8th Place: yggdrasil by Yendor

[X7[Q2C]]

Yggdrasil - The World Tree ~ By Yendor ~
yggdrasil.bsp


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








Judges scores



Judges comments:

James[Q2C]:
n/a

Dervish:
This is the most original map concept I have seen for a deathmatch map, but unfortunately the gameplay does not seem to live up to the level of originality. Starting most spawns near a weapon is a step in the right direction in terms of balance, but more could have been done to enable a player on the bottom to reach the top levels of the map and to allow people to escape the top levels without consistently falling to their doom.

Some of the weapons require you to go quite a bit out of your way to get them too, so they dont tend to be called into play like they should. (ex. the railgun)

The ladders and rope bridges were very cool tho and worked a lot better than I expected at first glance.

Spawn Girl:
Creative map, but can not be played in fluid way.
For example: The location of Railgun is frustrating.
Gameplay is bored and frustrating too.

Wixen1 [Q2C]:
n/a

Mr. LemonyFresh:
The idea behind this map is quite refreshing compared to the usual death-match.
I don't really care much for the connectivity of this level.

some platforms i think, needed more care in the way in which they were placed.
Some of the ladders and tree branches make it difficult to get from place to place,
and/or to maintain the upper-hand on your opponent.

The way in which this was delivered is a bit flawed, but some aspects make up for it.
The tree is pretty nice, but i reckon you could have joined the verts a bit better.
I dunno what the ancient head is for, kinda random,
but I've seen something like that done in quake 3

[spirit]

I agree with many of the things mentioned by the judges. The most innovative map of the contest and that tree is cool (it's really hard to make sth like that with brushes!), but the map lacks playability. On an inet server with some opponents shooting at ya and a bit of lag, navigating that tree may get nasty.

[mrlemonyfresh]

Seriously! whats up with the ancient head?? I'm thoroughly confused!

[yendor]

OK, the Ancient head is a power-up that increases your maximum base health by 2 points. When you see one in my maps, I usually stack a few on top of each other to make it (in the case of Yggdrasil) 12 points on max health. The maximum health of which I speak is:
1. The maximum that you can attain using regular health packs,
2. The value of health where the mega-health countdown stops as it wears off.
3. The amount of health you instantly get when you pick up an adrenaline.

So that's what's up with the ancient head.

As far as the railgun, it's a very important weapon in this map, as it's all one open area. Therefore I put it somewhere that's not terribly easy to get at, but is reachable under some amount of cover from a player that's hanging around the upper areas of the tree.

My own account for the map is thus: I had another map about 80% done, when I started to get some errors that I couldn't fix (shame on me for not keeping deep enough backups). So I started this one later. As such, I really didn't work out the layout of the active areas well enough. I made the tree first, then added the platforms. It was all about making a natural-looking tree, which I think turned out very cool... it was loosely based on a grand old oak that I have on my backyard. But alas, the map suffered for this lack of refinement. The frame rates are also horrible, owing to the fact that there's one large room when everything visible all the time. There is a limit, about 32000 polys, where the engine craps out with net-chan messages. My play-testing was done exclusively with 1-on-1 over a lan connect. In this case, the playability was fine. Multiple players on an internet connect will likely suck though

Cest la vie - I just had to make a tree... It'd never been done!

Thanks to all for their time and comments, and I look forward to seeing the other maps!

Cheers!
~Y

[m]

This is a super cool concept and very hard to pull off. I've yet to see a natural object like your tree in Q2 done as well. It's always been a shame that the Q2 engine has so many limits, visible polygons being the most frustrating. Oh well!

I kept picturing that tree covered in bodies, the one from 'The 300'.

[yendor]

Thanks for the compliments! I use Qoole 2.5, so i didn't even try to get the verts on some of the branches to align properly.

I did think of doing "The Hanging Tree" but that a little too dark for me. All the so-called evil monsters, dukes of Hell, sigils, creeping gods, and all that from Satan to Lavey, pales in the darkness of American History with regards to African slavery - by far the most brutal slavery ever put into practive in human history - I just couldn't go with the "Hanging Tree"...

Never saw the 300 - that may have been my direction! Roman temples all up in a tree