District

Description
Don't be fooled by the boring name of this map. Or the setting it implies. Yes, it’s a residential area, but it’s definitely a more rural/castle-typed setting, and I certainly wouldn’t associate it with the word district, even though I suppose it could be called a district. It's like one of those small villages that surround a castle, or at least, that’s the impression I got.

I really enjoyed this map when I first began playing it. Hey, maybe the Oblivion background music somehow managed to fool me into thinking I was actually playing Oblivion at times, and thus distorted my view of the map, but I really did enjoy it, even if it's not the most technically accomplished. There is a church, and several houses along a kind of parade lined by trees. The only spoiler of the general design was the giant wall around the edge. That really was a disappointment to me. Not so much that it was so big, but it just looked very repetitive and the textures didn't work on the struts. Actually, there are a few textures in the map that didn't work, such as on the circular steps around the church, and of course, the horrific pictures of the map's author plastered over the walls of some houses. Honestly, the map could have done without those, they spoil the ambiance. :(

There was also a missing texture bug, but by freak coincidence, you can almost mistake it for the right texture - it’s the one on the ceiling lights in the screenshots, and a few distorted textures on the patch roofs. On the other side of the coin, the architecture is believable and the majority of what you see fits the theme. The lighting can be splodgy, partly due to JK2's worse lighting calculations, but overall I thought it was pretty decent, and furthermore, the map has full bot support.

I'm going to make a few suggestions here, because I see a great deal of potential for this map. Firstly, make the windows breakable. Secondly, make the church windows transparent and use alphashadowing and lightfiltering to get them to produce some coloured shadows. (There's a tutorial HERE) which you might want to take a look at. I hope this map progresses further, as it's certainly peaked my interest.

New Sounds: Yes
New Textures: Yes
Bot Support: Yes

~Szico VII~