DM-Cordon
Map Info
	File Name dm-cordon.zip Author Twrecks Gametype UT2k4 Deathmatch Date Added 06-09-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 11.81 mb Player Count 4-10 Map Description A tribute to DM-Barricade (not a redux). Cordon serves blood sacrifice to the Goddess Vandora, and she's waiting for you!!! Review Rating 5 User Rating 6.5 Overall Rating 6.0
Review
Reviewer ArcadiaVincennes Awe Score:  1.5/3 Date 12-03-2004 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  1.5/3 User Point:  +1 Overall Score:  6.0/10 DM-Cordon (UT2004) A throwback to a classic UT99 map, this may look like a remake on the outside but it has been coplately changed on the inside. Comprised of 98% static meshes and 2% BSP the construction is curious and must have taken immense effort. The meshes almost all custom with custom textures applied to them and the inside layout is quite different from the original. Add in some custom music and you have a very distinct map that shows some promise. AWE: 1.5 The meshes! Oh the meshes! Oh the humanity! I certainly applaud the author for the amount of time and effort he spent in his modeling program. Not only is almost all of the level custom meshes, he also baked the shadows onto the meshes in the modeling program before importing them into the UEd. Unfortunately there are some severely lacking aspects to the meshes that need to be addressed and it seems like most of the baked lighting was applied only on the inside areas and very little on the outside. The first problem is that some of the textures on the custom meshes are horribly stretched. A glaring place in the meshed terrain outside, on most of the bottoms of the towers, and then dotted here and there throughout the map. Other custom textures applied to the meshes are very low-rez but these are few, fortunately. Also some of the meshes use a texture that either isn’t lit or wasn’t lit correctly causing them to really stand out badly. Almost like when one creates a mover that initially has no surrounding light applied to it and has default light on it. The lighting has to be broken into two parts because there’s the lighting created in UEd and the shadows and colors created in the modeling program. The UEd lighting is contrasting. Inside the meshes the lighting creates either nice pools of light or blends together to become a little ‘ambient’. The area where there are pools of light are missing light between them. I have my brightness/gamma set to default and it was a little difficult to keep track of the bots as they ran in and out of the pools but it wasn’t too bad. However these pools didn’t mesh well with the blended areas that ended up seeming ambient. More consistency would have been better. Outside, however, is a different story. Despite distinct light sources from torches scattered around the outside, the area is too brightly ambient lit from the sunlight actor. There’s no variation in light color outside other than the torches and the sunlight actor. And because the terrain was a mesh, it was impossible for the sunlight to cast shadows from the castle walls onto the terrain. As for the baked on lighting, the author has a number of torches with a claw-shaped torch holder. This casts long radial semi-spiky shadows on the walls and floors which look quite nice. However, the same torches are casting a yellow/orange light onto the walls behind them with a central greenish tint which just looks awful. I don’t know how a flame casts green light. The skybox is reminiscent of the original UT99 with levels of fog/haze moving back and forth across the face of the moon but there just seems to be something lacking in the skybox that the original had. There is a jumppad to get between the outside wall and the central castle roof but the indicator used, blue panning chevrons, is out-of place and doesn’t fit the theme of the rest of the map. Finally, the music track was custom and was decent enough. It carried a good energy but didn’t really seem to fit the map very well. Overall, the meshes have a lot of problems. Between the stretched textures, the lighting pools vs ambience, the low-rez textures, and the green torch casts, the AWE is there it just doesn’t do a good job. Build: 2.0 Despite the aesthetic qualities, the map is constructed well. The meshes fit together as if they had been built to do so. Which they were so that’s good. The little BSp there is is well-placed and I think it’s there because the author found a few places that still needed some meshes but he hadn’t constructed any so he quickly threw in some BSP. There are no zones. Correction: there is only 1 zone. Because so very much of the map is static meshes, zoning the map is impossible. So are there Anti-Portals? You ask. Nope. No zone or anti-portal optimization at all. See the Cast area to see how this affected the FPS and gameplay. Okay, well, are there blocking volumes to reduce collision lag? Nope. There area few physics volumes, well placed and well-implemented but that’s it for volumes. Basically, if you open it in the editor, and hide meshes, all you see are a few physics volumes, and lots of pathnodes, lighting actors, ambient sound actors, and a tiny bit of BSP. Wow. The sounds leave a lot to be desired. They have a good volume but their radii are set too small. They are only around the torches, as I recall, and unless your player stands right next to a torch – they’re largely inaudible. Adding in more ambient sounds and increasing the radius of what’s there, would have made a big difference. Finally, the movers scattered around the inside of the level are well made with matching sounds and decent timing. Overall, it’s well built but more/better sound would have been appreciated and some optimization should have been done. CAST: 1.5 Recalling the original, gameplay has changed dramtically, and not for the better. The outside remains almost the same with a ramp added to the center castle section and more accessibility to the interiors overall. However the inside got a complete revamp. 90% of the inside is now really tight. Narrow corridors, ramps, and rooms. The parts that aren’t narrow are decent but contain crates to get caught on. It’s good to add crates to break up a blank corridor but with the space involved, the author used too many. The super-shield platform is located over a pit that opens out into the skybox. This is a good risk/reward area except that the entrance to the pit is surrounded by pillars and openings where the pillars are too thick and the openings not wide enough. There is also a room with a trench in the floor with health vials running along the bottom. Good in theory but the author made it too deep to jump or double jump out of. One must dodge-jump to get out and the trench is only slightly wider than a player. This is no good. The flow overall was clumsy with too many ramps, pillars, and hallways at any given time that produced too many options. This also lead to getting confused easily and making the layout difficult to memorize. There’s a delicate balance between not enough z-axis, exits/entrances, access points, and windows and too much. Most maps where this is a problem usually run into the not enough portion but this map takes it past the sweet spot and through to the otherside. The bots play well in some areas and badly in others. I came upon bots stuck at the tower elevators trying to figure out how to get up but they couldn’t. The bots also tended to congregate on the floor under the flak cannon so whenever I wanted a fight I knew where to look. They were also unable to get out of the health vial trench. The supershield location also confounded them. Since it was directly under the flak cannon, lots of bots frequented the area. Thus the bot that grabs the shield is doomed to either fight to the death immediately without leaving the shield pit area, or he fights until he mis-steps and falls to his death into the skybox. Thus it’s very rare that the player gets the shield and not a bot. Finally we get to the FPS. Despite 1 Zone, no Antiportals, and no collision optimization, the FPS held up surprisingly well. Dipping to slightly below retail in very few locations, it mostly held at or above retail. The author certainly knows how to keep polycount down on his models. So no real problems there. Basically the gameplay problems lie in the bots, and the layout. A small improvement in pathing, and a major rework of the interior design would have made this a much better map. Reminiscent of a UT99 original, this map leaves a lot to be desired in comparison. This is certainly not a remake or redux as it certainly has its own style building on the former. The author put a huge amount of effort into the mesh skinning, construction, and global illumination for the mesh shadows. Unfortunately, due to a number of visual problems, flow and layout problems, and bot borking, this is an exercise in meshes and not much more. I recommend the download in terms of what can be done with an ‘inspiration’ and to show potential but it’s not a keeper.
