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DM-Dinashar | | Map Info |
| | File Name | dm-dinashar.zip | Author | Frieza | Gametype | UT Deathmatch | Date Added | 11-16-2004 | File Version | 1.01 | File Size | 2.91 mb | Player Count | 2-4 | Map Description | Small map set in the crypts of Dinashar
EDIT: v1.01 now for downlaod. Fixes a bunch of BSP bugs, some texture misalignments and has an added waterzone.
Enjoy! :) | Review Rating | 8 | User Rating | 8.5 | Overall Rating | 8 |
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| | | Review |
| Reviewer | Twrecks | Awe Score: | 3.0/3 | Date | 12-20-2004 | Build Score: | 3.0/3 | Review Schema | Cast Score: | 2.0/3 | User Point: | 0 | Overall Score: | 8/10 |
Who was Dinashar? And, what kind of music did they play?
Well Dinashar's Crypt is not for the 1940's pop female Singer/Actress or even a past resident of Jurassic Park. DM-Dinashar is pure deathmatch in a gothic setting with the atmosphere turned way up!
The Crypt is basically two main rooms surrounded by a laberynth of ramps and corridors. This high connectivity breaks the R-C-R feeling many maps produce, though the side effect is a cramped layout that favors splash damage weapons and shock whores. The outer halls and rampways typically take players quickly to fresh meat. Close doorways help shaking chasing flak monkeys a bit easier when dealing with human quarry. One thing that gets a thumbs up is the continuity of theme, that with some variation, makes areas recognizable made possible with all those extra polys. The lavish architecture is sure to get noticed nearly from every angle, only a couple of spots are close to blah after being spoiled with the abundant detail and trim everywhere else. What will also get noticed is the custom plant mesh showcased through out the level. Textures are primarily from the HourIndusX_UT texture pack that have been complied into the MyLevel, so you don't actually need to get this pack, but is recommended if you want to use these beauties yourself. As with most maps released today, you will also need Bonus Pack 4 installed to play this gem.
The build of Dinashar is outstanding, brush use is at an all time high. For the most part brush type is used effectively, semi-solids used to prevent breaking up BSP and non-solids where blocking is neither desired or required. There weren't any Block Player actors to prevent nOObs from T-porting up into the sky box. A few other places escaped the author, as did one or two deintersect for subtracting, yet with over 1000 brushes and 5000 total poys it's hard to get lost in the jumble and typically brushes are clipped. Most noteworthy is the lighting in DM-Dinashar. Raking/grazing light is used to extremes with the multitude of barred light sources, from the sides and above. The sky box makes use of some mood lightning and incident lighting, this has plus and minuses, the plus being on the looks department and and a threat of negative drain on playability. Light colors are tweaked to maximum without hitting disco ghey. I'd have to argue the hanging lanterns are over bright and the caged fires needed more red, those are only preferences and not to be held against the mapper. Dinashar holds true to cool blue shadows and light from a partial moon, and the warm overtones of indoor "natural" lighting, aka flames. I was a little confused by the flash light (remeshed knife), it looks nice with the light cone but is out of place, other than in some way maybe denoting a secret door... in the other direction. This ain't for lesser rigs from the vintage days of UT. Sure I heard about fast FPS and "optimization", but if you aren't careful with your settings/resolution you can be in a world of hurt when the flak cannons are blasting and gibs are flying every which way. I typically play smooth at 800x600 using D3D, I can tell you, if I switch to OpenGL at 1600x1200 Dinashar becomes a slide show. Some of this is in part because of the polycount, yet what is the real drag is when all those beautiful polys get dynamically lit with gunfire and lightning, BOOM! slowdown! Dynamic lighting has always been a frame killer, while it may look nice, expect GPU challenged ppl to cry foul. Oh yea, the zoning helps, unfortunately many a time players can clearly see many polys from one zone to the next, guess that's why we have so many R-C-R maps afterall, eh?
Gameplay is what deathmatch is all about, in that Dinashar delivers spades. I've already mentioned the connectivity, what I didn't mention was flow. Flow is determined primarily by two things: Architecture and Item placement, and to some extent lighting. The texture use and trim helps define player paths so one is not left guessing which way a turn will take you. Connecting corridors have a colaborating contrasting texture to help define the transition, and doorways are also well trimmed to lead players along. Breaks in walls via missing bricks, or undercutting geometry link areas visually and add gameplay by allowing players to track movement of their foes. Okay, the missing bricks could have been better textured to corrispond with the breaks, simple stuff. The semicircular jump pad is reminiscent of Quake and is universally recognized by veteran players. What I have a gripe with is Item placement. The health vials are on spam level, and the damage amp has no risk incentive or visibilty for human players. Bots will dominate the U-damage and hidden Invisibilty. Spawn points are extremely close to weapons, this works to help humans from feeling empty handed and there's handy item markers for those spawn locations in case your not playing with "weapons stay". Ammo is also on the over-abundant side. With such close quarters, ammo is not something most players will run out of. Most pick-ups are of the forced variety, right in your way. SO if you wanted something, chances are someone else already ran that way. On the whole, gameplay reminded me of a compressed Codex with the Shield Belt replaced with the Armor Vest ala Tempest (Shield Belt would have been the better choice IMO). This map is tight, which might account for that clostrophobic atmosphere, but it also makes combat the in-your-face variety suited to one-on-one contests. Player count is slated at 2-4 so heed the limit. Not only will higher player counts turn the match to skittles of players ricochetting off eachother, frame rates will drop with the extra fire power packed inside. Yea, the music also pumps up the volume. The custom track "ZAN_MET" could be replaced with "Seeker" to better fit the environment, though I've personally done worse, it's nice to have something new.
