DM-MarsBase
Map Info
	File Name dm-marsbase.zip Author SoH_Ghost3021 Gametype UT2k4 Deathmatch Date Added 11-03-2004 File Version 1.00 File Size 5.92 mb Player Count 3 - 5 Map Description A milityary base on Mars has been overrun with wierd creatures from another diminsion. You will fight in a closed of part of the facility, but watch out! Hitting the wrong button may cause them to come in.... Author's notes: Remember that it took only 6hours to make; the quality will be very low this map started as a testrun for porting textures and testing a few new brush builders. Absoblutly no thought went into item placement or design. Review Rating 3.5 User Rating 2.5 Overall Rating 2.5
Review
Reviewer ArcadiaVincennes Awe Score:  1.0/3 Date 11-08-2004 Build Score:  2.0/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  0.5/3 User Point:  -1 Overall Score:  2.5/10 DM-MarsBase (UT2004) With all the focus on Mars these days I guess even UT2004 couldn’t escape. Situated on a industrial/military base on Mars the map is a bizarre mix of elevators, pick-ups, and truncated hallways with tiny space-station windows looking out onto the Mars landscape and doors that refuse to open. Small, sometimes claustrophobic, with little lateral room to move renders this level difficult to play. AWE: 1.0 A long, thin, vertical shaft is the centerpiece with many floors to access. On each of the floors is a hallway with a door and a window looking out onto the Mars landscape. However, all of the floors are the same size, same shape, same decorations, and have the same lighting. The only indication that you’re on a different floor is the pick-ups available on each floor. At the top of the shaft is a square red light. At the bottom is a pickup base sitting on a greenish texture that doesn’t match the rest of the theme. The only inspired piece of level is that on each side of each floor, there is a purple electrical barrier in a hole in the floor that acts as a force field to stop players from dropping through. On the lowest level, the purple electrical field is green and the player can fall through. It’s actually a teleporter that places the player back at the very top of the column again. In effect, it’s an infinite series of shafts. The textures, imported from Unreal, oddly enough, work well and are aligned satisfactorily. The lighting is purple from the force fields, green from the transporter force field, red from the red ceiling lights, and white from um, I don’t know. They cast onto the doors that don’t open in each of the four corners and come from nowhere. All the lights are overly saturated, the red being the worst offender. The red light fixtures are simply a flat, red square with no variation and isn’t really convincing as a light source. And where there are no lights, there is no light – it’s too dark and difficult to see. I’m sure the author intended it to be dark, ala Doom 3, but this does not work in this map. The elevators are simply square, flat, thin panels with no supports. Yes I got the impression I was in a facility on Mars but there were too many defects to really be convincing. The overly-saturated lights, the lack of light sources or convincing light sources for half of the four colors, the unrealistic floating platform elevators, and the lack of sound and uninspired music selection all hurt the ambiance. BUILD: 2.0 The map is competently built with nothing out-of-place, everything fits well together and the textures mesh against one another well. However, the author really only built 2 rooms and a section of shaft and then repeated it down to create the remainder of the level. There weren’t any collision issues and the elevators are all lined up nicely despite them being floaters. The teleporter works well and really contributes to the infinite loop the author was going for. The bot pathing is well done, they use the elevators without complaint and hop from floor to floor and across the shaft without hesitation. There are no ambient sounds and the music is a stock track that works well enough but it’s a little too ‘grand’ to really fit the theme. Finally, there was no zoning. When looking down the shaft the FPSs dropped but to still reasonable levels – barely reasonable, but not harmful. Zoning each of the floors would have done well to reduce FPS drop when looking up or down by 2 or 3 floors. Zoning off each of the rooms would have helped the FPS when looking down the entire shaft. To sum it up, it’s geometrically well-built and the bots do well but the lack of zones and sound really detract from the build as a whole. CAST: 0.5 Unfortunately, the map doesn’t do very well with gameplay. You asked for Z-axis, the author