DM-Fade
Map Info
	File Name dm-fade.zip Author Pomperi Gametype UT Deathmatch Date Added 12-22-2005 File Version 1.00 File Size 3.32 mb Player Count 3-6 Map Description What was ones a splendid kingdom has now lost all its lustre, slowly, fading... This is my first map with 100% selfmade textures. Enjoy a somewhat new theme ;) Review Rating 6.5 User Rating 8 Overall Rating 7.5
Review
Reviewer Vertigo Awe Score:  2.0/3 Date 12-25-2005 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.5/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  7.5/10 Has been a while since my last review I know, but here I am again with another lil map for small player loads in a dark dark dark night somewhere in what appears to be an old castle. AWE: 2 As I said before, the action takes place in an old castle of some sort; meaning that you'll see lots of (custom) grey stuff like stone walls, wooden beams and even the mighty crates that every UT map has to feature. The author took the time to creat a complete set of textures for the show including walls, concrete, wood, and decos as spiderwebs, flags etc and the result is pleasant to me!. BUT, (again, there's always a but) on the other hand there the lighting, (the inexistent lighting i mean) that is way too dark to play and admire the effort pomperi put on the textures. The map is set on nighttime and I can understand that the darkness is to enhance the atmosphere but I think brighter lights and bigger radius here and there would have been better. Also I gotta say that there's nothing really outstanding in the theme but everything is well built and looks good enough without rasing the polycount much (in fact its very lowpoly :). So in short, the only flaw here is the light. BUILD: 2 This section is short. Theres not much to hear apart for the desperated screams of your victims and their flesh bouncing everywhere. I only heard the wind and a strange metallic noise in the pulse room. Due to the theme, the map could have used some creaks here and there or some howling to make the place feel more alive. Once again, everything in here is well built and works well including the elevator and the bots who navigated the map without problems. I couldnt see any HOM or BSP errors and even if they were there, I think I would have missed them because of the dark reigning in the place. and finally about the layout I must admit that I felt ñlike running in circles but that may be just because the map itself is very small (and a bit oversized in a pair of spots im afraid to say). There were some Z-Axis opportunities troughout the map too! CAST: 2,5 The best part of the map was the gameplay (ironically, ruined but the darkness IMO). The entire map flows well and bots go everywhere and take averything just as they should. Item placement was good except for some weapons/ammo that in my opinion were a bit outta place but nothig serious in the end. Neither did I find any objects causing me to get stuck breaking the flow so I think I can say pomperi did a good job with this. Many ppl will think that the map deserves an higher score and its possibly true but then again its was too dark and the whole place did not fell alive at all, and that was something that left me cold cos with some more work on lights and sound setup this map could probably have scored higher
Map Comments
madscientist327 12-23-2005 04:53 PM MST   Looks very nice. Download time! :) Edit: I can't run it. I get this error "Invalid music format in Music DM-Fade.MyLevel" followed by many arrows and words. Help!!!!!! Edit2:Seems as though FMOD and OpenAL have the problem but not the original Galaxy sounddriver...Help please. I would very much like to play this map. mutantX 12-22-2005 04:37 PM MST Rating: 10   someone tell me how to make my own textures [Admin: Asking here is not the right place to ask.] redfist 12-23-2005 10:49 PM MST Rating: 8   Pretty cool map, being a tad bit more vivid would be good, like more saturated textures, like the wooden beams or other trims. I mean it's not far enough off to even adjust anything, but it looks slightly too blended. (could be my settings too, opengl) Very well done level. I guess the question is, would it have looked better if it didn't "fade"? ADD, my first impression for gameplay the map is too big, and it's hard as hell to see the bots. (throw in some "omnibumpmap" lights) to light up those bots , and or meshes, it helps a lot, but also adds to the effect of walking past a light,more 3d input to the brain. ADD, Well I am being a lametard, you did it so good, I didn't even notice the fickin textures were B&W, LoL. You definitly did a good job, I will see about gameplay in a while. In that case I would say the keypoints for keeping your bearinmgs while playing, REALY fast, needs better landmarking, hence the yurning for some color(saturation), mabye like 10, 20% for barrels, trims or a stained glass window, a little clash, disidence, against the theme, kinda sorta. And or like more dishoveled, some rocks, a broken cieling, floor, earthquake effect, one time, or some breaking glass, somthing to (know the map) FAST!. Unrea| 12-22-2005 06:50 PM MST   1 question, Is it redirected to gameservers? Jonas(:K256:) 12-22-2005 09:32 PM MST Rating: 8   Ahh nice work Pomp, I really like the thought about making your own textures. As i have played it alot on our server (unreal://81.228.254.101:7777). I really hope that more mappers could think of something own, like making their own maps with a bit more interesting themes than the standard "cubes in lava" theme. And of course the New, Faster, more Reliable and Greater (:K256:) server is open for all quality maps out there. As me being the admin of our little community server, I would be more than happy to add more high quality maps with "homemade" textures;P Torn_Agressor 12-23-2005 04:29 AM MST Rating: 7.5   overall a pretty good map, and i like the texture work too, the handpainted feeling + the desaturated lights made it feel a bit like a black and white painting almost, which was intresting in terms of atmosphere im not really a good judge of layout but i had some nice frags o/ Pomperi 12-26-2005 04:16 AM MST   madscientist327: That was