Game Jedis Map Pack

Description
In Game_Jedi's Map Pack, he gives us four maps for our perusal: Dantooine: Destroyed Enclave, King of the Hill, Mini Fort Warz, and Valley of the Dark Lords. Since there are four original maps, I'll address each one individually.

[i]Dantooine: Destroyed Enclave[/i]
[b]Tech:[/b] 5
[b]Quality:[/b] 5
[b]FunFactor:[/b] 5
[b]Creativity:[/b] 7
[b]Item Placement:[/b] 5

[b]Map Rating:[/b] 5.4

Dantooine: Destroyed Enclave is more or less a representation of the enclave seen in the game Knights of the Old Republic, in destroyed fashion. It's decent, and the author certainly made a liberal use of Caleb1117's KotOR props, but at times it feels like the props were just thrown in there.

The central "enclave" part is probably the best part, designwise, but once you make it outside the walls (which are stone for some reason?), the props take on the haphazard feel mentioned above.

The work done on the sky and periphery of this map are probably the best of his four maps; he makes sure to use a different sky as well as adding some texture to differentiate the mountains from the surrounding ground.

[i]King of the Hill[/i]
[b]Tech:[/b] 3
[b]Quality:[/b] 3
[b]FunFactor:[/b] 4
[b]Creativity:[/b] 6

[b]Map Rating:[/b] 4

King of the Hill is really just conquest, although there is a large hill with a CP in the center of four CPs. Presumably, one would try and capture this to maintain the advantage, but logically by the time you get up there and capture the CP, you could have captured two on the ground. So perhaps the advantage goes to whoever [i]ignores[/i] the CP in the center.

The map could use a bit of design work, too - there seems to be no sky at all (not stars, not clouds, just a plain textureless skydome- although it could just be black, my computer renders missing textures that way). There are also a lot of steep, jagged cliffs. Unfortunately, there's just no way to make terrain sloped like that look good - the textures are all stretched and it doesn't look natural at all.

It's also worth mentioning that not only is the AI planning bad (it looks like the author didn't even try to make AI go up the hill) - but in the map's readme, the author says this:
[quote]if you play this with Ai and either planning is bad or they dont understand what king of the hill is, that is your fault.[/quote]
Yes, that's right - he said that if there's a problem with the AI, it's not his fault for making it, it's the [i]user's[/i] fault. I got a chuckle out of that.

[i]Mini Fort Warz[/i]
[b]Tech:[/b] 6
[b]Quality:[/b] 4
[b]FunFactor:[/b] 6
[b]Creativity:[/b] 6
[b]Item Placement:[/b] 4

[b]Map Rating:[/b] 5.2

This is probably the most solid (gameplay-wise) of Game_Jedi's maps - Mini Fort Warz is a continuation of sorts of his earlier Fort Warz map, but it seems like some things were tweaked for the better this time around. It looks like the AI will move from CP to CP, and actually capture posts (always a plus). The map is also not too big - it's traversable on foot.

The best change from his earlier version (if you can call it that) is that the map itself is much less glitchy. There's no running through terrain or being trapped in shield pens - just four forts on each side of an essentially square map.

Issues with this map include a very dry terrain - the mono-texture terrain looks really boring, mix up the textures a bit like you did in your Dantooine map. The Yavin sky is also not great, but at least the black part isn't visible. It's worth mentioning too, that when you (the player) are in the foliage in the center, the AI can see you fine but you cannot see them at all. Not so much fun. There were also a few object-placement issues, and there was very noticeable Z-fighting in the main CPs.

[i]Valley of the Sith Lords[/i]
[b]Tech:[/b] 5
[b]Quality:[/b] 6
[b]FunFactor:[/b] 5
[b]Creativity:[/b] 7
[b]Item Placement:[/b] 6

[b]Map Rating:[/b] 5.8

For starters, I liked the concept of this map - I really did. It's a good job of using some existing assets (and some more of the requisite Caleb1117's KotOR props) to create a map that looked somewhat like the Valley of the Dark Lords from KotOR.

Gameplay-wise, though, it just felt too big (it sure feels like it's on a bigger scale than it was in KotOR - although game-to-game comparison is irrelevant). There was too much open space and flat ground to make for a really solid map, although there were at least a few occasional pillars to hide behind.

I did like what was done with the temple at one end of the valley - this was definitely a high point in terms of design. Unfortunately, there are more of the sharp terrain cliffs that plagued "King of the Hill" in this map. (Also, what was up with the pits in the center? They seemed a little odd.)

[b]Dantooine: Destroyed Enclave:[/b] 5.4
[b]King of the Hill:[/b] 4
[b]Mini Fort Warz:[/b] 5.2
[b]Valley of the Sith Lords:[/b] 5.8

[b]Overall Rating:[/b] 5.1

So there you go, if you like what you see, give it a shot.

-Mav