ONS-ScrapYard
Map Info
	File Name ons-scrapyard.zip Author SoH_Ghost3021 Gametype UT2k4 Onslaught Date Added 11-21-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 5.49 mb Player Count 22 - 26 Map Description You'll need ECE bonus back to play this map. (as well as the latest ut2k4 patch, you can snag both at BeyondUnrealFileWorks) Vehicles List: Paladin Cicada SPMA Hellbender Scorpian Raptor Goliath Manta TC-1200 (sory, no room for leviathon} :( hey, if you download, plz let me know what you think, i would like to know if i should make another junkyard-themed map. thanks. :) oh, btw, i noticed the sky only showed up on GeForceFX5200+, so i made a custom shader that only has 2 materials panning instead of 3. it now works on geforce2-4. :) Review Rating 4 User Rating 8 Overall Rating 5.0
Review
Reviewer ArcadiaVincennes Awe Score:  1.0/3 Date 12-23-2004 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.5/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  5.0/10 ONS-Scrapyard (UT2004) A largish rusty onslaught among twisted hulks of metal and a two step terrain. Sub-par visuals and a planar game area don’t meet the potential the map indicates. Add a surprising amount of vehicles, odd collision and some bizarre lava, and the map disappoints more than it pleases. AWE 1.0 At first glance the map has potential. Rusted metal heaps, desolate terrain and inky black smoke and oil dominate your view. This then gives way to more rusty metal, desolate terrain, and inky black smoke and oil. Rinse and repeat. The textures on the meshes are some good some bad. The high-reflection static meshes have the DM-Junkyard cubemap still applied to them and it’s odd seeing a different junkyard reflected in them. The terrain textures all stay close to the theme – too close. It all blends together and looks, and is, the same everywhere you go in the map. The one area that gets a face lift is a lava flow extruding from the side of the central hill/mountain/crater/thing. This lava flow, in addition to having a repeating texture that just doesn’t fit visually, is under a shader that supposedly indicates flow in one direction. The odd thing is that the shader was applied to a brush and not a fluidsurfaceinfo or Xprocmesh. This means that it’s flat with the only movement in the direction of flow. Also, as one approaches the flow, the moving shader begins to disappear. It simply bizarre and breaks the effect that it’s lava. The textures on the steep parts of the terrain are stretched, sometimes very badly. The author needs to learn about the xy layer properties in the terraininfo actor. The lighting was sufficient throughout the map. No spectacular shading, no overbright or too-dark places, it was simply there and it lit the place up. Not bad, not good. The emitters for the flame and smoke were nice, although I think the flames moved too slowly to be real flames. But the smoke, and also the oil emitter were nicely done. The terrain/architecture was not so good. The terrain, over 95% of the map consists of pretty much 2 types: flat, or too steep to use. This means that the battles take place on the same plane throughout the map and anywhere that isn’t flat, you can’t go. This is extremely limiting and forces gameflow to be repetitive and somewhat boring. Also, the only interesting things breaking up the terrain are the junkyard heaps and broken vehicles. They are used to good effect overall except for some surprisingly bare spots which leaves much of the terrain viewable with one, or maybe two layers visible creating a very bland repetitive landscape. The skybox was done fairly well and matches the scrapyard theme nicely. There is a train tressle high up on supports that makes a circuit of the landscape. And there is a train that travels along it. However, it runs at the speed of a French TGV on the straight points and at the rather sharp curves, half of the train is suspended in mid-air. And some times it freaks out and rotates in place before settling itself back on the tracks and resuming its journey. Overall, a dull, drab, bizarre, flat onslaught map that has unrealized potential. It’s definitely a scrapyard, but that’s about it. And I don’t think many will appreciate the phallic Static Mesh that was deliberately put on display in a open location on the ground. BUILD 1.5 Despite it’s lack of visual cohesiveness, the author did construct it fairly well. There are two big sticking points, however. The collision hulls for the static meshs are all screwy. Normally, this would not be a problem because the author made most of them inaccessible on foot due to the terrain steepness. However, there are air vehicles and when passing them, one often gets ‘stuck’ on a mesh’s collision where there