DM-HighNoon][
Map Info
	File Name dm-highnoon][gold.zip Author Maksym Gametype UT Deathmatch Date Added 02-14-2005 File Version 1.00 File Size 1.03 mb Player Count 2 Map Description None Review Rating 4 User Rating 3 Overall Rating 3.0
Review
Reviewer Ice-Dancer Awe Score:  1.0/3 Date 05-26-2005 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.5/3 User Point:  -1 Overall Score:  3.0/10 DM-HighNoon][ by Maksym Well when I first saw this one, it looked pretty cool, and in a way it is, but in many other ways it is not, read on guys… AWE You can tell the theme of this map instantly, it’s a western, now I’ve seen a fair few wild west styled maps, but this one has to be one of the better ones, however, this, unfortunately, doesn’t mean much. The map has a real nice skybox, the clouds are very nice textures, and they came out very well on OpenGl, they seem to blend in with the rest of the skybox, which is cool. The map makes use of textures which aren’t regularly used, and throws in a few custom textures too. Lighting is very bland but its not dark, which makes a change for a DM map. The only really decent lighting effect I found, was in the tunnel, where there is a candle, the candle had a glow around it which lighted the rest of the tunnel, this was cool too, pity about the rest of the lighting, which was repetitive. My main criticism of this map, is about the interiors of the rooms, there’s nothing there!! Sure, there’s a few crates and bales of hay in on room, but in the rest, they are deserted, apart from one overly used square bookcase, that looks nothing like a bookcase! The outside view is good, and a lot of work and thought has gone into this map, as the custom “sheriffâ€� and “city hallâ€� signs show Some of the textures where aligned, most of them in fact, but there where still a few big nasty misalignments. BUILD Most of the brushes where quite basic, but the brushes where all aligned well. The 2d shape editor had been used to create some of the better architecture, but it could have been used a lot more, like I said in the AWE section, this map lacks interior detail, and the lack of brushes used inside shows this once again. Each of the jump pads made the Jumpboot sound when a player walked onto them, which was a nice effect. The swinging saloon doors also played a nice variety of sounds whilst moving, which was good to see, I’m sick of people that forget to add sound to most of their movers, sound on a mover is easy to do, and gives a lot of effect. Ah yes, the saloon doors, the only movers in this map, they work well, and its very nice to see movers that do more than just slide in and out, movers that open like proper doors, not the futuristic uber doors that disappear into the walls. The map was zoned well, and I had no framerate trouble of any kind, BSP errors where non existent, which again is great to see. CAST The map has great flow, and good gameplay. It’s a hardcore fragfest, by my mind, it’s about 2v2 size, the author recommends 2 players. There’s just one real big problem, if you go outside of the arena, you die. Well, you may think, that’s no problem, and really, it isn’t…except for the fact that you can suddenly be running around the map, and walk into the corners that are not sealed off from the outside. There’s a cactus there, however, it’s just made of sheets, so you can run straight through it, and suddenly, you’re dead. Mega WTF. Other players can also blast you into the cactus of impending doom, killing you. A block all would have been extremely useful there. The botpathing exists, but to me, it looks like it’s editor built, although the author did add a few lift exits to help the bots with the jump pads. One of the cool features in this map, is the armour, basically, when you take it, it tells all players “Armour has been takenâ€� and 30 seconds later (coz that’s the respawn time for body armour) it says “Armour is readyâ€�. Cool. Now this is a feature which will change the way you play, every time I saw that “Armour is readyâ€� message, I jumped down the well to where the armour is. Weapon placement is good, it’s the ammo placement I can’t get my head around. In a small map like this, ammo should be with the gun itself, and, for most weapons here, it’s like that, weapon and 2 ammo boxes in the same place. However, you have random rocket cans and pulse cells in other areas of the arena. Now, I appreciate you need ammo, but I don’t think that such an excess of ammo is worthy, and gives the map a somewhat dodgy appearance, with the ammo being all over the place. Pickups where placed well, for such a small map, there was no need for anything powerful like an amp or a belt, but the armour fits in nicely. Conclusion Basically, if you love top end graphical maps, I doubt this will keep you entertained for long, it looks nice outside, which I guess is where the author planned for most of the action to be, but the inside is unfortunately…well…empty. If you are a hardcore fragger however, this map might just be for you, it has good framerate, a nice selection of weapons, and powerups that are not totally out of balance. Plenty of Z axis action as well. I would love to see a version 2 of this map, with a lot more detail inside, and the outside of the map properly blocked off. AWE – 1 BUILD – 1.5 CAST – 1.5
