Yeah, this map is a lot of fun. It's very simple with plenty of backtracking which makes this place feel bigger than it actually is. The atmosphere is great, the choice of textures and lighting do a very good job at creating this monastery of death where you are the only survivor. When it comes to level geometry there aren't any flaws I found, Doublez-Down has always been a great mapper when it comes to creating imposing environments with great terrain. Doublez really reminds me of Chicoverde with the use of temples, traps and of course terrain (I find Doublez terrain much more stable but Chicoverde still gets the upper hand when it comes to the scope), imagine if Doublez and Chicoverde ever made a map together
. Also the use of shadows is amazing, reminds me a lot of ONP lighting. Love the fireflies too, also from ONP I assume
.
Sounds are very well used with plenty of DynamicAmbientSounds and AmbientSounds to give life to the environment, also SpecialEvents are used plenty of times to play sound effects, I really like how the game tricks you into thinking there's an enemy near you with clever use of SpecialEvents. Music is good as well, the map only uses one song (Wargate) and the level uses the song sections properly. However I wished that the map used a custom track to complement the Gothic aesthetic this map is going for, I personally use a custom song called HOHADES.umx from DOM-Q3meetsUT whenever I play this map
.
Textures are from UT99 (DM-Gothic) and they look great in this map, I wish more SP maps used UT99 content like textures, sounds, music or even some models (however don't use bots like Unreality Episode 1
), I like how this map even uses the doors from DM-Gothic. This map has new textures used in the portraits that are all over the place, they are definitely interesting
. Another new texture is the Gargoyles, they look awesome
The only things that I don't like about this map is that the limitations of weapons and ammo can become problematic depending on the difficulty you are playing, in Unreal difficulty you need to find all ammo locations and use the dispersion pistol. Adding the Stinger at the end of the map is a bizarre choice since that weapon should be somewhere at the middle of the map (replacing the Eightball for the Stinger would have work better during the Skaarj Trooper fight in the church), and you don't have that much ammo to use the Stinger anyway. Oh and this map doesn't have coop filtering
, this map has difficulty filtering but very little, the final two Troopers don't have difficulty filtering, now that's evil.
By the way you can skip a big portion of the map: push the barrel at the start of the map to the door at the right, push it as far as you can until it touches the door (be careful the door can destroy the barrel), then jump on top of the barrel and jump again to activate the door, then jump forward and use "side-dodging" to go as fast as you can to the area the Skaarj at the right goes to, if you are fast enough you should be able to enter the church where the Eightball Trooper is, skipping a portion of the map
. Also at the start of the map, if you shoot at the right of where the Skaarj at the right is you can break the sequence when the Skaarj runs away from you, the door of the church will close before the Skaarj enters it and he will get stuck
.
Issues I found:
-This map works fine in Coop, however since weapons work differently online, you won't have to worry about ammunition anymore, which makes this map too easy even in higher difficulties. Also the Eightball is the only weapon that cannot be grabbed as a normal pickup, which can lead to some issues online.
-This map has ammo for the ASMD, but that weapon doesn't exist in the map
.
-The playerstarts use the TeamNumber variable, what?????
-At the start of the map there's a window you can shoot, at the other side there's a Cloud Zone, a strange and unnecessary level design decision.
-This map uses plenty of BlockAll, but some of them are in weird places like the doors. One of them is in a blocked door at the church to prevent you from killing the Trooper with the Eightball, however you can still kill him by shooting at him through the gate making that BlockAll completely useless.
-Thing factories and Creature factories have collision, a very recurrent mistake in custom maps.
-All the Skaarj that run away can be killed, thankfully this doesn't soft-block the map but still, this Skaarjs shouldn't have collision.
-The table that has the Iron key can be destroyed.
-The translator meshes blink like pickups, which can mislead you into thinking that you can grab them.
-This map uses plenty of Zones with different Ambient Brightness, thankfully Doublez did a good job with the transitions from one zone to the other so the change isn't that abrupt except for one exception, the Water Zone at the end of the level.
-You can skip the boat at the end of the map and reach the other side of the lake, you aren't suppose to do that and there's nothing preventing you from going to the water except for some very angry fishes.
-If you take the boat and accidentally leave you can reach the other side of the lake but the final teleporter can be difficult to trigger if you don't know where it is. Also you will miss the final messages
.
-The map has two female carcasses that use the wrong texture, this is a glitch that's been in Unreal from the very start (which means UT99 also has it) , it was only fixed in the 227 patch.
-There's a secret where you need to get a ladder to get two health packs, however the ladder is fake and in reality the map uses an invisible lift to take you to the top, this can cause confusion if you try to go up the ladder, fall and then try to go up again, a custom actor would have worked better, like the one from The Last Fortress.
-Destructible walls use Damage Threshold, this can cause confusion if someone is trying to destroy the wall with a weak projectile, leading them to believe that the wall cannot be destroyed.
-A tiny nitpick, the textures that are masked or translucent are 2D sheets and an invisible brush is there for the collision, I would prefer if the 2D sheet were removed and turn the invisible brush visible with the correct textures so decals can work properly.
-The final teleporter takes you to the City Intro of UT99, however if you play the map using the OldSkool menu you will end up playing the City Intro with the wrong gametype, this can be fixed by changing the final teleporter to change the map AND the gametype, the correct gametype is Botpack.UTIntro .
Somewhere in Nevada...
