UT3 Vehicle DM-Throne

First of all, Happy Birthday!

Now, I played through this map 3 times and have some comments.

The map certainly has some potential, it's fun to play, with all the jump pads and stuff. However, there are a few issues. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but I'll do my best.

1) The lighting and colours seem kind of screwy.

- Too much greenish in that upper level... it's like the air is green. Too much blurry blue under water.

- There are featureless, black floor surfaces on some of the terraces. (lack of lighting?)

- The blurring is way too overdone... I can see using a bit of distance blurring for performance, but that just makes the map ugly to have it occurring so near.

2) As for game play...

- One thing I noticed was that there are a few places where your player gets stuck if you fall (not very far) One example is where the scavenger is parked) In my opinion, that should not occur anywhere in a map. Kill the player if you must, but don't make them suicide to get unstuck

- There's a viper in a cavern under that house, through the floor. I cannot for the life of me get that vehicle out of there and it seems pointless to me.

That's what I've observed for now, I'm off to go play it again a few more times. If I think of anything else I'll post back.

Yes, there were a few places where I managed to get stuck. Similar little crevasses as the one behind where that scavenger is parked (opposite side of that platform even). Also, there's one in the blue crystal area, it looks like solid rock where I can jump on but there's a bit of a clipping bug and I sink down and get stuck. The problem is, I'm having difficulty trying to describe where this stuff is. Maybe I'll try to make some screen shots tomorrow night.

About the blurring, it's so bad that in places I have trouble seeing the players shooting at me from a moderate distance. I don't mind the greenish glow of the forest area as much as the blurring. I got that effect as being a hazy forest, but I thought the blurring was a mistake.

I agree with everything said by grogan.

The viper i could get out , but i honestly cant see the point of it in this map to be honest, or that little under the house area. As you say, you can get it, but bots couldnt , and that just seems wrong really, you should make it work for them, or just remove it. (unless you want players to have an added advantage over bots ? )

From a gameplay point of view, things are let down by lots of little problems, getting stuck when getting to the top of a set of stairs and having to jump, areas where you cross bridges then suddenly stop, and have to jump over, also other problems such as, you have a jump pad at the top of the map (i think theres a sniper near to it), if you miss the jump pad (which jumps you downwards ?), and slightly fall over the edge, you fall 'behind' the main map, into an area you shouldnt go.

From a level designers point of view, you need to put plenty of blocking volumes in to stop those problems from occuring above, also you could do with aligning weapons and placements more correctly or on more flat surfaces as it looks ugly just stickin off to one side. also, too much bsp for these days ! lastly, you have lots of water, but i didnt hear much in the way of water noises.. the only noise that was prominent for me, was the strange clicking noise everywhere.

Oh, and very lastly, i couldnt agree more about the blurry thing mentioned also, is way too much.

If you open the ambient sounds package, i think thats where most of the looping ambient type audio is. if you then filter by water, you should get a few watery kinda sounds in there. Other than those off hand i cant think where there would be more, unless its one shot (non looping) audio.

hi

the first bridge crossing the bottom of main waterfall still is blocked by something. one of the 2 spiral (ish) staircases still is blocked when trying to go up or down, and cant even be jumped over. the 'bushes' around the garden area at the top, need their collision properties changing to no collision, as when you shoot around there, rockets and stuff should go through bushes, no collide. theres a couple other areas i found that still made you move around until you could get by, but i cant remember at the moment. lastly, theres the stock 'square' texture in a couple of spots in the garden area i think. i would have looked further but im alittle ill feeling at the moment, need to go. lol

oh and lastly, its not particularly my kind of map, but is quite inventive with what you have created. you need to be alittle more careful with things blocking players/bots and make sure the flow keeps going, as it can really kill a map i guess.

I'll be having a go at Beta 2 tonight, but first I have a bit of work I have to get done before I can boot to Windows for games. I'll try to find that rock I was telling you about... it's up high a bit, I think near one of the jump pads.

I thought I noticed getting stopped briefly on that bridge too, but I thought it was because there was a piece of a destroyed viper there at the time.

The beta2 looks much better without that blurring

OK, I found another place where I got stuck. I also made screenshots of where I get stuck in that blue crystal area, up near a jump pad. (Actually now it seems I can wiggle my way out to my left, and fall down to the seabed floor but last night I was STUCK there. Still, that's a clipping bug that seems to need fixing unless you did it on purpose to be tricky )

http://www.mikeserv.org/gallery/Mikes-Gallery/dm-throne/

I posted them in one of my galleries, with captions that 'splain. Just click on the pictures to see the items at intermediate and full sizes.

Also, I'm not getting stopped on that first bridge near the waterfall, but yes, one of those stone staircases doesn't work.

That's way gooder now

It looks nice, it plays nice and I haven't found any more places to get stuck. I just played it twice and beat the pants off the bots (ok, ok, I had them set to "Average" because I was exploring the map lol)

The scavenger is actually pretty good in that map. I got lots of kills with it.

the surface of the "water" is solid, and also not visible from underneath. By solid I mean it stops weapons fire- the enforcer and RL even leave scar marks on the surface of the water, and rocket grenades bounce on it.

heheh... I thought the water thing was deliberate in this map. I was using that to get away from the vipers

I just played Beta 4 and didn't notice any problems.

ill take one more look through it.