CTF-Church of Baal
Map Info
	File Name ctf-baal.zip Author Friendly Bob Gametype UT2k3 Capture The Flag Date Added 03-04-2003 File Version 1.00 File Size 1.67 mb Player Count 8-12 Map Description The church of the demon God Baal is a dark, forboding place, full of torture and torment. A worthy arena for the brave competitors of The Tournament. Review Rating 5.5 User Rating 5 Overall Rating 5.5
Review
Reviewer Twrecks Awe Score:  2.0/3 Date 04-21-2003 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.0/3 User Point:  0 Overall Score:  5.5/10 Baal me out. If blasting your enemies into submission and stealing their banner of glory appeals to you, this CTF map blends them into a rivalry of evil denzines. Continuity of design elements harkens flag crazed minions through the corridors, towards death, or a hard won capture... either way a palace of darkness awaits your play. Unfortunatly all the mayhem comes at a price. Gameplay lags pitching a glance form end to end. Antiportals would pay the devil in dividends, hiding the multitude of meshes from the rendering engines eyes (BSP does NOT occludes in UT2k3). A serious lack of movers or emmiters suck another oppurtunity for a second life. While able to spawn mass players, bloodshed should not be from pounding your keyboard. I prefer a map that will not let me leave till my eyes bleed and my fingers bone raw. Layout serpentines from each base to a central nexus. The outer corridors can lead you astray, yet familiar architecture will point you back on path when encountered. The pivot pathway will lead through the RL clutch complete with dual armor. These rich perches are not defensable and mearly provide egress to the enemys ramparts, or on the attack a fuelling station for unleashing agressions. Not a map to assail online, bots will own your laggy rear at home, only determination and facing away from sin will win the match.
Map Comments
Friendly Bob 05-22-2003 11:17 AM MDT   Right, thanks for that review Twrecks. I think what has been highlighted most through this and my other UT2003 map, Arena Delta, is a lack of detail in my mapping. It has been tough for me to adjust from using BSP on it's own to combining a BSP skeleton with static mesh detail. It's a tough thing to get your head around, but I'm getting there! :) One comment about the review, you mention a lack of emmiters - I beg to differ, as the smoke effects coming from the vents was done using emmiters. On another note, thanks to whoever it was (your name escapes me as I am writing this post. Sorry, but you know who you are! :) ) who pointed out the use of KActors in the map. I have to admit that I was unaware of their presence and I shall try to deal with this problem to address the framerate issues in the map! Finally, if you want to keep tabs on my work, check out my site at - www16.brinkster.com/fancyabrew. Later! Xyz 03-05-2003 06:26 AM MST Rating: 5   I think you should have spelled the word with a capital G, thats what the dictionairy says. The map looks ok. The lights on the walls dont have a shining light in it. The blue team area also has a red glow on it, it would be more clear if is was a blue glow. The layout is ok, but scoring may be too easy 'couse of all the routes to get to the flag and back. The greatest foult in this map is that the spawning points are mixed. Blue team members are spawen in the red team area and vica versa. It really fucks up the gameplay. You could adjust it by looking in the player start or spawn point properties and set the team number to 1 for blue and 0 for red. With those fixes it would be pleasent map. Clark Kent 03-05-2003 12:56 PM MST Rating: 4   Nice layout for the first 15 seconds then it all looks the same. It ran choppy on my 2ghz, 512mb ram, ati 9700 pro machine. Dude, lighten up on the poly's or something. Good concepts and I do like the look but poor implementation with low frame rate. People want smooth running maps that are easy on the eye so they can play all day! Like me. ;-) SirTahngarth 03-06-2003 11:43 PM MST Rating: 5   I concur with Kent. pretty good map, but the FPS leaves something to be desired. perhaps it needs antiportals. as long as you only use a few simple shaped ones, dont make more than a couple, they wont hurt, and will more likely than not help. try it with antiportals placed where they can block out unseen polys, and then try without. there may be a big difference, there might not. it depends on how many polys they are able to block from being drawn. one other note: geometry does NOT occlude. the subtracted brushes you mention do not block any polys from being drawn. Just because you cant see a polygon doesn't mean its not being processed and drawn. Zone portals DO occlude, in their own special way. but no BSP geometry has any occlusion as far as I am aware. an example of this is DOM-Marvellous. Ir is just a bunch of corridors filled with staticmeshes. despite the fact that the walls of the rooms block your view, and the corridors appear to be subtracted (though I didnt actually check) the poly count looking from one corner to the opposite one was insane- got like 10 fps on my GF4ti4200. Czm21x 04-26-2003 05:34 AM MDT Rating: 4   The theme is a church or temple, but it doesn't look like a church or temple. It looks like some sort of building, and that's all it looks like. I'm starting to wonder why there aren't more outdoor maps for Ut2003. An indoor/outdoor map would have been better for an ancient temple theme. Gargorias 04-27-2003 09:35 PM MDT Rating: 5   This is for the Reviewer and other people that have commented about the bad framerates on this map. The slowness of this map has nothing at all to do with Zoning, Occluding or AntiPortals or PolyCount. There is 190 kActors in this map. Yes!! 190!! All those little lighty things on the wall, they are all kActors and you can shoot them off the wall and the more you shoot off the slower the framerate. Overuse of kActors will dramaticly reduce framerate and the Author needs to fix the problem in this level. Homeslice 04-28-2003 12:03 AM MDT Rating: 7   I like this map, although it's not reminiscent of a church. This map seemed to have gotten mixed reviews. A 5.5 here, a 40 on Unreal Playground and a 7.5 on Insite (reviewed by me on that one). Weird. But a good map.