you lucky dog, i been an idiot for 30 years or more and i'm only up to captain

I am a bit late on this, but whatever. Here goes.

First of all, let me say kudos for the nice curvy architecture. Although you have used curves throughout, this is by far the nicest area. However, as I said before, that floor texture has to go. I also feel that you should do something more interesting on the left hand wall than just that one texture.

This image illustrates something which bothered me about the map over all. it seems to be slightly under scaled. Nothing that effects the playability or anything, I just feel like I?m going to hit my head whenever I go through a doorway. Your architecture suggests grand scale, yet the map does not live up to it.

This is a really big empty space, with nothing of interest really. I do like the skylight and the nice pattern of light it makes on the floor, but there isn?t enough contrast to make it very noticeable. Also, that mixture of textures is pretty weird (cinderblocks-wood panels) and monotonous.
I also cannot quite figure out what those little tableish things in here are.

Te alcoves are very cool and all that, but house plants?

Very dark. a nice spotlight on this landing would make worlds of difference.

I very much like it that you can see into inaccessible areas, however again, this door is an example of under scale architecture.

You?ve done yourself a disservice in making this sand perfectly flat. I can?t imagine why it is there in the first place, but you might as well give it some height variation. (triangle terrain)

Overall I think the architectural style is great, but you have a long way to go on lighting in particular. The texturing was generally neat, but unimaginative (I have a good deal of trouble with this myself).

The lighting is simply flat. There is very little variation or interest. I may simply be biased towards dark moody atmospheres, but even if you intend it to be brightly lit, you still need more contrast.

Keep at it, I?d like to see how this comes out.

Well, it is beta, and not in the sense that every room's completed. The room with the tableish things is very blah, I know, I can't quite get any inspiration going on it. Now to answer your questions.

The tableish things... are indeed tableish things. Basically they're there so I could see how much of the player is covered when they're crouching behind it. Originally gonna try to do some nice architecture around them but then realized that everything I came up with would block a lot of the view to/from the balcony.

The house plants are there because I felt that something needed to be there, and I couldn't come up with anything else... though maybe one of the little diploma posters behind some glass would look nice.

The sand's there because, again, there's gotta be something there.

The lighting's bright because I (read: most everybody) prefers dark moody maps, so I thought I might change it up a bit, but I did tweak it some, so hopefully it'll come out a bit darker.

Thanks very much for the critique!

Well, I'm gonna respond to some of your points anyway.

1. Very good idea, I knew something had to be there but couldn't think of any way to still have it connected.

2. I'm thinking about removing that pipe to allow for some form of alternate route for midgets, but if I don't, pipe trim it is.

5. The lighting looks different (read: better) on mine, even after I changed it... egads. But eh, if you were referring to the center lights, it's because whoever added 'em was underbudget + had no creative eye + but knew something had to be there.

9. That's indeed unfinished, I basically just threw on the roof so I wouldn't have a leak and compiled.

10. Haha, you spotted me ripping off Echo, I mean, erm, influenced by it... (and Elixir, for that matter)

11. I was just following your tutorial that said 8 units looks good

Thanks for the critique, I appreciate it! (especially after running out of ideas on fixing 'er up.)