DoD_Nuernberg_rc1

I like it. Downloading now to give it a run through.

Damn, a 77 megabyte download! That's a big map, Albatros. A lot of custom textures I assume?

Holy shit! Looks pretty amazing though (from the screenshot).

Seriously amazing looking map, almost photorealistic. Though gameplay looks like it could either flow great or slug around-- I haven't played it with other players so I'm not one to judge it.

if i had DOD:S i'd download this for sure

Well, I downloaded this big chunk of a map. Now, since I don't have DOD:S on my PC, I obviously can't play with it. But I do have the Crafty bsp viewer, which I used to check out your map. And what I saw, is a pretty damn good looking map, very detailed work. So, I will give you top score, but consider this on my part for graphics only.

Texturing 10/10
The texturing is magnificent, diverse, well spanned and outright flawless.

Team Balance 10/10
There are plenty of nooks and crannies all over the map but the good thing is that there are more places to defend from to closer you are to your base which means if you are the losing team, you have a great advantage over the attacking team but if they are captured then they can't be used against you.

Design 10/10
This map is seriously perfect! Different route's to take and well layed out bases that don't really feel like bases.

Ambience 10/10
Perfect lighting, and a decent amount of sound is audible from appropriate places in the map.

Map Skill 10/10
Not one single flaw!

Total 10/10 (5 stars)
I definately have to say that this map is at production studio standards, anyone would believe this map was made by Valve!! Great work, we want more!!

Wow,

stunning feedback.

Now I'm really motivated to finish my map pack of seven DoD:S maps (you were asking for more hehe). Had my doubts after one and a half years of work on it...

I've also been working on a system to use that map pack to reduce the size of the .bsps by two thirds, so no more MB shockers :).

The 77 MB indeed are a result of the tons of custom materials...

Rc2 will be improved a lot in many aspects. Looking forward to presenting it here!

Cheers & thanks everybody,

Albatros

Video Review

Bottom Line

Overall, DoD_Nuernberg is sickeningly well-made. I Don't have a fucking clue as to what else to say, because if you've watched this review, you'll have already seen what it looks like from the in-game footage. I just wish it was made for a game I actually give a shit about.This review is dedicated to 3760

Review

Looking at the screenshots of this map, it looks good. Great, even. Which is probably why this map got MOTM. Unfortunately, when playing the map itself, it's not so great. I've seen this a few times before - screenshots only give you a fixed angle, they give you no sense of the general 'feel' of the map, and obviously you cannot experience the gameplay either. As you can probably glean from the numbers above, the amount of negative commentary I have on this map is rather astonishing, compared to the other reviews in the vault, and yes, in this MOTM feature itself. I'll break it up into the 5 sections, because it makes it much easier for me to write about it. Architecture in the map is rather bland, and many places are blocky and very much out of proportion. Indeed, in some places, any sense of realism is thrown out the window because the scale is ridiculously off. This is particularly noticable with stairs and other enclosed areas. Speaking of enclosed areas, the entire map is full of them. It's disturbingly cramped, and leaves snipers rather useless. The entire map is a maze of tiny corridors and pathways and it is very easy to get lost within the labyrinth of alleyways, stairs, and ladders. Displacement work is lacking at best, with lots of stretched textures and boring, pointy, unnatural-looking stuff littered all over the place. Giving credit where it is due, there are some places where the architecture is well done, and it's particularly noticable in the rooftops, which, for the most part, look rather nice. Taking a look at the 3D skybox shows that some of the higher towers and a small amount of other stuff was moved there for optimisation, but there's nothing else in the 3D skybox besides a terrible excuse for a custom 2D skybox, implemented in all the wrong ways. I realise that you can't PakRat custom skies (I think), but this is just a terrible way to try to get around it. The author has run a circle of sprites or something right around the 3D skybox. It looks horrible when you're playing it, and there's a perfectly good 3D skybox there that could be used instead. It's not just for optimisation of tower-like structures, you know! Texturing is nothing special, and is downright bad in some places, with some cases of misaligned and badly blended textures. There are some places that use the same texture over a large space, which gives it a monotonous, boring feel. There are several places where two textures are placed next to each other that clash, and don't tile or fit together in any way. Ambience is disappointingly over-the-top. There's a looping background sound of your typical DOD fare - guns firing and artillery going off, but it's much too loud - enough to be annoying after extended (read: 5 minutes) periods of play. There's also absolutely no variation in the volume of the background sounds throughout the entire map - some soundscapes could do a lot for it. The author tried to create a bit more ambience by inserting several sound loops that you can only hear when near a certain area - and fell flat. There's (at least) two places with random looping audio of people singing, and the sound is coming from nowhere in particular. In one case, I'm pretty sure there's a woman's singing voice coming out of a rather large slab of concrete. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from a crappy counterstrike map, not a MOTM winner. The mapper seems to have inserted every single vehicle model that DOD has into the map, which, I suppose, is their choice - but it reeks of over-compensation, and misuse of models. In fact, most of the models of the map are badly placed - almost "chucked in", because Source mapping is reasonably dependant on models. I think that this map might have been made by someone more used to the Goldsource way of mapping, which isn't a problem normally, but remember we're talking MOTM winner material here. Moving on to lighting, which is average at best. Lighting is present, but does little to add contrast or anything interesting to the map. Yellow and white light appear to be overused, making the map seem very boring, with no heavy contrasting areas at all. Also - the street light have an odd look to them as you get closer or further away from them. And why are street lights on anyway, it's the middle of the day! Finally, the all-important gameplay. Not much to say about this, really - the number says most of it, and the rest is explained above. The cramped style of the map makes it almost impossible for snipers to be effective, and doesn't really make the map fun at all. It's also a veritable maze of passageways, stairs, alleys, and the like, which makes it amazingly easy to get lost. A few times I was wandering around the map, rather lost, and suddenly I found myself on the other side of the map! Very confusing. Several times, playing as either team, I found myself running into clip brushes, or player team clips. It breaks an unspoken rule of DOD - players can walk back into their spawn after dropping down from their little ledges. Only the player team clips stop the allies walking into the axis spawn and spawnkilling the lot of them. Another unspoken rule of DOD, and all multiplayer maps in general - usable objects. I encountered at least two - a machine gun-type thing, and a mortar, both of which may or may not kill people in range of said objects (the former making them much, much, worse.) Again, this is the kind of thing I'd expect from some crappy TF2 achievement-whore map, not MOTM material. Yet another unspoken rule of DOD - balance the caps! Nuernberg has 5 caps, 3 of which are single-man caps. Get where I'm going with this? It's simply unbalanced! There's not much more to say about that, beside that it creates unbalanced gameplay, and unfair matches. One final thing - I was happily nazi-ing along with my MP5 (or whatever it is), and had just walked out of the spawn, approaching the centre of the map, when suddenly I fell down a hole! There's a craftily-placed manhole thingie just after a small ledge, which makes it pretty much impossible to see until you're falling down it. Mappers out there, reading this review: Please, put holes in a place where you can see them before you're dropping to your (possible) doom! Thankyou.

Bottom Line

A fairly disappointing map that needs serious improvement. Techniques used in the map makes it seem as if the author is used to Goldsource mapping. If so, perhaps it may be best to stay with Goldsource. Otherwise, please do some more research on Source mapping! From this, it seems that most TWHL members who actually bother to vote for MOTM judge mostly by the screenshot of the map, without actually playing it. I'd recommend that members play the map before voting in the future. Or maybe just more people need to vote.

The detail of the map looks very nice. Looks of official DoD quality too. You did a great job with this.

Congrats on the MotM win! Well deserved!