My old map pack

[Dayz]

Hello everyone!
   I just discovered Open Arena and being one who loves to support anything Open Source I just had to see if my old Q3 levels would work and of course they work as well as they ever did!
Grab the pack here, but please don't tell my boss I'm using his web space... lol.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, it's all original textures and designed to run on older machines, my old P2 350 / TNT2 32MB loved them!
Bots go off and a couple of times we had 4-6 player DMs with great success.

http://www.country-care.com.au/dayz/dayzoa.pk3

[w1zrd]

Nice to see that they work as they should. Have you considered to release the maps under GNU GPLv2 or later so that they can actually be used by the Open Arena project? All you would need to do is to include a copy of the GNU GPLv2, write a few lines of text and Bob's your uncle.
I think the CTF map especially would be appreciated since most Open Arena players play CTF, and now they would have a BFG on the map

[Dayz]

Sure thing!
If the maps became part of the game I'd be bloody stoked!
The DMs were made as Training Arenas, so I reckon they'd go ok as a Tier, DayzDM3 is great for 1v1s.
Stay tuned...

[Dayz]

I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism any of you have on my maps.
Basically I want to know if there are any suggested tweaks I could make before the final release, or if they are OK as is.
Please don't be shy, I have a thick skin

[cosmo]

Hey Dayz,
I'm no fan of good words only, so here are my comments:

I went through your maps without bots and didn't test the playability as long as I'm short on time. First I've to say I love arena type of maps so good connectivity and reachability is important for me. If you're heading for oldschool mapstyle then don't take me too serious.

I came across the following problems in each of your maps. Walls in general are way too small/narrow so I got the slight feeling everything is made of paper-mâché. Often your stairs/ledges are too steep and narrow. You should have used more/other textures to add more details. Every map is made of one gaint box and many walls inside. If I would improve the maps I would start removing the gaint box and create unique rooms so everybody is able to know where he is at any time. I would reduce the amount of small rooms and create better looking 'standalone' rooms connected smartly.

dayzctfx:
There are performance issues, it's too open for my taste, there are unnatural walls/borders and texturing is too simple

dayzdm2:
doorways are to low/narrow, walls too thin, sprial staircase too dark, it's a small map and has too many items, ledges are too narrow I can imagine it's easy kick everybody of with a single rocket.

dayzdm3:
All my introducing concerns and lightning could be improved.

dayzdm4:
My favourite of your pack. If you remove the box-feeling and 75% of those ledges, add more details and don't have it so very open it's a fantastic "king of the hill" map.

dayzdm5:
Labyrinth type of map I imagine difficult to play. I guess Counterstrike players have fun with this one.
For me it's too narrow (all those hallways), no places for good dogfights, there is only one way up and why do I get hurt when I'm upstairs, is Quad and BFG balanced well?


Dayz, thanks a lot for adding your mappack to OA. I would love to see one or two maps improved. There is much potential.
I might be wrong and your maps are great fun to play. I just argued how they look like.

[Dayz]

Thank you so much for your input Cosmo.
Perhaps a further explanation of the pack might clarify things.
First, yes it is a pack of Old school maps, designed 4 years ago as my learner maps. Notice dayzdm1 is absent, and will never see action again...
The walls are too thin, you are right. they should be at least twice the thickness, you can follow rockets through them lol.
The giant box is themed (loosely) on the idea of the training room from the X-men, and such.
The few textures are all from pics I had taken, of a brick wall, carpet at my brother's house, his bathroom tiles, my wooden chess set and (of course) the sky. Just for the sake of saying the textures are all original.
I don't even know if I have the old map files, 4 years ago is a few comps ago too...
Dayzctfx, "Training room - Open Slather!": is meant to be that open, I never experienced performance issues before, even with 8 bots on my old machine.
Dayzdm2, "Training Room - Vertically Challenged": here's a secret: the spiral staircase is a trap, as are the 'doorways' that are too low. You are meant to be vulnerable as you crouch to move through them. I thought, why be able to crouch and crawl if there are  never bits of maps that you have to crouch and crawl to reach?
The trade off of so much health on the ground is you have no higher ground advantage, and it is supposed to be easy to splash damage you off the walkways, so you can learn to not be splashed off walkways...
Dayzdm3, "Training Room - King of the Castle": Only called dayzdm3 because I returned to dayzdm1 and expanded it after completing dayzdm2. It was going to be a CTF map based on the theme of the flags being right next to each other but separated. An idea i will definitely return to should I ever find time to map again (a lot has happened in my life since I did these maps). More of a 4 or less player map.
Dayzdm4, "Training room - Vertically Avenged": Sniper practice. The identical rooms follow the 4 way symmetry of the map, with different weapons in each room. You are supposed to be disoriented when you respawn. It's mainly for would be snipers to climb right up to the top and, well, snipe! The lighting is designed to provide cover in the centre where the RG is. The ledges are a bit overboard I know...
Dayzdm5, "Training room - Professor Plumpot's Lab Maze of Death": Would have been great had the corridors been twice the width, you can grab weapons through the paper-mâché walls sometimes... The small corridors mean caution is required with the RL and BFG, especially if you also have the Quad. Bots who get the BFG then the Quad blow sometimes themselves up within 3 steps of the Quad...

I will probably leave these maps as they are, releasing under GPLv2 very soon.

[Dayz]

Found my old .map files, will package them with the textures and release under gplv2 soon. Maaaybe will tweak the existing levels. Maybe.

I always wanted to do actual places, like the mall from the Blues Brothers lol... may look into it later. Any suggestions?

[kick52]

Some of the map design ideas there were pretty cool.
I liked the CTF one, with a fort-thing. However, some of the maps were really crazy and "noisy." I think (if you are going to expand on them) that you should clean up alot of the designs, and keep the core components, but leave out all the clutter. The clutter also adds to lower performance. The top of the ctfx forts are really laggy.
Another thing is lighting. I found that most of the lighting in your maps had too much contrast. Some bits would be really annoyingly bright, and other bits you can't see a thing in.

But anyway, keep it up, nice ideas.