DM-Rusing
Map Info
	File Name dm-rusing.zip Author E.T Gametype UT2k4 Deathmatch Date Added 06-04-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 8.69 mb Player Count 2-6 Map Description ''Surrounded by Mystful Montains, the Rusing factory stand quietly dominated by vegetation.'' A factory in the middle of montains with lot of vegetation and humidity ;) I tried to provide differents visuals and atmosphere for a factory styled dm map. This map handle 2-8 players. Review Rating 6.5 User Rating 7.5 Overall Rating 7.5
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  2.5/3 Date 06-23-2004 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.0/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  7.5/10 AWE: 2.5 An old factory that nature has begun to reclaim, DM-Rusing is an aesthetically pleasing map, meticulously detailed and artfully rendered. A small outdoor area where you can see the misty mountains and lonely trees that decorate the landscape, along with the vegetation that permeates the factory interior, serve to set it apart from the usual factory/industrial look, as does a host of custom meshes and textures. The author clearly knows how to craft a believable environment without making it look too busy by overusing meshes. The map's architecture is excellent, leaving very little cause for complaint. There are only two small things I'd suggest here. First, there are a few objects that are placed flush with the brick walls that might look better if they protruded a little bit, such as the window frames and the doorway sealed with grating near the Link Gun. Second, the map makes repeated use of the old trick of removing tiles from floors or bricks from walls to break up unadorned surfaces. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but I wish the shapes cut out weren't quite so precise. As it is, it doesn't look like something that could conceivably occur through neglect and abuse; it looks like someone carefully pried up whole floor tiles so that plants could grow in their places. On the brick walls outside it's worse, because the holes are perfectly rectangular, but the bricks themselves are weathered and rounded, so the shape of the hole doesn't conform to what you see on the texture. The map employs mostly stock textures, but there are quite a few custom ones included as well, including the brick textures that are the most prevalent in the map, and they are excellent. Whether stock or custom, all of the author's choices are good ones, and the textures all look to have been carefully aligned, excepting a few places indoors where one brick texture gives way to another too abruptly. The only other thing I take issue with on this front is the use of the interior brick texture on the beveled recesses that can be found on many of the walls. I'm not at all sure what a viable alternative might be that would make this look natural, but something about it is a little off as it is. Deep blues dominate the map's lighting scheme, though there are plenty of orange lights scattered throughout the map's interior, and some green lights as well, which are well placed and provide a nice bit of deviation from the standard blue and orange scheme. It all looks good for the most part, with all the lights properly sourced and such, but the blue lights almost all use the same saturation, and it's a bit high. It's not so high that it looks gaudy, though some variation would have been appreciated, particularly on the lights that are closest to the light sources; many of those light bulbs look far too blue to be believable. Also, the author uses a lot of non-incidence lights extremely close to the floor, which I think makes the boundaries of the lights look too well-defined. It might look better if the effect was tempered somewhat by the presence of a normal light close by, or if the non-incidence lights were simply set to normal themselves. I probably would have played with the light map resolutions a little as well. There are a lot of surfaces whose light maps are set to sixteen where 32 would suffice, and some others set to eight where four would have sharpened up the shadows nicely. Finally, shadows seem to collect a little too much in the corners of the outdoor brick walls, even though most of them are obtuse angles. Some very dim lights placed closer to the walls may have ameliorated the issue somewhat. BUILD: 2.0 On the whole, this is a skillfully assembled map, though some minor errors do come up in the geometry. The author's brushwork is very precise; in fact it's virtually flawless. The problems show up not in the BSP geometry, but in the static meshes. Almost all of the meshes have been custom-made, and unfortunately it looks like they weren't made to have dimensions that play nicely with UnrealEd's grid. Many of the meshes that fill doorways or recesses in walls have had irregular scaling factors applied to them in an attempt to make them fit properly, but many of these seem to come more from trial and error than precise calculation; a great deal of those meshes almost fit, but not quite. In-game, you can see very slim gaps between those meshes and the walls that enclose them as a result. I doubt that anyone will experience performance issues with this map. Aside from the fact that the map is detailed without being graphically demanding, the author has done a fine job at optimizing it. It's perfectly zoned, and its layout makes antiportals unnecessary. In addition, the author has utilized the world detail flags on virtually everything that could conceivably be removed without compromising the appearance of the map, so if by some chance you should experience problems (say, if you're trying to run UT2004 on minimum specs), you should see a performance gain if you turn down your world detail setting. Bots play the map adequately, though there are a few things missing in this department. First, the two lifts are pathed improperly. There's a LiftExit at the top of each, but none at the bottom, so the lift paths are incomplete. Bots know that they can jump down from the top, but they don't know how to ride the lifts up. Similarly, there are several places where you can access a higher level with a pair of double-jumps, or by dodging up wooden planks placed at steep angles. The bots won't use any of those opportunities. Thus they are not nearly good enough about climbing the map's levels, and it's pretty easy to rain death down on them with the Flak Cannon or the Lightning Gun. Finally, there are a handful of places involving standard PathNodes only where more efficient paths should exist. For example, the door facing the outdoor health pickups can't be approached directly from either side while inside. All of this means that the map isn't as challenging as it should be in botmatches; you'll have to play it at a high difficulty setting. I never lost a match on anything less than Inhuman. Though there are a few places indoors that you don't hear everything