Duel Harder

Description
" 知己知彼，百戰不貽﹔不知彼而知己，一勝一負﹔不知彼不知 己，每戰必貽。 "

The words of Sun Tzu, possibly the wisest general ever to grace the battlefields of Earth. Well, that has zilch to do with the map, but the wisdom behind those words may actually help you people in combat - not just on JKA, but in any game, and even in real life (for those of you who are in the military) - ...if you can understand them, that is. ;)

The words will also become important when fighting on this map, since one sneaky tactic by your opponent can end things. How? Well, that'll spoil the secret, so I'm staying hush. :p

Now, this is a nice little map, actually. It's basic enough to be considered tacky, but it has several unique aspects (and one or two dreadfully overused ones).

You'll see from the screenshots that this is a multi-tiered arena. Pretty basic and stable, using a theme we've all seen before. Well, appearances can be deceiving, and this map has a few tricks of it's own to turn. I'm not gonna give it away, like I said, you'll have to see for yourselves.

Anyway, here's the few problems I discovered:

- Some dodgy texture usage.
Some textures used were just plain wrong. I do refer specifically to the textures used on the four... "panels" on the walls. The textures used really weren't appropriate for how they've been used, and the surface inspector wasn't used to set them to the face properly. (To use the inspector, select a brush face [hold Ctrl+Shift, then click the face in the 3D view] and tap 'S'.)

- Primitive lighting.
Well, this is the author's first attempts with lighting, so we'll let that slip. It could have been a bit more interesting, though.

- Clipping/sparklies.
Yep, there were a few issues with these, as well as a little z-fighting. In future, the author should look very closely for these - they can be harmless, but they can also cause major visual discrepancies too. For the clipping issue, the author should use the Entity Properties to tell moving entities (such as doors and plats) exactly how far they should go, rather than letting them just move a distance equal to their own length/height. Still, this is a minor issue which can be safely ignored.

Apart from a few teething troubles, this is a good map. It don't look like much, but it's got it where it counts - gameplay. This map should definitely receive more work in the future - it has a good premise. Just don't judge it from the screenshots - you have to play it to really know what the gameplay element is.

Heh, kinda makes me wonder what's next, though. [i]'Duel Hard with a Vengeance'[/i], perhaps?

~ Kouen

[b]Bot Routes:[/b] No
[b]Custom Audio:[/b] No
[b]Custom Textures:[/b] No
[b]Custom Models:[/b] No