Small Carnage Garden
Praise
I really liked the foggy atmosphere of this level. The numerous false walls were pretty cool. Seems to be plenty of ammo and weapons scattered about. Achitecture was great. Multiple floor maps always impress me. For those net players who like tight quarters, this one is a winner!
I love the architecture. This is the map I would most like to build in my back yard.
The doors and corridors provide a nice mix of cover and exposure.
The complex room layout of this map made for some excellent hide-and-seek, with many chances for sudden surprises.
The fog is nice, as are the teleporters.
The architecture, the looping pathways, the many ways each floor and hallway feeds into each other, and the secret passages and outer passages (such as the flooded hallway) provide a lot of room without making the level expansive. No teleporters that would cause disorientation, but you can quickly get anywhere on the map, and with dozens of possible routes and with plenty of space yet to occupy where others could be lurking.
This map has a great feel to it when wondering around. The fog effect works quite nicely, and the freaky way you can walk through some walls makes it interesting. I enjoyed the layout of this map, and the ammo and weapon regeneration works well in net play. Awesome load screen.
Very fun game and would be even more fun with numerous players as the map is big enough for many players to hide and seek. From a game players point of view I thought the layout made the game interesting with many different areas of scenery. There are plenty of weapons to choose from and other health items about if you can find them. I personally liked the sounds, scenery and music. Big score for this game.
Suggestions for Improvement
Although I do not do netplay, if I did, I imagine this would not be a favorite of mine. I’m pretty sure I would favor wide-open maps. This one is definitely not that. There were two unusual oddities in the map. On poly 299 there is a Dacron Rifle hanging in mid-air. It can’t be seen unless you are standing in the right place. The Phaser on poly 438 can be seen from one side of the poly, but not from the other side unless one backs up pretty far. It then becomes barely visible. Have no idea as to what is causing these placement errors.
Some monsters would make this level interesting for solo play.
Feels a little tight to me.
There were a few design errors (doors usually slow things up on a fast map, even if it's a minor quibble; items and 'bounce' bugs also present). There might be too many healing potions, and finding a gun other than the phasor was occasionally irritating.
After playing this map in net play with just 2 people, it got a little frustrating because it’s really too easy to hide in this map, imho. If someone gets a score up on you, they can basically spend the rest of the game hiding from you, and I found it difficult to locate the player. Perhaps some Lua radars would help eliminate this problem. Also, there’s a funky placement of the dachron rifle (hangs in the air, and I cannot seem to pick it up), and the MML for the Phaser does not match the graphics (i.e., the MML supports the X6, but the graphics show the X5).