DM-BlastFurnace
Map Info
	File Name dm-blastfurnace.zip Author Sicko Teddy Gametype UT2k3 Deathmatch Date Added 01-28-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 18.71 mb Player Count 4-16 Map Description This is my first map for UT2003. The battle takes place at the blast furnaces in Russia.The map has many different aspects of combat such as outdoor battle,terrain, indooor battle,sniping spots and else. There are extrahazards, such as heawy trains loaded with koke,running nonstop;the furnace going on a full blast; liquid steel,flowing in the castfloor, and the hight.There are some secrets in this level. You can duck under the train and hunt for some enemy feets. Every coalcar has a ladder. Me and my friend created this map as a challenge based on a blast furnace kit.The framerate might be a little ruff in the begining. I wanted to create a map with extrahazards. (my mapping slogan-I hate BSP holes!) Please tell me how can I fix the ladder problems. (resp.){{Thanks alot for all those coments.And also thanks for the tech advice, now I can find out he problem with bot pathing. I used the blocking volume and a hitscan volume over the complex objects by disabling all collision aspects (block player, block actor....) I thought it will speed up the framesrate (it did,in fact). }} PS: my Email is in the README file in case you have any suggestions or else. Review Rating 5.5 User Rating 7.5 Overall Rating 6.5
Review
Reviewer Hourences Awe Score:  2.0/3 Date 02-01-2004 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.0/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  6.5/10 Rather large DM map for UT2003. The first map this author and his friend made and they didn't do too bad for that. Surely there are more polished first made maps out there but this one tries to be more original and uses some custom content. Gameplay in here isn't exactly of the type you would consider anywhere near "hardcore" nor it is something that you would place on a serious server. There's lack of flow and connectivity and it simply doesn't play very seriously. What it does offer is gameplay for one of those fun and insane matches at 5 AM with some friends. The map has lots of cool concepts and gimmicks that make it funny for some friendly matches, but also prevent it from being a serious gameplay map. A couple of driving trains, high towers with loooong ladders(finally someone uses ladders), some secrets, shortcuts, etc.. Great fun when you play it at 5 am and you're in the subway area, trying to shoot your friend while a train is coming down the shaft, killing your friend right in front of you while you saved yourself in the last second in a hole in the floor seeing the train driving over you. Great, just not serious. The invisible blocking walls all over the place to prevent you from running out of the area are a little weird too, it would have been better if you had placed more fences and made more use of this teleport back thing. The map also suffers from some FPS problems. I saw the polycount getting up too 130k + a few ten thousand terrain polygons. Not really great. Visually it tries to make a theme that's a little more defined than the usual "it's industrial because it has these awesome purple pipes and green crates" type of thing. Most elements in the map are put together logical, The main building with all the pipes and tanks feels authentic and the custom content is a nice addition. Where it goes wrong is the fact that the visuals lack a lot of polish and this quality feel. The custom content for example often has really bad texturing. The sand on top of the trains contains a few rainbow pixel spots, and the overall train skins are incredible one colored, 100 percent clean like. They make it feel like its a plastic toy train for your son. A few detail textures could have done wonders already, on all tex. Lighting is another problem area. Most of the light is plain white. The whole map feels pretty dead. Even if the map was intended to be realistic, you always want to have some color in your light. Outside the building drops a good shadow but the light just is too white, boring and lifeless. It feels dead. And the 500 different type and colored textures aren't exactly helping the coherency of the map either. 5.5, because it's the first map, tries to be kind of original and has a few nice concepts, but the unpolished feel and all the problems are keeping the score down. Still, fun for a few games with maybe a few cool mods or mutators at 5 AM in the morning. As for the optimizing part, few things to keep in mind : -There's no point in zoning a large outdoor area or the building in the middle. A zone and everything in it will be hidden when its completely out of view, in case of large outdoor areas it simply will always be in view so zoning is completely useless. You have to keep it for the indoor areas, creating a few "air shaft" zones in between two large zones and splitting up the corridors inside in maybe a few more zones if the zone is too big or contains too many meshes and other crap. -Your use of those BSP anti portal sheets in for example a few of those train cars is useless. A BSP sheet works less well for occluding meshes then a true Anti portal volume does, the BSP sheets also will not work together for better occluding, and sheets in general are less good then cubes or other 3D brushes for occluding purposes. -Should have used far more Anti portal volumes (though not hundreds of them either). Making each of them as large as possible, and making sure they always touch subtracted space and as many different zones as possible. A few large ones in your ground would have been a good start, so they hide the tunnels below the terrain for those nasty moments when zones refuse to do that job. -Terrain is too high poly + the more different textures you use on your terrain the slower -Your textures should be compressed to DXTC instead of your RGB8, that eats incredible lot of memory.
