Back to the Roots

Description
I don't see how the title has anything to do with the map, personally...maybe that's because it's a Yavin academy. Ah, well - I'll say this much, even though academy-style maps are overdone, that doesn't mean they are bad. This one is actually very good overall. Lots of time has been spent on this creation, and it shows.

Let's start with a basic overview. As I said above, the map is based on Yavin, and is built academy-style. There are many areas available to explore, including a large TFFA arena and two mission-style areas that I imagine are for training. The architecture is not classic yavin-style - instead, the author has branched out and created a smooth, but still stony appearance. I daresay it looks more like Korriban in places - that's ok, though, it looks good overall.

So let's go over some positives. Each room is sized nicely, although I feel the first room (the one you spawn into) could use a little widening out. Still, that's trivial. Like I said before, the architecture is nice overall. Also, there are things to do if you join an empty server. The atmosphere is nice, and there's eye candy all over the place. There's also a TFFA arena off on one side, which made a really nice addition. It has an observation area on the top, and a large fighting area down below. The lighting is [i]very[/i] good - I'm sure that took a lot of time to work out. Texturing is very well done, I couldn't find any terrible seams or stretched ones anywhere. FPS was good overall as well.

Now...that's not a very good list of positives; there's still more. But I don't want to ramble forever. As you'd expect, here comes a list of negatives as well.

Some areas of the map should be clipped. By this I mean things like stairs - most of them are clipped, giving a smooth walk to the top. Others aren't so smooth and go bumpitty bump bump all the way to the top. Also, the elevator doors leading to the TFFA arena need clip added to them - it is possible to stand on the ledge of the door and get crushed against the ceiling when it tries to open. Another glitch is that when you walk through a door, all the visible entities and players disappear for an instant. This is due to incorrect areaportals - you're supposed to use system/skip on 5 sides of the brush and the system/areaportal texture for the sixth. ;)

A few doors were missing sounds (maybe it was just my computer) and a few other things were glitchy here and there, but nothing too big. A few of the areas seemed like they were meant to be expanded but were not - I'd love to see more in a version 2. This map shows promise and it would be nice to see the full potential brought out. On that note, there are no scripts - add some! Scripts are the best thing that ever happened to JA maps.

New sounds: [b]No[/b]
New models: [b]No[/b]
New textures: [b]Yes[/b]
New music: [b]Yes[/b]

~Dretzel

[i]P.S. - You don't need to include base game assets in your pk3, ever. They're already in the game. ;)[/i]