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| DM-Rigit | | | Map Info |
| | | | File Name | dm-rigit.zip | | Author | Howitzer Lykaon | | Gametype | UT Deathmatch | | Date Added | 07-22-2004 | | File Version | 1.00 | | File Size | 2.27 mb | | Player Count | 2-6 | | Map Description | None | | Review Rating | 3 | | User Rating | 6 | | Overall Rating | 4.0 |
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|  | | | | Review |
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DM-Rigit (UT)
A semi-industrial map that is more an experiment with volumes, triggers, and light effects than a true DM map. The experiments went well overall but the author did not put as much though into general game play or atmosphere as the experiments.
Awe - 1.0
This would have been a .5 had it not been for the nice lighting effect on the fan shaft that we'll get to in a moment. Again, a semi-industrial theme with concrete walls and somewhat rusty beam supports. There are concrete walls with varying grey concrete textures and they are endless, broken only by some purposeless ledges, some wall indentations, and the supports for elevators and fan shaft platforms in other areas of the map. The lighting overall is average. Believable but not striking in any way, the lighting is mostly uniform throughout with one unexpected red light over an elevator shaft - the only real effort was put into two areas. The first is two flickering fluorescent fixtures that were inexplicably colored differently, orange/red and the other green, and than the same white fixtures elsewhere in the level. A nice touch, but slightly flawed. And the second effort was put into the shadows from the rotating fan blades that run almost entirely down the fan shaft. A nice speed, a nice effect, continued onto a platform about 1/4 of the way up, the shadows spin around the room. However, this too, was flawed because the shadows spin slower than the fan blades that supposedly cast them. As for texturing, everything seems nicely aligned, yet the different concretes are boring and uninspired, and repetitive. Additionally, when they meet, there is no separation or trim between them. A wall ends at rectangular doorway, the texture ends, and then the hallway through the door continues with a new concrete texture. As for the level geometry, it's basic, uninspired, hallways used as means to an end, and the ends aren't that interesting. I will give the author credit that he tried to vary the larger spaces with indentations and ledges, but the ledges serve no useful purpose and the indentations are floor-to-ceiling only. Finally, there's one room with lots of the dreaded crates. Lots of crates posed in interesting angles with some health, ammo, and a shock rifle on top, and sometimes a crate on another crate. A good idea for variance used to excess in this one room with crates nowhere else in the map except for two next to the minigun. As for ambient sound, one needs to play a different map to find some. I did not find any audible ambient sounds - not even on the fan. And the music used was the Unreal GUI music. Not really fitting for a fierce DM fight in an industrial complex. Overall, a lack of interest, boring geometry, repetitive texturing, and uninspired lighting except for two places, and no sounds render this a not very exciting location. However, it's put together competently and therein lies promise for future works.
Build - 1.0
Again, this would have been a .5 but for a few features that stand out. First off, the overall design lacks decent flow and no real z-axis other than the fan shaft. There are three main floors connected with some elevators, the fan shaft, with two more elevators, a teleporter, and a button triggered 'trapdoor'. It's not bad as there are some ways to circle the map with variance, but it is bad in that one of those ways is one-way, the 'trapdoor', and is unnecessarily close to the teleporter. The build is where the author seems to have run his 'experiments'. Firstly, the fan shaft is supposedly sucking the air out of the facility. Therefore if you jump in the shaft, you rise up, essentially a 'low-grav' zone. Now, in the fan shaft are two elevators - one from the bottom platform at the top of the water in the shaft to the second platform, and one from the second platform back down to the first platform. All this occurs in a 'low-grav' volume. The interesting part is that one can jump on the top of the 'up' elevator, jump off of it at its apex, and the 'low-grav' volume becomes much more so bringing you up to the fan. The only safe point here is the center of the fan where you can be stopped by the fan center. Rising to any of the blades will, as expected, bring gibby death. At the bottom of the shaft is a too-deep pool of water bringing the player into the final volume. All of it is put together well and the bots use it as best as can be expected from them. But we'll get into more on the shaft later. The trigger that opens the 'trapdoor' and the trigger that will summon the elevators work just fine and the bots seemed to understand so as well. The teleporter worked just fine and was even a "see-through" teleporter which showed the other end in real time. But that was only when close to it. Backing away from he teleporter reveals an immense corona that slowly burns the eyes. Finally, the construction of the hallways and rooms is good as well but very basic. Really a room-hallway-room-hallway affair that has one set of stairs to uneven the playing field. In general, it's well assembled but not very inspired except for the fan-shaft and triggers that work well.
