DM-Oros
Map Info
	File Name dm-oros.zip Author Koveras Gametype UT Deathmatch Date Added 03-17-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 3.62 mb Player Count 2-4 Map Description None Review Rating 5 User Rating 7.5 Overall Rating 6.0
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  1.5/3 Date 05-07-2004 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.0/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  6.0/10 AWE: 1.5 DM-Oros' first strength is that it successfully sets itself apart from most other UT maps out there in terms of theme, architecture, and texturing. That was the first thing that struck me upon opening this map: it's clearly not another amalgam of overused stock textures in a tired theme. The desert temple setting is pulled off pretty well, with lots of extra touches to show the building's decay over time. Outside, one of the building's columns has cracked and fallen, with the upper part of it lying half-buried in the sand. Inside, there are damaged wall sections with bricks either partially or fully removed, small sand deposits on the floor, and cobwebs hanging everywhere. Oh, and giant lava pits. Lava in a desert temple? Weird, but whatever. The author has made effective and repeated use of curved and beveled walkways, corridors, arches, and decorations, which is always nice to see. The one architectural feature that really bothered me, though, was the terrain. It's used all over the place, and it's all pretty ugly. Its unnatural points; deep, straight creases; and uneven lighting all serve to reinforce the impression that you're looking at a pile of poorly arranged triangles and not a rocky hill or a pile of sand. As I alluded to earlier, most of the map's surfaces are covered with custom textures done by ShockSystems. They look great and fit the theme perfectly. The only downside here is that they're not aligned well. The oversight is especially evident on the map's many curved surfaces. I wish more mappers would take the time to do this properly. The weakest part of the map's visuals is the lighting. Examining the map in the editor, I can see that the author does know something about creating decent lighting -– for example, the sunlight is colored well and fits the appearance of the map, and high shadow detail is used everywhere it would be beneficial -– but for the most part the lighting is terrible. The more I play this map, the more the lighting bothers me. First, as a relatively minor point, let's get back to the sunlight. In many places the author has sunlight coming in through a window or skylight, but in most of those, the light source is too close to the window bars, ceiling beams, or whatever else blocks the passing of light into the map's interior. Sunlight comes from far enough away that those rays are almost parallel when they hit the earth, so putting light sources very close behind a beam or window bar creates more of an impression that there's a powerful flashlight outside the window instead of a sun. In some cases this means that the light's effect is too muted, and it some it means that the shadows generated are much too large. This is not too big of a deal though; I'm pointing it out more for the author's reference than anything else. The lighting has two other flaws that are much more immediately obvious, and take away from the appearance of the map considerably. The first should be no surprise to anyone who's read many of my other reviews lately: many of the colors are horribly oversaturated. This is especially offensive given that every light source in the map is natural, not artificial, and many of the lighting colors used here look like something you'd only see on a neon sign. The lava in particular is very brightly lit and bathes the walls around it in garish shades of red and pink, as you can see in some of the screenshots to the right. Torches burning with red, green, and blue flames are all similarly oversaturated. The blue flames actually produce green spots on the walls, which is what happens when you use too much brightness and/or too many lights very close together. This all really detracts from the map's visual appeal. I tried closing my eyes and pretending they weren't there during playtesting, but unfortunately this significantly hampered my fragging ability. Finally, the second lighting defect I alluded to is that there are a great many instances of uneven breaks in the lighting along the edges of polygons. Sometimes the intensity of the light makes a sudden shift from lighter to darker, and sometimes it's more serious; there are plenty of surfaces to be found that are completely unlit and shouldn't be, and even a mesh that suffers from the same thing –- a big monk statue that appears completely black. I almost wonder if that one was done intentionally, since that statue has a collision hull wrapped around it when none of the others do, but intentional or not, it's not pretty. Generally speaking, this error straddles two categories. In some ways it's a deficit to the awe score because more care in placing light sources could have attenuated the problem considerably, and in some ways it's a build error because many of those polygon breaks shouldn't even be there in the first place, as I'll discuss in a minute. BUILD: 1.5 On the technical side of things, Oros is a curious blend of care and carelessness. It takes a certain amount of skill to take so many curves, terrain segments, and other complex brushes, and forge them into a unified piece of architecture. Brushes line up the way they're supposed to, fitting ambient sounds can be found everywhere (including a lot of dynamic ones outside to keep things from sounding too repetitive), and the author thought to include a nice custom music track, from Deus Ex. Given that the mapper had the ability