CTF-Innovative
Map Info
	File Name ctf-innovativev1.1.zip Author quillion Gametype UT Capture the Flag Date Added 07-14-2004 File Version 2.00 File Size 1.33 mb Player Count 12 Map Description some minor bugs found after up/L fix done. Review Rating 4.5 User Rating 7 Overall Rating 5.5
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  1.5/3 Date 07-23-2004 Build Score:  1.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.0/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  5.5/10 AWE: 1.5 It was only about two weeks ago that I reviewed this author's first map, CTF-Harmonized. Like many first maps, it was severely lacking, but now the author has obviously learned from his mistakes, and has come back with a considerably stronger effort in CTF-Innovative. To start with, the author's ability with architecture has improved markedly. Gone are the ugly, flow-breaking steps between rooms. Gone are the inexplicable holes in the ceilings. Instead, the map is decorated with pillars, ceiling beams, trim segments, weapon bases, and light fixtures of interesting and believable shapes. I especially like the fenced-in light fixtures along the floors, and the monster skylight in the central room. There are some negatives in here as well, however. While I commend the author's efforts to trim much of his map, it hasn't been carried off as well as it could have been. In some places, there are unsightly breaks in the trim, such as at the corners of the platform holding the Shield Belt, and around the perimeters of six light fixtures in the hallways just to the left and right of the center. Also, trim is totally absent in, arguably, the places it's needed most: around the perimeters of the map's many rectangular doorways. There are also a handful of places where light fixtures are missing where I thought they would have been present, but whether that was an oversight or a conscious choice on the author's part, I can't say. I like the texturing in this map. Quillion has drawn textures from several different packs (including SGTech1, so you need to have Bonus Pack 4 installed) while keeping a consistent theme, and the result is a map that looks a bit familiar without looking hackneyed. After five years and thousands of maps, it's not easy to use the retail textures in such a way that the map escapes looking like hundreds of its predecessors, but the author manages a fair job of it here. One striking counterexample is at the side doors, where a sizeable segment of a wall is covered with a base texture more appropriate for trim, and the wall itself is paper-thin. Also, the author hasn't done much in the way of texture alignment on the walls. The nature of the textures renders this a minor issue, but there are a few cases where it's all too noticeable. Specifically, on a number of surfaces oriented at a significant angle above the horizontal, the author has aligned the textures to the floor, stretching them terribly. Like the other aesthetic aspects of the map, the lighting is a big step ahead of that in the author's first map. Most of the team-colored lights are still too saturated to be convincing, and are sometimes used in odd places, but they've been relegated to a small role in the overall lighting scheme. The vast majority of the map is dominated by colors that are much more reasonable, if a little drab. Many of the lights have too little brightness and too much range, which is a combination I've been seeing too often lately. To the author: find a few maps with impressive lighting, crack them open in the editor and examine the lights' brightness and radius settings. You'll produce much more interesting results in your lighting by using those values more effectively. BUILD: 1.0 Regrettably, the author's brushwork is very poor. The map appears to have been assembled without little or no regard for the grid, and a number of errors result, as they always do in such cases. Four of the author's intended zones are merged as one. In one case this is due to careless placement of a portal such that it doesn't seal an opening properly, and in the others, the author neglected to add portals in all of the gaps between intended zones. On the plus side, the visual artifacts often associated with bad brushwork -– gaps and protrusions where two brushes don't meet smoothly -– are surprisingly minimal. They're in there, but are not nearly so prevalent as one might expect. The other aspect of the brushwork that stands out is that it's highly inefficient. The author often uses considerably more brushes than are necessary to achieve an effect. Sometimes he uses as many as five or six brushes that have the same shape, lined up end to end or even overlapping, where one long brush with the exact same shape would have served just as well. Thus there are too many polygons present in most areas. It's not a major issue in terms of performance since this is a relatively low-poly map, but it does matter from an aesthetic viewpoint, since you can often see the breaks between polygons where there should be one smooth surface. There are also numerous instances of unmerged polygons on tessellated faces. There are four movers in the map, all sliding doors that open as a player approaches. Two of them use the TriggerOpenTimed state, which can cause trouble with bots, as I have described before. The bots don't have many problems with the doors in this map since the triggers are so close to the doors, but TriggerControl provides behavior that feels more natural for doors. At the least, the triggers should be set to re-fire periodically while someone is touching them, to circumvent possible pathing issues. The other two doors use BumpOpenTimed, which is worse. This means that you have to actually touch the door before it will open, and the doors don't open quickly (the author did not change the default timing settings), so there's an annoying delay whenever you pass one of those doors. Bot pathing is functional, but mediocre. The author's placement of standard PathNodes is generally fine, though there are a handful of places where I would have provided additional paths. It's in the use of the more specialized actors that more troubling errors arise. The first example lies with the map's DefensePoints. There are four DefensePoints per side. Three of the four are fine, but the fourth places the defender right behind a door. Once you realize that bots like to sit behind a certain door, that defender becomes useless, because you can just fire a shot of flak through the passage as the door is opening, and the bot will die before he has a chance to react. More troubling, the author has neglected to alter the default direction for any of the DefensePoints, so as often as not, you'll find a bot trying to defend while facing a wall –- not exactly a winning proposition. AlternatePaths are used even more strangely. There are 22 of them scattered about the map, which in itself is odd. This map needs no more than six. I should note here that some authors do intentionally overuse the AlternatePath actor to compensate for some oddities in its behavior, but