Piha - Dunkelschwamm

  

        Piha is a façade of what appears to be an apartment building, the map description claims this to be the author, Robootto's, house. There isn't much interactivity or stuff to do in this map.

SCMapDP page

Author: Robootto

Date of final release: 2004

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Piha

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | May 28, 2022 | 2627 characters

    Piha is a map by Robootto, crafter of extreme woes and enigmas, but contains neither woe nor enigmas— a fact which left me uneasy through my experience. Instead, Piha is a fairly passable façade of a home, facing some bushes, and with a brutalist blocky backend with ladders to climb all over it. There's not a lot of interactivity to comment on, so instead I'll judge it by its presentation.

    Piha reminds me in some ways of the castle in Mario 64, by displaying a magnificent façade in front which develops atmosphere, but leaving everything around it simple or plain. I think of this kind of design almost like a photoshoot, where there is a staging area and everything outside of it functions mainly as a place to position a camera from.

    The stage itself is brightly lit, as could be reasonably expected from an outdoor scene. The brushes are simple and evocative— more in the evocative side when it comes to the front of the house, more on the simple side when it comes to everything else. The textures are very simple and low-res to a point where it does stand out, reinforcing that N64 vibe a bit more than the more advanced Goldsrc engine should be able to offer even in vanilla. There's also some very strange brushwork in the walkways around the garden area which show the uneven, poorly constructed brushes which largely comprise Robootto's strange, inefficient methods for mapping.

    I think the best parts of this map are easily gleaned by looking at screenshots, and further inspection will bring boredom at best and minor criticism at worst. As far as an exploration of recreating a real-life location goes, I can't compare it to the original as I have no frame of reference, but I could imagine this representing a large triplex (or apartment complex, but idk it gave the impression of townhouses to me)— though the large, blocky chamber which protrudes from the center townhouse is not a type of architecture I've ever seen, and stands out as unnatural among the rest of the scenery. I don't recommend for playing, but commend it as an example of Robootto setting out to accomplish an understandable goal and very nearly accomplishing it.

Pros:

• Half of this map is a decent representation of a home.

Cons:

• It's not really impressive or interesting enough to sustain itself on that premise alone
• The rest of the map is chunky, boring, ugly, and not super well constructed

Score: 4.5 / 10