ONS-MudSling][
Map Info
	File Name ons-mudsling2.zip Author SuperApe Gametype UT2k4 Onslaught Date Added 06-20-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 7.05 mb Player Count 6-12 Map Description A small island with many open trenches, muddy from recent rains. "Alright soldier, get your head on straight and listen up! The enemy has been talking trash all week. They think they're better than us. Ha! We've got superior tactics, we've got the best trained soldiers, and we've got a few suprises for them too. Now get out there, get dirty and send them cryin' home to Mama!" You can: - Start small forest fires. They smolder, burst into flames, burn (ow!), die down, and leave a blackened spot. - Get around on foot. This map is small enough that you're not out of the action if you're out of a vehicle. - Sneak into enemy command bunkers for purposes of sabotage. The bunkers hold a lot of goodies. Stack the odds in your favor and rig their bunker for demolition! - Browse UnrealPlayground on a laptop. ;) - Hack into enemy web cams. Once a Teammate has entered the enemy bunker, they broadcast the codes needed to hack into their own surveillance camera, mounted on their laptop. From your own bunker, you can spy on the enemy and remotely detonate the fuse to the rigged TNT. - Watch a bird fly by. Author Notes: - There is no Default link setup, so it will act as if Random by default. Use the Crossfire setup for shorter rounds, use the Deadlock setup for longer rounds or to try out more involved features like sabotage. - Laptop instructions and sabotage plan included with readme file. - Comments welcome. Thank you. Review Rating 4.5 User Rating 6 Overall Rating 5.5
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  1.0/3 Date 07-01-2004 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.5/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  5.5/10 AWE: 1.0 ONS-Mudsling][ isn't a map you look to for impressive visuals. Aside from a light sprinkling of trees, boulders, and the like, it's little more than a piece of terrain, and not a particularly interesting one, at that. It consists of trenches wending their way through a series of hills, and has no natural boundaries. It simply ends. Thus you never really get a sense of playing in an actual location; rather, the map is essentially a disembodied square, like something out of Final Fantasy Tactics, albeit with the poly count cranked up a few orders of magnitude. Those few static meshes that are employed are placed adequately, excepting that a couple of the weapon lockers, one of the Power Nodes, and both Power Cores are partially buried in the terrain. I wouldn't mention the Power Cores if it was just that a couple of their legs were shortened a bit, but the terrain covers some of the Cores' more substantial sections as well, and it looks a little odd. The one part of the map that does look a little more interesting is the pair of bunkers hidden below the ground, one near each Power Core. They look like what they were intended to be: hastily assembled command posts, with a simple framework of beams helping to support the weight of the earth overhead, a metal shelving unit containing robot parts and explosives, a map with a plan of attack sketched out on it, and a laptop computer to assist in sabotage operations. The author wins a cookie for his humorous posters promoting teamwork and Power Node maintenance that can be found on the support beams, which look like World War II-era propaganda pieces. One of the biggest contributing factors to the blandness of the map's appearance is the lighting. The aforementioned bunkers are each lit with a pair of lanterns that give off a soft yellow-orange glow, and the effect is nice. Aside from that, however, the map's entire lighting scheme is provided by one Sunlight actor that bathes the map in pure white light, and a hint of ambient light, also pure white. Some color would have been greatly appreciated. As it is, everything looks very washed out and unattractive. BUILD: 2.0 Two things have been built into this map that go beyond what you usually see in an Onslaught map, as the author has mentioned in the description. The lesser of the two is that you can set some of the trees aflame with weapons fire. Not all of trees will light, and they can only be lit singly –- there are no forests great or small in the map, just scattered trees so lonely that they probably find burning to be an entertaining diversion –- but it's a nice little touch nonetheless. The trees burn and smoke for awhile, casting an orange glow on their surroundings (the only glimpse of colored light the superterranean areas of the map ever see), and eventually leave a ruined husk behind. Far more interesting are the command bunkers near each Power Core. Each contains several useful pickups, so they're useful for stocking up if you spawn at your Power Core. The catch is that a bunker can be sabotaged by the opposing team. If you sneak into the enemy's bunker, you can grab a cluster of dynamite and affix it to the bunker's support beams. (Tournament players apparently carry duct tape at all times, like any self-respecting human being) Once this is done, can use the laptop in your own bunker to watch the enemy bunker through a surveillance camera, and, whenever you wish, remotely detonate the explosives. The bunker collapses, entombing anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the blast, and thus is inaccessible for the rest of the round. The whole setup has been assembled very nicely. That said, the map is not especially