Very nicely done. Gameplay is excellent. Though this was said before, i really enjoy the chaotic crossfire between allies and enemies, and being ambushed in tight spaces. Ammo is plentiful, but not too plentiful.
Architecturally, also very well done. The wide vistas, in particular, are a nice touch. A lot of mappers aren't very good about giving the player a good sense of the immensity of a particular space station or facility. Eternal Lucid Dream, with the lookout stations jutting out from the cliff face, did this particularly well. The stone areas, and the water pools/streams especially, look awesome. You've done some great things insofar as taking advantage of Aleph One's lack of geometry and viewing distance limitations.
Two minor things annoyed me a bit:
(1) Too many inoperable doors. Several times i found myself wandering around maps in circles long after i had already killed everything, searching for which door a particular switch opened, and being frustrated by the number of doors that were permanently inoperable.
(2) Too many texture sets. i believe this was mentioned earlier, in an earlier release, but while i see what you're trying to do with the variation in stone textures, at times it looks gaudy, particularly where you've added textures from the Pfhor set to the mix. It's difficult to appropriate this set in other environments, and i've very rarely seen it done successfully.
So many buildings in this world are so depressingly ugly. Pre-fab monstrosities slapped together as if by washed up ex-Soviet architects, nostalgic for the good ol' days of the Bloc.
i hope that whatever it is Ryoko does for a living excites him enough to make up for the fact he's missed his calling--as the architect that might have saved us from this mundanity.
Make no mistake--these maps are works of art. Playing these feels like lobbing grenades down the hallways of a Frank Lloyd Wright. Just when you've stopped to ponder a clever stair, or the railing along a causeway--BOOM! Pwned for admiring the scenery.
One complaint i frequently have with netmaps is the lack of attention paid to variation of floor heights. Splitting up the floor levels does wonders for gameplay, as it forces you to look around--to be a true vidmaster, instead of just taking centred-view potshots on an even playing field. Every set of stairs in these maps also flows nicely--no leaping up stairs set too high, or ceilings set too low.
i appreciate a mapper who appreciates variation in textures. Not a single wall is uninteresting--even the large, flat-textured ones toward the end seem to set off the details in other parts of the map. That, coupled with the fact that surfaces are the appropriate size for their textures gives a feeling of a 'strong', 'finished' map.
Nice work. i'm inspired.
ADDENDUM: It appears i should trust my intuition...Ryoko does in fact study architecture. Should have known...