DM-Aquarius][
Map Info
	File Name dm-aquarius][.zip Author Homeslice Gametype UT Deathmatch Date Added 12-01-2002 File Version 1.00 File Size 150 kb Player Count 4-12 Map Description None Review Rating 3.5 User Rating 4 Overall Rating 3.5
Review
Reviewer ArcadiaVincennes Awe Score:  0.5/3 Date 12-17-2004 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.0/3 User Point:  0 Overall Score:  3.5/10 DM-AquariusII (UT) A map that tries to use water to simulate z-axis but suffers greatly in almost all aspects. A deserted temple? perhaps? that has land-based combat and water-based combat. AWE: .5 The level first and formost, falls victim to the common trap of room-corridor-room. There are three, arguably four, main areas to fight in. Two, perhaps three, are rooms joined by corridors, one underwater, and the fourth is a large underwater corridor. The first thing that jumps out at one is the lack of decoration. The underwater corridor does have stautes, and some of the doorways throughout the level do have some flares/emitters/flames to set them off a little. But the rooms are practically bare with only the pickups as decoration. Underwater also has a few plants but they are in a room/corridor that gets no natural light so I don't understand how they're growing there. The doorways/transitions use vines that have been retextured to an inexplicable purple, and have no trim. The emitters/flares used are well-done but don't make up for the lack of anything else. The rooms look out into the sybox which really is just a box with some textures aplied to it with some clouds and a moon. Unlike most UT skybox clouds, these move at a realistic speed so thank you for that. The texturing throughout is decently chosen and applied but there's little variation in it despite the inclusion of custom textures.. One room looks almost like all the others in terms of texture even though the textures are different. There's something to be said for sticking with a theme but too close is also bad. There are two lifts in a large round room that are, sadly untextured and show the default ugly bubble texture. The lighting is quite curious. The amount of light fixtures is vastly out of proportion to the lit space. There's only a few stuck to walls and celingings here and there but they seem to light the entire space somewhat ambiantly. The author has also applied corona's to them which are fairly small - a nice change from most maps - but which lends to the feeling that they should be casting small pools of light and not lighting the level fairly evenly. Some of the light seems colored and some of it seems white. None of it is terribly interesting. The architecture makes little sense overall. The brushwork is blocky with windows being simple subtracted rectangles with no trim and no real reason to look at. There is a round room with two floors and two lifts and a doorway that leads to the largest room in the map through a tiny hallways. The two lifts have no supprts whatsoever and are just flat, square platforms that go up and down with no means of actually doing it. There are rectangular windows looking out into the skybox on the second floor. In the largest room the author has also placed skylights which don't look so good because they're simple rectangles again subtracted from the wall. The room this is in is also a large rectangle and there's a large rectangular pool of water in one area with no trim or any other distinguishing feature. Jump into the pool of water and you find yourself in a series of rectangular hallways flooded with water with rectangular alcoves holding statues and teleports. Continue down these 100% flooded corridors and you'll end at a round flooded room with a teleporter on the other side. There are some other items of note in the room but we'll get to those later. Overall, there's nothing here to really look at. The theme is uncertain other than maybe a partially flooded water temple. The lighting is ambiant without reason to be, and the textures are bland. The architecture doens't make much sense, suffers from room-corridor-room, and is too simplistic. BUILD: 2.0 The build here isn't quite as bad. The brushes are aligned decently and I didn't experience any HOMs. The lifts function well enough but, again, they have no supports, are untextured, and I didn't hear a sound from them. Sound is not very well applied here. In the circular room there is a fan in the center with a spinning fan sound but the fan actually moves slower than the indication from the sound. The only other sound I heard was in the corridors filled with water. For some reason the authro thought that a wind sound was an appropriate underwater sound. It doesn't really work. The teleporters worked fine and were a handy way to access the water areas and land areas. Overall, some build deficiencies, mostly with sound, but otherwise constructed well enough. CAST: 1.0 The gameplay is very basic in 3 main facets. The first is flat gameplay and there is a lot of this. In the largest room that's almost all there is. In the large circular room, there's flat gameplay on the floor. And