3 Crystals by David "DavidM" Münnich
Site score: 36%

Things are getting steadily better as we move slowly up through the thirties with this early effort from DavidM. However, looking at some of the stuff that still lies ahead, I think I'll think of this as a brief honeymoon rather than a reliable upward trend!

While, objectively speaking, 3 Crystals may be outdated in its design, laggy, devoid of any meaningful story and rather too easy to be involving, I still like it, and always have done. I like the theme and I particularly like the use of the environment to create an unusual, infiltration style of gameplay. Despite UB describing this yesterday as "13 Mutants' lesser brother", I definitely think that this is the stronger map.

The concept is obviously inspired by Na Pali Haven, right down to the use of a monolithic tower structure surrounded by water and the same music, but I would hazard that the design of the village may also be influenced by the historic villages of DavidM's home country of Germany. The streets are close and intimate and it is often possible to get from one building to another by jumping across the street from window to window - indeed, this is very much a part of the gameplay in this level.



The player must progress and find weapons by breaking windows, climbing stacks of boxes and walking along narrow ledges and across lampposts. Even the access to and from the final structure is done in an interesting way, including a vertiginous, death-defying leap from a great height into a narrow moat of water. Imaginative navigation of this kind helps to keep the map from getting dull despite the lack of any really challenging combat scenarious. I'd hazard a guess that this map is less about the combat challenge than it is about the exploration and the mission.

I only wish the map were longer. As it is, it's very short, and it ends just as the player is really starting to get into the swing of it.

Next: A step into the creative, angular landscape of Tarmation, one that for some reason I've never got round to playing.

This map was really weak after I played 13 mutants. It's like an attempt at being original going awry. The gameplay made me turn my back on this since I lost interest after some minutes of playing.

Lol Tarmation, more like Saturation Nation. A case of a (good) map having a sequel being overall worse.

Tarmation by Paul "Taz" Mader
Site score: 36%

As I continue to work my way through a succession of single, mostly "first effort" maps, I find myself feeling the urge to get on to an actual map pack to give me something more substantial to get my teeth into. However, I'm not due to play any map packs until Zora's Episode One, and I've a few more single map releases to get through before I get to that. None are maps that I'm particularly impatient to play or replay...

Tarmation is, at least, a map designed with some vision. The diversity of architecture and the size and shape of the spaces is unusually impressive for a first-time map. Lighting has also had some time spent on it, with a number of experimental approaches evident. Unfortunately, the attempt to create an atmosphere is incomplete, as there are next to no ambient sounds. This seems to be a recurring theme with the maps I'm working my way through at the moment.



Through Tarmation we are following in the tracks of members of a crashed survey team who have died in the underground in an attempt to clear an ice blockage that is preventing them from escaping. However, although there are a few dead bodies in the level with the now traditional logs, there's little else in the map to convey the story. It is left to the Readme to set out what the mission of the map is going to be, which admittedly does play out in the design of the map, the last few areas of which are well realised to address the story.

Unfortunately, there's just not enough gameplay to keep Tarmation that involving. Combat is sparse and simple; progression is often confusing. There are a lot of large empty areas with only one or two weak enemies to fight and long, slow elevator rides where nothing else happens (although some of the elevators are interestingly designed), making Tarmation more of a sightseeing tour than an intense gaming experience. Pretty, in some ways, but not one I'll be returning to, I think.

Next up: An early effort from Chris "One Day" Burgess in Deep Space 666.

It's always nice to read these. I haven't played Tarmation, but maybe I'll download it to see what the rest of it looks like.

Deep Space 666 by Chris Burgess
Site score: 36%

You know, from the screenshots, I have always written this one off... never being a great fan of DecayedS.utx, and with the screenies on the site perhaps being brighter than they should be, I never found it that inviting. Having finally played it, I think I was wrong to disregard it completely.



The map is dead easy and runs choppily. But what is striking about this one is the thought that has been put into creating a convincing space station location. As well as the standard issue storage rooms and corridors, the player, on his journey through Deep Space 666, visits an interesting power generator, an elevated bridge / control room area, a well-realised shuttle bay and a vertigo-inducing section of the space station's infrastructure consisting of pipes suspended over an empty void. A non-linear layout provides the player with a rare opportunity to explore and choose their own route through the surroundings, and opportunities for the careless player to fall out into space are plentiful. I'm not quite sure why the map is so littered with random quotes from Star Wars, though!

To do a proper travelogue, I need the map to have some sense of progressing a story. A lot of these low-scoring maps have no story to speak of, which is why my posts have been tending to turn into mini-reviews, or the kind of stuff you'd expect to find in a MOTW thread. It's still interesting to go on the overall journey through all of these little maps, though, to see how the quality progresses as I climb through the scores. Having reached the high thirties, I really can feel an upward trend in the build quality of what I've been playing. With Deep Space 666, for example, we finally encounter a half decent use of ambient sounds, and texturing and lighting is becoming more skillful and varied. Now, if this increasing build quality could only be combined with a story and a more involving gameplay model, we'd have it made!

Next time: Nali Cove 2


P.S. Where've I been since the last update? Well, I went on an UT kick and completed an entire single player ladder - my own version that includes custom maps and runs to 75 matches in total. Now I'm struggling with UT2004's SP ladder, which I've never played before, and has the infuriating habit of bumping you back down the ladder if you fail to win the latest map a couple of times. Don't know if I'm going to see this one through!

