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During the reign of UT, quite a few urban-based maps were released. Although the majority of these were for so-called reality mods, there were a few that were just for vanilla UT as well. As a rule, I was never overly enamoured by these urban-themed maps. The Unreal engine was designed from the ground up to produce great sci-fi fantasy levels. It’s very good at this. Urban levels never quite work. This is because you either have predominantly boring cubes as buildings or you add detail to the buildings and they still end up looking rather cubic anyhow. Either way, even with good lighting, they never really grabbed me. Besides, how many sewers, deserted ghettos and grotty alleyways can you run down? UT2k3 has had far less urban levels, and this is no doubt due to the fact that with all these new graphical features, why would you want to go back to an urban theme? Giles Cresswell decided to give it a shot with UnrealPlaza.
The first thing to note is that, fortunately, the author had the presence of mind to at least move away from the overused dirty theme. The level sports shiny, pristine buildings, clean water and well-maintained planters, all contributing to that air of newness. It does beg the question, why has Liandri suddenly decided to purchase what one would presume was a far more expensive venue when their penchant for bargain-basement fixer-uppers has been pivotal to the tournament’s success? Hypothetical musings. In any case, the level sports the kind of architecture you would expect in a new plaza; a central open courtyard between two the buildings that serve as the bases, large, airy atriums replete with palms and an abundance of staircases. Some of this is courtesy of some custom static meshes. The animated textures on the sides of the buildings with the slowly panning clouds was a nice touch, although the distance fog in the skybox fades the matching clouds out unless you’re looking more or less straight up so the effect is lessened. The texturing everywhere is reasonably clean and I didn’t come across any glaring alignment issues, and the custom textures were welcome if pedestrian. There were no antiportals used, however the open layout and wide views often afforded would make these harder to implement effectively and the author has made very good use of zones which really help to keep this map running smoothly. The enclosed spawn rooms I wasn’t really impressed with. They look incredibly basic and I disliked the options of either swimming way out or taking an out-of-place elevator directly to the flag. The water simply isn’t an option as it’s too slow and puts you in the middle of the map. The elevator just didn’t seem thematically consistent with the setting. A proper elevator with closing doors and a larger floor would have been more appropriate. I also don’t like it, as an attacker, to have defenders spawning so close to the flag with access to weapons like the rocket launcher. The curved side staircases also seemed rather incongruous and also quite plain and boring.
The lighting was a bit on the average side. Outside, the sunlight actor does its job well and it works. Inside is a different story. Firstly, the author needs to spend more time matching lights to light sources. Much of the internal lighting is via paired fluorescent tubes. Unfortunately, whilst this almost works in the blue base with blue lighting, in the red base it looks utterly ridiculous. I say almost works in the blue base because the colour is a little too strong for a fluorescent, and the brightness is too high creating white “burns” on the walls which don’t look very good at all. This also happens at the exit of the blue building where an artificial light overlaps the sunlight, as you can see in the first screenshot, creating another white burn. Overall, the lighting lights the level but doesn’t really give it a whole lot of character or atmosphere… but then I suppose that’s a plaza for you! :) Sound work, I’m afraid, is rather dire. Firstly the level has no music track assigned to it, so it’s capture the flag to the menu music or picking a track from the playlist. Either way, music clearly was given no consideration, which is a disappointment. The level also sports a grand total of two ambient sounds. One of these sounds is a general city ambient and the other is the fountain. Wow. With a little bit of imagination this level could have had quite a bit more done in the sound department.
The bots are something of a mixed bag. The bottom line is that they play the level well. The author has made use of assault paths so they certainly vary their attack and flag runs, and this helps to keep the game interesting. However, despite pathing by the author, the bots steadfastly refuse to go underwater, at least in the many matches I participated and spectated in. To be honest, I don’t really blame them, as the underwater sections of the level offer no genuine value. I’ll mention that this large underwater section features no less than two ion painters and two redeemers, but both are too far away from the action and have limited usefulness in this layout, especially the ion painter due to the inability to fire indoors. The bots also got stuck on the railing in front of the flags more times than I would have liked to see. Perched atop these rails, especially when they’ve just captured the enemy flag, they’ve been seen doing a little jiggle on the spot. Weapon placement was alright, although as I mentioned I’m not keen on the rocket launchers in the spawn rooms. Ammo is rarely near the weapons it’s for, so players will need to do some legwork to stock up, which is a good thing, however in some cases I would have liked to see the ammo a little closer to its weapon. The author recommends 6 to 12 players for this level. I’d suggest at 12 the level gets rather spammy, and your best bet would be 8-10. The author didn’t set a default bot load, so playing with the default bot load will get you 4 a side. This is an acceptable load, but I would have liked to see the author be deliberate in this loading rather than a coincidental occurrence.
Ultimately, while being a slightly different take on urban themes, the level doesn’t really wow you with visual splendour as is so often the case with urban levels. There are the visual and game play/bot issues, which dragged the score down a bit, but overall the effort is solid and has merit.
Bottom Line: It runs smoothly and the bots will give you a decent game and that means it’s worth checking out.
Score: 6.0
Average User Score: 6.8 (3 scores)
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BuilderBob
Score: 7.5
Even though there are perhaps a few crits ThunderStrike mentioned, it plays well on the surface IMO. I've had this map on my HD for some time now, I know the author via 3dBuzz's forum. I like the map and it's in my CTF map rotation :) gj on it!
2004-05-20 02:39:05
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Homeslice
Score: 6.0
Not much to this map. I did like the geysers and the glass buildings, not to mention the cool signs, but otherwise, it was pretty basic IMO. Still good to play. Great to see an urban-themed map which is rare for this game.
2004-05-12 19:44:48
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cresswga
Thanks for the review - I cant argue with any of your crits :) However this was my first map (outside of the 2 required for the 3d buzz level editing course) and with more experience I can now see a lot of the mistakes.
With the sound I didnt really know what I was doing at the time. As for the bots getting stuck I never figured out why that happened - especially as it only seemed to happen to the _other_ team.
Thanks again.
2004-05-12 11:15:07
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SkaarjMaster
Score: 7.0
Interesting an different map, lots of tactical possibilities, bots are fairly good, great new map for CTF servers, needs custom music, water areas need a little work.
2004-05-12 06:38:32
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