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Description
Clan maps, something few reviewers like having to work with, simply because they're usually built to specific personal standards as opposed to general-purpose standards. For instance, while I'm sure this map fits the clan's purposes quite well, I'm not judging by a "good enough to use" standard and thus see flaws which may or may not bother the clan.

Biggest problem I tweaked to is visual styling. A lot of things could have been done much better, architecturally and in the way of decals. You'll notice much of the map consists of hollow cuboids for buildings/rooms with no specific features for variation, and that cuboids are almost exclusively used to build the map. The brush count thus is likely to be extremely low, which means the author has a [b]lot[/b] of room to add extra detail, which I'd advise doing. It's one thing to work well, but if it looks good, that's just double the fun. Kinda like double choc chip cookies. ;)

The texture usage overall is basic, but effective. The Bespin theme is used, and for all it's elegance, there's little that can really be done with said theme. What isn't used, it appears, is the Surface Inspector. When applying textures to surfaces that aren't the same size and/or angle as the texture, this tool is a mapper's best friend; it would have certainly fixed those doors up right. Also, the stretching on the beds in the hotel, to me it looks like the surface inspector has been used, but it's set the textures to incorrect proportions, resulting in a "warp" pattern. Lighting is mostly fine, usually rather obvious that entity lights have been used but at least they're sourced, but I'm going to have to gripe at the bar - Austin Powers would probably feel right at home in there. Little too psychedelic Sixties, if ya catch my drift. :o

Visual stylings aside, the layout works rather well. It's smooth, fluid, and while it may be linear there's no puzzles on getting from A to B. I did like the hovertrain - func_train entities are under-used if you ask me. One thing stopping this map from being used in normal gameplay is the armory. All the pickups are located in there, which cancels out the map's usage for general purpose FFA gameplay, so it really is just a hangout map rather than a serious FFA map. Admittedly I chuckled at seeing a building site in the location of a not-yet-constructed area.

There's one thing that truly irritated me - these guys have their own private jet! Inyri, you have so gotta get us a Gulfstream. :p

While the map has it's problems, I'm sure it's more than suitable for the clan's purposes. Much could be improved, though, and there are missing textures that really need fixing. Since there's a v2.0 on the way, I'd advise trotting off to [url=http://forums.filefront.com/star-wars-jedi-knight-series-852/]our forums[/url] for design and technical tips before pushing that one out there. While basic may be more than enough, the engine can handle far more than what's used here, and you know the saying - "Waste not, want not!" - so I'm sure our resident mappers will be more than happy to hand out some advice for you, and teach you some tips and tricks as well as do any bug bashing that may need to be handled.

If you're a member of this clan, or hang out in their server occasionally, you'll probably want this map. For anyone else.... well, there's not a whole lot here if you have no link to the clan, but there's a few nice things, it'll work as a hangout for anyone else too (only having one instance of the clan tag), and hunting the secrets should keep you amused for a little while.

~ Kouen

[b]Bot Routing:[/b] No
[b]Custom Textures:[/b] No
[b]Custom Meshes:[/b] No
[b]Custom Music:[/b] No