efficient. Obviously the majority of the map cannot be zoned since it's outdoors, and so the author has turned to antiportals to try culling unnecessary geometry. However, instead of using the usual AntiportalActor to accomplish this, he has used additive brushes whose every surface has the Anti-Portal flag set. Thus the number of antiportals present in the map is significantly increased beyond what it should be, and they don't occlude as effectively since, if I recall correctly, a mesh or terrain section that requires two anti-portals to occlude (say, two surfaces on the same brush) will still be drawn. This problem isn't too relevant, however; the primary improvement that could have been made is the use of terrain with lower resolution and fewer texture layers. The map is too small to require a 256x256 terrain, I think. A 128x128 height map would have been fine. Pathing looks to have been done well. Bots get anywhere on the map efficiently, though there are a handful of places where a shorter path would have been useful. They don't seem to have any trouble using the various vehicles that are available. They won't infiltrate and destroy your bunker, which will give you a bit of an advantage in offline play, but I certainly don't fault the author for that. Making them aware of such tactics is probably not possible without monkeying with UnrealScript. They do know well enough not to try running into a bunker that's been collapsed, at least, and I'm glad to see that the author remembered to account for that. CAST: 1.5 This is a relatively small map, and the layout fairly simple. There are three Power Nodes, arrayed approximately in a straight line that sits nearly perpendicular to the line between the two Power Cores, and three node setups to choose from. The Deadlock setup requires a team to hold all three Power Nodes in order to assault the enemy Power Core, and obviously makes for the most drawn out games. The Slingshot setup requires you only to control one of the outer Power Nodes to establish a link, and is much faster. Finally, the Crossfire layout allows you to establish a link by controlling any of the three nodes, and turns the map into a boiling cauldron of blood and chaos that will be over in a few minutes. Interestingly, there is no default node setup, so if you don't choose one yourself, the game will select one at random. Each team starts with a Manta, a Scorpion, and a Goliath at its disposal, and there are additional Mantas at the side nodes, plus a Hellbender at the center node. The vehicle choices and placement work well for the most part. Even if you don't have a vehicle, the nodes are close enough that you can make the distance on foot quickly enough. Gameplay is decent, but not outstanding. The terrain offers little in the way of geographical diversity, and the central node is the only one that's enclosed at all, so you can attack the other nodes, and the Power Cores, from quite a distance. This is especially clear if you play the Deadlock layout with bots. Once you have the central node under your control, there's absolutely no excuse for you to lose, because you can shell the node nearest the enemy Power Core with the Goliath from quite a distance, and the bots are hopeless at dislodging an attacker so placed. The other two setups work fine for offline play, but only if you want the game to go very quickly. Players who want a longer game will have to look for the map online. It makes for a pretty fun multiplayer map. The command bunkers add an interesting element to online play. Each contains numerous ammo pickups, a Big Keg O' Health, a Super Shield Pack, and an AVRiL. That last is important, since the only one of the map's seven weapon lockers that has an AVRiL is the one near the central node. It's fun trying to rob the other team of those assets before they can do the same to you, provided the other team's players are aware of the possibility. I think it's a little too easy, though. It's just a matter of sneaking in and hitting Use twice, and then it can be detonated remotely. And once the explosives are placed, the other team doesn't have any way to remove them. In terms of frame rates, performance isn't too bad, but there's another performance-related problem that hurts the map's playability significantly, which is that the game frequently stalls while playing. I experienced very slight stalls several times a minute while playtesting this map, and that alone is enough to keep it out of my rotation. Some computers may not experience this, and some players may be willing to tolerate it, but it seems like a fairly common problem. The devil of it is that I can't figure out what causes it. The author originally thought the TriggerLights associated with the burning trees were to blame, so I tried rebuilding the level without them, but the problem remained. I also tried removing the rest of the forest fire triggers, removing the bunker sabotage system, reducing the terrain map to 128x128, changing all the antiportals to AntiportalActors, and sacrificing a goat to any deity who happens to like that sort of thing, and none of it did any good. FINAL SCORE: 4.5 All in all, this is a pretty average map. Subpar visuals and the mysterious stalling are what hurt it the most. It's also significantly less challenging offline, but that’s mostly due to limitations in the game itself, not anything the author did incorrectly. So give it a try if you're into Onslaught and want more maps, particularly if you see it out there on the servers (UP is running it, for one), but don't expect to be amazed.
