DM-Chaos2-[d12]
Map Info
	File Name dm-chaos2-d12.zip Author Lofty Gametype UT Deathmatch Date Added 04-25-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 2.42 mb Player Count 2-8 Map Description None Review Rating 3 User Rating 6.5 Overall Rating 4.0
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  0.5/3 Date 05-09-2004 Build Score:  1.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.5/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  4.0/10 AWE: 0.5 Whatever else DM-Chaos2-[d12] may be, it's not a pretty map. In fact, it's a pretty ugly map. My first impression was that its architecture is extremely boxy. When I looked more closely, I was able to find only sixteen brushes out of 433 that are not orthogonal to the principal axes, and most of them probably would have looked better if they weren't angled. Eight of them are used to form angled hallways on the second of the map's three levels, and those angled brushes meet rectangular ones at an extremely acute angle, so the corridors' walls become impossibly thin towards the ends. Six more are used as water surfaces, so they do nothing to break up the boxy look of the map. (They do, however, make it appear to the careful observer that water doesn't quite obey the laws of gravity.) The last two are light fixtures around the Redeemer. Aside from that handful of things, the map comprises several hundred boxes, which is not particularly interesting. And even the boxy elements of the architecture are not always set up correctly. There are four pillars that hold up the second level of the map, and they stick out over the edge at the top and bottom. With only three exceptions, the textures come from the SGTech1 pack, which is part of Bonus Pack 4, so you'll need to have that installed to play this map. I like that texture pack, but here it seems like the author felt obligated to use as much of it as possible, regardless of whether it was appropriate. Therefore, there are many texture changes as you go through the map. Brick walls become corroded concrete, which in turn becomes studded brown metal, then iron, then lighter metal with pipes along the top, and finally vented gray walls. The worst part is that there is never any trim between these changes; one simply stops and another begins. The same can be said of the flooring. The author has trimmed the walkways on the upper two levels, but the vast majority of the edges are untrimmed, and the textures aren't aligned to the edges either, so the floors just end in the middle of a tile. Where floor textures change, there's never any trim or decent-looking transition between them. A light texture intended to be used to wrap a solid shape is instead used flat against several walls. It's all very unattractive. The lighting is worse. Lights are either pure white or much too saturated, never in between. And the colors are terrible. There's fully saturated red coming out of the ceiling in the center of the map. Saturated red lights have their uses, but this is not one of them. Lights are colored bright yellow on the second floor to accent an already off-putting yellow floor, and a hideous pale green in the map's corridors. Green lights, too, have their uses, but not to illuminate dirty white concrete. The water gives off light of its own, which is rather odd. And a significant level of ambient light is used, and there are several areas in the map that are unlit otherwise, so they look flat and unrealistic. There's one LightBox deco mesh, and it's thoroughly out of place, as you can see in one of the screenshots to the right. A large, square light beam is emitted by a group of four long, very narrow lights. The beam is yellow whereas the light is bright red. Plus, the LightBox sticks out through the ceiling! Awful. Finally, coronas are badly used in this map, particularly in those green hallways. The coronas are overlarge to begin with, appear even larger because they occur in groups of four, and are that horrible green color. All the coronas, viewed side-on, appear to emanate from a point that's a significant distance in front of the light fixture, rather than from the light itself. This is most definitely not a map you look to for visual appeal. BUILD: 1.0 The map fares a little better in its technical aspects, but is still riddled with flaws. The good news here is that there are almost no BSP problems, but that's not too surprising given the simplicity of the architecture. Still, there are two partially invisible surfaces, and those should not have been hard to fix. There's not a lot I can say about the author's brushwork since virtually the entire map is composed of boxes. At least everything is on the grid. There are no semisolids used, though it probably doesn't matter much in a map this simple. There's no zoning either, except for the underwater areas. The map has twelve lifts to carry you between levels, and all of them are triggered by buttons on the walls. This is kind of an annoyance, as most players are used to having lifts trigger immediately when stepped on (or when the shaft is approached, depending on which end you're on). The buttons are a needless bother, they slow the lifts down because the lift doesn't start moving until the button stops moving, and they're timed improperly. For instance, eight of the lifts move between the center and top levels of the map. Once the button is fully depressed, the lift takes one second to rise, pauses for four seconds (much too long!), then takes a second to fall. Elapsed time: six seconds. But the button stays depressed for twelve seconds, meaning that even after the lift returns to its resting position, it's inoperable from that side for six more seconds. Bot pathing is flawed in a number of ways. Many of the PathNodes are very close to the edges of walkways, presumably because this is how the author got bots to jump to lower levels. However, it also means that bots not infrequently fall off a level when they're trying to get someplace else. The author should have defined jump/translocator paths explicitly, which would have cut down on those errors considerably, and allowed the bots to translocate back up to the top of the map without having to ride the lifts. The bots do go for the Damage Amplifier, but almost always fall to their deaths in doing so. I saw a bot grab it successfully without dying only once or twice, and even then he fell two levels, which costs over sixty points of damage. Bots do not go for the Shield Belt or Big