CTF-Courtyard][
Map Info
	File Name ctf-courtyard][.zip Author Muff_N Gametype UT Capture the Flag Date Added 03-29-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 715 kb Player Count 8to10 Map Description None Review Rating 4 User Rating 3 Overall Rating 3.0
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  1.0/3 Date 05-05-2004 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.0/3 User Point:  -1 Overall Score:  3.0/10 AWE: 1.0 CTF-Courtyard][ is exactly what its name would have you believe. Well, actually it's three courtyards, but you get the idea. It's done in the standard gothic style, so it certainly doesn't look like anything new. All the standard brick walls, rooftops, and arches are in here. It's unoriginal, but the architecture is assembled competently for the most part, with lots of curved ceilings and corridors. There is enough ornamentation on the walls, floors, and ceilings to break up any expansive flat surfaces, but not enough to look crowded. The textures used here are little different than those used in any other gothic map you may have played; the gothic theme is one of the more repetitive of those that are commonly used. Aside from a few grassy textures for the unpaved sections of the courtyards, and a couple of textures from SkyCity for the walkways, it's straight ShaneChurch all the way. Again, it's not that anything has done particularly badly; I just really have to concentrate on the layout to shake the feeling that I've played this map before, because it looks so much like so many that have come before it. Textures in curved hallways don't line up like they should, the hallways towards the center of the map are a tad plain, and there are a few spots where a little more trim work would have been welcome, but it works for the most part. The worst part about the map's appearance is the lighting. The sky radiates the same, horribly saturated purple light as in DM-Gothic; the hue and saturation values are exactly the same, in fact, so there's little question what inspired the choice. I've never liked the outdoor lighting in Gothic, and I don't like it any better here. It's especially odd in the central courtyard where the sky lights don't reach down so far. The walls, ground, and overhangs in the courtyard are lit with something approaching normalcy, but as soon as you direct your gaze up to the rooftops, it's like being in Smoochy's Magic Jungle. Most of the lights in the map, not just those in the purple sky, are too heavily saturated. I seem to be complaining about that a lot lately. You don't want lights that are pure white, but you don't want them so heavily colored that they look horribly unrealistic either. Must learn balance, Daniel-san! A few final notes on lighting: first, I would have appreciated at least a little light in the sniper perches. As they are, it's too hard to see whether someone's up there or not. Second, a few coronas would have been welcome; there aren't any to be found. BUILD: 2.0 The author did a pretty good job of putting this map together. Brushwork is good, aside from a handful of places where fewer brushes could have been used without complicating matters at all, and several where semisolids should have been used. There's only one hole as far as I can tell, up in the sniper tower on the red side, but it's kind of a silly oversight; it's not one of those holes that only appears occasionally and from the right angle, but a large, rectangular section that's missing from the wall at all times. It's more obvious in the editor than in the game since the sniper ledge is almost totally unlit, but it's still noticeable, and should be fixed. I doubt that anyone will have performance issues with this map, as the poly count stays under 300 for the most part. Still, a note to the author: look up the Merge Polygons command. There are a number of places in the map where coplanar polygons on a brush are left separate. It could have been a lot worse, had the various arches been done with additive brushes as is common, but they're all subtracts, so the problem isn't so widespread. It mostly occurs on the floors of curved hallways. Bots navigate the map reasonably well. The pathing is certainly efficient, with very few superfluous nodes. However, there are no paths for translocators or jumps, and as it turns out, this is a big mistake. I'll discuss this in more detail in the next section since it relates very specifically to the layout of the map. CAST: 1.0 Courtyard][ is a pretty small map. The author recommends 8-10 players, but I'd say that 4-8 is closer to the mark. The map's layout is very simple. Each flag room consists of a small courtyard, and a U-shaped hallway behind it that connects to the courtyard on three sides. The flag is all the way in the back, with weapons