scrimpy's News

I thought I'd starte a little subcategory to keep you nigs entertained. As I'm very much into mapping and map testing, I thought I'd tell you a little about maps that do not get the respect and the public attention they should get (ranging from few to no servers at all) which is very sad because all the effort that went into them is wasted by an ignorant community of idiots who somehow all seem to enjoy dust... I'll here review beta maps, custom maps and even official maps that go less played than they should.

This time I have broken my modus operandi and instead of CS have reviewed a Map for Team Fortress 2. Actually it is ctf_quarry_v2 by PogoP, which I have yet to see in real play. As the name implies, it is a capture the flag map, much like 2fort, but also with some striking differences. Also, as the name implies, the map is set in a quarry, what basically means desert. Which has been overdone by now, but oh well, this map is rather old, actually, so, it was quite aight at the time it came out, I mean, REALLY old. Even older than badlands, which is quite a lot, if you really look at it, as badlands also already gets treated like an old map. Now, I will stop talking some general shit and directly move onto the map. Yet, one last thing is that TF2 maps are different to rate than CS maps paying closer attention to gameplay, fluidness (performance and clipping) completeness (more of this later) and little gimmicks such as the windows with all that spytech shit behind it as you can see in official maps such as 2fort and well.

Yet, let's start out with the graphics first that, quite frankly, can effortlessly compete with the official graphics of, i.E. 2fort. The outlying areas tend to be quite bland, as opposed to i.E. 2fort but ALOT more attention has been paid to the details such as cobwebs, those little windows I mentioned earlier, just things that you don't notice until you take a closer look. After all, due to the setting; the extreme indoorness (although there also are outdoor areas), which may not be everyones taste, you won't notice alot of the bland surroundings anyway. After all, you can easily see that a lot of work went into this.

On Custom Stuff, I don't think there is a lot. There is a metal, heavily reflective, texture which is used as frame for a fenced-in area, along with the fence texture itself, from which I don't know wether ithey from TF2, HL2 or entirely custom. Looking at the texture names using mat_crosshair however, I am fairly sure they are, in fact, custom. But nearly everything is standard anyway which is by now means bad, as they fit to the overall theme. Also, as mentioned earlier, this map is old and from a time where custom stuff wasn't that important for TF2. The brushwork is rather complicated, also resulting out of the Fuckload of details.

Now talking about Gameplay, I'm yet disadvantagous because I have never played it, but I can imagine the map to run very well. The Main area consists of one large room (a rock cave with a hole in the ceiling, to be exact) with a pit inside that only soldiers and demomen can get out and two bridges that lead to a platform high above that pit, which several health and ammo packs are placed on, along with the classical sniper windows (that you can't exit, unlike 2fort) overlooking the area. There are also several rocks placed around the pit for cover. There are three (well, four) entrances to this main area, with the fourth one leading into the pit, similar to the sewers in 2fort. The other two are on ground level, the third one leads to that bridge. The pit entrance leads quite close to the Intel Room entrances with one major Problem, though: There is a ghost mine cart speeding along its way through the path that'll kill you instantly upon touch. It is quite fast, plus there is only the sound of the cart itself, not the warning siren you can hear in cp_well. Luckily, there is a little alcove that you can wait in and let the cart pass by. God damn, fights in this area are gonna end FAST.

I guess it will not be hard to get the intel, at least not as hard as in 2fort, as there are three entrances to the room, at three totally different positions, so a sentry or a sentry nest should be destroyable without the need to uber. To make up for that, the spawn room overlooks the Intel room, and the entrances to the intel room are below the spawn room. So, running out of the intel room may result in a pyro coming right out of the spawn directly roasting you from behind. However, this quite exposed place of the spawn room, coupled with the lack of a secondary one coupled with the fact that the two doors are quite close together means that this spawn can easily be camped by a demoman or two. I pray to god that I am wrong with this.

Class balance is quite well. While the scout again suffers from the crampedity of the intel room and its entrances, there are several places for him: First of all, he can doublejump over the pit, something that only the soldier and the demoman besides can do. He is doublejump can save him some time in several areas, he can enter the second floor using another route (which turns into a one-way exit for anything but soldiers, demoman and scouts again) and thereby use another entryway to get into the base. It also lets him ambush snipers quite easily. Also, his overall speeds helps him a real fucking lot when having to get through the death tunnel cleared out by the ghost cart on regular basis. Soldiers of course are really advantagous since they can jump out of the pit, onto the platform (and use their height advantage) and the oneway exit, which turns into another entryway for them. Plus there is a high ledge in each main hall the the soldier can jump on, raining death upon his enemies. The same goes for demoman, naturally, who can of course spam into every chokepoint they can find. Also, a sticky jump obviously helps them being really fast at the enemy, or getting up to the platform. Pyros have a nice (but dangerous) ambush route by the death tunnel (which is reffered by that from now on) plus, as said before, they can ambush anything coming out of the intel room. Lastly, his airblast hopefully fulfill its purpose. Heavies have some nice close quarters to strike in, but they will easily fall prey to snipers and demomen in the cave. One ubercharge or two will however (as the bases are quite small, clear out everything). Engineers have some nice sentry spots, although they most likely are also counterable by an uberdemo/pyro/heavy. Medics also have some corners to hide behind, which also is a plus. In the main fight area, they are howevery pretty well ambushable from behind and above. Snipers have the usual battlements, alongside with some other nice positions. There however is enough cover for the other team as well, which is good, obviously. Spies I don't know about, as they have three heavily trafficed and one very dangerous route to enter. Their best bet is the latter, I guess. Although there may be some nice uncloaking spots that I yet have to find. So, overall, class balance is really good.

Lastly, polishment. This includes things that final maps should have like player clipping, gimmicks such as the windows (a fuckton in quarry, along with some other windows closed by metal plates), or, well, the cart of death, performance, and little details such as working spawns and things like that. Also, it of course has to be entirely bugfixed. Quarry also does a very well job here. I can't complain about clpping, the spawns are how they should work so you do not die when you want to change class, something that too many maps don't have. Most of them the infamous orange maps, or dm or fun maps. Yet, the windows you can see are quite detailed, and so work very well and feel authenthic. True, perhaps. The only thing that is questionable is the performance, which seems to be quite bad, although it also has been optimized as good as possible, as mat_wireframe 1 can tell. So, here are the results:

GRAPHICS : 10/10
GAMEPLAY/BALANCE : 9/10
FLOW/PERFORMANCE : 7/10
ORIGINALITY : 5/10 (+2 for the ghost cart of death)

So overall: 8,25
I guess this "low" rating is most likely due to the fact that it's pretty much more of the same, yet it's still awesome.

So:
http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/41263

Check it out faggots, and if you have a server, pack it into the cycle.

On a side note, I'm working on a little map myself, more of this later.

-> Screens come if I feel like it, you'll be pretty happy with the screens supplied with the link anyway. Also, READ AND COMMENT, FUCKWITS. This took me too long.

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