BR-Pandius
Map Info
	File Name br-pandius.zip Author 3-dee Gametype UT2k4 Bombing Run Date Added 02-27-2006 File Version 1.00 File Size 13.17 mb Player Count 6-10 Map Description Do battle in a breeding enclosure where the Giant Emporer scorpions rome free.... So watch out!! the little ones may cause you some pain. In the centre of the map you will see the entrances to the Enclosure that have been blocked off and 2 robotic arms hold the Ball Spawn platform in place. Good luck and dont get stung. Review Rating 3.5 User Rating 5 Overall Rating 4.5
Review
Reviewer Ironblayde Awe Score:  1.5/3 Date 02-28-2006 Build Score:  1.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.0/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  4.5/10 AWE: 1.5 Here we have another Bombing Run map (yay!) from author 3-dee. It's similar in size, shape, and setting to BR-Serenity: a twisting valley with sheer rock walls on both sides and a goal on each end. Unlike that map, however, BR-Pandius comes outfitted with technological trappings. The canyon walls are crowned with what looks like a huge mass of rusted metal, with barbed wire fences atop it and light fixtures dotting its underside. Bracing the walls are shiny steel beams lit with team colors, constructions that would look more at home in a space station than a canyon. The goals and ball spawn point are decorated with similarly futuristic-looking structures. Oh, and there are these weird purple scorpions everywhere. The mixture of themes is a little hard to swallow. On the bright side, like the last 3-dee map I looked at (BR-Kryo), this one features a fair number of custom textures and static meshes, so at least it stands out. The lighting is thankfully better than it was in Kryo. It's a little on the bland side since so much of it is just pure white, but there are no oversaturated team colors this time around, nor abrupt changes, nor light that's obviously unsourced. There are a few details that bother me. One is the puddle of unidentified liquid on each team's side of the map. At first I thought it was tar because it appeared so dark, but that's just because of the way it's textured. It uses a cube map that's supposed to reflect the level around it. Typically this is combined with some kind of liquid texture and made somewhat transparent so that it really looks like a reflection (see DOM-Highdale for an example), but here the author has used the cube map by itself. It doesn't look like a reflection; it looks like an eyesore. The map has seams in it that are quite noticeable, too; see the third shot at right, in the bottom-left-hand corner. The really weird thing is that if you go swimming in the mysterious liquid, the distance fog used underneath the surface is team-colored. So what is it? Water on one side and Frank's RedHot on the other? Who knows. The other thing that bugs me is the use of decoration layers on the terrain. There are these huge reeds everywhere that are ugly and, well, huge. They're big enough that they can really hamper visibility if you're trying to fight near a patch of them. I strongly recommend turning off foliage if you're going to play this map. It'll make it more attractive and more playable, and give your framerate a boost in the bargain. BUILD: 1.0 This map is divided up a little better than was BR-Kryo. It's all outdoors and wide open so it can't be zoned, but the whole map is enclosed in volumes with location tags so you can see where your teammates are, and there are a couple of antiportals that go a long way towards reducing overdraw. One thing I do wish the author would be a little more careful of is how he aligns the various parts of his geometry. At each base there are two ramps coming up to a platform with a central cylinder, only the cylinder is noticeably off-center. There are two jump pads, and those are also a little off where they should be. And an item spawn base in the same place is roughly parallel to the edges of the platform, but not quite. These are minor details of course, and if it were just one thing I wouldn't care, and might not even notice. But when enough of these add up, it makes the map look a little sloppy, which is a shame. The one unusual thing in this map is the scorpions I mentioned briefly in the last section. Apparently this map is some kind of breeding ground for the little buggers, and several of them can be found throughout the map, which "sting" you if you get too close. Unfortunately the scorpions are just static meshes; they don't move at all, not even a flick of the tail when they sting. So they're not really believable or interesting, just more obstacles to be avoided. The stinging effect is provided by PhysicsVolumes that enclose the scorpions. The bad thing about that is that if the ball enters a volume that damages players, it gets reset, so if a throw happens to hit a scorpion, you may or may not find the ball unexpectedly resetting, depending on whether it enters the volume (sometimes it doesn't). Also, if the