Egg Carrier

Description
The Egg Carrier. Dr \"Eggman\" Robotnik\'s[b]* [/b]flying fortress from Sonic Adventure. It was temporarily grounded by the heroes after they each individually battled and defeated Chaos 6, yet it was repaird again (presumably by Eggman\'s bots) before the final battle, where it was destroyed by Perfect Chaos before it had a chance to do... well... anything.

Does this look anything like it? No. Wait... I [i]think[/i] I can see a little bit of the real Egg Carrier\'s physical form. Just barely.

So, first, what\'s good about it.

It\'s big. You won\'t run out of room on this map. Er... the structure is a bit varied... And... that\'s about it. =/

Alright, I\'m itching to get this out of the way, so let\'s just get it over with.

Architecture. Not good. A Sega Genesis is able to, and on numerous occasions has shown that it can, render better architecture than this. I\'d call this like a lego version of the Egg Carrier, but it doesn\'t really look like lego either. It resembles an overgrown Airfix model, to be honest.

Texture usage. Ick. Many of the textures used don\'t even remotely resemble the materials they represent. Are we meant to believe that the Egg Carrier\'s hull is made of *carpet*? The author has also failed to align many of the textures to the brushes they\'re attached to. It\'s all a basic \"make brush, select face, click texture, finito\" job. Randomly applying textures just detracts from both the visual and technical aspects of a map.

Oh. And the skybox. [i]Bespin[/i]? How the [i]heck[/i] would the Egg Carrier fly on Bespin? It\'s not designed for atmospheric travel at all! Damn, got sidetracked there - my point is that the Bespin skybox needs to die in a fire, and probably shouldn\'t be used by anyone for anything unless it\'s a Bespin-themed map. And if it\'s a Bespin-themed map, it better be good, because you just know that after all the other Bespin maps people have released, the community are going to be more critical than the cross-bred child of Godzilla and Simon Cowell. Oops, side-tracked again. >_>

Layout and item placement won\'t promote any sort of gameflow at all. The items are placed in the dodgiest places, and much of the map is borderline intraversable. So, unless you want to be confined to one part of the map where you\'ll be at a disadvantage - stay on the flat parts at the top.

No lighting, and no ambient lighting either, so I\'d guess that the map has been released after a mere -meta compile; this means that no elements of the map are compiled except for the basic architecture. I\'ve said it before, and I\'ll say it again - unless a map has been through several compile stages (one compile from each type, with a \"final\" compile being the last) then it\'s not ready for release, since virtually none of the map has been compiled.

And... is that a spawn point for the DL-44, an infinite ammo weapon which is *automatically* given to the player when they spawn? And the point in that is...? >_>

I\'m also guessing that the map hasn\'t been tested at all, since I found many aspects which needed attention but were neglected.

Now, the author openly admits that the map couldn\'t be at the standards of the Dreamcast/Gamecube stages, and that\'s true, because the Quake 3 engine literally sucks compared to other game engines - even the Sega Saturn\'s rendering capabilities exceeded Q3\'s, and that thing was weaker than most PCs from 1996, never mind the modern-day era of computing.

However, with that said, we\'ve seen that Q3\'s capabilities can be pushed further than this. The author just needs to take more time, work harder, and most importantly of all - know what they\'re mapping before they start mapping it.

I gotta say this. This thing isn\'t the Egg Carrier. It\'s nowhere near. It misses almost every detail the actual Egg Carrier had - many of which were fully possible as well as practical - and what\'s more, even the details it does get right have almost 0% credibility to the real thing. And I should know. I\'ve played SADX to death.

At this point, I\'d probably suggest that the author works on their skills a *lot*, since many of the fundamental abilities needed by all mappers are shown to be lacking here. I\'m still suggesting that, although I\'d like to comment that the V1 in the name is perturbing - don\'t even try another version of this. You just can\'t do it. Not in this engine. I\'d have thought y\'all would have learned that lesson after the Greatfox map. >_>

Well, for the Sonic fans out there, sorry to disappoint, but this is only the Egg Carrier in the vaguest possible reference. For those who aren\'t Sonic fans, I\'ve included some snaps from the Egg Carrier for reference - and practically everything in those screenshots was replicable here (although they wouldn\'t have looked as sexy in Q3 engine >_> ).

~ Kouen

[b]Bot Routes:[/b] No
[b]Custom Music:[/b] Yes
[b]Custom Textures:[/b] Yes
[b]Custom Models:[/b] No


[ [b]*[/b] Side Note: I don\'t give a hoot what anyone thinks - his *real* name is Robotnik. Eggman is merely his alias. Example: In [i]The Matrix[/i], Keanu Reeves actually played Thomas A Anderson - his alias was Neo. Yet, everyone called him \'Neo\' - his alias. However, that still doesn\'t change the fact that his real name is Thomas Anderson.

So no matter how many times Sega\'s bipedal mammals call the fat dude Eggman, it doesn\'t change the fact that his [u]real[/u] name is Robotnik, and that Eggman is his alias. ]