and health on either side. Each flag base connects to the central courtyard via a corridor that contains a very steep ramp, sloping downward towards the center so it's not hard to defend. The central courtyard features two sniper perches that sit above the corridors that approach the bases, and the sniper spots connect to their corresponding bases by means of a teleporter. Thus you can teleport directly from the courtyard in the flag room to the sniper ledge, bypassing that ramp that would normally serve as a choke point. Doing so is the fastest way to escape the base; you don't even take damage when you fall. And the bots won't use it. They'll go snipe from the towers, but they won't jump out. Thus once you get the flag, you can make a quick run for the teleporter, pump the sniper (if there is one) full of flak before he has time to turn around or even blink in surprise, and dodge out the window, and you're already more than halfway home. Elapsed time: four seconds. The bots won't catch up; they're forced to take the slower route, and by the time they get out, they should be meeting serious resistance from your team. This makes the single-player game very easy. The problem is magnified by the availability of powerful items. Each flag base has a Shield Belt in it, and the central courtyard has a Redeemer. So here's how an ideal flag run might go. Grab the Shield Belt in your base, and head up to your sniper tower. Translocate over to one of the multi-tiered pillars that provide excellent cover from all sides, and wait for the Redeemer to respawn. Once it does, jump down and grab it, then translocate into the enemy sniper tower, jump through the teleporter, and instantly nuke their whole team. Grab the flag and run as described above. If done properly, this rarely fails even against godlike bots. I played a 3v3 game on godlike and won 10-0 with ease, and I'm not a particularly talented player. Needless to say, botmatch gets very boring very quickly. Multiplayer might be a little better, but I think there's still too much protection available for such a small map, and the Redeemer is a little overkill as well. There's nothing wrong with making a small map, but it's easy to unbalance one if you use too many of the best pickups, and that's partially what happened here. Weapons and pickups are placed reasonably aside from that, but the big guns mess things up a bit. Finally, I would have considered opening up the rooftops instead of blocking players' access to them. Against human players who know enough to camp the teleporter that comes in from the sniper tower, it could be very difficult to penetrate the enemy base, especially going up a very steep ramp to face defenders who all have flak cannons, rocket launchers, and shock rifles (all three weapons are right in the flag room). A sudden Redeemer attack notwithstanding, the base could probably be defended with spam alone, and that's not good. If the defenders had to worry about people jumping down from the rooftops as well, the action might be even more furious than it already is. FINAL SCORE: 4.0 If you run a server, or regularly play on a LAN, you might want to give this map a try. I'll bet it would make a pretty decent map for 3v3 games, provided they're all human players. The bots, however, are too ineffectual to recommend this as a single-player download; any player worth his salt will pound them into dust even on very high difficulty settings. It's a worthy effort, but it needs better pathing, a little more deviation from the standard gothic template, and a lot less garish lighting to be worth it.
Map Comments
Manticore 05-06-2004 04:02 AM MDT Rating: 4   This would have been an ok small CTF map except the lighting is incredibly poor (as in meaning: underdone). The blue flagbase doesn't seem to be lit at all from some angles. Perhaps that has something to do with the portal zoning under the arches. This mapper has some other stuff, CTF-Throwdown][ was a better effort. quillion 05-09-2004 07:00 PM MDT Rating: 2   zzzz, boring! this is just a rip from a certain DM map ThaKillaTwinz 05-11-2004 12:34 AM MDT   Thankx 4D review!! I always liked the lighting (and ditto the outdoor lighting in Gothic) but sure now that i think about it it is kinda well...headache inducing. Don't know if map is worth fixing (botpathing, lighting etc.). Prolly not...just make a new one. and a "rip of a certain dm map"...i originally intended for it to resemble the courtyard of the Sarafan compound in the Legacy of Kain series modified into a CTF map. The only cutting and pasting i did would be the purple lights from the sky in Gothic. More like a rip, as quillion puts it, of SEVERAL shane church maps since some styling cues are prevalent in numerous shane church maps, like arches and windows.