Ian is watching us from beyond the grave, smiling, camping safely in his tomb.
W'rk knows the holy words, beguiling, chanting softly on a womb.
There are a handful of problems consistent with all four maps:
Not nearly enough spawn points. Every map should have a minimum of 8, no matter how big it is. Spawn-camping and spawn-killing were simply too frequent, and not even intentionally -- in a 5-player game we were spawning on top of each other on all of the maps.
Generally poor weapon balance. It's a bad idea to only have one rocket launcher on the map, and a worse idea to have a ton of ammo for it at the same time! It lets one person hoard the good weapons and perpetually control the map. The problem was consistent with the rockets on all of the maps, and the shotguns as well on at least two of them.
Not enough weapons near the spawns, or at least weapons worth anything. An assault rifle with no grenades is not helpful when one player has all the rockets and is spawn-camping at the same time -- see the above two bullet points. Similarly, for each weapon, put some ammo next to the weapon.
These problems make the maps virtually unplayable to any serious degree. Rinse the Valve is the best map, and I would put it at "decent" on a good day. The good news is that these problems are mostly fixable while retaining the maps.
Visually, the maps are good enough. Some differential shading is necessary, but the minor details (especially on M.I.A.) are appreciated. Flow-wise, the maps also could use some help, but generally they aren't horrible, except on M.I.A. where there is a major dead-end that led to many kills for the aforementioned rocket guy.
Fix these problems, then we'll talk. In the meantime, this pack can get no better than two stars from me.
Most of these maps have some serious flaws; Rinse the Valve is about the only playable one, and even it isn't very good.
Texturing and lighting are OK, but everything else is pretty bad. Flow suffers from dead ends, bouncy walls. Player spawn placement is horrendous; there aren't enough of them, they're in bad places, and at least one is in mid-air. One is a few feet from the hill, directly visible.
Weapon placement is equally bad, it seems like weapons were just placed randomly. Weapon balance is also lacking (one map has only one SPNKR, which is easily guarded).
I would wait till the next revision before downloading these, they're not ready yet.
I hope the version .5 means you know these maps need a LOT of work. Gun balance is the worst I've seen in maps for quite a while. The spawn points are completely broken on a few of these maps. I saw at least one untextured side, and there are no words to describe how bad the KOTH map was.
Do better please.
Of course not. These scripts are merely perfect.
5 stars.
As a mapper, Slave is really taking some considerable strides in technical ability, but has some problems with diversity; in short, many of his maps feel similar to each other and few of them are especially compelling on their own. When put in a pack together, the sameness of many of these maps becomes a big problem in choosing a map to play.
I find that stylistically the same sets of architectural elements find themselves present in almost all of his maps, which isn't necessarily bad (I am guilty of the same thing) but when they are as prevalent as they are in some maps here, they become less of a convincing motif and more closely resemble a lack of creativity. I think Ascent, Concentration Moon, and Firefly are basically the same map, for example; different texture sets, sure, but the weapon choices and general flow are very similar (and I still think Ascent is the best). Rainfall, In Limbo, and Deep Blue Day are also remarkably similar, or at least to me.
I think the problem is that most maps here are less a collection of rooms and more a collection of corridors and passageways. In my experience, rooms are both more fun to play in and more compelling as a composition. In that sense, Leek Hills, Riki Tiki Tavi, Ascent, and Tiger Mountain are some of the best maps in the pack. Tiger Mountain and Leek Hills especially provide a great balance between big, interesting main spaces, and functional secondary corridors and spaces that make the maps especially successful, whereas maps like Endless Night and Airbag are less memorable or interesting.
Other maps have problems with height changes that are both too dramatic and too drastic to really work well for this game. There's nothing specifically wrong with big heights and a dynamic use of them, but it can reach the point where the flow is so stilted, and too focused on going up and down, that it interrupts the gameplay. Airbag, Cloud of Eiderdown, and Ocean of Noise all have this problem to a severe extent. Maps that use height changes well are Rainfall and Deep Blue Day; in these cases, higher and lower elevations still interact well both by themselves and with each other, and the focus of flow is still more horizontal than vertical.
I think a constructive mapping exercise for Slave is to make a few maps that are simpler and focus on big issues rather than small ones. Cosmic Clouds still lacks a traditional arena, which is okay, but I believe that making an arena is an easy, fun, and productive exercise; successful arenas put all of the player focus on straightforward combat, which is something that is lost in the shuffle to some extent currently in this pack. Good arena maps are enjoyable and memorable. Making more maps that focus on one or two main rooms, with less focus on corridors, side spaces, ledges, and so on, would also probably be constructive. Riki Tiki Tavi is one such map, and one of the most flexible and most fun. Over Fire Island is a case where a good main space is tarnished by having too much cruft in the upper levels, which are so high they're detached from the main flow.
