Duel Academy II

Description
More JK2 maps? You betcha.

Duel Academy II is apparently a duel map, as is Duel Academy 1.2, which is also included, but to be honest, they'd both be suited for small FFAs, roughly 3-6 players. Both maps are awfully wide for simple duel arenas.

Anyway, I'll start with Duel Academy 1.2. Basically, it's a small courtyard area, with a door leading into a control room. Both areas felt pretty empty, and the lighting on both was bland, to say the least. Texturing choices were suitable, but yet again, plain. Not much variation in and around the map. The architecture was nothing special, either.Very blocky, and if I didn't know any better, I'd say the rooms were just hollowed-out cuboids. Sure, squares and blocks are what real-world architecture is mostly like, but impressive, complex architecture is always good. Overall, the map's more of a "seen it before" case.

On to Duel Academy II. This one features a hangar bay, with a small passage leading into a second outdoor room. Again, it's mostly basic on the indoor areas, but models and physics clips have been used pretty well in here. There are some texture choices which just don't work though. The first is the generator texture - apart from the lights, it's flat black. Same with the second texture, the one on the side of the cloud car. The Force Push icon texture doesn't work for the door leading to the outdoor area either - it points to the right, but the door goes down. Go figure. Also, a door texture has been used for the crates in the hangar, and although it's explainable, I don't think it's entirely suitable.

Duel Academy II, like 1.2, has bland overall lightning. It's also terribly dark inside the hangar, which makes navigation slightly tricky as the textures are also dark. (And I had my brightness set to the recommended level.) The terrain in the garden is also unrealistic. It's mostly brushes with vertexes dragged around, and very little flat ground is there, making dueling difficult at best as you can barely control your movement.

Final error in both is the music. It's the default JK2 duel music, and that song should never have been in the game to start with. It's the worst possible song to use for a map, or... Anything, really. Doesn't create any atmosphere in any map, gives a bad tempo for duels, and it's just downright loud and annoying.

Still, if you want another two duel maps to go in your server rotation, then there's two right here. Personally, I wouldn't use them, there's just nothing here to make them stand out. I'd advise the author to try and assess their map's weak points from a neutral viewpoint before releasing, next time, because these maps could have been a lot better than they are.

~ Kouen

[b]Bot Support:[/b] Yes
[b]New Models:[/b] No
[b]New Textures:[/b] No
[b]New Music:[/b] No