Alien Planet - GrandmasterJ

 

    This map is supposedly set on an alien planet but starts off in some brutalist YMCA and never really looks too alien. There are parts where players can see through cracks in the level.

SCMapDP page

Author: DeathBog

Date of final release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Alien Planet

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | March 11, 2022 | 3636 characters

    That was a rough map. The walls were paper thin and didn't always line up with each other. He had a noob box around the whole thing, I could see skybox through the gaps of the level.

    Players get thrown into the map already taking damage from enemies. The map starts on a fade in so you can't even see what you are doing and you have to take hits. The room you start in looks like a plain swimming pool, I started a map called 'Alien Planet' and started in a swimming pool. If you stand at the water's edge and jump you can see parts of the map through the skybox. The pool is absolutely filled with ichthyosaurs. Players only get dual uzis and shotguns so killing them is pretty tedious. These weapons do make the rest of the map pretty fun to play, combat-wise. In the water there is a flashing button and a door. The delay on the door opening takes so long that I consistently thought the button just plain didn't do anything.

    Swimming through the door puts players on dry land, in a tunnel. It leads to a room full of houndeyes with a door and a hole in the floor with a ladder. This room is where we first noticed the brushwork didn't match up and we could see the skybox outside. It got much worse from there on out.

    The vent leads to the other side of the door, with another door with a long delay, prompting us to think maybe the button was just broken. We went down a hallway and turned around the corner of a paper thin wall. We go through gonomes, past water with no ichthyosaurs, and into a room with a bunch of weapons. There is a light sprite in the corner that teleports players to a big arena full of infinitely respawning vortigaunts and one alien grunt with high health. Killing the alien grunt ends the map immediately.

    I did go back to the map to recheck something and I ended up noclipping around. There is a button near the end area with all the weapons. We pressed it but had no idea what it did. When noclipping I found a teleporter behind spawn, the button opens the wall in front of the teleporter and the teleporter puts them out in the room with all the weapons. It's a real nice attempt at a shortcut even if it's telegraphed poorly. While noclipping around I found that the whole map is floating in a big skybox and some areas don't even have ceilings. The shortcut I just mentioned shows the final boss arena floating there in space.

    The map looks bad, not just the poorly placed walls and floors not lining up in areas, but the texture use is bland too. I thought I was supposed to be on an alien planet, not the YMCA. The ladders are misaligned so I'm climbing on either floating bars or smashed, off-center ladder textures. Everything is bland looking and there is no decoration. Fix all the misaligned brushes and get rid of the giant noob skybox and a bland and uninteresting map would still be left.

    This map has some glaring brushwork issues, bad textures, a map fade-in while enemies are attacking us, doors on weirdly long button timers, and ands with an arena where an alien grunt is the boss, yeah it had higher health but we still killed it very fast and then the map was over. It was short but it was rough.

Pros:

• The map was playable
• There was a shortcut, even though it was not implemented all that well
• decent combat

Cons:

• Bad brush work
• Bad texture work
• bad map start with enemies attacking us while the map fades in
• bad doors with long timers

Score: 1.5 / 10