9th Place Place: pwpipes1 by PeeWee_Rota

[X7[Q2C]]

Peewee's Pipes The Giant Aliens
pwpipes1.bsp



q2c.tastyspleen.net/maps/con_7/pwpipes1.zip








Judges scores



Judges comments:

James[Q2C]:
I thought it was a pretty cool map, the textures kidna bgged me but an all-around good map.
I Loved the railgun room. i was impressed with the size of the map.

Dervish:
This one reminds me of some of the single player maps in q2, and as such it needs a little more work on the flow for multiplayer. The inability to enter and exit certain areas quickly and with more than a few choices cuts down on the speed of player movement and the flow of the combat.

While some spots are a bit monotonous due to overuse of a single texture, the map is consistent all around in terms of form and style, and theres not a lot of places where you get hung up on brushes.

I found it to be lacking any sounds, where it could have used water effects and pump sounds.

Spawn Girl:
1) Definitely is not for all the levels of skill
2) Is too labyrinthine and have several separated parts and no conectivity (without skill)

I don't like the map is cold, and ugly. Is a good job technically but nothing more.
Can be fun for some jump mod players.

Wixen1 [Q2C]:
n/a

Mr. LemonyFresh:
I find the map to be a little inconsistent and random in it's layout.
At one point you can find scenery typical to that of an Egyptian theme while at the same time you stumble upon randomness like for example, what looks like some very big ..bunk beads..?

I wouldn't mind, but the transition between techno/Egypt and techno/...?
is kinda fuzzy and I'm not seeing any kind of consistent theme or idea.

The geometry is not bad, I think it could have been a little more carefully put together in some places,
but aside from that, there are some daring efforts like the statue that holds the quad damage.

The texture placement is ok, although a bit of colour coordination would have gone far.

I felt as though some space in the rooms could have been filled up, while some corridors I found a bit claustrophobic.
Apart from some slightly messy brush placement, the tris count for the level is quite stable, and everything runs fine.

I found that some of the platforms and corridors were a tad bit ridged, something needs to give for smoother gameplay.
I quite like the the the BFG is placed, kinda harder to get but obvious that it's there.

[peeweerota]

Thanks for the judging guys, I appreciate it


As a note:

- I'm a programmer, I have no sense of color coordination.

- I play with my sounds off so it completely slipped my mind

- The overall theme was very tall aliens that are cared for by humans. Hence the small kitchen and the giant fridges. (also the tall bunk beds that have walkways for humans that the aliens wouldn't need)

- The split in theme was due to half of it being created 3 or more years ago and the rest now.

- The crappy texturing was due to time and brush constraints. You'll see that the room I started on, the sewer, is 100% textured while the last room I worked on, the BFG room, is untextured as untextured gets. In order to texture the halls properly I would have tripled the current brush count, which is already astronomical. (However i surprised myself at how well i was able to hide large rooms from seeing other large rooms keeping the rspeeds down)

- The scarcity of items in some locations was due to the limit of entities on a single map. I was at the point where a map without full QVIS would no longer display items. I'm probably around 160 items in the map. Above 256 crashes maps, so I cut short to avoid that.



Anyway that's my story, I'm just happy to finally finish it. It was a lot of fun to make, and that's what matters




(P.S., X7, did you use gl_modulate 1000000 in those screenies? LOL)

[spirit]

The very tight corridors connecting large, temple-like halls without sky make this map feel quite claustrobhobic and linear. Lighting and texturing could use some work, too. But there's some cool spots and ideas. The things I like most are the RG room, the BFG spot (though the pipes are quite tight in some places, think I even need to duck a few times) and that alien statue holding the QUAD, of course.

Creating a map of this size is lots of work (too much for me!). Starting with a smaller project gives you more time and the freedom to do what you want.

[mrlemonyfresh]

The overall theme was very tall aliens that are cared for by humans. Hence the small kitchen and the giant fridges. (also the tall bunk beds that have walkways for humans that the aliens wouldn't need)

... of course!

lol ok so there was a theme

[yendor]

I'd have to have more than 1v1 on this one to make a playability judgment.

The statue of the beaked alien was weeeird, in a very cool Dr. Moreau kinda way. Driven by the strength and originality of that room, it's statue, and the cyclopean nature of the whole thing, it kept reminding me of something from a H.P. Lovecraft story. It's VERY reminiscent of the underground structures discovered in his story, "The Call of Cthulu," or the ruins found in "At The Mountains of Madness."

(...and everyone who plays any id product MUST read at least that much from Lovecraft!!).

[spirit]

Played this map yesterday with 3 or 4 ppl and I felt alone on this one. It's huuuge! I guess it can handle sth like 16 players easily.

[m]

I agree with the thoughts others have expressed. This is too big and not interconnected enough to suit dm play that well.

That said, you have a great beginning on a huge, linear puzzle/platform style of map. More or less single player, sans the enemies...make the map itself the enemy.

Maybe an idea for an upcoming map contest or better yet, non-contested map pak dealio?

[yendor]

Ive been thinking of cool ideas for mapping contests, like a map in 100 brushes or less.