2nd Place: spirit2dm2 by Spirit

[X7[Q2C]]

spirit2dm2 - The arms of Lilith (q2 edition) - by Spirit

q2c.tastyspleen.net/maps/con_6/spirit2dm2.zip
q2c.tastyspleen.net/maps/con_6/spirit2dm2.txt

Judge by	Map Creator	Filename of bsp	Original or Revision	Texturing	Originality	Game Play	Weapon/Item/Health layout	Extras (jump pads, etc)	Lighting	Sounds	Connectivity/ Flow	Technical Rating	Total Score
kold	Spirit	spirit2dm2.bsp	Original	8.50	8.50	7.50	7.00	7.00	8.50	7.50	7.50	8.50	70.50
Paril	Spirit	spirit2dm2.bsp	Original	9.00	6.00	9.00	8.00	7.00	8.00	9.00	10.00	8.00	74.00

kold

Spirit’s map - Spirit really has picked up Quake 2 mapping very quickly and shows he can easily transfer his skills from
other game engines into q2 with the snap of his fingers, (plus coffee).
It was good to see a different texture set used in Quake 2, very refreshing. The item placement seemed good but ammo
was very limited and spread out across the map. It felt a little weird at first with the clipping on the crates, it helped speed
up gameplay but felt a little weird to me?
r_speeds seemed quite out of place, 3000+ in some areas, I’m not sure if thats because of the compile process or the
open area above the map where the sky is? It looked like a fast vis from my end but I dont know ;-)
Beautiful brushwork. Reminded me of a Quake 4 map.
All in all I really liked this map, there should be many fun duels in this.

Paril

Subjective Observation (What did you think of it?):
Extremely great flow, small deathmatch map, quite the experience
[Comments]
The first time I entered this map, all I could say was 'wow'. The textures stood out immediately,
and I recognized them from a few other maps. The style isn't exactly "original", but the way
Spirit put together this style is superb. The textures flow really easily, there's a nice amount of
eye candy, and even a low quality version. I only saw one teleporter and not much else for extras,
which makes the map a bit more linear, but it's a great map none-the-less.

[j3st3r]

How does a map with such high r_speeds get a better technical score than others? Wouldn't the r_speeds also hurt online gameplay?

[jaydolan]

The "r_speeds" indication that online gameplay might suffer is the mesh polys count, not the world polys count. Mesh polys usually has some correlation to the number of entities in your PVS at any point in time. More entities in PVS means larger average packet size which means you're more likely to have messages suppressed by the server due to rate caps. You also run the risk of overflows, especially during baselines (joining the server).

High world poly counts, on the other hand, don't mean anything to online gameplay. They might cause slower machines to struggle with framerate, but you won't start dropping network messages etc.. because of world polys.

Also, in spirit's defense, this map was originally created for Quake2World, which, as you know Jester, can handle significantly higher poly counts than Quake2. It was back-ported for the contest.

My personal opinion is that jtrep is a better Quake2 level than Spirit's Q2 port of Lilith. I think the lighting in this version came out a bit pale. Or maybe I'm just comparing it to what it looks like in Quake2World. Regardless, they're both fantastic maps. I would rather play Lilith in a 1v1, and jtrep for a small FFA.

[Whirlingdervish]

depending on the size of the big open areas with lots of tris, software players might have a bit of trouble as well..

still checking out some of these maps, so I'll chime in with my opinion in a bit.

[SkiesOfBordom]

Iniitially, when I spawned into this map, i was wow'ed. However, me being a hard critic, looked into the details. I found several texture mistakes, the textures looked washed out because they had to be ported to 256 colors, and some of the brushwork was off.... k enuf with the negative. I liked the layout for this. The detailing of the pipes were nice too. Ceiling structure also looked nice. Gameplay was excellent (worked well with bots).

Basically, I just couldnt get over the textures. Oh, and teh item layout wasnt to hot either.
I place this 4th.

[spirit]

Hi everyone,

I just returned from a job that left me in the back of beyond with no internet connection for more than 2 weeks, so I just saw all the discussions in here. I haven't even downloaded the maps yet.

First I'd like to thank the people who put a lot of work into this contest, both mappers and judges. I agree that having only 2 judges isn't optimal, but you can't blame Paril or anyone else for that.

I won't comment on the judging here for obvious reasons (haven't played the maps yet) and because I didn't participate in the contest for the placement but for the fun. And that is why I'm a bit disappointed after reading some of the rather angry discussions here.

What really struck me was being more or less accused of stealing the layout I put many hours of work into. This really wasn't what I expected when I came here to finally see the results of a contest I had waited for so long and with anticipation.

[peeweerota]

Oct 10, 2008 12:00:43 GMT -5 spirit said:

What really struck me was being more or less accused of stealing the layout I put many hours of work into.

someone wasn't reading

Your game play is similar to but not as good as ztnmap5. Not intentionally stolen, just samey for reasons I elaborate elsewhere. Heck just today someone on TS accused jtrep of stealing ideas from jstress LOL

[Riz [Q2C]]

This map is freaking beautiful. However it is not fully friendly with slower PC's (like mine) and takes a while the render the far away places. Otherwise a solid nice map.

[spirit]

Oct 10, 2008 17:43:11 GMT -5 peeweerota said:

someone wasn't reading

Ok, then I got you wrong it seems. Fine with me.

[peeweerota]

Sorry, I don't mean to diminish your effort. I viewed your map in both quake 2 as well as the Q2W distribution and it is absolutely beautiful.