ut99.org '15 TmC poll

[UnrealGGecko]

Note: downloads for the maps can be found in the original contest thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6550

It's been a rough one. Seeing as there was not a lot of submissions, instead of a "Gamers Choice" and the winner being voted by the participants... I think it would be better that a basic vote will give us the winner.

Voting will end on Jan 30th.

Cheers!

[Gustavo6046]

My is first vote!
Go on PrinceOfFunky, you'll win!

[Hellkeeper]

Alright, here's my comments:

AS-TmC-Snow: 0/10. Trashus maximus (magna disgracia). Absolutely horrible build, display bugs, ugly, no clear indication of what's the next objective. Probably the worst thing I've played since 2010.

DM-TmC-NoxxCrater: 3/10. Nice idea and well done visually. Everything else suffers a lot unfortunately. Build is poor (the terrain has much more polygons than needed, it's over 8000 polygons for a map which could probably made with only half of these. It runs very slow on my computer and that's not a good thing given how small the map is and the fact I'm not using a poor 1999 computer either. It can't be the rain only because I've used rain too and didn't have this problem. The map is way too dark with a dark rock texture so I never know where I am or where to go. There are a number of display bugs with polygons flickering in and out of view and some steady BSP holes here and there (not the instant death type, fortunately).

Finally, pathing is a failure, with pathnodes here and there but much too spaced out and the network is broken in many places. Honestly, this is something I would have pointed out if I had tested the map, but I was not involved at all in the contest. I don't know if anyone playtested the the maps, but if yes, then there's a problem because this would have been commented on.

Here's a picture with all the isolated parts of the networked circled in red. If a bot gets here, he cannot go anywhere.



Not to mention the fact there's a pathnode right next to the sniper rifle (which is useless), or the fact they can only go around the central sphere by a single path (on a single side). This map is a good idea but the execution is absolutely terrible.

DM-TMC-Narean: 7/10 Lovely, lovely map. Very good build, nice idea, awesome execution. Gameplay is also very solid with a lot of vertical fights. Texturing is very impressive with the dirt paths, there are tons of details, the interior part of the temple or castle is delightful and there's no bug in sight, despite an impressive geometry. The only problem I had was a little troublesome navigation on the uppermost level, when stepping off the bridge: there are a few marble slabs on the floor which would have been better as semi-solids because they have weird collisions. I'd like to give this map more points, but... It's so damn dark! I can barely see. There's a luminosity issue IMHO, and this means you can barely see in some areas, and not at all in a few others. Too bad.

DOM-TmC-S3TC-CoexistFinal: ¿/10 I feel like I'm barely qualified to say anything about this because it's a completely delirious one. First of all, the file is 165 MO and 335 MO or something like that when uncompressed. I want the author to reflect for a second on the fact that his map is heavier than most map pack out there.
And then I want him to reflect on this alignment of lightbox meshes (with wrong scale for each and everyone) which brings my game to a crawl. Once again, my computer is not an old pedal-powered antiquity, and yet I cannot play this map if the morpheus copy/paste is in sight. Morpheus copy which presents at least one glaring BSP error.

Appart from that, the map is nicely built, the terrain is nice, but I couldn't rate it very high given its terrible performances. Also, on the edge of the map, the terrain stops abruptly on a black wall. That's meh. To finish about the terrain itself, I'd say given how many meshes the map uses, it could have been converted into a plane mesh and mabe saved a few (needed) fps.

Then, let's tacle the next: no sound, no music. Alright, that's not nice. The map is gigantic and yet the playable zone is not as large as it seems. Pickup choice is unexplainable without the help of God because there are UT weapons, UT2 weapons and "others" (glock, dragunov, sr25, etc.) which means everyone has a different thing. Ok. That's not bad per se but already the map feels off. Also, all weapons using a 2004 pickup base are bugged one way or another: most are half-buried in the ground or not centered, the bases are GIGANTIC... UT2004 raptors are also half-inside the ground and I couldn't get into one to save my life.

But in the end, all this is meaningless because the map is unplayable. It's not pathed correctly. The morpheus part is pathed, maybe with the original morpheus pathing, so it seems to work. Otherwise, 1% of the terrain on the floor level is pathed, the infinite walkways are not all pathed, the square walkway with the shops all around the map is almost fully pathed, but only in a barebones way and the network is broken... I don't know if special waypoints are needed to fly the vehicles around, but there are none. Bots don't look like they can use them anyway, so ahah, no problem!