gives it to you - but not much else. The z-axis of the central shaft is too narrow and too cramped, especially with the elevator squares in the way. Because of the darkness and the elevators it’s extremely difficult to jump from one floor down to the next and not fall to one’s death or land on an elevator and get gibbed as it moves up and traps you between it and the next floor. The weapon load out is predictable with one weapon per floor and ammo to go with it. What’s unpredictable is that on the same floor but on the other side of the shaft, there’s a heavy load-out of Adrenaline and Health Vials. At the bottom of the shaft is a wildcard base that gives even added power to the map pickups. But then there’s an inexplicable 3 more wildcard bases on various floors. In one game I was able to get the Double Damage and then I got it again right after it wore out, and then while I was charged up on that one, I met a bot who had Double Damage himself. The multiple wildcard bases on a map this size is just unnecessary. The default bot count is also too high at 4-6 there is not enough room for you and them to stay alive very long. The bots use the elevators well and jump from floor to floor and across the shaft with ease, but if they’re distracted by another bot or the player, they fall to their deaths or get caught on an elevator and are squished. It’s also extremely difficult to see them as the level is extremely dark so much of the time I spent firing at where their projectiles were coming from and not them. Then there’s the amount of pickups that are just too much. Too many Adrenaline and Health Vials on each floor, too many wildcard bases, it just renders the match clumsy and with little useful strategy. Finally, the hallways are too small to allow dodging or dodge-jumping – one is confined to horizontal maneuvering and double-jumps to avoid fire. The darkness, the hallway sizes, the elevator squashing, the long falls, the bizarre pickup quantities all reduce the gameplay quality. This might be a better level in terms of gameplay if it was a 1-on-1, the shaft was widened, the hallways made larger, the lights were tweaked and some more were added, and the pickup quantities reduced. As it is it’s just a shaft of frustrating death that once had potential. Despite its quality geometry construction the map suffers too much from darkness and confined space. It may have worked on Mars in Doom 3 but it doesn’t work in UT2004. Floating elevators will squash you, the bots will attack from all angles but you cannot see them, the light there is is oversaturated and sometimes without a source, and the FPS can drag you down in the center shaft. I like the idea of the infinite loop shaft and the author was on the right path. However, he made some bad choices that really hurt the gameplay most of all. Lastly, I’d recommend that the author not indicate that he kicks a** in the level preview – please use it to showcase the map. Download it if you’re a 1-on-1 addict otherwise, this one is a miss.
Map Comments
SoH_Ghost3021 11-08-2004 03:21 PM MST   this is my first realesed map, but not my most recently made (bout 6months old?). feel free to critisize, it took me 6hours on a boring saturday to make. alse used 3dsmax to make pipes.(that why they low poly) Edit: Thanks for the comment,cUnNiNg_StUnTs,slaskan , your right. i should think twice before i post cheaply made maps with no energy put into them :P Sicko Teddy 11-06-2004 04:22 PM MST   WOOOT!?!? --"alse used 3dsmax to make pipes.(that why they low poly)" LOL MAN!! That's like a total opposite- in 3D max everything comes out HIIIIIIGH poly. LOL man just LOL!! XD EDIT- to SANDORSKY- it depends how you make the mesh, man. in UED you can make low poly mesh, and high poly mesh(not smoothened faces, though). 3Dmax or any other can create any kind of poly tesselation, depending what you need. often we use OPTIMIZE to make a sqeare plane have 2 poly triangles instead of two. If you talk about OPTIMIZATION, then youre correct, if not, then this is wrong. sandorski 11-06-2004 05:44 PM MST   sicko: huh? 3dsMax or Maya will produce much lower Poly models than UEd. Edit: True enough, but unless the Mesh is a simple plain, 3dsMax or Maya is the best way to do it. cUnNiNg_StUnTs 11-07-2004 11:42 AM MST Rating: 2   What is the point of this map, it has a ton of items on boxy little rooms with nothing to do but drop down to the next room. It has more than one double dame power up in such a tight confined space. You can do better. slaskan 11-07-2004 06:59 PM MST   y do u sbmitt a map that u know is crappy and only took six hrs to make?? ^o) (its a sarcastic smilie :) This map cannot be commented on.