is no visible mesh within a few feet. The collision on the meshes really should have been removed and replaced with blocking volumes that more closely match the mesh’s shape. For optimization the author did add antiportals and they do help. A few more would certainly have been in order. The sound in this map is not bad. For the 1 sound there is. Fleshing out the map with much more ambient sound really would have helped. Finally, the mini-map is awful. The ground color doesn’t match the map’s ground cover and half of the ten nodes are not even on the map. A little more research on how to construct mini-maps is certainly in order. CAST 1.5 On one hand the bots work fairly well. At the game start, they all hop into vehicles and take off. On the other hand, none of them went to the node I went to. I have no clue where they all went. The bots overall are okay but they could use a little more pathing work. I had three nodes built by the time the red team started their first one, and I noticed bots just hanging out near a node every once in a while when there was plenty to do. Another problem is that this map should have been included with the excessive mod simply for the sheer numbers of vehicles in the map. As you can see the loadout at the first node is pretty hefty. And none of the other nodes I ran into seemed to skimp any at all. In fact, I found the toilet car available to use at one of the nodes. A waste of space in any competitive map, this vehicle should really only be used as an easter egg, silly race maps, or at least spawn off to the side and out of the way. Now granted, the map is large, but spamming the map with vehicles is not a good way to reduce the travel time between nodes. There are more creative methods out there and vehicle balance is key to Onslaught maps. The collision issue I spoke about before rears its ugly head again in the gameplay section as it does an effective job of blocking aircraft for no reason. But, fortunately, the map has an extraordinarily high ceiling so if you want to fly high to avoid the invisible collisions, you can fly high enough to render the entire map almost the size of a orange. And I have a 20â€� monitor. The gameplay itself is flat and not very challenging. The node linkage, the terrain monotony and narrow corridors all make for a very ‘trapped’ gameplay feel. Despite the terrain being smoothed pretty much throughout the map, I was able to get my vehicles stuck on the terrain a few times and at one point my goliath was barely able to squeak through a particularly narrow path. Finally, the framerate was not up to scratch either. Sometimes it squeeked above retail, but mostly it hovered a bit low. Nothing that would break the video card but some older pcs might have some stuttering trouble with it. Overall, the gameplay is disappointing. The monotony of the terrain, the massive number of vehicles, the invisible collisions, and lack of interesting link design all detract from the map’s fun factor. To put it all together, the map had potential. But too many visual and gameplay flaws bring the map down too far. If you want to experience the complete spammability of vehicles possible, then give this a shot. Otherwise, unless you can’t go an hour without playing ONS and are completely starved for a new map, skip this one.
Map Comments
SoH_Ghost3021 06-27-2005 06:06 PM MDT   Thanks for the review; i'll try to do some more homework on Onslaught maps and how they flow. I still am not sure how to make the train NOT spin around like crazy on the 8th frame, though. i almost forgot taht terrain needed to be bumpy! its a scrapyard after all, i need to fix that...and teh flame...and teh apples..and some shaders and lighting...well, thanks for reviewing it anyway! ;) "phallic" eh? im just usin meshes from epic's packages that came w/teh game. perv. well, thanks all! :) i will try to do better next time! edit: it seems the review was more helpfull than the people taht commented so far... slaskan 11-21-2004 12:37 PM MST   LEWL gotta try it out Evil Snack 11-22-2004 01:31 PM MST   I don't even have UT 2004 and I know what that vehicle is! HOORAY FOR PALADIN! Any of the other ECE vehicles? NSRules 11-29-2004 06:58 PM MST Rating: 8   wow, ghost i didn't think our map would turn out so well. when is that reviewer going to review it MartinW 12-24-2004 07:27 AM MST   not before next year... [Edit] errare humanum est Kantham 12-24-2004 10:59 PM MST   no need to be reviwed and please , just make better jpg compresion ;) Vipermx 12-27-2004 01:42 PM MST   hm....NO COMENT... Draco 06-10-2005 07:44 PM MDT Rating: 8   Good map. redfist 06-28-2005 12:36 AM MDT   I'll help ya Soh...........stop making ONS maps LoL DM is the one yeah !! just kidding ya....