Finally, and this had no bearing on my appreciation of the map, but the proud american flag at the top of the map, the big american flag on the moon and the "map made in America" in the readme make me laugh. As well as the "Unreal Powered" logo in the readme. Or the fact the readme is a 4,5 MO PDF instead of a 15 ko readme. And the fact it contains nothing you'd usually find in a readme.

I don't even know how to rate it, because it's very well done, but appart from that, it's more or less unplayable. Also I'd make it lose points just for being so huge both in weight and in size, both unnecessarily IMO. I award it a wonderful American/10.

And with that said, I vote Narean, which is not only my favourite but also the only fully-working one. Also, it's inherently very good, congratulation to Swanky.

[Carbon]

Great review Hellkeeper. What else is there to say? I agree on all points.

Good job to all entries!

[Gustavo6046]

Just played DM-TmC-Narean for a minute before this overheated. Seems a very good map, and since people is doing high reviews to it, then I guess I change my vote

[OjitroC]

Pedantically I would point out that none of the submissions comply with all the rules of the competition

Seriously, though, I don't have much to add to what has already been said and largely agree with Hellkeeper's comments. Just a few thoughts

DM-TmC-NoxxCrater - loved the idea and the dark, dreary, rain-sodden landscape - the flickering polygons, BSP holes and steepness of the crater in some places make it difficult, but not impossible, to play - in one game, though, I fell out of the world three times so there is one, if not two, fatal BSP holes. I didn't find it too dark overall, though there are places where shadows and dark terrain combine to make it difficult to see. The noise of thunder can only be heard in the centre of the crater and should be more general to add to the atmosphere. The black hole is a cool idea. Overall, though, the technical build problems and lack of pathing do, unfortunately, detract considerably from the quality of the map.

DM-TMC-Narean - excellent in every way - the textures used are good and the juxtaposition of building and terrain works very well. Again I didn't find it particularly dark (maybe I have a high brightness setting) but thought the lighting was well done, creating the right kind of ambience. It is somewhat on the small side for me, but that's just personal taste, and it won't stop me playing it for a long while to come.

DOM-TmC-S3TC-CoexistFinal - an ambitious and grand project with a interesting concept behind it. However it was probably too ambitious - a great pity as considerable effort had obviously been put into the map. The problems mentioned by Hellkeeper meant that, for me, the map was often only playable for a short while before it crashed (or, if it didn't crash, it was laggy on the city level). The disposition of weapon types matches the dom points idea and I didn't find this a drawback - however the layout of pickups did seem eccentric with an overabundance of weapons on the Morpheus and city levels (compared to the terrain level) coupled with a lack of health pickups. The regimented, regular layout of the weapons on the city level served to emphasise its straightness and blandness, as did the lack of any environmental sounds. As I say, a great pity that it is largely unplayable as I do like large maps.

[UnrealGGecko]

While I would've given Narean the point, I instead vote for Coexist, for a few reasons:

- while barely playable, it looks farely nice.
- one of the only ones that actually put the batch in. Cheers for that.
- look at all the stuff we can use on stuffswapper and other similar mods (not all of it is good and this is where a lot of the filesize comes, but still).
- interesting idea for the map
- well... someone needs to get 2nd place.

still no idea how I'll put this on a mappack though.

[Gustavo6046]

From here on, forget my map is in the contest. Or else...

[Hellkeeper]

- while barely playable, it looks farely nice.

I agree it's nice, but really, barely playable is the main thing for a map in agame. And the size issue is also ridiculours. The map pack is going to be 180 MO with 4 maps, when only one of them is actually playable with bots. I find this idea insane.

[sektor2111]

Swanky is Dominating. If you feel lazy do not read bellow.

In this contest I see one map, one no go and... nothing else. Given my latest aggressive hunting errors from my Bots I can see one as testing terrain and a game-play in the same time.
The rest of xx MB (looking in that System Folder) = Nope. Even if I have tens of times disk space required I won't waste time and neither adding additional time in defragmentation process.

Maps with broken paths are not gaming for me, I'm not hunting myself because A.I. stay stuck.

[PrinceOfFunky]

My is first vote!
Go on PrinceOfFunky, you'll win!

Ahahah, sure man XD
If there should be someone that wins here, that's not me XD

DM-TmC-NoxxCrater: 3/10. Nice idea and well done visually. Everything else suffers a lot unfortunately. Build is poor (the terrain has much more polygons than needed, it's over 8000 polygons for a map which could probably made with only half of these. It runs very slow on my computer and that's not a good thing given how small the map is and the fact I'm not using a poor 1999 computer either. It can't be the rain only because I've used rain too and didn't have this problem. The map is way too dark with a dark rock texture so I never know where I am or where to go. There are a number of display bugs with polygons flickering in and out of view and some steady BSP holes here and there (not the instant death type, fortunately).

