DM-Cycladic is "inspired by the Cycladic Islands of Greece" according to its author, Dylan T Gladstone. I've never been there, but I assume the architecture is dominated by masonry work. The map appears to be made for Unreal 1, since the textures and pickups are specific to that game. The game does run in UT, however, Epic suggests replacing the old pickups with comparable new pickups for performance reasons. Does anybody really do this?

This map did suffer from performance problems, with polys peaking over 260 in the outdoor area. Since much of the fighting takes place outside, this was a cause for concern. Path nodes were a mixed bag: Some nodes were placed well, while others were overly done. I noticed bots having trouble negotiating boxes and stairs, bunny-hopping in vain to reach a vest. I also noticed a bot getting stuck at the edge of the water in the underground zone. Either that or it was just having fun splashing around making waves. There is no mention of player load, and no screenshot: Since the map is rather large, I just stuck 16 bots in there and went for it. The bots do kick butt, and I suggest staying inside the buildings as much as possible if you experience too much lag outdoors.

There are several buildings of various shapes and sizes, and some nice underground areas with water thrown in for good measure. The design of the map is clean, and texture alignment was not much of an issue, considering that much of the architecture was made with 'Base" textures. This was, most likely, done to comply with the simple architecture of the Cycladic Islands. Nevertheless, the architecture is slightly above average, using some 2D shape editing, and not being overly gaudy. The underground tunnels provided the map some definition, and an atrium rocket arena, sniper locations and vertical fighting offer some variety to the map. One location has a small square hole in the ground, apparently so you can get in a cheap shot when someone goes for a health pickup underground.

Items were placed reasonably well, with the 'good stuff' hard to reach. Snipers will have fun decapitating unsuspecting robo-fraggers, using building tops and towers as advantage points. Health was placed with careful deliberation, making you work for your kills.

Lighting was mediocre. There were many areas of light/dark contrasts, but some of the underground areas were a little too dark. Adjusting the brightness, or playing the level at night should help with this. The outside area was lit by the ambient light of the sky, which gave the map an 'overcast, full moon' feel. The skybox does have some texturing anomalies associated with it, but you'll probably be too busy staying alive to notice this. Lanterns provided the bulk of the indoor lighting, including the underground areas. These went well with the architecture, but one word about using lanterns: If you use a lantern for lighting, change the 'ScaleGlow' setting from 1 to 4 (or something above 1) to make the lantern appear to be on. Seeing bright light emanating from dull lanterns is a paradox. Mr. Gladstone placed some nice lens flares on the underground lanterns and adjusted their size appropriately to give them a nice appearance.

There is no music and little ambient sound on the map. Much of this has to do with the theme: Since we aren't inside a castle with burning torches, or a factory with roaring machinery, there wasn't much use for ambient sounds.