DM-Fautl
Map Info
	File Name dm-fautl_r1.zip Author Nemezis Gametype UT Deathmatch Date Added 02-26-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 5.65 mb Player Count 10+ Map Description A Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Portugal, para quem não sabe) Nota: o mapa é muito grande, e pode perder desempenho, especialmente nas áreas exteriores, nos pc's mais antigos AVISO: Não-alunos da Faculdade, poderão achar o mapa aborrecido e demasiado grande ;) Visitem o link abaixo para verem mais screenshots... --------------------------------- The Faculdade de Arquitectura, of Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Portugal, for those who don't know) Note: the map is quite big, and it may lose performance, specialy in the outside areas, in the older computers WARNING: Non-students of this college, you may find this map quite boring and too large ;) Visit the link bellow to see more screenshots... --------------------------------- www.nemezis.pt.vu --------------------------------- Review Rating 3.5 User Rating 7 Overall Rating 4.5
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  1.5/3 Date 04-25-2004 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  0.5/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  4.5/10 AWE: 1.5 In this map, the author has reconstructed a Portuguese college of architecture, and done a very detailed job of it. The author’s attention to detail is commendable, and despite the fact that I’ve never walked the halls of the Faculdade de Arquitectura myself, I have no doubt that anyone who has would recognize the facility instantly upon playing this map. The included texture pack comprises nearly one hundred textures of everything from simple walls and flooring to vending machines and what appear to be project presentations. (I suppose they could be plans for constructing a doomsday device, but I don’t speak Portuguese.) Some of them are rather plain, but I’m not docking any points for that since it’s done in the interest of accuracy. Finally, to accent an already detailed geometry, the author has tastefully used hundreds of deco meshes, and they do a great deal to add to the place. Most of the textures on the walls are not aligned, but the walls are extremely plain and low-contrast so you probably won’t notice in most places. There are a few places it jumped out at me though, such as when I was ascending a staircase. The other unfortunate part of the texturing is that although windows appear transparent from inside, they appear opaque and pure black from outside. This was done intentionally for the sake of performance, but it’s not pretty, and as I’ll discuss later, performance doesn’t improve much. For the most part though, the texturing is done well. The lighting, however, is sterile and soulless. Virtually every light in the map, even those used to create daylight, is pure white. Unlike the texturing, this is not a concession to realism at the expense of adornment. It’s just plain boring. The map could have looked so much better if the lighting had been done properly, to give it some color and shadow, but instead it looks impossibly white. The coronas could use better skins and much lower radii as well. There’s one place outside where you can find a set of ten coronas in a long row, and they’re visible at any distance, so if you look at the row head-on, they all combine to give the appearance of a giant, opaque circle. Finally, I think the skybox is inappropriate for this map. If you look out over the edge, there are hideously bright, oversaturated blue clouds below you (the only instance of colored lighting I was able to find in the map) with bunches of lightning slowly drifting past. It’s an incongruous thing to find in a map built for realism. BUILD: 1.5 Another point in this map’s favor is that there are not too many technical mistakes to be found, which is good considering the sheer size of this beast. Its area is roughly comparable to that of CTF-LavaGiant, huge for a deathmatch map. Still, although those brushes orthogonal to the principal axes (which is most of them) are aligned nicely, many of the others are not, and this may contribute to some of the BSP holes I found. Most of them are minor, but some of them are permanently visible, including one nasty HOM effect. There are some other oddities in the build that relate to gameplay, so I'll cover them in the next section. The bots play fairly well. They get most everywhere, even on the rooftops outside. Once or twice while I was testing they got stuck on a corner, and I might have added a couple of AmbushPoints for bots that enjoy camping, but that’s it. Nothing major, really. One other problem I have with the map in this area is that the sound is very bland. As I said, it’s a giant map, and there are only three ambient sounds in the whole place. Two are for small fountains outside, and one is a wind sound. The problem with the wind is that there’s only one actor providing it, placed in the center of the map. This means that in some places, you can hear the wind at full volume while indoors in a room with no windows, and in other places it’s virtually inaudible even while outside. A little more and better audio would have been nice. CAST: 0.5 Sadly, here’s where it all falls apart. There are a number of serious problems in this category that prevent the map from being much fun. First, unless you’ve got a monster of a machine, performance is going to suffer somewhat in the outside areas. As I mentioned earlier, the author set the windows up so they’re only translucent from inside, whereas from outside they appear to be