little ones hurt you when you come close, why don't the huge ones at the base? Maybe the big ones are supposed to be statues or something? They look exactly the same as the others except for the size. Now for the really bad news. This map's bot pathing contains a few errors that are so critical and so silly that I have to wonder whether the author playtested it with bots even once. The first is that there are no paths that reach the ball spawn point. So when the game begins, the bots have no idea what to do with themselves, since they don't know where the ball is. They just run around as though in a deathmatch. The second is that there are also no paths to the red goal, so the blue team can't score. And finally, there is a single path to the blue goal -– but the red team can't use it, for the following reason. Each side has a single ShootSpot, but that spot is positioned where it can't be reached without scoring seven points –- inside the PhysicsVolume that kills players when they jump through the goal. The single path to the blue goal goes to that ShootSpot, and from there to the goal. Since the bots know they can't reach the ShootSpot without entering that volume and killing themselves, and they don't realize that doing so will require them to pass through the goal and score, they don't use the path. It would also have been nice if the author had included defense points for the goals, and more explicitly defined translocator paths, as there are some places and items the bots cannot reach, but without the ability to reach the ball, or to use it if you give it to them, this other stuff is irrelevant. CAST: 1.0 As I mentioned earlier, this map reminds me a lot of BR-Serenity. The whole map is just a winding canyon with a goal on each end, so there are no alternative routes to explore; gameplay is basically just back and forth along the same line of attack. This map doesn't seem quite as long as Serenity, which is good, but Serenity was a little wider too, allowing players to spread out a little more and use the various trees and hills to provide a little cover. No such luck here. Also, the goals are set up in such a way that you can't score by throwing the ball. Each is placed at the bottom of a column that is completely enclosed except for the top. With the lack of alternate routes already making it difficult to reach the enemy goal, removing the ability to score three points from a distance doesn't strike me as a good idea. I can't say I like the way the jump pads were done in this map. For starters, the emitters associated with them all fire their particles straight up, so you don't know which way the jump pad is going to send you. Second, the jump pads on your team's side of the map all send you backwards, which I find rather strange. It's especially odd once you get to the center of the map, because the ball spawns up on a raised platform that has a jump pad on each side. The natural assumption is that the jump pads are what you're supposed to use to get up there, but they send you backwards, away from the platform. If you have your direction and velocity just right, you can use the jump pads to access the platform, but it's a real pain. I hope nobody tries playing this map without a translocator. The final problem with the jump pads is that they sometimes prevent you from walking onto them. I think maybe the angle on the mesh's collision volume is a little too steep on one side. This occurs on both jump pads at each goal; it's extremely frustrating to finally complete that run towards the goal, and then get killed because you get caught on a mesh. Occasionally I saw a bot get stuck on one of the jump pads and stand there motionless until I displaced him a little with a rocket. The weapon load is almost entirely hitscan: each side gets a Shock Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Minigun, Lightning Gun, and Classic Sniper Rifle, with most of the weapons placed towards the center of the map. A little more variety would have been much appreciated. Also there's a silly oversight in that the red side gets the Classic Sniper Rifle, but the corresponding weapon base on the blue side doesn't spawn anything. They're positioned so that the only weapons you can get before you get into the central corridor are the Rocket Launcher and Lightning Gun, and the latter spawns significantly behind all the player starts. It's not a very good item layout overall; it seems just one more thing that gets in the way of having a good time with this map. FINAL SCORE: 3.5 Since this map can't be played offline due to the broken pathing, it's really only worth checking out if you'll be running it on a server or a LAN, and even then I'd suggest passing it up. It could have been a decent map -– BR-Serenity is definitely not my favorite of the retail Bombing Run maps, but it's certainly not bad –- but there are so many oversights and big mistakes that drag it down. I really wish the author had spent more time on this one. Maybe next time...
