DM-Prophecy
Map Info
	File Name dm-prophecy.zip Author razielyo Gametype UT2k4 Deathmatch Date Added 01-09-2006 File Version 1.00 File Size 21.26 mb Player Count 0 - 12 Map Description New DM tech style map with a lot of custom content as usual...Dont be surprised, i wanted a very strong theme in this map. The layout was created for a fast gameplay... Review Rating 5 User Rating 6.5 Overall Rating 6.0
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  2.0/3 Date 04-16-2006 Build Score:  1.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.5/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  6.0/10 AWE: 2.0 I grabbed this map because the screenshots made it look like it might be pretty interesting, but the appeal wears off quickly once you realize that everything looks the same. Everywhere you look, every surface seems to be covered with the same few textures, lined with the same few static meshes. It still definitely stands out as something different, as virtually all of the textures are custom-made and of high quality. It's just very homogeneous. Like the textures, the handful of static meshes that provide most of the map's architectural detail are of pretty high quality. The author definitely has talent in this department. However, the map as a whole is underwhelming in the architectural sense, because the BSP that provides its basic shape is little more than a collection of cubes, and none of the meshes do much to alleviate that impression. At the macroscopic level it's just not an interesting location, despite all the details filling it. The lighting is likewise uninteresting, having almost no contrast at all. Virtually the entire map is bathed in the same pale blue, except for a handful of locations where purple lights are used instead. The nice thing about high-tech themes like this one is that you can get away with all kinds of different light sources and color choices, so it's rather disappointing when a mapper doesn't explore those options at all. There is some shadow detail around, but it wasn't handled very well. The author simply selected every surface in the map and turned the light map resolution up a notch, which is lazy. It makes all the light maps larger when most of them don't need it, and doesn't go far enough in the areas where high shadow detail would be expected. All in all, I found the visuals in the map to be somewhat disappointing given my high hopes for them, but I still have to give the author above average marks here if only for all the solid work he did on custom content. BUILD: 1.5 In the map's readme file, the author states that he has a few BSP problems. As he says, they're hard to find and extremely minor, but the fact that they occurred at all surprised me, given that they're a rare sight in 2K4, especially in a map that's mostly cubes anyway. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the whole BSP is one gigantic brush, which is pretty absurd. I'm not sure why someone would do this. It is zoned correctly, though, so at least performance shouldn't be an issue for most people. Bots play the map well, without any significant problems that I was able to spot. It would have been nice if a couple more jump paths had been added, though, particularly around the part of the map where the Double Damage is located. There's at least one point where a shorter path towards that pickup ought to be, and a dodge-jump from the Double Damage to the Lightning Gun would have been convenient; that's the way I almost always went in that part of the map, and the bots should be able to do it too. I didn't like the use of sound in this map very much. There aren't very many ambient sound effects, and it's never clear where they're coming from. A few nondescript sounds of a technological nature can be heard everywhere, provided by a few sound actors with huge radii that are simply placed in the middle of several large rooms. There are a lot of fans going in the map, but their sounds don't seem to work. I hear fans every time I spawn, and continue to hear them as long as I stay near my original location. But as I move around the level, the sound fades. Even if I come back to my original location, the sound is gone for reasons I can't guess. Once I die and respawn, I hear the fans again for awhile. The triggered sounds are strange, too. There are quite a few of them scattered throughout the map in seemingly random places. I say seemingly random because there's never any visual indicator of when stepping somewhere will produce a sound. What's strange about them is that the triggers that activate these sounds all fire the same event, so if you trigger one, you trigger them all. This makes them useless as a guide for locating other players, and also makes them sound rather confusing. They have pretty high volume and are set not to attenuate over their areas of effect, so you'll often hear several distinct sound effects all at once, seemingly produced at the same point. Finally, a minor point, but I don't like the two jump pads that lead to the Double Damage. The first of them especially fires you almost straight forward