To me, the best maps are Ascent, Leek Hills, Tiger Mountain, and Riki Tiki Tavi. That is not, however, an invitation to make more maps like them. It would be better to take some of the metaphorical ideas that make them successful -- big spaces, smooth flow, memorable design -- and employ them in new maps.
And make less water maps. Take a look at the screenshots posted here -- five of them look like they could be the same map. I would like to see more maps that used Jjaro and Lava, especially. Different texture sets would encourage different architectural quirks and styles, which I think would be a good exercise.
I would like to give this pack a 4.5 -- it really is almost there, but it falls only a little short of being excellent material.
Firefly and Deep Blue Day are the only good additions to this new release. However, at 17 maps Cosmic Clouds is finally large enough to provide a good hour of game play by itself. Of course, the texturing is ugly as usual but that is only a small distraction.
Im not going to repeat the flaws the have said, but I do like it!
These are good maps and the pack is a promising start. While none of them are especially strong, they are fun and enjoyable maps with no noticeable flaws. I would happily play on any of them, but I probably wouldn't specifically request any of them.
The concept is interesting and, from what I remember of the source material, the adaptations are generally good. Treellama does a good job of balancing faithfulness to the original map while making the necessary adaptions when stepping down to a simpler engine.
Aesthetically, these maps are the best TL has to offer. Egyptian Temple looks great for what it is; this map is a shining example of how differential shading is absolutely necessary when the texturing is simpler. Velora Pass's texturing is horrible -- the obvious byproduct of the two sets used together -- but architecturally the map is ooverflowing with small details that really contribute to a good overall aesthetic, and the lighting is exceptional. Zora's Domain is a good mesh of good texturing and good architecture, and is an unusually vertically-oriented map for the arboreal camelid.
Overall, a good pack, but one that needs to find one or two real winners.
Although this is by no means a bad pack, it doesn't quite live up to the standards Treellama set with his previous pack, Popems. These are by no means bad maps, but where Popems is full of fun, impressive maps, this pack falls short.
I have always liked Zora's Domain a lot, and I like Velora Pass (with the exception of some of the texturing), but I was not very impressed by Egyptian Temple. Although Egytian Temple has some good cover due to the pillars making the bullet-based gameplay interesting, the map quickly started to feel bland and repetitive to me, a downfall of the Egyptian style and look.
That put aside, I'm interested to see what comes of this pack, and I certainly think it has the potential to reach (if not top) the status of Popems with a bit more consistency quality wise.
That being said, I really like what is being done here. I can't give it a higher score because of three main reasons:
The maps are supposed to encourage the use of all weapons more evenly, but there are no pistols in some levels. This particularly irks me more than it may irk others because the pistol is Marathon's defining "marksman's weapon" in lieu of a sniper rifle-type weapon, and I really want to see marksmanship encouraged a bit more. The pistol is quite viable if we can pick up a second one, otherwise it simply will be overlooked as it always was.
I feel pretty strongly about the SMG being left the way it was. It was already a power weapon in my opinion -- getting "kept on the beam" by an opponent for most of a clip meant certain doom, and a clip lasts, what, a second? So I don't think it needed an upgrade in any way.
Too many alien weapons on the maps! Turn some into pistols, please. The increased power of the alien weapon becomes overbearing when there are so many on the map, and tilts overall gunplay in the direction of more blunderbussing and blind short-range charging (moving away from rewarding careful aiming), since that is what works for this weapon -- and I feel that is a direction things don't need to go in any further.
Every other change to the weapons is very well thought-out and I look forward to hosting these maps, with the exception of Persepolis, which for some reason rubs me the wrong way. I wish I could put my finger on it and be helpful, but I can't, sorry. All I can say is that the structure confuses the eye greatly, and the upper and outer areas don't seem used at all (perhaps connected to the location of spawn points, just throwing that out there as a thought).
All the other maps are nice, and stand out from most maps -- to me anyway -- in the amount of cover they provide, which is something I feel is often overlooked in map design.
Sorry if my score seems low, but I really want to leave room for scoring revised versions higher, since I see that room for improvement. Consider the actual score a 3.5.
I actually did not see a difference in play when using this script.
Reference is made to "Never stop firing" as if I needed that advice... that is how I have been playing for years, so i don't know what this script is supposed to do for me.
"Fire weapons to gain points"? Again, this seems to be a tip directed at novices. Perhaps new Marathon players will benefit from this more than seasoned pros like myself.
Oh well, it didn't make things worse, so it gets a 5.
You guys are jerks. Ray worked very hard on this.
MADE FOR SOMEONE ELSE BUT NOT FOR ME
I was Wrong. Ray Labs Knows, and so can you: Munitions are what make the world goes 'round, so let's give it up for Munitions Disposer!.lua
MapDamager no longer has the monopoly on fun!
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Guys, don't post a review if you have a question about how to use the file. These reviews are completely serious and should not be abused.
A little unbalanced, but these were fun for a run through KTA2. Good co-op potential.
I dont get it- i downloaded it- now what?its just a file. please help. P.S. I'm on windows
this is from irons.