My turn to do a review! Great thanks to Pink Panther for his own, of course. I'm not myself going to do such a ting as giving ratings etc., since the purpose here is to select only one entry, I already eliminated a number of them by looking at the screenshots (not just one of them, but all the ones that were provided in the upload thread). Yes, that would be a bad method if I intended to actually rank all entries. But the point is, I didn't, so essentially any entry with a couple of critical defects was not going to make it - and defects I could see on a screenshot were obviously not going to disappear by running the .bsp.
Please note before reading that I did not judge gameplay at all, only visuals (with two specific exceptions that I will explain). Also, I am extremely picky with metal beams: if you don't see any other comment than one about metal beams, know that's it's already enough to me.
#1 Dullestbulb
|I'm not convinced by the floating panels. More importantly, the noticeable presence of red textures (window frames, wooden desk) in a blue base feels inappropriate. On the plus side, the fly-through video is appreciated.
#2 - Apom
|I think that's me :]
#3 - CornOnTheCod
|The concrete pillar that's somehow pierced to let a metal beam pass through looks strange. The other metal beam is only half-positioned, so that half of the screws are in thin air.
#4 - Nubcake
|General feeling of emptiness and lack of detail. The metal ceiling looks weird, you'd expect it to be concrete.
#8 - LSS40 #1
|Detailing isn't bad, but the completely uniform lighting makes it almost look like a fullbright map.
#9 - LSS40 #2
|The scaffolding is highly unrealistic (the transversal beams don't support anything), and those electric panels would probably be safer if protected from weather conditions by at least a minimal door. Also, what's the pulley doing up there?
#11 - VelvetFistIronGlove #1
|Metal beams without apparent screwplates
#14 - BladeMasterPsi
|I think the mix of concrete and wood is a failure. That's too bad, because it looks pretty good otherwise.
#15 - Pitto
|The glass looks waaaaay to thin to support people walking on it (let alone battle damage)!
#16 - Fearlezz
|Even though the rest looks good, the railing is so central in this room that you can't afford to mess with it. In this case, the props overlap in a very visible fashion, and the fixtures (that should be on a vertical wall) are seen sticking out of the ground.
#17 - Void
|The walls (and probably ceiling too) are too bland and undetailed. Those parts that are detailed are nice, but there aren't enough of them.
#19 - MrMuffinMan
|By making a room with such a high ceiling, you aren't taking the easy way, because you run the risk of it feeling empty. You should probably have done a lot more work on the walls, or more easily lowered the ceiling
#20 - Sgt Frag
|The spotlights are much too wide compared to the props they emanate from. More importantly, the lighting is completely uniform (I couldn't find a single shadow), which doesn't do justice to the nice detail work.
#21 - Jazz
|While this is overall a good entry, I think you went a bit "cheap" with the workload. Really, this is just a pair of cubes + pyramids and a volley of stairs. You probably spent time on the "trap" thing, which admittedly is a nice addition, but not enough to compete with the best. Also, I'm not sure about the ceiling opening, as I would have preferred a more "entombed" ambiance (with only torches, no skylight).
#22 - Tech
|Another occurence of beams without screwplates
Also, some walls look somewhat empty and could probably use some more props/overlays.
#28 - Drexen
|You really need an env_tonemap_controller, the HDR is killing me. And for god's sake, don't upload screenshots in .bmp format :angry:
Okay, so after this pre-selection, the other entries are the ones I actually played because they looked like good contenders and/or had some fresh ideas I wanted to check out.
#5 - Youme
|Who would have guessed that Youme's entry wouldn't conform to the name scheme?
Excellent sunset ambiance and gorgeous displacements as usual. The details around the "room" are excellent. Unfortunately, the "room" itself feels... Empty, somehow. This would be an excellent point of passage in a regular map, but as a place that receives focus... I don't know, it lacks some luster.
