This is a lesson on how to take a simple map, and make it appear complex. DMUrbanHotZone is a large, outdoor map that plays well because of good frame rates. That's right, a large, outdoor map with good frame rates. That's hard to do.

So many times have I seen a theme such as this totally screwed up. Mappers try to show too many polys at once and kill the frame rates in the process. Not this author: "Slapshot" Robert J. Missionario. You see buildings surrounding you, billboards, benches, fires, streetlights, even a subway train. But you don't see this stuff all at the same time. This is what makes this map play far better than any outdoor map, of this type, I've seen to date. Z-axis fun is everywhere, as you climb the catwalks bolted to the sides of the buildings.

A custom texture package comes with this one, and it compliments the theme. Walls with graffiti are all around, as are some cardboard boxes left by the homeless. The night sky looms overhead, and the full moon helps to illuminate the darkest corners.

The bots kept me busy. The author suggests 8-16, but I would say that 16 is about right. Once you start getting less than that, you are going to be sleeping too much. A goodie on the water tower is avoided by the bots, but I never took advantage of it either, because jumpboots were the least of my worries. The bots also kept jumping from a plank by the water tower, instead of crossing it, even though the path nodes were correct. Maybe they just wanted to get off the building to fight somebody on the streets. The item placement made for a good game. Most of the time I found myself running for a weapon after I spawned, but I usually had plenty of time to get something worthy to shoot with before I found a foe.

I liked the lighting. There are a couple of places that need a little tweaking, but the rest of the map looked great. There are lots of dark corners, and once you get way up on top of the roofs, all you have for lighting is the moonlit sky above. There is no music, but there are ambient sounds and mover sounds.

~End of Review~

For the author: I don't think the self-installation program is really a good idea. For one thing, it's not really necessary, and for another, it can cause problems in the long run. Some people might not realize that a texture was automatically placed in their texture file by the program, and if they are newbie mappers, they might make a map with your file and send it in. The map would not run without you textures, because the newbie mapper might not know your texture file was a custom one and not include it. The lighting issues I mentioned are as follows: You know those tunnels that have the masked fencing? (like the one with the truck) You have the lights running down the tunnel, but the lights are not lit up inside the tunnel. The gradually fade out as they encroach into the tunnel depths. It just doesn't look right to me. I also think the graffiti walls were overly done. Instead of having a long wall with the same graffiti on it, just make one little section of the wall with graffiti so you don't see the same thing spray painted every 256 units.