Senatu sanctuary

Description
I sometimes wonder what is it about academy maps that make them so popular. Maybe it\'s the potential for tutoring beginner players, maybe it\'s the usually large amount of arenas or some test of skill and finesse. Simply put, I really don\'t know. But I\'m not here to discuss my opinion on academy maps in general. Instead, I wish to take you through a new academy that can be accessed through this very site. Come, walk with me and I shall show (or, rather, describe and you\'ll imagine) you a very nice complex.

Now, the first thing I saw was the hull of the Millenium Falcon located inside a hangar. The hangar itself is nice and roomy and home for the aforementioned ship and two X-wings. The pillars and girders are a nice touch, they gave me a feeling that this place was built in a bit of a hurry (maybe they needed a place to hide out really fast).

As I approached the elevator, I noticed the missing texture on the button. No matter, the button itself still works. Once I stepped off the elevator, I found myself in a very well-lit corridor that leads to a small open-air... place. There\'s a statue near the next door, which leads to another corridor. The first thing my ears picked up was the sound of something burning. A lot of something burning. That would be the sound of the stone torchieres in the next room. Now, this place is a hub of sorts. There\'s a bench on one of the grass patches and three doors leading to three different places.

I took the left hand door and it led me to a massive room with four statues looming over me ominously (they have a tendency of doing that). A little ways down a staircase is what seems to be an auditorium for the learning jedi/sith warriors. There\'s a button on one of the pillars that raises a platform from the floor. What good that does, I\'ve no idea. But it looked cool, so I have no qualms with it.

I went back to the hub and chose, once again, the door to the left. This new corridor first lead me down an elevator and into a huge room with loads of floating platforms. After several tries I managed to reach the top. As the roar of my triumph resonated throughout the cavernous room, I forgot that I was standing on the very edge of the relavitevly steady ground and took a step back. After retracing my steps from the hangar, I made my way to a small arena with a glass platform. The button below said platform created a nice big target on the glass and the button on the platform spawned one of those killer floating droid things. There were also two smaller platforms in the corners that had the missing texture grid all over them. Accross the hallway was another arena. Since there wasn\'t much to see there, I explored the last door left in there and that took me to a lounge-like place that overlooked the two arenas.

Going back to the hub, I took the last door left. This last room, with its bright lighting and clean colors gave me a slightly cartoony vibe. As it turned out, it\'s a gallery of a whole lot of people. Brothers and sisters all, the two dozen or so images depict, in my understanding, the various members of the Senatu clan.

And that\'s pretty much where my journey stopped. I went back to the auditorium, gave my last words on this map to an empty room (I guess no one likes my classes) and sat down on one of the bean-bag-stools and waited for my arcane magic practicing buddies to come and Gate me away from there.

Now, since no one came to my class, I\'ll have to repeat everything I said here. First off, the music in the map is very nice and soothing. The architecture of the map is what you\'d expect from anything Yavin-themed and well done. There\'s little in the way of bugs, all I found was the missing textures, some z-fighting between the first elevator and first floor walls, no flame sounds in the first clearing and some more z-fighting in the lower conres of the hub doorframes. Aside from the textures, nothing one would really notice during gameplay. However, the fact that there are only two spawnpoints, both of which located inside the hangar, make it somewhat unsuitable for an all-out brawl, simply because everyone\'s in the same place when they start and there\'s no reason to go anywhere else. As it is, it\'s more suitable for roleplaying or clan meetings. Speaking of clans, there\'s quite a few clan tags scattered around the map. Nothing disruptive, though. There\'s no bot support, so you\'ll need living warriors if you want to do battle there. All in all, I really like it. As for you, well, if you\'re the kind that likes academies, this one\'s probably for you. If you don\'t find academies to be to your tastes, give it a whirl anyway. Trust me, it\'s cool.

- Jose

[b]New textures:[/b] Yup
[b]New music:[/b] Yup
[b]Bot support:[/b] Nay
[b]Gametypes:[/b] Team/FFA