Map Comments
goldfenix 03-02-2006 08:26 PM MST Rating: 5.5   Map quality and custom meshes like the scorpions quality is way different quality from each other. I think someone else made the custom meshes and textures. To prove me wrong can you tell me how to make a cubemap? Seriously, I need to know. Scorpions should be movers, that move around, or pawns. Couldn't hurt to make them have sounds. The alien drone sounds in general ambience should do just fine. The water textures weren't 2 sided, and the water's fog color seems to have something to do with teams... Ughhh! Nasty. Emmiters need improvement, for they don't show a direction which the jumppad directs you towards. i wish you made more than 1 straight path to get around the map. The map is just one giant hall way, needs more halls and tunnels. To get around. The way I see it, if your making a map such as a ctf or BR, even ONS or AS, you always wan't more than one path to get to the objective, like the goal or flag. This map just had 1 path to the goals. A cool touch would be to put team triggers near the large scorpions by the goal, so when a blue team member for example came in its radius next to one of the red's large scorpions, it would move at them and hiss, and of course kill them with a strike. The tail of course would need to be a seperate static mesh, or even make the whole thing a mesh with animation (EASIER JUST AS A MOVER WITH 2 PARTS THOUGH). Map is pretty average in some disciplines of the map, like the construction, and for other things like the scorpions, they were good. Overall the map deserves a 5.5. Cool Tow fix the water problem, just make the texture 2 sided, and change the fog color two be more suitable to a water color (the color of the most visable color of the surface. If the fluid surface's colors were mostly red (unless its a reflection from a ceiling and stuff), like blood texture, then obviously the fog is going to be red. So, since your water is blackish, (actually its pure reflection which it shouldn't be, need a texture too) the fog needs to blackish. I'll be happy to beta test your maps, just send the map packages and the map to my email address: levelmaker@hotmail.com, and I'll do a good beta test. In return can you test some of mine? If you agree, just type your email and I'll send you them. Iv'e got a BR that really needs to be tested. Apparantly, no one hears me 3-dee 03-02-2006 05:06 PM MST   I think I will make a DM map next time LOL. Or possibly I can get some one to test a beta so I can improve it. As you only get one point of view... ur own!! Thanx for the tips tho guys. Especially about the bot path stuff, I had no idea there were things such as translocator points etc. Plus when ur making an out door map or a big map, it is hard to make ur alignment work, still... I love making em so I will continue to do so. Oh by the way the cubemap... U can find it here.. www.powerpixels.co.uk/Tutorials/Cubemaptutorial.doc I rewrote it from slaywebs tutorial for ut2003. By the way, I made all components. And at least I try to mix styles and see if they work out.. unlike alot of mappers who only unreal maps like unreal depict. Laters Ironblayde 02-28-2006 01:20 PM MST   3-dee: If you've never been there, have a look at unrealplayground.com. Their forums are quite active and you can almost always find someone willing to give you a hand with beta testing. I'm always up for that too, so if you want me to take a look at something pre-release (especially BR, since it's one of my favorite gametypes!), or have any questions on pathing or anything else, feel free to shoot me a PM on the forums here or at UP. Wesley "Boreas" van Dijk 02-28-2006 03:31 PM MST Rating: 4   Bots didn't know a thing about killing in this map... it took them so long to kill me, I had already made 3 goals :| Some textures are horribly stretched, like the one on the rocket launcher rock. I also don't think you should make it so easy for everyone to get the RL, and there should be a way to get the ball without a translocator... Also, the water looked great, until you had your head below the surface... it just doesn't feel right, one moment you see reflections and everything above it, the next moment you see everything from underneath it... Maybe you should try more shallow water, or making it transparent.