DM-1on1-Neivm
Map Info
	File Name dm-1on1-neivm.zip Author darth_weasel Gametype UT2k4 Deathmatch Date Added 06-06-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 8.35 mb Player Count Unknown Map Description None Review Rating 6 User Rating 7 Overall Rating 7.0
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  2.0/3 Date 06-14-2004 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.0/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  7.0/10 AWE: 2.0 Here we have another anonymous industrial facility, but solid architecture and some nice custom content set it apart from the pack somewhat. A three-tiered arena with numerous ramps connecting its levels, this map offers a convincing rendition of an old theme, full of complex machinery, multipartite piping, and sleek metal trim. In this lies a weakness as well, however: there are simply too many meshes, too many elements repeating too many times in numerous parts of the map. It looks very cluttered. For example, there may be far too many supports along a wall, or piping broken into too many sections. A little restraint would have gone a long way on that count. There are also a few places where pipes heading for the ceiling don't quite reach it. I do like the meshes, though. The author has modeled them all himself, and done a fine job of it. I especially like the wide, curving corridors that you can see in the second screenshot to the right. Very cool work; they lend that part of the map an almost alien feel. For textures the author has turned primarily to the ShipTech package, so in that sense the map is recognizable; it's a familiar face on a new body, like DM-1on1-Crash after a marathon session of plastic surgery. The texture choices are all fine, but unfortunately the author neglected to do much if any alignment on the BSP surfaces, which makes for some pretty ugly breaks in the texturing wherever two walls meet without a static mesh to cover the corner. Similarly, there are a handful of places in the map -– for instance, in some of the doorways that use the gh_doorTwo mesh –- where the transition from BSP to static mesh looks abrupt and unnatural, and would benefit from some trim. Several of the gh_doorTwo doorways are trimmed nicely, so I assume the author simply forgot about the others. The always-reliable blue and orange lighting scheme works well here, and includes a number of red lights in appropriate places for added contrast. Brightnesses, saturation values, and light types are all chosen well to produce a pleasant overall effect, though not one with any strikingly interesting features. Coronas are used well also, but there are some places where coronas probably should have been used and were not, and a few others where coronas are included but are not visible in-game because they were placed too close to their corresponding light fixtures and ended up getting buried in the geometry. One last note: there are quite a few emitters in the map used to generate steam from vents. The effect isn't bad, but it's a little too obvious that the steam is coming out in small, separate patches rather than as a steady, cohesive stream. The particles are relatively small, and the emitters are clustered together in groups of three. Perhaps this would have looked better if the emitters were used singly, sending out particles more frequently, or of greater size. I can't say for sure without testing it, which I haven't, but one way or another, it probably stands to benefit from a little more tinkering. BUILD: 2.0 As far as geometry goes, this is a skillfully assembled map. The author has created a number of maps for the original Unreal Tournament, and that experience is evident in his excellent brushwork. Everything sits nicely on the grid, and there are no misalignments to be found. The same is true of the map's numerous meshes to a great extent, but on this count the map doesn't entirely escape error. There are a few places where small segments of BSP surfaces can be seen flickering on top of static meshes they coincide with, and a few others where minor flickering effects are produced by static meshes that overlap one another. In particular, this occurs when trim segments are used along edges of irregular dimensions, like those that lie at 45-degree angles to the principal axes. Things start to slip a little bit when it comes to how the map is divided to improve performance. The map is zoned properly, which is good, but because of the map's openness, the zones tend to be rather large, and there are usually parts of many zones visible at once. Therefore, something more is needed. I found many places where antiportals could have been used to cull a significant amount of geometry, but alas, there's only one antiportal in the whole map. One other thing that the author needs to work on a little is managing collision. None of the meshes the author created for this map have simplified collision models built in. In many places in the map, the meshes are set not to collide at all, and BlockingVolumes are included instead, which is perfectly fine, but sometimes there are needlessly complex collision models being used, and that won't do any wonders for performance. Collisions aren't always consistent, either. Consider that curved corridor mesh I mentioned in the previous section. In one place in the map, that mesh is used to line both sides of a fairly long corridor, and there are BlockingVolumes in place to keep you from running up along the narrow sides of it. But in another corridor using the same mesh, there are no BlockingVolumes, so you can run on different parts of the mesh, and possibly get stuck on other pipes along the wall for which collision is enabled. Discrepancies like this one can detract from the immersion factor somewhat by making it hard to remember for certain where you can go and where you can't, and can be avoided by using built-in collision models. Finally, there are some places where collisions probably should occur, and don't. In those very hallways I was just talking about, if you double-jump, your head will pass right through the beams lining the ceilings. The bot pathing works, but could use some tweaking. The most obvious problem is that there are two large gaps in the network. First, there isn't a path through the air ducts on the third floor. That's not a big problem though, since the ducts are devoid of utility. The more worrying gap is in the hallway by the Rocket Launcher. There's a whole segment of the corridor that bots won't use. One PathNode placed in the center of the hallway would have