Death Arena v2

I was pretty surprised to read that this had been in development for twelve weeks. For the most part, it's pretty basic stuff which should only have taken so long if the authors had spent a lot of time goofing off - and the development time should only include the time you spend working. :p That's beside the point, though.

The map is generally simple. A central courtyard with a few bobbing rings, and four passages. An interesting note about the courtyard, is the button which lowers the floor. The leftover platforms look cool, but if you fall, you're teleported back to the top. No dueling underneath them. The four passages from the courtyard lead into seperate "districts". I'll give a short district-by-district description.

The first area is the combat district. Four duel arenas in two rooms, with a third room between them. This room has a wide floor, NPC spawn buttons, and a small relaxation area. The second area has a swimming pool and a bar. Typical clan map area. Behind this room, you'll find a small Yavin-style room where you can spawn a Jedi Trainer NPC, and another NPC which I didn't bother to spawn. The third area is just a big duel room, entered via a button next to a doorway. Inside, another similar button teleports you out again. A third button, on the inside, raises a cage. Stepping through the passage near the aforementioned button, leads to a large empty duel room. The final room, through the fourth passage, is seemingly inaccessible. Yeah, right. Noclip for the win ;) . There's a small pond, a meeting table, and a row of buttons. Three of the buttons drop dead reborns into the pool, another button raises a stone platform into the pool, and the others seemingly do nothing, but I assume one unlocks the entrance.

The good parts. Simple map, high framerate, good variation in areas, no really useless stuff, a good deal of things to do, moderate RP server value. The design isn't particularly striking, but it's not ugly either. Several ideas were quite smart strokes. A few aspects of the map are just neat. Clan tags aren't pasted anywhere.

The bad parts. The texturing gets very repetitive. The lighting is boring - it seems as if one light entity has been stuck in the center of each room and adjusted to light the whole room. No light sources, and almost no variation. "Don't Lame" has been plastered everywhere, and has been constructed from brushes. For starters, it would have been better making a custom sign texture and using one brush for each occurence, rather than the dozens used to spell the words out. Secondly, dotting that everywhere lowers the RP value of the map, and in a map well-suited for FFA games, it makes little sense. The map tries to use too many themes in the different areas, and it doesn't work so well. Variation is nice, but it's hard to believe that a Yavin map can go from Yavin academy to Japanese dojo to roman-esque.

Anyway, this isn't such a bad map, so if you like it, give it a download. I still don't believe that a map this simple took 12 weeks, though.

~ Kouen

Bot Support: No New Models: No New Textures: No Custom Music: No

Gametypes: Free For All