finally, there's flat gameplay in the water areas. Now, the water areas are, I think, intended to simulate z-axis. But because of the nature of a water volume, movement is very slowed, and the vertical heigh of the water area is such that any encounters tend to be either on the same plane, or on a slightly sloping one. The second facet is z-axis and this is really only prevalant in the large round room with its second floor. The third is the water zones which have already been covered. As for weapon placement, there's really no strategy employed except for two weapons. The first is the sniper rifle which is up on the second floor of the large round room. However, it is largely useless because with the reccomended player count, bots will be spawning on the same upper level and you'll need to switch weapons to effectively deal with them unless you're a crack shot with the sniper rifle. The other weapon with any thought put towards its local is the redeemer. It's placed in the water zone in a large cubbyhole. This would normally be a somewhat decent risk/reward of the threat of a confined space giving you the reward of a high-powered weapon except for two reasons: first you move slowly in the water zone so your chances of making it back out of the water to use in a more interesting place is greatly reduced. Second, is that because you can move vertically in the water zone, the confined space threat is greatly reduced because you have 3 axes of movement instead of two. So it doesn't really work. The only really interesting placement is with the shield belt and keg of health which, unfotunately, are right next to each other. The author saw fit to make aquisition of these items a challenge by place two minigun turrets on opposite sides of the room with the shield belt and the keg being exactly between them directly in their field of fire. combine this threat with the slow movement inherent in the water zone and it's truely a risk/reward to get them. The bots will go all over the place and with the default player load you'll be constantly fighting them or they'll constantly fighting each other. They seem to use the lifts by accident and it seems like they can never really decide whether or not they want to be in the water because they're constantly popping in and out of the teleporters and water pool. Thankfully, for humans and bots, there are plenty of scuba tanks available to work your way through the water. To put it all together, this map does not make much sense. The architecture is minimal, basic, and uninteresting. The textures are bland and wash into each other and, at one point, are missing altogether. The lighting is too ambiant for the amount of light fixtures and the gameplay is really quite limited. This map tries to incorporate interesting z-axis gameplay in the waterzone but the design hinders this too much. If you want to see the potential the water zone shows, download the map. Otherwise it's a complete miss.
Map Comments
Homeslice 12-21-2002 01:27 AM MST   Tell me what you think of this map as compared to the first, sub-par Aquarius. Review if needed. (Really, I wanna know!) (EDIT: Any reviewer out there, can ya review this one and compare it to the first one as well? Thanks.) |LCN|Vaporizor 12-18-2002 05:37 PM MST Rating: 5   Better than the previous version for sure. Less ammo and more oxygen filled areas are good improvements, plus better textures. The instagib rifle is still too powerful though-it just doesn't belong, and the map is still too wide open. The room that has the rocket laucher and leads down to the instagib rifle could have a lowered ceiling, and some obsticles, or maybe make some rooms or partition, You get a lot for the file size though, with nice improvements. blabla 01-09-2003 01:10 AM MST Rating: 3   Definelty an improvement on the first Aquarius. I really like the theme of the map, however there are many factors which keep it from staying in my rotation. The Good -Cool Skybox -Theme (I dig the ancient temple idea) The Bad -Too wide open, with no cover -Botpathing - bots jump in and out of the water alot, and avoid the water tunnel entirely - theyre almost always up on dry land -For an ancient temple, its weird to have 2 auto cannons guarding the shieldbelt and kegger. On a related note, why are these 2 items right next to one another, and right around the corner form the Redeemer? -Alot of the lighting isnt sourced -Little to no Z-axis The Ugly -Texture alignment -Some items half buried in walls -Meshes are somtimes not attached to anything (seaweed) -Shingle textures on the wall? -Lifts are floating in mid air -Flames underwater (even blue ones) dont look right gyokusai 12-25-2002 09:05 AM MST Rating: 3   The "Too wide open, with no cover" bit makes the more interesting underwater parts of the map practically unplayable--if you'd like to win a match, that is. Since there's nothing to slow down combat on dry land, general frag count rises frantically while you're trying to make your way through the water filled catacombs. A problem due to which, I think, the whole point of the map is somewhat lost.