Map Comments
bright_eyes 06-20-2004 06:40 AM MDT Rating: 7   Super map. Used to be a bit bland before but now with terrain alterations it really plays well. The bunkers are a great addition as well. Wildman 06-21-2004 07:44 AM MDT Rating: 6   This is a big improvement over the first version, as far as playability goes. It was fun setting those trees on fire. :) Rotchiller 06-22-2004 12:04 AM MDT Rating: 6   Kinda dull and not visually stunning, but it's a fun map to play nonetheless. Mainform 06-22-2004 12:14 AM MDT Rating: 6   This seemed to run horribly on my machine, even with all the graphics settings turned right down. Every few seconds I'd get a small jerk, where the visual would freeze for about a fifth of a second. This was happening constantly, and it got to the point where it was too irritating to play. I'm not sure why it was doing that, but it ruined an otherwise playable map. This is the only map I have that does this. Otherwise, it's well thought-out, just that issue that makes it annoying for me to play it. Sicko Teddy 06-22-2004 10:01 PM MDT Rating: 4   Below average... and know? First of all- visuals low (actually don't even exist) Only things appear in the map- terrain, rare elm trees, and powernodes+ powercores. well and two bunkers. That's all. You might think- well low visuals might promise low FPS- WRONG. the map contain a high poly terrain with 4 or 5 layers of texture (I made the same mistake at my first map). That is bad enough for fps. There are only few SKINNY effects like flamable trees (not all either) and the bunker with some stuff dumped in it. I didn't look in UED so i'm not sure if you put antiportals there. Oh eah- the skybox- the skybox realy unapropriate for a scheme for the level. You could use skybox from ANTALANTUS. It fits the scheme. Terrain - nothing special - geometrically. Sorry dude, I am not trying to say- "forget it - give it up-yo".. I am just not happy that this is what you might call- finished dough. Improve it, practice, visit forums, optimize build optimize again. you will get there. SuperApe 07-02-2004 03:41 PM MDT   All comments are helpful and welcome. Thank you for trying it and spending the time to critique it here. Based on the insite review (5.0) of ONS-MudSling, the command bunkers and sabotage may not be obvious to everyone. The reviewer missed it, so I include instructions with the readme file in this version and I tried to make the map fun enough without it. Next one will be better, more time spent. Thank you again, to all who commented. Edit for Ironblayde: Thank you for reviewing the map. It sounds awefully, "glass half empty", but I appeciate the thoroughness of the testing and the mention of the unique parts of the map. Bots easy with Deadlock setup? No. Dis- embodied terrain? Island, suspended over water, much like the skybox structures. Lighting? Matches skybox. Buried Nodes? Mud. Small differences in opinion. BTW- did we ever find out who requested this review? outpt.co.uk 06-24-2004 04:54 PM MDT Rating: 7   Absolutely no probs with framerates here on my 'average' rig. And, if you look at what the average map is on Nali (Actually don't - you'll lose all faith in 3rd party maps), i'd certainly say it was above. It definately shows the mapping skill you don't see on a lot of maps here. But the reason I liked this map is that it's fun to play. I can have a blast for 20minutes on here without feeling like I'm starting a serious game. And it's fun to play even after the novelty of setting fires to trees and the bunkers wear off. The layout is very simple but never actually looks it, (the terrain is higher and this is an improvment) and since there's no real cliffs you are free to use different strategies. And that's the reason I don't mind if the graphics don't blind me. Eye candy whores won't like maps like this, regardless of weather or not they're fun to play. Reading the readme also helps this enjoyment too. First time i fired the original up I was a little confused with the skybox - It doesn't seem like you're on an island but rather a square of terrain floating above water in the skybox. (Until you read the description) The futuresque buildings seem massive and doesn't quite fit. It's a nice skybox, but I think one made up in terragen would fit the map much better. Overall It's worth a download, and one that I keep for quick blasts of 2K4. Its not up there with the best, but it's I certainly got my 7mb of fun, and then some. Solid and fun. Looking forward to the next one, superape ;) Ironblayde 07-03-2004 01:10 AM MDT   No problem, SuperApe. Check your PMs on UP for answers to your specific points and questions. :) sandorski 07-08-2004 12:19 AM MDT Rating: 4.5   ok. Makes for a real quick game. For the map size one would expect more than what they get Moriyosi 08-30-2004 10:21 AM MDT Rating: 6   THE GOOD The Gimmicks. There's a lot of clever stuff happening here, most of which is mentioned in the map description - flammable trees, useable objects, foxholes you can sabotage, surveillance equipment. All in all, the author deserves a healthy measure of respect for trying to flex their UEd muscles a little beyond the usual. Botplay. Bot support does the trick, playing a fast-paced and fairly vicious game. If you're big on offline play, you'll find no complaints here. THE BAD Dull Environment. Save for a few clever easter eggs, Mudsling's environment is sparse and generally uninteresting; the questionable choice of skybox gives the map an oddly disproportionate cast, while the rest of the level has an heavily unfinished feel to it. Over Already? The three-node layout means only one successful node capture is required in order to open up the opposing power core, which tends to eliminate any serious need for strategy and wraps up most matches in under four minutes. Part of the problem is the generally open-ended nature of the map layout; where levels like ONS-Primeval add restrictive elements which force advances into certain avenues of conflict, Mudsling]['s got nothing of the sort. Good for quick matches, but half the fun of Onslaught's found in the long, drawn-out battles larger maps inevitably give rise to. The Gimmicks. Interesting as they are, the various knick-knacks populating the level don't have any serious impact on gameplay, and ultimately just detract from the map's focus. THE VERDICT A compact, generally decent Onslaught map, albeit one that's ill-suited to larger games. Hampered by bland layout and nuance-free gameplay.