#6 - Ezekel
|The water inside the cave seems to appear and disappear at will (because you have different water levels), which is a turn off and prevented me from appreciating it. The smoke at the base of the waterfall is totally killing my FPS when I look at it, you went way overboard with sprite density. Further, because of one of these two things (or their conjunction), your map made my computer crash :/
#7 - MungoKing
|It's really small. While I liked the lightbulb's fixture and the ceiling falling apart, the construction light's attachment looks very artifical (it should be attached by the handle, shouldn't it ?). The yellow spots on wooden pillars that hold the lanterns are distracting. Also, the wooden support wall stops somewhat abrubtly, without being properly terminated (whether by rock or a larger wood piece).
#10 - VelvetFistIronGlove #2
|My favorite map after seeing the screenshots. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out as well in-game
The whole room is dark and the only part that stands out is the very bright desk. This makes it difficult to enjoy the rest of the detail work. Also, viewing it from ground level definitely doesn't have the same qualities as the somewhat aerial screenshot you took.
#12 - Omega322
|A solid entry. I found a couple of minor texture continuity issues, but I had to look for them. The most disturbing part is the flag staircase itself: it's not aligned with the "entrance" between the two pillared walls, because one of these two walls is longer than the other but you still used a central symetry to place the staircase. Also, the displacement here is disturbing: shouldn't it have a lower elevation in the centre and higher elevation close to the walls, rather than the opposite?
#13 - Vander
|An excellent take on the archeologic egyptian site. The scaffold next to the hieroglyphs is brilliant. While I didn't find any major flaw, there were a small number of minor flaws that, when accumulated, prevented it from taking first spot: different textures on the disjointed bricks, a light leak at the base of the broken wall, one of the wires that goes through the stairs. I also think that some lightspots on those construction lights would have made for an even better atmosphere.
#18 - Pink Panther
|Nice job with the spacebase theme, it often ends in catastrophic failure. The flag "cage", although nice, is probably too complicated, but that's arguable. I think the most notable problem is your use of glass textures - badly aligned, badly scaled, visible brush transitions (interior faces should be set to invisible).
#23 - NameLess
|An excellent entry. The skybox is fantastic and the room itself is high quality too (of course, you get bonus points for using my props
). Wires with a rope texture are noteworthy as well. On the bad side, the blue lighting in the corridors is a mistake that's already been commented on, I also noted that the pillars in the other corridor (the one you don't spawn in) are too short, they don't reach the ceiling (and the one in the corner visibly overlaps with a copy of itself). On a more structural note, the log as a support doesn't convince me, it should be on the edge of the wooden extension for that, not leave it hanging.
#24 - ikem
|A fine entry, probably the one with the strongest atmosphere in this contest. The pipework is most excellent. Unfortunately, there were a couple of overlapping brushes and props (including right in the player's face at the spawn point), some of the class-themed props on the table seemed to be floating, and the blue light was... well, too blue. I mean, too much "#0000FF", not enough TF2 blue.
#25 - ABBAttoir
|An excellent entry, simple and effective. The underwater part is just perfect, and the side rooms are cool too. However, the glass texture on the windows doesn't really fit, so there is a visible transition between the first 512 units and the rest. I'm not entirely sure about the gray metal ceiling either (that's arguable). One of favorite entries.
#26 - Big Rexy
|Excellent job with a sci-fi theme. I think the real problem is with playability. I said I wouldn't judge gameplay, but in this case, your moving platforms are so central that one can't ignore the way they interact with gameplay. And it's too easy to mess around with the platforms so that they end up in bad places, have you drop of them when you shouldn't, etc. I praise you for trying, still. The only visual problem I could find is texture alignement in the metal struts that surround the moving parts, these should be 45°-angled rather than brutally cut each other at 90° (you hardly look up there, so it's really nitpicking).
#27 - A Boojum Snark
|Wow. There are so many awesome things in this entry that I do'nt know where to start. Complex and yet realistic wiring job, fantastic usage of skybox props, best usage of metal beams I've ever seen, a background that's good enough to be featured separately, dislodged tiles that reveal underground pipes, perfectly shaped staircase, self-illuminated ground shape... I have one single complaint: the desk zone is bordered by that door threshold texture that totally ruins my video card's anisotropic filtering - which is okay for a door threshold as you'll only look directly at it if it's close, but annoying for distant vertical surfaces.