and presence of mind to do these things well, I'd expect the rest of the build to be done with similar skill, but alas... First, there are superfluous polygons everywhere. In some cases this is because a few too many brushes were used, but the majority of the time, the author simply neglected to merge coplanar polygons on almost all of his terrain brushes and curved surfaces. Now, in some cases this is acceptable or even necessary -– for example, if you need to leave polygons separate in order to get trim textures aligned properly -– but this by no means accounts for all of the unmerged polys in this map. In a map where the poly count commonly tops 500, and occasionally tops 700, care needs to be taken to optimize wherever possible, and here the author has ignored one of the easiest ways to do so. Not only does this make the poly count considerably higher than it needs to be in many places of the map, but it also contributes to the lighting breaks I mentioned in the previous section. Second, there are plenty of BSP holes to be found. I counted ten (though there may be more), and most of them are concentrated in the part of the map with all the lava in it. Segments of the walls and terrain disappear, and the areas where bricks are missing from the floor or wall tend to turn into HOM effects. There's also one outside that, while most people probably won't find it, gets my vote for BSP Hole of the Year. I was playing around with my translocator, seeing if I could get on top of the temple or any other interesting places where the author might have hidden a pickup or a sniper spot, when I managed to walk outside of the map. Thus I could see through walls into about half the map from one position, and everyplace on the screen where map geometry wasn't being drawn showed an HOM effect. I could turn 180 degrees and the entire screen would be one giant HOM, since nothing of the map was visible. (If you want to see it, stand at the Big Keg O' Health facing the temple, then turn ninety degrees right and go jump around at the top of the terrain in front of you.) Third, the author's attempt at zoning the map has failed horribly. There are plenty of polygons flagged as zone portals to be found, but none of them close off zones correctly, save for the surfaces of the lava pools, so the primary level geometry is all in one big zone. This doesn't exactly help the map's performance, which already suffers from a high poly count. Bot pathing is functional and efficiently done, but nothing special. The map doesn't have any places that are tricky to access, so the bots will go most anywhere. I observed two very minor glitches in playtesting where the bots seemed to get stuck, and there aren't any translocator paths although a couple would have been nice, but the only real mistake is that the author forgot to path the map's only lift. "Forgot" might not be the word for it since two of the three nodes required are there, but the third is nowhere to be found. I don't really like the lift anyway. Besides being too slow, it looks like something the author just tossed in for a little more connectivity. CAST: 2.0 Gameplay is pretty decent; the layout keeps players moving, and pickups are distributed well. There isn't a glut of weapons available (no bio-rifle, minigun, or Redeemer), but I don't think they're too scarce either as long as you keep the player count down, as the author recommends. Indeed, there are only four spawn points, so expect some telefrags if you play with any more. The author should have added a couple more. I don't expect mappers to accommodate those lunatics who love to stuff sixteen people into a map small enough for a duel, but there should at least be enough spawn points for a couple players more than the recommended maximum. I also might have considered moving the Big Keg O' Health inside. There's a narrow plank high above one of the lava pits that would make a good place for a risk/reward setup. It seems a little too far removed from the game as it is now. Most of the fighting in this map will be close or medium range action. The sniper rifle is in here, but you can't really sit and camp with it; no matter where you go, you'll either have poor visibility or be vulnerable from at least two sides. The flak cannon was my weapon of choice for most of it. It's especially useful because there are a lot of ramps that are too steep (in my opinion), and staircases whose stairs are too tall, and it's easy to get people with splash damage when you catch them on one of those. There is one minor sticking point in the layout you should be aware of: there's a spot over by the sniper rifle where if you're unfortunate enough to fall off (or get knocked off) a walkway, you can end up wedged between a loose brick and the wall, and if you don't have a translocator, you won't be able to get out without a hammer jump. Aside from this, and the performance problems you may experience on computers that aren't too recent, the gameplay all works together pretty well. FINAL SCORE: 5.0 Wow, this was a long review even for me. Don't let my long list of complaints discourage you from at least trying this map out. Almost all of its failings are technical and aesthetic, and the former aren't bad enough to break the map (except in Last Man Standing games if some joker jumps into the BSP Hole of the Year), and the latter aren't bad enough to totally overshadow the nice architecture and refreshingly unfamiliar textures. When it comes to the fun factor, which is of course the most important aspect of any map, DM-Oros should be able to serve up a few interesting games. Still, I'd like to see the author address the technical problems herein, and clean up the terrain and especially the lighting. This map has the potential to be a couple points higher than it is now.
