DM-FishTrap
Map Info
	File Name dm-fishtrap.zip Author GOD__AM Gametype UT Deathmatch Date Added 10-11-2003 File Version 1.00 File Size 1.64 mb Player Count 2-8 Map Description This is a medium size DM map which features a triggerable trap over the shieldbelt area and a few marine tanks with fish. Bots play the map very well and will hammer jump to get powerups or to gain acess to higher levels. Polygon count is pretty high in most areas and will bog down some older machines. Review Rating 4.5 User Rating 7 Overall Rating 5.5
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  1.0/3 Date 05-25-2004 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.0/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  5.5/10 AWE: 1.0 DM-FishTrap is set in a marine research facility, which means it's constructed much like any other high-tech, industrial-type setting, except that it has fish tanks in it. It's a nice touch; there are a number of large tanks, both free-standing and embedded in the walls, that have Devilfish swimming around in them. The architecture is fair. There's nothing terribly exciting to be found, but it's not dull and the overall design seems to have been thought out fairly well. On the downside, almost all of the map's textures come from the UTTech1 package. Like everyone else, I'm thoroughly sick of those textures. I don't mind them too much when they're used well, but here it seems like the author has chosen all the ugliest textures in the set. There are tons of places where some trim would have done the map quite a bit of good, but it's not used very often. Alignment seems to have been almost totally neglected. There are some horrible mirroring effects, too, which I hate. In one place, a wall is set to be a mirror for no apparent reason. It serves no aesthetic purpose at all, would never be placed there in such a facility if one really existed, and does nothing except to disorient players. There's another place where a section of flooring is set to partially reflective. That looks all right for marble, but not for a dirty metal floor, and certainly not when it's thrown into just one room in the map for no discernable reason. That kind of thing stinks of a mapper throwing in an effect just because he wants an excuse to use it, not because it's actually appropriate in its context. The ugliest part of the map is the light fixtures. Quite a few of the map's lights use a hemispherical deco mesh that's included with the map, and those look all right, but the rest of the lights use those small, rectangular light textures from UTTech1, and they're used in some very odd ways. The first instance of this, which is used in many places, can be seen in the first screenshot to the right. The light fixture cuts back into the wall at a 45-degree angle, with four lights tiled on it vertically. That looks bad enough, but to make matters worse, there's a corona at the center of the fixture, at the four lights' common corner. A corona should be placed where the light being generated is most pronounced, usually at the center of a light texture. Here it's placed between four textures, where no light is being generated at all. Not good. This texture also appears in huge banks on the walls, where it's tiled 24 times, as you can see in the second screenshot. What's more, the texture isn't scaled to fit the size of these banks evenly, so there are little bits of additional lights visible at the top and bottom of each. This was very poorly done. The lighting isn't very good either. Pretty much the entire map is bathed in the same shade of orange (though some bluish light does come in from outside). Those hemispherical lights appear perfectly white – the surface seems not to accept lighting – but they radiate orange light. Similarly, light textures that are pure white give off orange light. Quite a few places in the map use light textures that are colored blue, and they radiate orange light as well. Something about that doesn't seem quite right to me. All of the light textures are set to be unlit, so not only do they completely retain their incongruous colors, but they look unrealistic as well, because they're lit so evenly and with the same brightness no matter where they appear in the map. The author has used high shadow detail in many places, though I don't know why. There aren't really any interesting shadows anywhere, so it doesn't seem to do much except waste performance. BUILD: 1.5 There are a lot of mistakes to be found in the build, particularly as regards brushwork. It's very sloppy. Brushes seem more likely to be off the grid than on it, and as a result there are numerous BSP errors, and lots of misaligned brushes to be found as well. The map is zoned properly, at least. Two lifts appear in the map, and they're not very well done. The lifts are made of a single box each, so there's no trim or anything, and so it's not especially clear that you're about to step onto a lift. This is particularly true in one case, where the lift's texture is very similar in appearance to the texture on the floor around it. One lift appears right in the middle of a hallway, and spans the entire width of it; it's kind of a cumbersome location. Both stay open for too long, and in both cases, there's no indentation in the floor for the lifts to come up out of, so when they start moving, it looks like they pass right through the floor. There is one trap included, a set of spikes that can be brought down on the head of someone who's trying to retrieve the Shield Belt, but it's set up very strangely. There are two buttons which can activate it. They're right next to one another, and one of them can only be touched by jumping off the platform you're on, so I don't know why it's there. The buttons can be shot at, which is good considering that neither of