Posted by Agent Smith on Tue Mar 8th 2005 at 3:02am

Yak, after playing it on the Snarkpit server I was mightily impressed. It played great and looked great. I don't what it is with those screenshots, but they don't do the map justice. The only problem I was having was with that pink/black chequers appearing on props and models, but it might have been my PC. Excellent work.

Posted by Campaignjunkie on Sun Mar 6th 2005 at 2:13pm

This map (intentionally or unintentionally) borrows elements from dm_overwatch, but extends these elements to accommodate a larger server and better balance. <br> <br>It takes place in a war torn city-block, complete with rubble and surrounding buildings. Citadel walls devour the surrounding area, sirens are going off, and smoke bellows out of ruined buildings. Yep, this is the war torn City 17 we have all grown to love. Unfortunately, some awkward architecture and texturing somewhat offsets the immersion, mostly concerning the ruined apartment courtyard area. Minor framerate issues also crept up, mostly due to the open nature of the map, but are very tolerable. <br> <br>Now the connectivity! Wow. While still maintaining the structure of a city-block, areas seamlessly flow into each other. Well, a nearly seamless flow - there are a few mundane hallways that are used to connect some of the outlying areas and make it difficult to pinpoint where exactly the player's location is. Which leads to another minor problem: The interiors of the surrounding buildings (unfortunately) borrow a bit from Half-Life 2, with little variation in the interiors and a spartan level of detail. Thus, the lack of landmarks increases the learning curve of this map a little; still, nothing fatal. <br> <br>Weapon placement is also done well - most of the weapon locations are easily distinguished, and the rocket launcher at the top &quot;draws players in&quot; (to quote a fellow Snarkpitter) and seems to promote conflict. Overall, an impressive accomplishment that the author should be proud of, despite any minor imperfections. Whatever dm_torque does well, it does very, VERY well. An easy recommendation into any server rotation.

Design


Gameplay


Verdict
A spicy, zesty City 17 map with great flow.

Pros
Very good connectivity and it looks pretty much like City 17.

Design
Awkward architectural and texturing choices, lack of landmarks, hallway-itis.

Posted by dabait on Sun Jan 23rd 2005 at 5:36am

This is my kind of map! I was a bit aprehensive when I first spawned, but then I started exploring and imagining frantic and very dynamic DM battles going on. Can't wait to play this one with others! <br> <br>Ermmm... haven't actually played it with others yet... as it stands, I'd give it a 10. I don't expect that rating to change much after trying it online. Nice work! <br> <br>-- EDIT -- <br> <br>Ok... I ran it on my test server (DM) for a bit and had some other players hook-up. It really calls for four players or more... much larger than immediately appears (not a bad thing at all). Had a really good time!

Posted by keved on Fri Jan 21st 2005 at 7:48pm

Quite impressive. I like the layout...multi-tier, good connectivity, with no overly long routes. Like others have stated though, there are a lot of right angles. Unlike a lot of other levels I've seen, the performance is pretty good too. <br> <br>One comment last would be that pickup and dynamic prop placement needs work. Some of the pickups seem randomly strewn around in the middle of a room etc. And as for the dynamic props, in places there are 2-3 identical ones right beside each other. I particularly remember 3 combine balls clumped together in a corner when just 1 of them would have sufficed. <br> <br>p.s. are you the yak_fighter who used to do HL1 prefabs? If so, I remember using some of them in my own HL1 levels.

Posted by Tactii on Fri Jan 21st 2005 at 4:00pm

More on the cubemaps. The cubemaps in the bsp I downloaded from punkassfraggers were not built. Once I built them it looked fine. Maybe you copied it out of the mapsrc instead of hl2mp/maps or something?