New Age Sith Temple

Description
I instantly am suspicious of any map with 'Sith' and especially 'Temple' in it's name, because temple maps, to be honest, are over-done, boring, and often poorly-made. So you'll forgive my initial reaction to the map, considering I spawned in the worst area, the outer section. This is the kind of mapping which is trying to be creative and come up with a result, but has failed abysmally. In this area, the lighting, architecture and texturing were all bad bad [b]bad[/b]. It just looked over-bright and ugly.

Now, you can't imagine how relieved I was when I saw the inside areas. It's like you've walked into a different map. Seriously, If you look at the first 2 screens of the outside area, and then of the inner area shots, you would be prepared to swear on your life that they were not from the same map. But, they are! Yes, the general lighting still has some splotchiness issues - partly due to JK2's outdated lighting system, partly due to an inappropriate compile line and partly (I suspect) due to a low lightmapscale, but it still manages to fit the theme, albeit a rather dark theme which is a little too dark to be perfect.

Aside from the bedrooms where the splotch lighting really is unbearable, the rest of the map has a great ambiance, although seeing as the music didn't work, it falls a little bit short. For the authors reference, you need the following keys and values in your maps worldspawn to make the music work:

[quote]Key: music
Value: music/sith.mp3[/quote]

The architecture in the inner areas is often smooth, but does vary a great deal, with the theme in one room totally contradicting the theme in the next. But it's all well-made, so its not as if this is a bad thing. What [b]is[/b] a bad thing however, is the framerate and general 'tidiness' of the map. If you look at my final example screenshot, you'll see that many areas the play will never see are textured, which increases load on the video card and lowers framerates. Using the 'caulk' texture on these surfaces would have eliminated this fault and improved playability. Engineering the -vis (visibility) section of the map better would also have helped. Furthermore, there is no bot support, *slap* and overall this is a map which, whilst well made in areas, just doesn't seem to have the completely rounded finish.

New Textures: Yes
New Sounds: No (Broken)
Bot Support: No

~Szico VII~