SJC - Naboo Crystal Sanctuary

Description
Its been a good long while since the last time any of Sith J Cull's maps graced our fair site, but at last the drought is over! ;)

Some of you may know of Sock's famous 'Pyramid of the Magician' map which was converted to JKA as 'Pyramid of the Massassi'. Unfortunately though, it appears that we no longer have that map on the site, I don't know why, but it is a shame indeed.

However, that famous map has heavily inspired Sith J's latest creation; Naboo Crystal Sanctuary! Anyone who has played on the Pyramid of the Magician/Massassi map will instantly recognise the features that have been inspired by that map. These include the jump pads in various locations, used to catapult you up to a higher level, the canyon like layout, dense foliage and other features. From what I understand, some textures have also been carried over from the original map by Sock, though these mostly appear to be the plant and leaf textures (which would be difficult to make from scratch, believe me, I've tried!). Some of the stone textures were really quite low resolution, which makes me thing that maybe these minor textures also came from the original map.

The only other thing that has come over from the original map by Sock is a few sounds, which lend the whole map a nice ambience. That brings me onto the music, which is very unusual indeed. I haven't a clue where it is from, but it seems to combine elements of both the Star Wars themes and some Star Trek themes, oddly. Anywho, the music fits perfectly and nicely fits in with the rest of the audio ambience.

Now, onto a rather big and impressive part of the map; the dot2product terrain blending! Dot2product is probably the most complicated way of creating a nice and natural blend of different textures for your terrain, however it is the best looking. Proof that you can learn new tricks no matter how long you have been mapping, Sith J has done an excellent job of using dot2product on this map to create a seamless and natural blend of textures for the varied terrain here. I must say though, despite the excellent job Sith J has done, it still doesn't quite match up to the truly masterful job that Sock did on his original Pyramid of the Magician map. There is some room for improvement as far as making sure all the textures are aligned around some of the rock walls, where the various lumps and bumps tend to through out texture alignment a little.

The layout itself is quite complicated, even though this isn't a very large map, which means that you can spend plenty of time exploring and discovering things! Whilst I liked the outdoor areas with the small ruined Naboo style pavilion's and pillars, my favourite area had to be the caves. There is just something about caves in JKA, they are very hard to do right, but if you succeed they really are a great feature to add to a map. Sith J has done a top notch job of making the labyrinthine caves in this map, complete with hanging vines and mushrooms! Lets not forget what the title of the map is though, Naboo [b]Crystal[/b] Sanctuary. Also in the caves and other areas around the map are groups of crystals, which lend the map its name. I was a bit disappointed that there weren't more crystals to be honest, I would have liked to see a cave full of them, like the inside of a [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/787776.stm]giant geode[/url].

Overall this is another very impressive map from Sith J Cull, although I do think there are a few areas that could be worked on and polished up a little more, especially those lower resolution stone textures which don't look too great close up. They are only used in a few places however and not on large areas, so that isn't too much of an issue. I also think it would be cool if the crystals were more 'glowy', not that crystals generally glow, but it just looks cool! ;)

Once again this is another excellent release from Sith J, but I do think that the low resolution textures in certain areas let it down a little, apart from that though I highly recommend you download this map, I don't think you will be disappointed! :D

[b]New Textures:[/b] Yes
[b]New Sounds:[/b] Yes
[b]New Music:[/b] Yes
[b]Bot Routes:[/b] Yes
[b]Game Types:[/b] FFA, TFFA, CTF

~Nozyspy~