What do you think are the best HL2-DM maps so far?

There will always be controversy, and difference of opinions....but I'm wondering if there is any consensus on what you all think are the best playing HL2-DM maps released so far. I'm prompted to ask this after reading Yak's "5" score of dm_morbid, which I think is one of the better HL2-DM released so far, and everyone in my server always loves playing it.

These are the maps I'm running on my 16 person [K-9] Kibbles and Bits! server right now. I have tried others such as dm_watergate and dm_overwatch, but they lag horribly when you get 14+ players. These are all pretty good, and good FPS performance.

• dm_lostvillage
• dm_lockdown
• dm_crossfire2_b2
• dm_morbid
• dm_substorage
• dm_frenzy
• dm_stalkyard
• dm_insurrection
• dm_rebar_b6
• dm_gasworksinc_beta1
• dm_island17

Well I played Morbid on your server and not everybody thought it was the greatest. :wink: I even asked the players who were there about it and all I got was "Well, at least it runs fast". I may have been too harsh on it though, as I was on the fence between a 5 and a 6.

I really think the best two maps so far are island17 and rebar. There's a map I've played called dm_underpass_b4 that really grew on me as I played it and it really reminded me of subtransit. ctf_export also isn't too bad all things considered, but it's a bit too laggy when there's combat in the flag rooms.

I can tell you that dm_frenzy was terrible, and I have no idea why the author changed it into a crossfire knockoff. dm_substorage is rather blah, as it is really too cavernous with rooms too large for the slow movement of HL2DM. dm_crossfire2_b2 isn't bad, but I still don't know why it is textured like it is. I asked the author and he just said texturing messes it up or something like that...

http://www.snarkpit.com/forums.php?forum=2&topic=3650&22

Firth is looking quite impressive. Feedback is good too.

Too bad dm_firth is too damn big and it can't run on Linux, eh? :wink:

I personally like dm_rebar and dm_morbid the most. Though I felt
dm_morbid was a bit too dark (mostly because of the choice of theme)
and won't be taken too well by players.

EDIT: Oh, and island17 rocks my socks. Only thing I don't like about
that map is the lighthouse - I would have preferred the more
traditional HL2 look for that, with the red and white stripes.

I haven't played any of the betas except for the crossfire beta2, I'm
waiting for the final releases to come out, and I also don't play that
much HL2DM. Also there aren't many servers running any of the
"good" maps I've heard about (I use quotes because I haven't played
them yet) since most of them are busy running crossfire, killbox, or
the 2 officials.

That said, I love lockdown for FFA, I think it's a real fun map with
great weapon placement. Overwatch can be fun but I think there is
way too much camping that goes with that map, and it can get
choppy. Substorage ain't terrible to play, but it's not a very
pretty map and and everything is just wayyyy to oversized. It is
kinda fun with teams, though. I played Termination, and didn't
have too much fun on it. Other people seemed to dig it. I
liked the crossfirebeta2 remake, it plays pretty well if you can grab
an xbow and hold onto it. I am obviously partial towards my map,
dm_casual. I got a chance to play it with teamplay the other
night and it was pretty fun. The lostvillage remake was ok, too,
but a little bit boring and really just made me want to play HL1.

I have a few others installed but haven't got a chance to play them,
there's a lot of really nice looking maps out there that are in beta
but new versions come out before I get a chance to d/l the old ones so
like I said, I'm waiting for now. I wish that the servers could
send maps quicker than 10+ minutes for an 8 meg file.

Oh and I tried out castleoverload by myself and wasn't into it, and killbox is a waste of bytes.

groans

I will be so glad when I build my next PC. these topics make me drool for wanting to comment. I refuse to comment strictly on screen shots though. yeah, I could load them on my current system, but I am always wondering "did the author mean for that to look this way?"

HL2 truly requires a largish PC to view these maps in all their intended glory. I personally feel you are not only cheating yourself out of the visuals, but you are cheating the authors out of their just deserts.

course, I might be over harsh on myself too, so discount this if you feel its unimportant.

besides less than 30 fps, sucks. especially if you are afflicted with my visual impairment.

I didn't like Morbid, and don't understand why anyone thinks it's so great- it looks nice and has great FPS, but is otherwise pretty poor :sad: Same thing with insurrection, it looks okkkaaayy but is definitely nothing to write home about. Each to their own, though! I'm with the Yak man on these I think, island17 is very impressive and good fun.