Keg O' Health. These two items are placed interestingly. Beneath the lower level of the map, along the walls of a square shaft that terminates in a lava pit far below, there are two protruding basins that act as receptacles for the map's two waterfalls. You can jump down into either basin, grab one of the aforementioned powerups, then swim up a shaft to rejoin the fight. These areas are not pathed at all. The first consequence of this is that bots will not go for those powerups. The second is that in the case where a bot is knocked off the edge, or falls off, and happens to land in one of these basins (it happens sometimes), he'll grab the pickup, then sit underwater until he drowns. Obviously this takes him out of the game for some time. There isn't one ambient sound to be found in the map. There is a custom music track which is kind of interesting, but the readme.txt doesn't say where it came from. I'm guessing it's not an original composition since it doesn't loop properly or even cut off cleanly, which the author probably would have fixed if he were a composer. CAST: 1.5 I got tired of playing this map pretty quickly. I've never been a fan of the arena style of deathmatch maps, so your mileage may vary, but I think there are better maps out there for those interested in this kind of game. A few twists and turns aside, it's basically just a three-tiered arena in terms of gameplay. The architecture doesn't have much to offer. And of course, the deficient single-player game hurts as well. Many of the spawn points will start you a significant distance away from the map's seven weapons (everything but the Bio-Rifle and Ripper), and that's no fun when there are many places from which a significant percentage of the map is visible, especially if there are a lot of players looking for targets. This map is an arena for the most part, but it's a big one – it can easily accommodate eight players in terms of size. But with eight players, in addition to the fact that several of the spawn points won't put you near a weapon, there's a high probability that the nearest weapons won't be spawned when you get there as well, and so you might find yourself going largely unarmed for awhile. That's not good in this style of map. I would have added a couple more weapons so nobody goes without one for too long. On the other hand, I think the Shield Belt and Big Keg O' Health are placed in interesting positions. It can take time to swim back up through those shafts, so in games with lots of people, you might think it's not worth the time to go get them when you could be racking up points, but if you have a translocator, you can get back up more quickly. It's a bit too high to make in a single teleport, but what you can do is translocate as high as possible, then fire your translocator again (up to the bottom level of the map), fall back into the water so you don't take any damage, then translocate back into the fight. I wasn't sure how to score this part of the map, but although I didn't have much fun with it, I'll err on the side of caution since others might like the play style better than I did. FINAL SCORE: 3.0 Very poor visuals, technical errors, faulty bot pathing, a lack of sound, and gameplay that gets boring after a few games make for a map that's not really worth your time. The author needs to work on architecture, lighting, and bot pathing more than anything else. Not a bad effort considering it looks like this is only the author's second released map (at least on NaliCity), but not recommended.
Map Comments
GiXXeR 04-26-2004 07:34 PM MDT Rating: 8   Great map Lofty!! I think the lighting is great and the flares give it a great little magic especially on that upper level. I really like the waterfalls and the passages. Good job dude! Manticore 04-26-2004 11:42 PM MDT Rating: 6   This pit style arena is large enough to make effective use of the rocket launcher, sniper rifle and even the redeemer. This is a bit suprising as a first glance the scaling of the map makes it look small and, er, "stretched" horizontally in a cinemascope/widescreen/16:9 fashion... I don't get the waterfalls. It appears that once you get to the bottom of the waterfall it isn't possible to jump out to the side meaning the only escape is to jump to your death in the central lava pit and respawn. A bit lame really.... Map has a good look re: the texture usage and lighting. Additional comment after Saint: I think I tried pressing the switches but still couldn't get it. I'll have to try again. It's still a map worthy of multiple plays. Saint 04-26-2004 09:28 PM MDT Rating: 7   You have to press the switchs to get out of the waterfalls. Very good map and i like the music. slaskan 04-27-2004 02:12 AM MDT   argh how do i get sgtech1 ??? Lofty 04-27-2004 06:19 AM MDT   SGTech1 can be found with the UT Bonus Pack 4, it's in the essential files section for UT on BeyondUnreal. The waterfalls have an exit at the back, swim up, press the button and a hole in the wall will open. Ironblayde 05-07-2004 01:17 AM MDT   Where did this map's music come from? The readme.txt doesn't mention it. d12RonJr 05-08-2004 09:54 PM MDT Rating: 10   Very Nice job... Glad you are workin for us ... Shadowlurker 05-10-2004 02:08 PM MDT Rating: 2   Over-rated IMO. This is 2004, not 1998 - maps that deserve over 5 need to look better than this. ChiTown Boy 05-10-2004 03:49 PM MDT Rating: 10   Excellent map!! Game play was great and fast. Nice layout thru out. Lighting could've been darker for more ambience, but good none the less. Keep up the good work. The Brazilian Novice 05-12-2004 09:56 PM MDT Rating: 2   Lets screw scores down, 0! o.Ô Chaotic texture usage, hence the map's name. hype 05-13-2004 07:30 AM MDT Rating: 9   Not the prettiest map to look at but with the fantastic gameplay who cares. Good job. Razor 05-15-2004 02:29 AM MDT Rating: 6   The map is pretty weird... i think it can be fun online but the bots dont play good.. and they are in the lower level most of the time and not spread out.. )Hidra( 09-13-2004 12:12 PM MDT   looks great .. but .. my driver don't take ut99 anymore =( redfist 09-13-2004 02:58 PM MDT   Hidra,goto epicgames.com get a file "opengldrv.dll" youl need to edit your ini,youl see in the zip run ut in opengl all the time.faster and looks better. and if you have the second CD for ut,replace the textures with the large files (compressed tectures) I couldn't look a ut any other way now,lighting is more real,suttle,just alot better.