rather than on a noticeably parabolic path, which feels rather unnatural. There also aren't any emitters associated with them, so it's easy to not realize they're there if you don't know the map. The map's third jump pad does have an emitter, but its particular effect would look a lot better if it were to emit its particles at regular intervals. CAST: 1.5 The homogeneity I was complaining about earlier hurts the map's gameplay as well, because it's difficult to identify landmarks, and thus easy to get lost, when every part of the map looks the same as every other. It took me quite some time to learn what was where, and I still get turned around sometimes. Once you do learn your way around, the layout isn't bad, but it isn't very interesting either. There are multiple levels, and each room has openings on at least two of them, so there's a fair amount of z-axis action. Everything's pretty well connected, too. But the boxy structure of the map hurts it somewhat, and there are some corridors – the ones near the top of the map containing the Lightning Gun and Minigun – that are too tight for comfort. There also aren't many BlockingVolumes, so you can get stuck on the various protruding supports and such, but they don't stick out too far from the walls, so this isn't a very big problem. The author recommends six to twelve players, but that's way too high. I'd say two to six is nearer the mark. Any more than six players and you'll feel like you're playing Assault Rifle Arena. The weapon load is pretty standard: two Link Guns and one of everything else, with no Redeemer. But ammo is very scarce. Each weapon has one or two packs of the appropriate type next to it, and that's all there is. There's a moderate amount of adrenaline and health vials to be found, but only two standard health packs. The placement of the various items isn't too bad, but I wish there were some powerful items on the bottom floor to compensate for a player's vulnerability to fire from above. All that's down there now is a Link Gun and the Bio-Rifle. My overall opinion of the map's gameplay is that it doesn't offer anything to make it stand out from the many other maps out there. I got tired of seeing the same scenery everywhere I turned, and not having enough pickups. It certainly works, but that's as far as it goes. It's a pretty average affair altogether. FINAL SCORE: 5.0 DM-Prophecy is definitely a unique-looking map, but one that doesn't really have much to recommend it. The map's visual promise is hurt by the lack of diversity in the theme and the uninspired, boxy look of the architecture. And the gameplay, while not too bad, gets boring in a hurry. If you really like looking at new deathmatch maps then you could do a lot worse than this one, so by all means take a look, but I doubt you'll be keeping it for very long.
Map Comments
nELs0n 01-09-2006 10:32 AM MST Rating: 6.5   pretty nice on the whole but has some problems - you should have added quite a bunch more blocking volumes especially to the walls. the minigun corridor and the corridor leading to the lightning gun are way to narrow imo. the lighting could also use some work - it wouldn't even take too much to make it look a lot more interesting. the rooms in general look a tad too similar to each other imo. i liked the theme - seems kinda fresh although i've played quite some sci-fi maps recently - reminded me of coldcity somehow. also, the use of alphachannels and all the new staticmeshes wes really nice. sounds were ok as well. gameplay on the whole was ok but could be a lot better if you solved the problems imo. maybe make a v2.0?! razielyo 04-22-2006 12:44 PM MDT   10x for ur comments and the review. Just one thing: create a big BSP brush isnt absurd when you know why you do like this...and i know. Thanx n3o: Prophecy was a fast made map without pretention for testing some construction technics... :) CyMek 01-11-2006 06:15 PM MST   I've posted my comments on teh map for the author to see elsewhere, but as for anyone looking to download the map, I'd reccommend it, at least for a try. It has a few gameplay issues, but I think it's a great offering. Wesley "Boreas" van Dijk 02-01-2006 03:52 AM MST Rating: 6   The issues I have with this map is mostly about textures. Pretty much everything in this map has the same look, even the floors and walls. Other than that, a lot of black is used, which in my opinion doesn't come out right. Plus, I'm not really convinced about the layout. But that may be because I constantly get lost, everything just looks pretty much the same :( Manticore 01-31-2006 08:03 PM MST Rating: 6   Basically, I agree with everything that's been said above..... N3oDoc 04-22-2006 06:20 AM MDT Rating: 7.5   Good job Raziel, good custom content, anyway I know you can make it much better, the map needs more variety, it looks a bit repetitive :) GL for your next project! Ironblayde 04-22-2006 03:04 PM MDT   "Just one thing: create a big BSP brush isnt absurd when you know why you do like this...and i know." We're not mathematicians here; asserting that an answer exists isn't going to cut it. So what's the reason?