UT2k4 SP ladder was made to test the human psyche against cheater bots

Is it even more retarded than UT3's SP "campaign," because that was just complete bullshit.

The idea is equally as bad as it (minus the cutscenes or a proper "plot", it's basically a random tournament. At least in UT1 your objective was to defeat Xan) - it extends for more than you would ever expect since there's the deal to buy teammates and face those sudden retarded 1vs1 matched that you wish never happened (lose them and I think you lose teammembers).
You have to play matches and matches to gain money and get a team first before doing TDM, DD, BR, Assault and the final challenges.

You're also forced to play several rounds of Bombing Run and Double Domination - the latter being the most despicable and campy MP gametype ever created. Don't remember much otherwise since I only played one ladder of it and as you probably know I did uninstall that game very quickly.
UT2k4 ladder is overall worse for me since, unlike UT3, there was almost nothing I liked from that game, not even DM.

It's a tournament though. A very frustrating one.

http://liandri.beyondunreal.com/UT2004_Single_Player
Full info
Seems cool until you play it

I liked Deep Space 666 actually... It was kinda refreshing to have an SP level on a space station, that was fairly well done. Ok, most things are pretty basic/simple in it, but it has its charmes. Had some fairly original (conceptual grandness..) things in it..

UT3 doesn't have Double Dom, so it wins by default. I guess Uberserker already covered that though.

I don't see any way that mode is a good idea; stuff like CTF has vaguely similar concepts (E.G. stalemates can happen and progress can potentially be stopped easily) but there are a lot of ways to manipulate things in your favour. Whereas, at least in botmatches, Double Dom just comes to praying that your bots are competent and the enemies aren't; given that literally all they have to do is scrape a point to remove any progress on capturing you've made, with no in-between at all, along with the fact you can only personally guard one point at a time.

Maybe the mode suddenly gains a wealth of depth when you throw in real people, but the SP was enough to make me utterly despise it.

Agreed... it seemed like a good idea, and I really wanted to like it, but it never really worked. The announcer was exceptionally irritating, too.

The original DOM was a sadly underrated gametype IMO. Hence my supersize efforts in DOM-TempoClasm and the abortive DOM-DreamLand (which I'd finish if I thought it would be a good use of my time, but I just can't justify it).

EDIT: Thanks Darkon for attempting to keep this thread on topic.

i remember deep space 666 being really fun for being non-linear without being overwhelming. Often a non-linear map just makes me dizzy if it's way too big as well. but this one is manageable

also, did you ever finish the travelouge for unreal and rtnp?

It would seem not. "Nagomi Passage" (day) is the last map I did, and it appears at page 16 of this thread.

I'm gonna stick to playing the custom maps. My mini-reviews may or may not blossom into full travelogues as I go along - we'll just have to see!

Nali Cove 2 by Mark Simmons
Site score: 37%

Another map with a fairly credible build, Nali Cove 2 fails to make an impact primarily because it lacks a story and is incredibly short.

The player begins the map marooned in a bare sandy cove. It's not clear where he has come from - the shipwreck in the water, or through cracks in the caves - or what he is doing there, but there is plenty of space to explore and in which to find some hidden items. The cove and water caves are interestingly designed, although blandly lit.



In due course, the player finds himself at the gates of a small Nali monastery, which is where the lighting is at its weakest. Fortunately, things improve once the player gets inside, where rich texture use and warm coloured lighting predominate.



It becomes apparent that the Skaarj have captured the high priest and are holding him prisoner, and it is the high priest that the player now has to save. The few Skaarj that guard him are generally the toughest of the Warrior classes and health is scarce, so the player has to be careful not to take too much damage during the course of the few fiights that the map has to offer.

Nali Cove 2 is ultimately anticlimactic. The player finds the high priest, and then the game ends. We are left none the wiser as to who the player is, how he came to be here, or why... but it looked fairly pretty along the way.


Gramercy by Chris Burgess
Site score: 38%

Now, this is more interesting. Gramercy is infamous primarily for being hugely overscaled, but as well as being large the map also displays an interesting concept, inspired seemingly by Nali Castle and Bluff Eversmoking, of an ancient Nali fortress sitting on a rocky crag surrounded by a lake of lava. Not the most hospitable of environments, to be sure, and it's very dark and moody. You have to wonder why the Nali would want to make their home in so bleak a place as this!



There's still not much of a story, although as the player overcomes the defences and makes his way through the mountain pass he follows the journals of a human scout who may have made it through the valley before him. This time, though, the gameplay is interesting enough to make the lack of a story less important. Plenty of z-axis movement is required for the player to make his way through the fortress, ambushed from time to time by Skaarj that lurk in dark corners or dodging boulders thrown by Titans - which, this time, I found it easier not to try and kill, although there was enough ammo around to make doing so perfectly possible.

Gramercy is not technically well accomplished - it's much larger than it needed to be and the lighting is weak. However, it demonstrates effectively how an ambitious concept and sense of "place" can make a map memorable even when the build quality isn't really up to scratch.


Next up: Uh-oh, it's Zora's Episode 1!

It looks like someone put AS-Siege, Nali Castle, AS-Siege]l[AL, Skaarj Tower and Bluff Eversmoking together and replaced the water with lava. Though it looks good!