Onossia Jedi Academy

Description
Ahh a new Academy map, excellent! I do so enjoy reviewing these! :D

I say map, although really I should say [i]maps[/i] since there are two different versions in here, a daytime one, and a night-time one. Whilst only a few of the areas (namely the ones that are open to the sky) have different night-time lighting and sky textures, the difference in feeling between the two versions is quite noticeable.

I have reviewed plenty of Academy themed maps whilst I’ve been around here, but I must say this one is rather unique out of all the ones I have seen. It does of course have all the necessary Academy features, such as a dorm / bedroom area, saber duelling rooms, large open communal areas and of course the ever present council room and secret areas that only those in the leadership of the clan traditionally know how to get to. The unique feature I am talking about is the actual texturing of the map. Generally speaking Academy themed maps tend to use a lot of Yavin textures, since the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin is the most well known ‘Jedi Academy’ probably followed closely from the Dantooine Academy from Knights of the Old Republic.

This map has plenty of Yavin textures, but the unusual thing is that they seem to be mixed in with rather a lot of Bespin textures as well. I would never have thought of putting the two together since the old weathered Yavin stone textures wouldn’t seem to go very well with the relatively new, clean metallic Bespin textures. However whilst there are certain areas in this map where they didn’t fit together very well, on the whole I was quite surprised to find that they generally fit together pretty well in this map.

The architecture is a similar mix between rounded structures, and the more traditional angular Yavin style architecture. Overall though, like the texturing, the two styles work pretty well together.

One thing is for sure, this map is [b]huge[/b] and there are loads of places to explore, one of which I thought was a nice little nod to the Dantooine Academy out of KotOR. One ‘crossroads’ has a feature in the middle, with some basins full of water, and a tree at the top, with an open skylight above that. If I remember rightly this is exactly what was featured in some concept art for the Dantooine Jedi Enclave under level that featured in Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. I cant remember whether that area made it into the final game, but I do remember that piece of concept art as it was one of my favourites.

Also along the Dantooine Academy theme, this map features the music from the Dantooine Academy level of KotOR, which is another nice touch.

Some other areas that are of particular note are the Council rooms (yes, there seems to be more than one council room!) an outside courtyard area and the expansive, secret, underground labyrinth.

There are definitely some areas I feel could be improved upon though. One of the main ones was the scenery you can see outside some of the windows. The hills and such you can see through these windows are rather too angular and do not look natural enough, I definitely think these need to be softened a bit to make them look more natural and organic. Another less noticeable area that needs some tweaking are the stairs. Don’t forget to place a wedge shaped brush covered in the ‘noclip’ texture over the stars, so when you run up them, you go up smoothly, rather than bouncing up and down as you step up each step.

Lastly I would suggest continuing working on texture combinations and architectural details to really polish this map up to a brilliant shine. ;)

All in all though, good work here! What is more, I couldn’t find any clan logo’s or references in this map, so it should be suitable for all clans to use, which is always a bonus.

If you guys like the look of it, give it a download!

[b]New Textures:[/b] Yes
[b]New Sounds:[/b] No
[b]New Music:[/b] Yes
[b]Bot Routes:[/b] Yes
[b]Game Types:[/b] FFA

~Nozyspy~