wierd... The map uses a regular .xm module, stored into MyLevel. I've never encountered that error before, and I don't have a clue how to fix it : Redfist: I don't know how I possible could saturate the textures. They are black and white, hence the catchy name, and I don't know wether or not it would look better without the "fade", but I do know it wouldn't be as an original theme :P Btw, don't you have any comments on the gameplay, as usual? ;) Jonas: *spam* Torn_Agressor: Glad someone got the idea of the theme. When I first made the concept for the map, I was thinking about making it entirely black and white, but I realized that it would look boring as hell, so I had to make a balance between the black an white theme and some eye pleasing lighting. [EDIT] Thanks everyone! Especially Vertigo for that review. The funny thing is that I never requested any :/ Anyways, thanks again. I guess lighting is my biggest flaw, and I need to improve to the next time =) Oh, and btw, there are plenty of sounds, custom ones to be precise. Guess you missed all the crow sounds. Cyrss's Female Dog 01-03-2006 08:42 AM MST Rating: 6   I saw the screenshots,liked the black/white texture and downloaded it. It's nice for a 1 on 1 game with Tamarlene. cooloola 12-23-2005 07:47 AM MST Rating: 7   Visually it's quite average but the lighting and the b&w texs enhance the atmosphere. The flow is quite good the weapons are spread out nicely so are the other pickups. Overall a very fun map with low poly count so it's more than worth the download. Idren 12-23-2005 09:34 AM MST Rating: 8   Awesome map! Ve//DeTTa 12-23-2005 03:35 PM MST Rating: 9   I really like this map. It is beautiful to look at, and has an atmosphere that is very unique. Fast layout with enough open areas to take advantage of sniper. The clincher is that this map played flawlessly on my ancient AMD850 with 32 meg vid card. Excellent job of keeping tranlocators out of areas u didnt want people to go. This map is like the withered sister to Gaia. but since black and grey are 2 of my favorite colors, in this case i think the withered sister is just a little prettier. Wesley "Boreas" van Dijk 12-23-2005 04:35 PM MST   Man.... the screenshots make me wish I still had UT installed :| souldividersjosz 12-24-2005 04:34 AM MST Rating: 7   Very nice looking map IMO. It would've been just slightly better in my opinion if there was slightly more landmarking to navigate with (possibly using colour, but I know that'd ruin the theme), but I enjoyed it :) kurtloeffler 12-25-2005 01:18 AM MST Rating: 7   nice map :) only thing is lighting is a little bland in the color department, although the colors that you did use work well together. Corey(:K256:) 12-25-2005 09:48 AM MST Rating: 9   This map has the nicest flow i've seen in some time. The fact that the whole maps is made with own made textures only it makes this map pretty special. Only the skybox looks a bit dull but it's also self made and I couldn't make such good one myself so I shouldn't complain. Overall a very nice map. I suggest you download it and have some fun =) Defeat 12-25-2005 09:54 PM MST   >Very nice, the music was good for the level, there could have been a few more sounds but I thought it was ok with what there was. I liked the texturing, very faded keeping with the theme. I didn't find the lighting too dark and I could see the players ok. I kept wanting to get up higher but I couldn't, I think it would have been cool if there was a power up on top of the bridge-like thing. The weapon placement seemed ok to me and the skybox was ok to me too. Overall I liked it, you should do more custom textures, it seems to be working out for you quite well:) Vertigo 12-26-2005 04:10 AM MST Rating: 7   I forgot to speak bout the music! one of the better tracks i've heard in a while! it has a gothic feel to it that reminds me of Medievil or American McGee's Alice and thats always good! [CODE]OMEGA 12-26-2005 06:08 PM MST Rating: 9   Med Box's and Health Vials Green very nice change. The music is very nice as well thanks for inbeding it in the map makes it alot nicer to upload to server. Well done I hope you make more along these lines. Agent X 12-26-2005 11:21 PM MST Rating: 10   I really liked this one. Excellent lighting and ambiance. The flow and textures were great too. I highly recommend this one. It's unique as well! I know some people have criticized the lighting, but it SOOOO works here for the theme, that it doesn't bother me at all. TexasGtar 12-29-2005 12:45 AM MST   This is a very nice map. Some might find it bland --colorwise---but once you get your feet wet i think you will find that you haven't even noticed the lack of color. This is a lot of fun to play. I advise downloading and giving it a whirl! My first go round was fun..the next match..the next..and i just had a blast playing it. Good work. The color might 'Fade' but the fun does not. ludacurz 12-31-2005 07:01 AM MST Rating: 8   looks very nice ! good map download time !!! STORM [PE 01-03-2006 11:58 AM MST Rating: 7.5   A job well done Pomperi! I thoroughly enjoyed playing match after match on this map. The bots played well and the theme felt original and fresh. Thanks for another map for my maplist :) Nahand 01-27-2006 08:15 AM MST Rating: 7.5   ... i really enjoyed this map. I'm not going to say anything that hasn't been said by others, so, i'll just point to the overall balance between eye-candy/gameplay the map has. DM-Fade is not exceedingly good at either but marks very nice at both, and it's a fact more and more maps - DM or otherwise - tend to polarize: either looks over gameplay, or the other way around. The plus here is that the author tried the originality path by pulling a theme that doesn't exactly bring consence to the mapping community (the "bland" use of lighting, that i agree with. Pomperi made it right :p ), and by using custom made textures. A good map should try and be original as possible, in gameplay and atmosphere. I think DM-Fade is the latest good example of that directive, and i wonder just how much more hightech/industrial -themed maps will the other authors release until they realize those maps aren't anything really special...