them is within site of the trap they trigger (odd), but the damage triggers are placed some distance out from the wall, so you can see your shots colliding with something invisible in midair, although that collision area doesn't block players. It's a little strange. Successfully killing someone with the trap sends a sound effect to all players, a woman's voice saying, "Look at those gibs fly. Great job," with a definite touch of laughter and perhaps a hint of condescension. I don't know why, but that voice annoys me to no end. The other unusual thing about the trap is that the TrapSpringer actors used to lure the bots into using it are placed oddly. There are five TrapSpringers the bots can use, and several of them are nowhere near the activation mechanism. Thus the bots can activate the trap from many places in the map, while the players can use only the pair of buttons, so the bots get a huge advantage. I'm all for strong botplay, but not when it's done by allowing bots to do things that it's impossible for human players to access. In practice, though, it doesn't really give the bots an edge since they don't use the trap all that often (that I saw, anyway). Otherwise, though, the bot pathing is very solid; in fact it's the only part of the build I really liked. They go for everything except the Big Keg O' Health, which is hidden above a destructible part of the ceiling. That was a nice little touch, although the jumping wires in there are a bit much – with six of them, it becomes very obvious that they're all the same mesh playing the same animation – and the ceiling "respawns" every thirty seconds, which is a little weird. Bots will translocate and effectively use Anti-Grav Boots or even hammer jumps to get to various powerups, and I didn’t catch them doing anything exceptionally stupid. They should play a good game. CAST: 2.0 Thankfully, DM-FishTrap's gameplay is more appealing than its appearance or its technical merits. I do enjoy the layout for the most part, and since the author put in the time to get the bots working well, it should make for a challenging game in single-player mode as well as in multiplayer. It flows fairly well, aside from some walkways around poisoned water that are rather too confining, and that stupid mirror. Those players who are crazy about z-axis action may be a little disappointed, though; the map does have several different levels to it, but I almost always found myself fighting my enemies on approximately if not exactly level ground. Weapon and item placement is good. There's just enough to keep players supplied without the items being too scarce or too plentiful, and the author has chosen good locations for most of them. All of the major powerups are here, and they're all in somewhat tricky locations. The Keg, like I mentioned, is hidden in the ceiling, which is pretty cool; normally you'd only notice it by accident, but the author placed the frayed power cables a little too low, and you can occasionally see parts of them through the ceiling in the place where you can break it. The Shield Belt, also previously mentioned, is out in the open, but beneath a trap. The Damage Amplifier can be found way at the top of the map, the Redeemer way at the bottom in a hidden room, and the Invisibility requires a lift jump, hammer jump, translocator, or pair of boots to reach. There is one thing here that really annoyed me, though, and I'm surprised the author didn't pick up on it in playtesting. You should never place a PlayerStart such that it faces something very close that the player probably doesn't want to walk into. There are two offensive PlayerStarts in this map, both of which start the player right on the edge of a tank of water that eats away at your health pretty quickly, facing the water. Thus if you're holding down Forward as you spawn, which I almost always am, you'll find yourself swimming – and dying – unless you react in less than half a second. This is a Bad Thing! FINAL SCORE: 4.5 Since the map does play pretty well, it's probably worth at least taking a look at, but it's not something I particularly care to hold on to. I got bored with it pretty quickly, especially since I strongly dislike the visuals, and there are so many annoying build problems. Download it if you really want a new deathmatch map. Just don't expect anything miraculous.
Map Comments
C0der 10-12-2003 03:48 AM MDT Rating: 7   This map looks cool and plays well, but it is too big for 2 players, so player count is 4-8. Note: it runs slow on my PIV-1700, 512MB RAM and Geforce 4 Ti4200 with resolution 640x480. Why rating is not 8 or 9: lighting is too boring. I think you should add some colours. Poligon count is too high so not everyone can play on this map. And you should make slime in the bottom green not blue like water. LoserMan 10-13-2003 12:56 AM MDT Rating: 7   Just so people don't think the performance is a big problem: I got an avg of 70fps with a low of 40fps playing the map. I run an XP1600+, 256MB, Radeon 8500, at 1024x768 with Mike's Eyecandy mod to give the highest image quality possible, including the hi-res texture packs. Certainly a bit lower than the avg map, but nothing anyone should worry about. Overall the map is solid, the layout is good, with lots of connectivity. There could have been more interaction between levels, but it's a minor issue. The architecture was believable, though I thought the texture selections were kind of boring. The lighting was ok, perhaps a bit flat, more contrast would be good. There were some places where minor texture misalignments or scaling were noticeable, but no more than are found on some other very good maps. GOD__AM 05-28-2004 05:46 PM MDT   Thanks for the review Iornblade. Points well taken, and I agree that the bot pathing is probabally the best part of the map.