Map Comments
XepptizZ 02-14-2005 03:02 PM MST   Very interesting visual style, it feels like an arena style map coated with a dash of western. Sometimes a bit cramped and not all the effects look correct in d3d (unsuprisingly). Like in d3d you can really see he used a blue/white texture for the clouds wich in software rendering blends in. Texturing is pretty good, consistent with sometimes wrong scaling (on top of some roofs (where it is easy to go). Every part of the map is accesable like the roof, but everything beyond this tiny community seems to be dead as falling outside the level to where the ground is always results in instant death. EDIT; For the outside area you should've tried to enclose it with other things then a killing zone, something wich would fit the theme, or make the roofs unaccesable. As for the clouds, I only run D3D and I saw sheetage, you could've tried to make the texture of the cloud have a black background and make it translicent, you'd need to have photoshop for this though. I'd be glad to do such a thing for ya in the futur, wouldn't take a minute. Also I get the effect you were going for and that sure is a pretty tough one if you don't have a whole set of imaging programs. With the editor there's always another way of doing it. EDIT: You could enclose it with canyons, rivers, steep cliffs another surrounding part of buildings (wich don't have accesable roofs). And you can mixed them all up too. Falling such a short distance and dying is just to weird and you loose a frag for it. If you really have no other choice then you should've placed blockPlayers wich does exactly as it's name implies. Rightclick on the bar of the viewport>Actors>Radii view to see how it will block. There are numerous maps using many ways to make the end of the map more realisticly blocked. Maksym 02-14-2005 02:43 PM MST   Dead area beyond the map is made to keep players within the arena. It is necessary, because it wouldn't make any sense if you could run all the map to the horizon. Question of clouds. In D3D there's no problem, only in open GL or software, in D3D You don't see the edge of texture with cloud, and everything looks natural. I just didn't see any other way to make the sky looking exactly as I wanted. Thanks for Your opinion. /EDIT If roofs were unaccessible the playability would suffer very much I think. Placing objects also wouldn't solve the problem, player would always be able to leave the map if surrounding area wouldn't be deadly. I tried also to make the texture of cloud translucent, and also masked, but it looked badly, edges were torn. Nevertheless I have no doubt, that it could be done in other, better way,I'm just not skilled in Photoshop. Monday 02-15-2005 08:11 AM MST Rating: 4   Interesting concept, reminded me of Tomb-rdr a bit but was good for around 10 mins.... Textures are basic,(lights need something) but i felt old-skool in there and became comfortable. Bots seem to move in a patrolling manner i found but they found each other eventually. AimBoY 02-15-2005 08:56 AM MST Rating: 0   crap,well haha ,is good to write a ...um......as Monday says..."old-skool" map but this is the 2OOO+ era so come on!!! i understand that new mappers should be exposed but what????..what is this?????? redfist 02-15-2005 12:56 PM MST   your zero posting is unwarrented!! it sure is easy to pick off the these 12 to 16 year old kids these days. IndySkyz 02-15-2005 01:26 PM MST Rating: 4.5   This map aint all that bad, the lighting could be redone way better, a few of the ramps seemed alittle to steep, and I think I would move the cliffs closer and open up alittle of the outside dessert area, the instant death when you try to go outside courtyard just dont feel right but its still playable. Gustine 05-27-2005 08:26 PM MDT   For a wild west hardcore fan it's a nice basic layout.....this one reminds me of Michael "widowmaker" Cranston's western level he did for UT2003/UT2004 .. http://www.utmr2003.dk/images/DM/DM-LINCOLNCOUNTYWID2.gif I am a BIG western fan myself and love seeing more of this type showing up more and I think it could have looked alot nicer if more time was spent on interior...and a little more interactivity.. If you you wanna to explore more into the wild west arena please visit the wild west of UT2004 Lawdogs Mod http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~lawdogs/cms/modules/news/ Damnation Mod http://damnation.blueomega.com/ WildWest Reviews http://www.wildwestgames.org/