Cast - 1.0
Nothing special in terms of game play except for the 'low-grav' area inside a non-'low-grav' map. The item placement is wonky almost everywhere. In terms of health, it's loosely scattered around the level in terms of health packs except in one corner near the shaft where he placed 8 health vials. As for weapons, the author decided to place two shock rifles, two flak cannons, and two rocket launchers in a map that's intended for 2-6 people. One of the shock rifles appears on a crate in the crate room and the other appears lying on the floor of a hallway. The flak cannons are situated in the middle of a non-descript hallway and the other sits, almost overlooked, next to a pillar as you exit the teleporter/drop from the ‘trapdoor’. The rocket launchers are on the bottom platform in the fan shaft, and the other is lying along a wall in the crates room. Also, the shockrifle in the hallway, and the rocket launcher in the fan-shaft have no ammo nearby. The mini-gun is well-placed but there are 12 ammo packs sitting directly under it. And then, the Damage Amp appears directly on top of the whole pile. The ripper sits in an excellent place on the second fan shaft platform. The link gun sits a few feet away from the shock rifle in the crate room separated by many crates. And in this indoor industry arena, the author placed a sniper rifle on a ledge with mucho ammo overlooking the teleporter. The entrance to the ledge is from jumping up on crates, and then the crates block the backside of the ledge from view. This is very cruel according to the generally accepted rule of sniping positions being accessible from more than one direction, and especially cruel to plant it right in front of the teleporter. There is a redeemer in the level, but it's at the top of the fan shaft under the center of it. I managed to successfully grab it numerous times, but I always floated out from under the center of the fan and went to pieces. Interestingly enough, there's a keg of health next to the redeemer, however, it's directly under the fan blades which means whenever I survived long enough up there, I couldn't figure out how to get the keg without being gibbed. And I never found out how to get down either - except by death. Finally, the shield-belt makes an appearance at the bottom of the pool in the fan shaft. However, the pool is awfully deep and you'll be struggling for air halfway down. Usually the only thing that saved my life from drowning was getting the shield-belt. The bots had no trouble with anything in the level except the sniper rifle, which they never used, and for the fan shaft, which I’ll address imminently. They used the teleporter, the 'trapdoor', and the elevators competently; however they did very much favor the teleporter over the very close-by 'trapdoor'. The fan shaft was a death-pit for them. They never tried to grab the redeemer or keg of health but they did love to try to get the shieldbelt. Because of all the high-priority pickups in the shaft, all the bots eventually came by to visit the shaft; and I never saw one leave. They were always either too busy grabbing the rocket launcher or ripper, fighting with the other bots that had got there before them, or swimming for the shield belt. Since new bots were constantly coming in, the ones already there rarely got an opportunity to do anything other than frag.
Overall, bizarre item placement and a fan-shaft of death for the bots makes the game play bland. Combine this with flat, boring hallways and rooms, a crate-garden, and really there's just the fan-shaft to keep it interesting. However, this becomes boring as well because you always know where to find the bots. On the plus side, because of the simplicity and minimalism of everything, your frame rates should never stutter - perhaps only in the fan-shaft on extremely low-spec machines.
To sum it all up, it seems like the author had a great idea for the fan shaft and wanted to experiment with various 'advanced' pieces of the Unreal tech. His 'experiments' worked well - the teleporter, the triggered 'trapdoors' and elevators, and the gravity zones. But it just felt like he didn't really know what else to do with the pieces once he had them complete. It seems as if everything else was just cobbled together. If this is, indeed the case, then the author did a great job except for the speed of the shadows in the fan shaft being slower than the fan blades. But this does not usually lead to very fun levels. If the author intended this to be a rampaging DM level, then although I applaud the effort put into the various aspects of the work, he missed his mark. But I do see potential here and would like to see his next work focus more on game play and atmosphere and less on the mechanics. I'd recommend this map as a download for a round or two of fan shaft fun but I would then delete it to make room for something with a longer play life.
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| | | | Map Comments |
| Dead Man Walking
07-24-2004 08:52 PM MDT | Rating: 8.5 | | Great map! I love this map, It hasgreat textures and lighting. And the flow is awsome. I like to play with 16 for a quick kill fest. Bot pathing works well. Great job.
| EvilSwanky
07-25-2004 01:42 PM MDT | Rating: 3.5 | | 0_o great lighting? I don't see anything nether in the pic nor ingame.
I don't see good architecture either, some cubes slightly different rotated - no more no less.
Gameplay... hm... I don't like it - it doesn't exist in my opinion...
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