Is it just me that has walk-throughable walls in Island17? It also had
another few issues that really annoyed me, but otherwise its certainly
one of the best I've come across in terms of gameplay potential. Rebar
also seems like it should play pretty nicely.

LOL, Orph! I won't tell you about my |33t harware then.

The reason I'm running a few of the others in my cycle is that there are not many good maps out yet. I tried dm_watergate which was a lagarama above 13 players. dm_np_refinery_b4 is well made, but I'm waiting for gameplay/weapons changes in b5. I looked at castleoverload and it lags with a lot of people, and is almost too large for these sizes of servers. dm_depot_rc1 is a beautiful map, but IMHO, also too large. dm_motel is promising, but I would need to take out a lot of the physics objects to make it playable on a 16 person server.

Mouse I looked at your dm_casual, and like a lot about it, but IMHO it has too many playing levels from ground to bottom for these 14-16 player size servers, and the bottom area itself is quite large. There are very few maps that have multiple levels above and below ground that really have worked, Gasworks being one of them.

Yak, fair enough on your hearing that about dm_morbid in my server. I don't dispute what you found, just have not been able to corroborate it....but more importantly, thanks for promoting dm_island17 !!! It is very sweet, and I'm now adding it to my server rotation.

These dm_island17 bugs/issues need to be fixed, and since it is a beta, I radically altered the weapons/ammo/objects for better gameplay.

http://www.kain-9.com/images/dm_island170000.jpg
http://www.kain-9.com/images/dm_island170001.jpg
http://www.kain-9.com/images/dm_island170002.jpg
http://www.kain-9.com/images/dm_island170003.jpg
http://www.kain-9.com/images/dm_island170004.jpg
http://www.kain-9.com/images/dm_island170005.jpg

You can see my suggested ent changes on my server which now has it added to the end of the mapcycle list (I edited above mapcycle post). You guys do realize though, that a server needs to run more than just 1 or 2 maps...so there has to be more than island that you recommend AT THIS TIME. I'm not saying any of these are actual "9" or "10" maps, but the really good ones will come with time.

I was hoping to see my hl2dm map but oh well :sad:

dm_morbid is loved by loads because it's similarities with Ravenholm are quite spot on. Your server has a good choice of maps at the moment by the way!

i don't wanna sound like i am crying, but how the hell do you manage 177 FPS mikee?

the refresh rate of the basic monitor is only 85, it would seem to me that you would be seeing reverse strobing.

tell me truthfully, does it play well at 177? i may not be able to afford a machine that does that well, but i would like to know if i would be wasting my money trying to get close.

Well if you really need to pad out the maplist just throw dm_torque on there. I'm certain players will enjoy and appreciate the other maps that much more after a 30 minute game on it :razz:

and Orph, there's no real noticeable benefit to having the FPS go higher than 60. If you can get a computer that'll play island17 and rebar at a 60 FPS average you'd probably be set for the next three years...

And feel free to run my piece of crap too :biggrin:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Yak_Fighter</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>

and Orph, there's no real noticeable benefit to having the FPS go higher than 60. If you can get a computer that'll play island17 and rebar at a 60 FPS average you'd probably be set for the next three years...

</DIV></DIV>

60 sounds like an attainable goal Joe. thanx.
i have this mental image of someone fragging backward at 177 FPS cause the numbers are twice as high as the monitors capability

My personal favorite right now is Firth. I'm a big fan of epic maps with slower hunter style gameplay and Firth definitely has that. However, if you don't like hunt and snipe style and you dont have many players it could be a problem.

sidenote: I'm glad you guys all like Island17, although I do realize that there are several bugs still left. @mikee, I'd like to see your modified weapon placement. After the contest I will see if I can release an updated version.

i don't wanna sound like i am crying, but how the hell do you manage 177 FPS mikee?
the refresh rate of the basic monitor is only 85, it would seem to me that you would be seeing reverse strobing.
tell me truthfully, does it play well at 177? i may not be able to afford a machine that does that well, but i would like to know if i would be wasting my money trying to get close.

I'm using an A-64 3500+, 1 GB DDR, ATI X800 XT PE with HL2 settings of 1024x768, High model, high texture, water-reflect world, shadow-low, AA-2x, Filter-Aniso2x, Shader-High, V-Sync-Disabled. In most maps I get 400-600 FPS, but I'm not doing anything special to get that. I have my XP-Pro Windows desktop set at 1280x1024 refresh rate of 85 on this 22" NEC FP-2141-SB, but the HL2 settings override that.