you might expect, the map's ambient sound is pretty good. It's the triggered sounds that bother me. There are numerous places in this map where small pools of water have collected on the ground, and they make that splashing sound we're all used to by now if you step in them. It's done the same in this map as it is in many other maps I've played, but I still don't like it. The sound is very loud, and gives the impression of a very forceful break, and yet the water can't be much more than an inch or two deep in most of the cases here. It doesn't sound accurate. Also, there's a place where walking over a grated floor triggers a sound, but it sounds like what you'd hear if you threw a rock at a metal pipe, not the sound of footfalls on a grate. It's superfluous as well, as the trigger is right on top of two health vials; collecting those gives enough of an aural cue to whoever happens to be listening. CAST: 2.0 DM-Rusing has a pretty decent layout, one with plenty of connectivity that doesn't succumb to the old room-corridor-room syndrome, and which offers multiple levels for z-axis fighting in most of its major areas. It's easy to learn and easy to navigate. On the other hand, it seems thoroughly ordinary. That's a very imprecise thing to say, I know, but the first time I played this map, it felt like something I'd played a hundred times before, despite the fact that it makes for a fun game. I can't put my finger on why this might be; it just seems to me that the gameplay doesn't offer anything new or special. One thing I do like is the thorough use of BlockingVolumes to cover gaps that necessarily exist to give the map its appearance, and to smooth out small corners. The effect is usually subtle enough not to produce visual inconsistencies, yet important in that it allows you to smoothly slip past gaps and corners without getting stuck on them if you're trying to navigate in a firefight. Little touches like that are good for the map's flow. Item placement works pretty well. The whole standard arsenal is included (no Redeemer), with weapons and ammo distributed evenly throughout the map. The action does seem to center on the Flak Cannon though, despite the fact that it's off to one side of the map. It generally accounted for about half of my deaths. The Link Gun seems pretty useless, too. It sucks up ammo so quickly, yet there's only one ammo pickup for it in the whole map, and it's not next to the gun. Plus the Flak Cannon is less than three seconds away. Health is placed well enough, with the Super Shield Pack in an appropriate place right in the middle of the map, so you can be sure that you'll be taking a beating from the moment you pick it up. The Double Damage is too far removed from the action, though. You can generally go grab it (and the Shock Rifle) unmolested, then head back inside and start throwing double-damage combos everywhere. One final note: some of the PlayerStarts are on the bottom floors of the central, high-traffic rooms of the map. It's a very vulnerable position to start in, and I would have preferred if those PlayerStarts had been left out or moved. The map could certainly tolerate losing a few – there are fifteen in a map best suited for about four players – but to the author's credit, it's probably a good thing to have so many, since prevailing wisdom online seems to be that no map is too small for sixteen players. FINAL SCORE: 6.5 Lots of relatively minor things chip away at the score here, but the author has all the fundamentals down cold. Primarily, I'd like to see stronger bot pathing, and a slightly more careful eye on dimensions when the author creates custom meshes, so the map doesn't end up with those little gaps in the walls. All things considered, though, this is a fine map, and will make a decent addition to anyone's rotation.
Map Comments
Manticore 06-04-2004 06:39 PM MDT Rating: 6   The map looks good and performs well. It appears to be well constructed. The gameplay is nothing special in my opinion. hampel 06-05-2004 02:04 AM MDT Rating: 8   very nice map imo! sandorski 06-05-2004 06:10 PM MDT Rating: 7   A good map with no noticeable flaws. D-7 06-24-2004 04:32 AM MDT Rating: 8   What? 6.5? Nooooooooo... Worth much better. I know, I tested it from the beginning. =) 8.5 Ironblayde: I don't see the wohole point in NaliCity's reviewing scoring system. With that 9.0 max. I shouldn't be able to rate a map more than 9 if the reviewer can't either. This way the user rating and the 'official' rating is not compatible... anarkist 06-23-2004 12:55 PM MDT Rating: 7   Good map....screwy weapon base skins but decent enough flow. Koveras 06-23-2004 07:26 PM MDT Rating: 8   very similar to his last map Idrus, let's see a new theme :) nightshadow 06-23-2004 11:42 PM MDT Rating: 9   this map really struck a cord with me. the map just feels well put together and smooth. i like it! Hourences 06-25-2004 04:07 AM MDT Rating: 8   7.5 it feels very solid and finished off, and sure its not utterly mindblowing awesomely original but it is solid and polished and thats some few maps succeed in now a days, while that solidness is highly important and the base for whatever else you might add to the map later on this map does that, so good ! nice oldskool type of industrial map and rather original colors [[TDW-KkillgasmM]]] 06-27-2004 04:19 PM MDT Rating: 7   not bad, not bad at all ;) put it this way, i'd rather play it than aristocracy! [and no, im not being sarcastic] DaZ 06-30-2004 06:14 PM MDT Rating: 8   Love the visuals of this map, high enough detail to look nice but still low enough to have super slick frame rates on slower pc's. Gameplay is excellent too, very fast and with a few trickjumps to perform as well. Very recommended... Appo 07-10-2004 03:34 PM MDT Rating: 7.5   This is a very good DM map. I can see this being put on quite a few rotations. Its just plain fun, the action is never far away and the items are placed carefully. Nice work. redfist 08-01-2004 11:40 PM MDT Rating: 5   Don't know,just wish that alot of these levels have is a more "area" to "go to" ,it just feels like i am running ,like, more visual cues to know ware you are in the map be better.like a flashing light or some odd deco,and another area use different color light etc etc.For example each weapon pickup make the room slightly a different color,very slightly,or a way to "feel" you are getting to the "area" to grab bio rifle.kinda sorta. nELs0n 06-11-2005 07:48 PM MDT Rating: 7.5   i like the atmosphere and was surprised to see a map that concentrates more on bsp architecture than on s/m use which is a rare thing. i especially like the lighting with it's blues broken up by orange highlights. and bot play was fun too - especially instagib. nice one ;) scirmast 09-19-2005 05:24 PM MDT Rating: 8   The only thing I don't like is that the layout - while being good - is too ordinary. Everything else I think is good. Just next time try to design the layout more thoroughly.