black. The problem is that they don’t occlude properly. Thus, even though you can’t see through the windows while outside, all those polygons in there are still being drawn, and so you take a big performance hit for no gain in visual detail. The result is poly counts that are sometimes upwards of 800, with dozens of deco meshes in view at the same time. Throw in character models and dynamic lighting from weapons fire, and your framerate’s going to hurt. Second is the much more serious problem of scale. Despite the fact that the map is already huge, the scale of the place is too small. There are many places where you can’t jump without hitting your head on ceiling beams or the tops of doorways, and doorways and stairwells are usually barely wide enough for a player to fit through. Needless to say, gameplay suffers a great deal from this. It’s very difficult to maneuver while inside. Third, we have the equally serious problem of consistency and connectivity. The author went a little nuts with destructible objects in this map, whether they be doors, tables, wall sections, or whatever else. Unfortunately there are many of these things where they’re not especially useful, and they always seem to be missing in places where they’d be truly useful. It’s common to find a wall that can be destroyed right next to a bunch of windows that are indestructible. The breakable objects all respawn too, which is exceptionally odd. I like blowing stuff up as much as any red-blooded gamer, but watching walls reappear before your eyes and then having to blow them up again so you can see across the room gets old very quickly. The map’s many doors suffer from the same defects. Some of them open, but most of them are just textured onto impassable walls. I don’t need to tell you how frustrating it is to run up to door after door trying in vain to find the handful that will actually let you traverse the map. There are never enough options for which way to go (except while outside), and it’s often very difficult to figure out how to get somewhere. Item placement is uninspired, and inconsistent again. Sometimes you can run around for a long time without seeing anything, and in some places you’ll encounter a dozen pickups or more all clustered together. One hallway has seven weapons lined up nice and pretty, including a chainsaw, of all things. There are tons and tons of weapons, but they need to be more evenly distributed. Also, a note to all mappers: Five Redeemers is too many. FINAL SCORE: 3.5 Here we have a potentially interesting map that was ruined in part by the restrictions inherent to faithfully rebuilding an actual location, but mostly by a number of fatal errors on the part of the mapper. The gameplay is simply bad, and it would require a great deal of work to salvage it. With more connectivity in the inside areas and an appropriate scale, it might be all right for people looking for a big deathmatch, but as it is, I can’t recommend this map.
Map Comments
Baba 02-27-2004 12:32 PM MST Rating: 7   Great map! Incredible planning and forthought went into making this map. Following the link to the makers website shows pix of the actual facility this map is based on. Wow! What a great job. It makes a good run-n-gun map as well as a good sniping/camping map. Nahand 02-27-2004 01:58 PM MST Rating: 6   É bom ver que autores portugueses de mapas para UT existem e fazem algo de jeito. Continua ;) Sicko Teddy 02-27-2004 09:47 PM MST Rating: 9   Why 6 and 7 then!? give it a bigger beef. (: G|-|O$T 02-28-2004 09:00 AM MST Rating: 10   Execelent map, nice design and great criativity. Keep it coming ;) Jez 04-13-2004 12:46 PM MDT Rating: 1   What the heck are you guys on? This is one mother of a highly overrated map! It's bland and white, kinda reminds me of the very early maps that started appearing after UT first went on sale. There is absolutely no detail on the textures. The walls, if they are walls, disappear when shot and reappear, yet the windows are indestructible. Futhermore, I found myself stuck in the same corridor going up and down shooting walls, collecting ammo, shooting walls, collecting ammo, ad infinitum, with no way out and no bots to kill. None of the doors open, even though they made a continuous opening sound. I had to kill myself just to so that I could respawn elsewhere. This map is daft, sorry. Nemezis 04-23-2004 06:52 PM MDT   SPECIAL NOTE FOR JEZ: I assume you know how to read? If so, read my map description, PLEASE! I repeat it: The map is mainly designed to look just like the facility you can see in this link www.nemezis.pt.vu. If you are not a fan of this kind of maps, then do a favour yourself: do not vote and do not play it, ok? Thanks! -------------- Edit: I know this map is not a good example of anything, the mainly purpose was recreating my college :) The scale: yes, the buildings are smaller than they sould be, but i saw that too late... The Texturing: I've made about 80% of the textures used in this map, and also, they are what they are because of how the school looks. About those masked windows, i thought if they would be opaque by outside, it would optimize a bit of framerate - it seems it didn't :( Thanks for all your comments :) The Brazilian Novice 04-23-2004 08:49 AM MDT   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOmebody here speaks portuguese (not brazilian portuguese thought. :) Lol. =P Manticore 04-26-2004 02:03 AM MDT Rating: 7   Like Cartwright Hall for UT2K3 this is an incredible exercise in architectural modelling and should be rated accordingly. That being said it would be a good map for sniping/manhunting. Big!