connected it, but as it is now, bots have to go far out of their way to get from one end to the other. Also, there are many places where long double-jumps will get you across large gaps that should have been pathed with JumpDests. Turn your difficulty setting up for this map; the bots are easy to defeat. CAST: 2.0 Gameplay in this map flows nicely. The layout keeps players moving, always gives options as to where one would like to go, and allows for different styles of play. Quick, long-range weapons get a workout through long halls and open rooms, whereas the Flak Cannon and Rocket Launcher are ideal for the many chances you'll have to rain death on your enemies from above. The uppermost of the three levels tended to get neglected somewhat in my test games, though. That may be largely due to the way I was playing, but I suspect that it has at least something to do with item placement. Weapon placement is fine, but I think the ammo boxes should have been distributed a little more evenly. As I was playing, it seemed to me that I couldn't turn around without finding flak, rockets, and lightning ammo, while I despaired of finding anything to feed my Link Gun. When I checked the numbers in the editor, though, the number of pickups for each gun is about the same –- indeed, there are only two lightning ammo pickups, though I could have sworn I was seeing them more often. The ammo for these more powerful weapons is concentrated on the lowest floor. The Link Gun charges, it turns out, are all on the upper floors, whereas the weapon itself is on the first floor. I understand that the author probably didn't want to make it easy for z-axis aficionados to stay on the third level all the time with an endless supply of flak and rockets, but still, I generally like to have at least one ammo pickup close at hand when I grab a weapon. If the item placement was intended to promote movement throughout all parts of the map, I think it could have been tweaked a bit. Health and adrenaline pickups are abundant, perhaps too much so. In one corner of the map, four linear arrangements of said pickups that are pretty close to one another total eleven Health Vials and seven Adrenaline pills. That's more than half of the Health Vials in the map (eleven out of nineteen), all available in a single area that constitutes about a fifth of the map's area, and with a Super Shield Pack in the center of the arrangement to boot. That's pushing it. Finally, the map is going to cause playability issues for some players, as far as performance goes. In part this is a build issue -– as I mentioned in the previous section, a fair amount of additional geometry could have been culled in many areas through the use of antiportals -– but primarily this is a matter of the volume of graphical elements in the map. All those meshes will exact a good share of blood and sweat from your video card: often more than 200,000 polys' worth, though that figure gets up to 320,000 in one place that I found. Owners of higher-end systems won't be bothered, but those with more modest hardware will take some not-so-modest hits to their frame rates. FINAL SCORE: 6.0 All-around, DM-1on1-Neivm is a decent piece of work, competently constructed and fun to play. It certainly has its flaws, but they are mostly minor, and spread about pretty evenly, not so concentrated in any one area that they significantly hurt the experience. Unless you have an older machine, that is, in which case you should probably try another map.
Map Comments
Manticore 06-07-2004 10:47 PM MDT Rating: 7   A well built map that performs wells also. Could probably handle a player load of four, in my opinion. Ironblayde: P4 2.6 Gig, nVidia GForce 42MX (urgh), 512 meg RAM.... I was going to put this in the comment originally, and with respect to the mapper, it appears that the UT2K4 engine is tempting mappers to overmesh and overdeco their maps. This is the second map lately where the amount of meshing has been over the top. The use of meshes like this without proper optimisation is going to strain a lot of rigs. But I didn't have performance issues with this map....... Ironblayde 06-07-2004 03:19 PM MDT   What kind of hardware have you got, Manticore? This map is making my video card weep and beg for mercy. darth_weasel 06-14-2004 10:08 AM MDT   yes, due to a little overzealousness on my part when it came to meshes, the polycouts can just get silly sometimes :/ by the time the problem manifested itself was too late to scale back really. lack of foresight on my part, sorry. edit: thanks for the review, all spot on, rough edges that needed more time and thought in there. SilverDemon 06-07-2004 11:25 PM MDT Rating: 6   Nice map. Attention to detail is pretty nice. Doesn't quite set an atmosphere, though. Perhaps try to add some shaders on some metal textures? Incredibly slow in one particular part near the water. sandorski 06-08-2004 12:39 AM MDT Rating: 7   I think it looks great, but as mentioned there's a lot of Polys (over 300k in 1 spot, but commonly over 200k). I see that it's zoned and all(freaks me out wondering how many exist without the Zoning!), but I also noticed in UEd that you seem to have a whole area cleared aroung the Maps outside, were you planning on adding an Outdoor area? Anyway, I like the Map and it worked reasonably well on my Athlon 2800/Radeon 9600 Pro. So anyone who has a fairly up to date system should be able to run it well enough to enjoy it. It really shouldn't be a 1on1 Map though, it takes forever(it seems) to find your opponent. KaMi 06-11-2004 07:15 PM MDT Rating: 8   This map reminds me another weasel´s map named DM-Ochre, very nice custom meshes too, all in all a great map! scirmast 11-07-2004 07:22 PM MST Rating: 7   As said aove, there is a very bad choppiness problem. That prevents the map from scoring higher. We need another, optimized version asap. The layout is nice, though IMO it consists too much of big rooms with stuff on them. The "roomy" feeling is not good. Howeverm other things, like the glass floor and the amount of Z-axis is definitely a good thing. BooGiTyBoY 11-21-2004 04:20 PM MST   How can you guys seriously rate this map over a 2... and that's just points for looks. Yeah it looks real pretty... but the gameplay is completely ruined by shoddy construction. You can get out of the map easily with nothing but a few well placed shield jumps. If that wasn't bad enough, there's tons of meshes you can hide in making you totally invisible to the enemy. So how exactly is this a 7-8 rated map??? I can provide screenshots if necessary ;)