Finally, pathing is a failure, with pathnodes here and there but much too spaced out and the network is broken in many places. Honestly, this is something I would have pointed out if I had tested the map, but I was not involved at all in the contest. I don't know if anyone playtested the the maps, but if yes, then there's a problem because this would have been commented on.

Here's a picture with all the isolated parts of the networked circled in red. If a bot gets here, he cannot go anywhere.



Not to mention the fact there's a pathnode right next to the sniper rifle (which is useless), or the fact they can only go around the central sphere by a single path (on a single side). This map is a good idea but the execution is absolutely terrible.

Well... ...thank you for explaining your opinion about mine and all the other maps I appreciated it.
Anyway, I know there are a lot of problems in that map, I did it in the last 5 days actually:
first and second days: Making the right terrain and try to make it as a mesh without success, so I decided to directly place it as BSP terrain
third and fourth days: Detach the pieces from DM-SpaceNoxx and Make the "broken" effect.
fifth day: Placing the "broken" pieces around in the map; putting rain effect with a sucking effect inside the Black Hole, that sucks any rain particle near it; setting up textures; setting up lightning; placing weapons; placing pathnodes.

[KingJosh]

Even thought most of these are invalid entries (lacking batch photo ) I voted for NoxxCrater, I loved the skybox, the rain effect was beautiful and map had a good size. I only disliked that it does have some BSP errors, but overall a nice map. Thanks for the review Hellkeeper. I always like your map reviews the best, but did notice some things I from your review that I don't understand.

EDIT: also I forgot to mention Frag N Brags map looked the best from the screen shots in the contest thread, its a shame the map wasn't finished in time and entered. I can almost tell already from the screenshots, that if he entered the map it would have my vote

First of all, the file is 165 MO and 335 MO or something like that when uncompressed. I want the author to reflect for a second on the fact that his map is heavier than most map pack out there.

I don't like using repeat building textures or repeat sign textures. I also think 1024x1024 textures look better on large buildings instead of 256x256. I figured in 2016 file size should be irrelevant.

hen, let's tacle the next: no sound, no music. Alright, that's not nice

There is a background song (the ut2004 menu theme song, my favorite unreal series music). Although it does require an OldUnreal ut99 audio patch for the song to be heard due to way I converted (as mentioned on page 12 of my PDF Read Me).

Pickup choice is unexplainable without the help of God because there are UT weapons, UT2 weapons and "others" (glock, dragunov, sr25, etc.) which means everyone has a different thing. Ok.

Pick up choices are based on the DOM point's theme real life, ut99, ut2004, and fantasy. The DOM point at morpheus is based of real life, so you have real weapons such as ak47, mp5, and m16 etc. Along with realistic bandages instead of med packs. Also realistic vehicles such as fighter jets and a helicopter.

UT2004 control point is also obvious, it is Ut2k4 themed and has things such as the ut2004 pickup bases, ut2004 guns, Ut2004 med boxes and Raptors.

The UT 99 point has UT99 themed vehicles and stock pick ups.

The ground level terrain is called fantasy land and uses scifi vehicles and U4e weapons. (hence the term fantasy land used for the DOM point name). This is all clearly stated in my video and my PDF readme.

UT2004 raptors are also half-inside the ground and I couldn't get into one to save my life.

You hold crouch and walk against the raptor to enter it. You press your throw weapon key to exit.

Or the fact the readme is a 4,5 MO PDF instead of a 15 ko readme. And the fact it contains nothing you'd usually find in a readme.

I never liked the common readme format so I created my own.

Also I'd make it lose points just for being so huge both in weight and in size, both unnecessarily IMO

The physical size of the map was essential so you can fly the vehicles with a large open space.




Besides this the rest of Hellkeepers penalties / criticisms were 100% valid. I do admit I am far from a bot path guru, the FPS are horrid, I probably should have added a few environment sounds, and maybe the lightboxes might look better with a larger display scale.

Kind Regards,

KJ

B8U1lPb5FUA

[UTX]

Voted for Swanky's map for obvious reasons.

[papercoffee]

Voted for Swanky's map for obvious reasons.

I'm sure the next one will be better...

[UTX]

I sure hope so, I will try to participate then, just make it something simple as to not get the same results.