that only works with careful balancing and playtesting, and besides, standard use will generally produce more predictable results anyway. In this map, every one of the AlternatePaths is marked as a path to the red flag. Thus, attackers on the blue team have many AlternatePaths to choose from, most of which are inappropriately placed, and so inefficiencies in attack patterns may very well arise. Conversely, attackers on the red team have no AlternatePaths to use, and will therefore take the shortest route to and from their destination every time, resulting in overly predictable behavior that's easy to defend against. CAST: 2.0 The layout is simplicity itself. Each flag room has two openings into a hallway shaped like a figure three, which obviously forks into three paths between the bases. The paths connect again at the center of the map so you need not commit to a fixed route for the whole run. For the most part, the map is totally flat, except that the central room is crisscrossed by slightly elevated walkways, and the flags also rest on raised platforms, which make those positions a little more tenable. Those who prefer complex layouts with lots of places to run and hide or throw off pursuers may not be crazy about this map, but it should satisfy those looking for a quick and action-packed game. The map's connectivity is just enough to keep flag runners from feeling like they're running on rails, without being so open that it becomes relegated to the vile pit where Thorns and its kind fester. There are a few things that hinder the flow of the map somewhat. First is the problem of the doors, as I mentioned in the previous section. They open too slowly, and the ones you have to touch to open –- which, lamentably, are both located right along the map's most-used path –- are particularly egregious faults. The weapon bases also cause problems. At first glance, the weapon bases appear to be square, ever so slightly raised platforms that slope down to the ground at a 45 degree angle on all sides. If this were the case, there would be no problem. However, two of the sides of each weapon base are set at greater angles above the horizontal, and it causes problems, even though the weapon bases are so short (only 6 UUs) that you should easily be able to run over them. Instead, oftentimes when approaching a weapon base, you may find yourself getting caught on one of its edges, or even lifted into the air as though you'd performed a ramp-dodge. This is rather annoying, and could have easily been avoided with more careful brushwork. The rest is positive, though. There are plenty of PlayerStarts, even for those who insist on stuffing a map with more people than it was intended to hold, and they're placed well. They're divided approximately evenly between the three routes to the flag, and most are slightly forward from the flag room. That, along with the relatively long view distances in the map's center regions, allows defenders a chance to catch the flag carrier even if they've recently died, or are on the wrong side of the map. Thus it can be pretty difficult to score against competent defense. The bots don't provide very competent defense, but I can see this as being a good map for LAN and Internet games. The author recommends twelve players as the ideal load for this map, but I think that's excessive. Six or eight players makes for a better game. I'd only recommend the full complement of twelve to players who like a little spam with their CTF. Weapon placement is fine, too. There are no Bio-Rifles and no Rippers (and thankfully no Redeemer), but all the heavy hitters are in here, placed for easy access from any of the spawn points. The Flak Cannon and the Minigun are right in the flag room, so beware of well-armed defenders! The map also works pretty well for InstaGib, if the standard weapons don't dish out enough carnage to sate you. FINAL SCORE: 4.5 Though the author is definitely improving when it comes to visuals and gameplay, the technical aspects of mapping remain by far his greatest weakness. Still, this map does represent a big step in the right direction for this mapper. Is it innovative? No, not really. But it is a decent CTF map, worth trying out.
Map Comments
cybersirius 07-13-2004 09:38 PM MDT Rating: 7   It's a Decent Map with some visual things. Looks too small for 12 players trough... (I recommend 6-8 players) GTD-Carthage 07-14-2004 10:28 AM MDT Rating: 7.5   Nice map Quillion. The map is a standard for every CTF map of what they should be. The flag-bases have a tight defense always. Too tight I think. The corridors sorrounding the main room in the very center has enough details to make you stare at it for a few minutes. Each corridor during bot-play has more than 1 or 2 bots which stands for "good pathing". The main room itself has a glass-cieling and a strange but cool verticaly winding floor. Weapons and ammo are at your disposal as they are scattered all over the map in both unlikely places and main-stream places. Lights for that matter look dark and moody giving the level a great feeling of realism. The textures form an ambient particularly on the corridors which I don't seem to explain yet. Every detail is balanced so this map deserves my fraction. A good over-all CTF map. Gaweph 07-15-2004 03:50 PM MDT Rating: 8   I think this map is amazing. I really enjoyed flying around and looking at all of the details berfore the game comenced. The bots seemed to work well, i followed some of them. I very much like the mnain room, the glass on the roof works really well, i also like the lighting underneath the polatform in the middle of the room. Homeslice 07-22-2004 01:17 AM MDT Rating: 7   Pretty decent! Good architecture and lighting (in terms of shadows anyway) work all around, texture choices are nice (despite being too standard by the standards these days), bot support was very good, all-around fun CTF map to play. Ironblayde 07-23-2004 03:09 AM MDT   Good job quillion; you're improving very quickly. This would have been at least a point higher if not for the numerous technical problems. Something to watch out for next time. :) Manticore 07-24-2004 02:58 AM MDT Rating: 6.5   Decent CTF map. Well constructed. Bots are happy...... GRed (V)èg@ 07-26-2004 06:03 AM MDT   lots of nice touches in this one from supports to triming all over the place the lighting in the other hand was not so good u have the lighsources but they dont seem to give light (some of them) the weapond pads dont seem to stand out from the rest of the map making them more unique would have help also i got stuck on one of them :P just make the brushes to nonsolid and problem solved, anyway it was a fun map thanx to the easy to learn layout CursedSoul1 07-29-2004 05:40 PM MDT Rating: 5   decent, but simple... Shao 08-17-2004 06:09 PM MDT Rating: 7   is ok....i like this map :) Ntwarr 08-21-2004 07:18 PM MDT   It's a good map quillion shao i think it likes any map on here of UT redfist 08-21-2004 08:15 PM MDT   NT he don't like mine LoL RayZidane 10-31-2004 09:08 PM MST Rating: 7   huh...map...looks like...hmm.....