Slave Duel

Description
Hmm, it always saddens me to see a map which has potential, but releases none of it. This is one such map.

The general concept of the map is a slave room, as you may have guessed from the filename. It\'s a commonly used concept, but one that sometimes gets misinterpreted. For this map, the concept works. However, the end result isn\'t so good.

This map consists of a square pit with lava at the bottom, which has a small slippery platform suspended above it by impossibly thin metal bars. There\'s a small walkway around the edge, and a spike coming out of each pit wall. Above the whole thing is a rather chunky cage hung from the roof by a bar. That\'s about it.

In theory, this isn\'t a bad concept. In practice, there is so much more work which needs to be done on this. For a start, there are a lot of errors - z-fighting is a lot more common than it should be in a map of this size. There are only two spawn points - one of which is hovering above the floor, meaning you can\'t move for up to three seconds until you drop to the floor after respawning - in a duel, three seconds can be precious time. The other spawn point is actually stuck in the metal bar above the cage, and the only way to free yourself from here is to use [b]/kill[/b], something which people won\'t want to do in duel games. The next problem is texture alignment - or rather, the lack of it. None of the textures seem to be properly aligned at all, and the texture used for the spikes really shouldn\'t have been used, since it\'s a texture made for use on shutters.

The big issue, however, is the fact that the map has been submitted after a [b]-meta[/b] compile. This means the only thing taken into account by the game are the brushes, and the spawn entities, so even if lighting was done, it doesn\'t show in-game. None of the outside edges have been caulked either, and although it doesn\'t have any effect in this case, the principle remains - brush faces the player won\'t see should always be caulked. There\'s no music either, and the bot routing doesn\'t work due to a misnamed folder.

Now, don\'t get me wrong, I\'m not saying this is a bad map. Simple, yes. Buggy, very. Bad? Not necessarily. It\'s a nice, simple concept for a duel map. But, I\'m thinking that the author should have spent more than ten minutes making it, and should have read some tutorials and familiarised themselves with GtkRadiant more before releasing this map.

Last Wish can use the mapping tools correctly - that much is clear. All it takes now is a little work, a bit more effort, some practice, and most of all, beta testing. Keep trying Last Wish, you should be able to improve your skills over time with practice.

Summary? Well, this map is playable, so if you like the looks of it and don\'t mind the bugs, then go ahead and download it if you see yourself using it.


~ Kouen

[b]Bot Support:[/b] No (broken)
[b]Music:[/b] No
[b]New Textures:[/b] No
[b]Gametypes:[/b] Duel