To wrap it up, I've said entirely too much for most ppl to read. What you need to know about this small map is that it is for fast matches, with believably beautiful fluff and enough good stuff to keep busy fraggers happy. If you have a half way decent rig and a good connection, you won't be dissapointed with what you find inside. Download it now! before you bog down someone's server. Last of all, Dinashar is a place, a place with a crypt, a crypt called DM-Dinashar. |
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| | Map Comments |
| Mister_Prophet 12-20-2004 09:06 PM MST | Rating: 8 | | This map kicks my balls.
| Lok 06-06-2005 09:57 PM MDT | Rating: 8 | | This map kick my ball too! With the shadow effect and the layout... just download it and shut up! Very Nice! The ambiance is one of best you can find in Nalicity IMO
| ChromeBallz 11-19-2004 07:25 PM MST | Rating: 7.5 | | Finally :D
Souldivider, have you checked wether you have fsaa and the like running? In my experience UT does not go well with stuff like that...
I got a 2800+, 768 mb ram, gf4ti4200, and it rusn perfect, 70+ fps on most places (max detail ofc).
| Master roshi 11-15-2004 05:30 PM MST | Rating: 10 | | Nice map! This map was entered into thunderstrikes mapping contest at unrealplayground. I still have the contest version. I looks alot better than the contest version now that you don't have the 400 polly limit holding you back.
| Sicko Teddy 11-15-2004 08:35 PM MST | Rating: 9.5 | | WHOAAAH!! what a map! WHAT a LIGHT! Lighting is just a role model!! cool!!
| Frieza 12-21-2004 08:54 AM MST | | Thanks for the review Twrecks! I could start defending myself on the case of item placement but I won't :p I'm very happy with an 8!
Thanks for the comments so far but it appears that I've missed a rather obvious BSP bug. I'll upload a bugfree version very very soon
Edit: Ok it has been uploaded and claimed, just a matter of time now :)
Quillion: THe walkthroughable chains are intentional, because it would otherwise block the player too much and take away from the flow.
Souldividerjosz: I don't get it. I have the most shitty rig of every one here with a 16mb vid card and a PII350 Mhz and the map runs fine.
| Sergeant Todd 11-16-2004 09:41 AM MST | Rating: 9 | | Frieza has hit a home run with this map. Atmosphere, architecture, ambient sounds, flow........I love it!
Todd out
| Derdak2rot 11-16-2004 06:09 PM MST | Rating: 8 | | Very nice map , good layout and weapon placement but in my opinion , there are too many ramps for my taste . also good lighning but my favorite point is the custom textures , i like them ( mmh , hourences ). Good work !!
| redfist 11-17-2004 01:36 AM MST | Rating: 7.5 | | All in all it gives the feeling of running ,running a round and round trap,it looks bigger than it really is for some reason. Basicaly a very nice level,my biggest complaint is I wish the texture color range was wider,wich is why I kinda think get that running feeling,then allways end up in the middle somehow. Prettty cool level needs to be a tad bigger 10% 20% max mabye.
| quillion 11-18-2004 08:20 AM MST | Rating: 8 | | Very classy map indeed. Flow and gameplay are sound, the look and feel is well done, but i did notice a few things. Near a lift (amp) the trim is badly misaligned and that lift should go dark and light as it moves(cant think of what you call it atm:P). Oh and the chains, you can walk right through them. [EDIT] I see about tha chains. I must say the map runs very smooth for me, my specs aren't that good.
| souldividersjosz 11-18-2004 12:38 AM MST | Rating: 7 | | Not to destroy what the people have got going here, my laptop suffered some serious FPS damage in some of the areas of the map, which I find very disturbing since the map is constructed and lit so well. This is not inability, this is pure neglicense.....
EDIT: I forgot to mention that my laptop has these specs: pentium 4 2.8 GHz hyperthreading processor, 512 DDR RAM, 1250 meg swap file, 128 meg M-10 ATi Radeon 9600 Mobility video card.
| Evil Snack 11-18-2004 12:14 PM MST | Rating: 8.5 | | GOTTA LOVE IT!!!!!!
| tgm79 11-18-2004 12:52 PM MST | Rating: 9 | | Great map, Frieza! Truly enLIGHTENING experience!
| Hellscrag2002 11-18-2004 05:07 PM MST | Rating: 8 | | Solid map with excellent lighting and atmosphere. A bit cramped but enjoyable melee; lighting is still a bit weird on a few surfaces due to the advanced methods used.
Nice work, Frieza.
| EvilSwanky 12-21-2004 12:44 PM MST | Rating: 7 | | Hm... I like the map, but there's too much health in it and in places I have about 8 fps... (650MHZ, 32Ram Grafics card...)
| Deathbliss 12-21-2004 11:20 PM MST | | If anyone here is getting low FPS in an Unreal Tournament map then it's time to upgrade!
As for the map itself well I'm glad to see the author has continued mapping since my first and last encounter with them - before my site died. I'm gonna download this and see how they're doing. But one note to the author... Are you gonna make me a happy UT junkie and do some UT 2004 maps? Maybe with some custom meshes?
Be awesome if you do! - Deathbliss
| Defeat 02-07-2005 10:02 AM MST | Rating: 9.5 | | Friggin' awsome map. This is truly a love at first play.
| milb 07-28-2005 06:04 AM MDT | Rating: 8 | | Nice one, needless to say more!
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