first post - UT map

GuyBrave

Hi all. This is my first post here on polycount, I hope its in the right place.

Im posting a UT2004 deathmatch map I finished recently to get some comments and crits. Its a big file (60 meg zipped) because it has all new content (nothing used from UT except the water material), and there are a lot of textures and meshes in it.

Here are some screens if the file is too big for you









and here is the link to the download:

-download me-

cholden

Pretty neat looking, but definitely won’t win any design awards being a giant stairwell.

I like the duplicate versions of the level in the background, but with the strong red underlight source, I can’t see the fog below completely lacking color as it is. Also, the upper sky really needs something going on to break up the emptiness.

Textures themselves look good, but could use highlights for edges.

Most of the connecting wires need to be thicker since they are used on a large scale, as in, placed at far distances from the camera. So they end up pixel thin and disappear often.

Probably the biggest thing that bothers me is the heavily repeated stairwell. Details are the same all the way up, giving you no visual or layout variety. This makes the design fairly boring and a deathtrap for players above and below to take advantage of. You end up with is most of your playing surface will be avoided.

Overall it’s definitely a strong learning piece, but I’d move on to the next project and keep improving where you can.

IronHawk

Cholden nailed the gameplay issue spot on imo. The repeating stairwell just doesnt look fun.

If you havent already go and rip apart some of the top played DM levels. Rankin comes to mind.

Check out how the paths and open areas connect then you will get a good idea how the game will flow.

anyways thats my 2 cents.

- J

GuyBrave

hey thanks for the advice guys..... as a matter of fact I have already moved on to a couple of new projects. You are right, it certainly was a good learning peice. As far as the staircase being repetative, you are right about that. I found when playing for many hours with friends that we would always just head up to the top, and mostly ignore the rest of the level. I may go back and fix up some of the visual issues in the future. For now though, I'm just going to apply what I've learned and the advice people have given me about this map to make better maps.... stay tuned for my next one

Soccerman18

Two things that I really like in this one is that it could allow for some good verical action (or at the very least a good king of the hill map), and it looks like it'd work pretty well with using the grappling hook from the chaosUT mod.