Canyon: Redux

Alright I played through the map a few times to really get a feel for it. Really cool map! The first impression based on imagery and gaming aspects is great. The high catwalks over toxic acid create great vertical gameplay downwards while the huge combine machine like sky create great vertical relief upwards. Walking on the catwalk by the white beam reminds me of halflife 2 when you'r gravity gun gets rigged to grab people and your walking through Dr. Breens tower. The doors that roll out of the way are really awesome. They really contribute to the combine waste theme. The custom textures are all really good but some of them are a little too repeated. This especially in the maine center area. Weapon placement is pretty good though you should have to work a little bit to find ammo rather than get a bundle of it at the weapon. Well I guess it would save time. In my opinion the egon is a little bit too easy to get and I couldnt even find the gauss. The architecture is overall clean and well molded together. I like the way you contourted some of the ceilings to compliment the tiled textures. The entire map is a very ideal blueprint of a playable and well balanced arena while still holding uniqueness. It is very ideal in that it is a huge area of vertical gameplay with catwalks surrounded by halls and pathways in all directions all leading to the same center area. The hallways and areas surrounding the main center do their job in getting you up and down different areas of it but also keep their own unique secluded feeling. The elevator lifts in the tubes were really neat and well textured. The health areas were really cool and give the player the ablity to aim out while charging rather than having to quickly jot in bits of health fearing a gunshot to the back of the head. The platform elevators in my opinion are way to slow and no one would want to wait on them while getting sprayed down. Everyone would just run inside to get higher up. And I really cant stand elevators that move on their own because everytime you get to them their in the up position so you should just put buttons on both ends or make it start in the down postion. Deatmatch fall dammage is only 10 anyways. To sum it up.

+Architecture is unique but fluent.

+Great texture use for the most part.

+Ambience is included and pretty good.

+The doors are pure awesome!

+Great use of vertical gameplay.

+Good start locations.

+Great visuals.

+/- Weapon and ammo placement could be better.

-Some lifts are way too slow.

-Some textures are a little overused.

-Same old overused sounds are used for the plats and ambience.

This map is lacking only in minute areas but really displays your abilities as an awesome mapper. It would be a definite in the rotation if we'd get a server running and i'd love to play it with you sometime. Btw im not quite sure how you made the doors roll. Are they func_platrots? This map was pretty inspirational for me to get a deathmatch map done myself. I'd like to check out you'r friend's early version. With the solidarity of everything this is a well deserving five star map.

++++++The map and the textures looks great.
-Explosive crates doesn't explode
-Slow elevators
I have no sound so I don't know about the ambience

Thanks for your comments and votes so far...

Yeah, I could have done with more textures, to reduce repetition a little, but I was already hitting the 4Mb limit at this stage!

The moving platforms are slow, precisely BECAUSE the egon is so easy to get to. It may be easy to pick up, but escaping with it in one piece is another matter. One aspect of my buddy's level that I had to preserve was the egon/rocket battles which unfold so regularly -- since the egon's range isn't enough to reach the platform where the rocket launcher sits...

The explosive crates DO explode. Just not easily!

(A consistent complaint about my maps is that breakable stuff is too darn tough, and doesn't break with one or two shots. My thinking is that if it's gonna break that easily, it may as well not exist. If you have a crate filled with explosives you don't want it to go off every time some clumsy handler bumps into it... Long story short, that aspect of my level design is unlikely to change anytime soon. Sorry...)

Edit: The rolling doors are func_trains with a rotational speed applied. I've tweaked my own code so that they reverse rotational direction when they close, which I couldn't get to work under standard HLDM. Must investigate platrots, see if I could make them do the same thing...

Edit 2: As for the "same old overused sounds" -- yeah. I haven't really looked into adding new sounds (or more to the point, I'm not sure where I'd go to find new sounds...) Should probably investigate that further...

Besides being epic, this map reminds me of "the trap" mod. 5 stars

First lemme say automatic 5 stars for the advanced skill that went into this map. This must have taken eons to build and compile considering how epicly-huge it is...

Many likes to this map, but a fair amount of dislikes notwithstanding:

++epic scope and size, all very carefully put together(reminds me of a star wars movie walking through it.
++epic gadgetry like the healing rooms, lifts, doors, and many other things
++epic vistas throughout and interesting structures/formations to marvel at.

--the sky was cool, but might have been improved/replaced in some areas by brushwork(like the part where you can look out the windows going up the lift, as it didn't look natural. plus some other places same thing)I'm sure tho you were limited by mapping resources to do source-like skyboxing for this.
--Texturing thoroughout is very carefully done and very good, but they are a bit repetative and wearing in a great deal of places too. like the main open area with all the pipes and lifts...it's a huge rectangle monotextured with a very simple tiling texture. a little retexturng to break it up would improve the look of this area imo hugely. (really nice looking shadows/lighting in this area btw.
-use of ambient sounds could have been much better imo.
-I like the lifts you can call, but some of the other lifts and moving platforms are maddening slow. I had no patience to wait for them, so i noclipped through much of that area.

Though this map has a fair amount of minuses imo. The pluses far outweigh them, and i'd love to see how this plays on a server.

Epic work as always, from the inimitable darkphoenix_68!
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