Map Comments
Sicko Teddy 03-18-2004 08:26 PM MST Rating: 10   Realy worth of looking!! EDIT- COOL stuff man! I change from 9 to 10!~ It deserves it. It does look like UT 2003 level in some zones. One problem for low end machine users, they will get a real lag! Oh well, buy a new computer! (unless youre stuck with MAC = LOL!!!!) COOL COOL COOL . Saint 03-21-2004 06:31 PM MST Rating: 10   Could be featured map! edit: dark jaxx is a **** this map is one the best maps i have played for ut anything below a 7 is unfair (in my opinion). Nice job Koveras. mangan }swe{ 03-18-2004 04:33 AM MST Rating: 9   when i see a screenshot and think wow i always go look 4 that spot of the map but in this case the map beatiful all around desnicus 03-18-2004 04:40 AM MST Rating: 9   When I first looked at the screenshot I thought it was UT2K3! Everybody knows what that means in terms of graphics! Nahand 03-18-2004 08:18 AM MST Rating: 7   ^yes, me too... but it has 45º ramps :/ lava and sand? some areas seem "streched"... good map still... UArchitect 03-18-2004 12:34 PM MST Rating: 5   nothing wrong with 45degree ramps at all however..the terrain was jagged edgy and extremely ugly and..bleurgh, fix that. the rest of the level was quite nice tho :) i do agree on the strangeness of lava+sand :o pretty nice but terrain needs a serious overhaul... specially the lighting -dont take this as a flame..its constructive :P M@estro 03-19-2004 06:17 AM MST Rating: 8   what can i say (comment) [Dark-JaXx] 03-21-2004 11:07 AM MST Rating: 1   me not like lava, lava scarie Bot40 03-21-2004 09:01 PM MST Rating: 6   Well, imo nothing too special. There are some very nice touches, like the doorways are pretty good, and the architecture outside is simple but effective. Unfortunatly, I didn't find the layout too amazing and I didn't think lava suited the map at all. Nice idea of partly collapsed temple, but it could have been executed much better. Looks bad mainly because of the sharp spikey terrain. Lighting wasn't too bad, nothing special. Was oversaturated in a lot of places. It would have been nice to see a much cooler blue colour used and along with some water instead of lava to contrast with the overall hot sandy theme of the map. 6.5 but I give a 6 because other people have overrated it so much as usual. Vertigo 05-07-2004 05:41 AM MDT Rating: 6   not a 5... o_O Homeslice 05-07-2004 09:30 AM MDT Rating: 8   A 5? I liked it better than that. Sure, the flow can be a bit rough and terrain ain't the greatest (along with a few HOM's), but the map looks damn good and plays damn good to match. One of the best Egyptian maps ANYBODY can make! Good work, Sarevok, Koveras, whatever. (Read my Insite review for more of my thoughts) AMmayhem 05-07-2004 10:28 AM MDT Rating: 6   5 or a 6 works. The indoor lava was different. But the map didn't flow well enough. Like the outdoor area was a bit of a large dead-end. Not a bad map though. Koveras 05-07-2004 04:17 PM MDT   thanks for the review Ironblayde :) quillion 05-09-2004 07:01 PM MDT Rating: 6   like the dude said, to much lighty thingy things! other than that good map i guess IronFlaSh 04-23-2006 03:28 PM MDT Rating: 10   really well made...good work...keep on mapping Idren 04-24-2006 10:04 AM MDT Rating: 8   Indeed! Very nice map!