Anax: Hidden Village

Description
Each of the following six files has been made by the same author over the course of a very short time; to commemorate the prolific production of one author in such a short time I will write a short essay in six parts: "Caring for your work" or "why it's important that you spend more than an hour or two making a map or mod you plan on distributing."

Part 4:
The temptation for a mod, map, or series of maps becoming an exercise in production and not a practice of technique can be a very particularly easy one to fall to when working with something as simple as Battlefront II in terms of creation. Once a new modder crosses the first hurdle of learning to adjust their viewpoint in Zeroeditor, a whole new world opens up. "Look, the terrain just MOVES when I want it to!" Then one learns that they can add objects and suddenly the day is gone - "Holy cow look there's just a bridge there and there wasn't before!" These things are all exciting to figure out - they are for everyone - but eventually most of us learn that the one object we just plunked down in Zeroeditor, while fascinating to us the first couple of times we try it out ingame, does not a good map make.

[Continued in "Tatooine: Tusken Canyons"]



"Anax: Hidden Village," by cyclonassasin, is a simple, fou... no, wait, six-CP map set on a fictional (err, I suppose they are all fictional, but this one is extra-fictional as the fine folks over at Wookieepedia don't have anything on it) planet "Anax." This is probably one of the better couple of cyclonassasin's maps, as it at least doesn't stick with four basic CPs and it has a little more coherency of theme (the map looks like a Naboo-Endor). That being said, there are still several issues.

What could be done to improve it? Here are a few tips:

-The sky. Yes I will say this for every one of your files. You are not on Yavin, this sky does not fit, and you don't have any surrounding anything to block out that ugly black cutoff in the sky texture. Change it.

-Actual crashes. Please, please, please don't leave in anything that crashes my game. Especially if you're going to make such a simple map that is easy to bugcheck. The enter-able Ewok catapults (which do not actually fire?) crash upon being destroyed if you're in them. If you're unsure about a prop, don't use it until you're sure.

-CP balance. Why do five CPs? If you can, make the number of CPs even to ensure a balanced game. There's no real reason to ever hand one side a marked advantage in a conquest mode.

If the screenshots appeal to you, go ahead and give it a try.

-Mav