Terra
Akuma
Rich aka Akuma is a home-made map designer who has
done some work for Epic (Rocketarena, Bonuspack), and is also
the creator of some very good maps like DM-UrbanArena and DM-Moribund,
and their UT-versions. As far as I know this is the first non-DM
map he made, but it doesn't look like a beginner's job. I didn't
expect anything else. His website currently presides at: www.planetunreal.com/urbane
The looks are good, although not special. The author
made a respectable number of urban looking maps with excellent
custom textures, but this one is made of "vanilla" UT-textures.
However, everything fits together perfectly. The lighting is 100%
ok as well, and definitely not over the top.
I couldn't find any glitches, but to be honest I
didn't look for those. I am pretty sure that he wouldn't have
released this map if it was not, at least from a technical point,
close to perfect. One thing, I thought was that it slowed down
considerably at one certain point, but that could have been my
PC as I couldn't find it afterwards.
This map has a rather large outdoor area, and the
bases are like bunkers in the mountains. The flow when you walk
from a bunker to the outside is very smooth. You will want to
play this map again and again - provided you add at least 9 bots,
or play on a server that allows at least that amount of players.
The 8 players minimum Akuma mentions is a wee bit too low.
It is quite large, but not to an extent you need
a roadmap to find your way around because of the logical layout
of the whole thing. As any good CTF map there are several points
to "do your thing". Some sniping bunkers, several paths into the
enemy base, and inside another multiple choice of paths to take.
The author made the wise decision to build a mirrored map - iE.
the red base is the same as the blue one. Non symetrical maps
are a good idea in general, but very hard to do if you want to
avoid advantages or disadvantages for one of the teams. The bots
do an excellent job here, although they don't seem to use the
alternative route for attacking towards the enemy base. They do
use it for defense.
Weapons are well placed, as is the ammo and the
health. As in other CTF maps, the shieldbelt is in the middle
of the map.