Map Comments
Amisa 01-28-2004 05:43 PM MST Rating: 8   This map is very nice, well done ! The two trains works very well. Very realistic. So some narrow places in the subway. Good gameplay, but in some places near the fences outside, i get stuck. Bots can't easily move upstairs and are sometimes blocked by the standing wagons. 10 fo eyecandy.. OLDMAN(CO30) 01-28-2004 03:02 PM MST Rating: 8   I like what it has to offer, i think i would have added a few health/weapons out by the fence and such to see if anyone had the guts to go after them with someone up high with that lighting gun. Also maybe a few boxes out there to hide and then run like heck for cover. Fliegenklatsche 01-28-2004 03:28 PM MST Rating: 8   The map looks very good and is full of details. Thus it affects very realistic. Unfortunately the fps are very low at some places. There are still two holes in the terrain which should be filled. At the same place the player stucks between terrain and blocking volume. Also at some other places it is a little bit angular so that the player stucks. But all together the map gives me a very good impression. Shao 01-28-2004 08:10 PM MST Rating: 8   looks great...cool map man!~~ Need i say more? Equinox 01-29-2004 10:22 PM MST Rating: 8   Looks fantastic, plays well. Solidly 8. mangan }swe{ 01-31-2004 03:44 AM MST Rating: 9   really looks incredible _GMotha 01-31-2004 12:16 PM MST Rating: 8   a very pretty urban map for ut2k3. Sicko Teddy 02-13-2005 09:31 PM MST   (Updated) Thanks alot Hourences for this review. It was very usefull.When i'll make my next maps i'll keep those things in mind. The Rainbow sand is my mistake , when I was using Photoshop. The train texture is a texture from a model train(a prototype of Russian rail unit.) I wasn't very sure of how the antiportals work, but I understood the aproximate concept. The majority of the mesh texturing was planar or cylindrical. (I didn't quite understand what is so funny there, and the 5 AM thing too) Oh whell. I want to thank you again for a review. Thank you all! Tnx alot people, for those coments, and thanx for the TECH advice. I wish the UT2003 creators fix that "FALSE KILL" done by movers.(I mean when player jump, touching the mover's wall, the engine think that the player got trapped by a wall and his trajectory. So it refers to the encroach setting>> which is set to "CRUSH WHEN ENCROACH" + does anyone know is there a way to make bots avoid the train? I tried to use the fear spot, but it was useless. EDIT+ Thanks for complement about mesh skinning! Some meshes have a good skinning while others are badly skinned(like the vertical gas tube on the lower portion of the factory. Fortunately, I learned how to use Material ID and how usefull it is! When My college will be over for summer, i will go back to mapping! (I plan to make Assault map for UT2003 using Assault mod!)FAREWELL. EDIT:Feb 13 05: Yeah thanks. It was so unusual for me- THE FIRST SUMBISSION! MY FIRST UPLOAD! And a first map that got outside feedback! Thanks again! brighteyes 02-05-2004 03:02 PM MST Rating: 6   I totally agree with Hourences, interesting theme but is less amazing in the graphics and gameplay section. I think it is still quite playable but I couldn't not notice the unpolished visuals. Still a fun map that will probably stay on my hard drive. 1/2LuNaTiC 02-05-2004 09:44 PM MST Rating: 4   Ok I won't take any of the people gave 8's seriously anymore. This map has lots of flaws in it and gameplay was boring. Obi-Wan 02-08-2004 03:07 PM MST Rating: 6   agree, but really good for a first map Draco 03-13-2004 01:55 PM MST Rating: 7   Great looking map with high detailed objects. For botmatchfans only average. Manticore 03-21-2004 02:07 AM MST Rating: 7   This map does nothing much for me gameplay-wise. That being said, people who skin models for mods etc. should take a lesson from the quality of the work in this map; particularly the trains. Excellant realism........ sulkava 03-22-2004 07:51 AM MST Rating: 7   yes yes, pretty good! rbrohammer 04-13-2004 03:50 PM MDT Rating: 7   Good. A little tight in spots from a players standpoint. SoH_Ghost3021 01-11-2005 11:58 AM MST Rating: 8.5   great work, teddy! ;) u lucky dawg! mr Hour. reviewed it himself! >:(