Good news on the island17 map. I talked to full servers of 16 people two separate times it ran (with those entity changes), and everyone except 1 guy who never had a single kill absolutely loved it....very little lag was reported.

LOL...that one guy asked if I could run "that map which is the single room and only has the gravity gun." Yeah, sure buddy...OMG!

I didn't look at dm_coastland when I saw its rating. I'll look at torque....Lep what is your crap map (LOL !)?

Maze, I'll look at Firth now....how do you want to get my modifications? I could just copy the ent list and send it as a long text email, or zip it...or do you want me to zip the actual bsp? Let me know, and the best way to get it to you. You can email me Mikee@kain-9.com

Mouse I looked at your dm_casual, and like a lot about it,
but IMHO it has too many playing levels from ground to bottom for these
14-16 player size servers, and the bottom area itself is quite large.
There are very few maps that have multiple levels above and below
ground that really have worked, Gasworks being one of them.

But there's only two levels? :?

That's cool, though, I'm glad you liked what you played of it.
You COULD always throw it on the server for a little while, just for,
you know, putting it on the server. PUT IT ON, PUT IT ON THE
SERVER!!! :biggrin:

I actually haven't played on your server yet but I noticed it's always
full, maybe I'll jump on tonight for a bit if no one is playing
HL1. I also always get it confused with the other K9 clan's
servers.

Yeah, they were primarily a HL clan, nice guys. There's at least three levels...the top, mid-level, and above train, and tracks level/side room. But, I could see running it now that look at it again. Same with Torque, which I never looked at. It seems a lot larger than the noclip overhead view.

I see why you like Firth, that is amazing, and I would have thought it much larger bsp size than it is. Still with the downloadurl from my site, 13 mb maps load in about 30 seconds if you have a good connection. I'm thinking that Firth may be too big....but worth a try, since I have the largest size server you can run. I'll add these three at the end of the mapcycle, and see how they go.

Aye, you could look at it that way, I suppose.

K9 (the other one) is a great clan, super-friendly and
non-elitist. The Kennel Club, which runs Bubblemod, is where I
started playing Half-Life 1 again after breaking for a few years and I
met a bunch of great people there. Good folks. Their HL2
server is always empty though. It also has a map rotation of like
30 maps which is probably why.

I'm really surprised nobody has mentioned dm_hydro
http://www.snarkpit.com/maps.php?map=1435. This map looks
really promising, and I can't wait to play it.

^^ Well that's the whole thing, how can someone say a map they've never played is their favorite map?

Since everyone's throwing around map names, I like dm_swamp and dm_battleground. Ya can find both of those on global assault. You can also find my map Termination on global, but it doesn't run well with large groups.

Is this thread becoming a self-pimping advertisement?

No one has mentioned dm_petrol yet. Rabid just released another beta, and it plays very well (and looks great).

OK, I've tested with players, or ruled out some maps based on boring design, and/or bad FPS, and/or poor connectivity, and/or too small for a 16 person server, and/or obnoxious continuous cricket sounds.

I have ruled out all of the maps in this thread other than dm_torque, and the others in my new mapcycle. With many of these maps (torque inlcuded), I am running a version which has been adjusted in terms of reduced physics objects, increased weapons/ammo/items. There are very few decent maps so far that really work for a 16 person server.

Here is my revised mapcycle:

• dm_lostvillage
  dm_lockdown
  dm_morbid
  dm_torque
  dm_substorage
  dm_np_refinery_b5
  dm_frenzy
  dm_stalkyard
  dm_rebar_b6
  dm_gasworksinc_beta1
  dm_island17

CTF_Export_Final is not a bad choice occasionally either.

s**ts.....scratch dm_torque.....lagarama with a full server.

:razz:

That's what I get for making a big open middle area. Thanks for trying it out anyway.

Although I don't see how you can have dm_rebar on the server if that's the case, since it lags more than dm_torque. At least in my experience with 8 players I can get 25 FPS in rebar and about 35 in torque... hmm now I'm curious as to how it could possibly be slower, considering that I thought it averaged at least 10 FPS higher than rebar did when running around by myself. Oh well torque sucks anyway.

Compared to all the maps out there, I don't think it sucks at all. I would have kept running it if not for the lag problem. Rebar doesn't cause lag, so it must be yet another mysterious aspect of the Steam HL2-DM engine. Actually I think it has to be related to all the logical standard criteria that guides quality map making.