Map Comments
MassChAoS 06-09-2004 12:08 AM MDT   Sexy Manticore 06-09-2004 05:45 PM MDT Rating: 7   .....and very oldskool. But well done........... Additional comment to MichaelM: DM-Barricade. That's it. I knew this map reminded me of the oldskool for some reason. hampel 06-09-2004 04:02 AM MDT Rating: 6   not my taste! D-7 06-09-2004 04:02 AM MDT Rating: 5   Bah. Terrain is horrible, lack of SMs, at places it feels really empty and alpha-ish. Even the ut99 dm-barricade looked better IMO. weiming 06-09-2004 04:18 AM MDT Rating: 5   Good attempt. It does feel a little empty but. gweedo 06-09-2004 07:07 AM MDT Rating: 6   Well put together.Not a bad map. MichaelM 07-15-2004 12:43 AM MDT Rating: 8   This map is great man....I really like the whole floaty Island thingy gives it a good feel. I believe this one resembles the layout of DM-Barricade, however this one is much better to me. It would get a 9 or 10 from me however there is a terrain error, it looks like it got streched out in the build proccess or something, also like the others said it is a little empty in some areas......This is the best, if not only non clonage remake if Barricade I have seen. If that Terrain error is fixed I'll give a +1 Keep Mapping :) Edit: oh... I did not realize that the ground was an SM, of course, luckily it is easy to convert a SM into a brush again and retexture( that could be hard tho). To me that texture stretch was the only thing that upset me, the rest is perfect including the lighting(thats just my opinion). After playing some more it does not even seem that empty..... you need room to fighht guys. A Must Download!!! nightshadow 06-09-2004 02:41 PM MDT Rating: 7   i loved the old style, but there were several lighting issues and i got stuck in the pit with the health vials. could have had a better color scheme, but overall good. Twrecks 07-14-2004 08:14 PM MDT   Try Impact Jumping if you don't have a translocator... D-7 is TEH funny, there is no terrain and the whole map is made of SM's, of course how would you know that :p Fixing the texture stretches and Lighting, will take any suggestions on optimization as most "normal" methods do not apply to the way this map was made. MUhahaha!!! rocketeer 06-09-2004 06:32 PM MDT Rating: 9   I had a lot of fun with this map. I however hated the player start that the engine always wanted to pick for me. That is on the outside of the arena (looking out). It Took me a few seconds to get my bearings. This is a very busy map. All in all this is a very well designed map. The music track is my favorite from UT99 Thanks for including it. Orions Barricade is still my all time favorite map of any game I have played. I am thinking about remaking it. But until that is finished this makes a great map. By the way the bots play this great which is a big plus because I cannot play online do to our horrid dial up. Oh well Piece out. saroner 06-09-2004 09:45 PM MDT Rating: 5   omfg. this map looks and playes like a better noob map and you rated from 7-9. ^^ sandorski 06-10-2004 12:33 AM MDT Rating: 5   Like the others, some of it looks empty, but other parts look real nice such as the walkways. One thing that really turned me off was that I found myself constantly needing to stop as there are too many holes to fall into. The occassional need to jump is ok, but the need to jump every 20-30ft just to prevent falling is kinda too much. David-Tran 06-10-2004 04:22 AM MDT Rating: 6   I agree with most of what's allready been said here, but still a fun map to play. Theseus314 06-19-2004 12:03 PM MDT Rating: 7   The map does have lighting issues, but I felt it played well and looked nifty. It wasn't overmeshed unlike too many DM levels of late, and I really the visual themes the map has going. Unfortunatly there was no kind of optimisation, no zoning or antiportals anywhere. This wasn't so much of a problem because the map isn't too triangle heavy, but framerate is god, and it would have cool to really optimise the fuck out of it. X22887 07-15-2004 02:52 AM MDT Rating: 6.5   Acceptable... the origional had a better layout. I like the metal work that replaces the wood though. Mister_Prophet 12-05-2004 07:26 PM MST   Twrecks do you have a fetish for floating structure maps over skylines or is it just me? ;) scirmast 09-19-2005 05:07 PM MDT Rating: 6.5   Ah the memories! This brought back the feeling of original UT. Unfortunately it is now lost. As a 2k4 map it isn't special, but as a memory it is almost invaluable. +1 point for that.