Ascii Art - GrandmasterJ

 

    ASCII refers to the American Standard Code for Imformation Interchange, a system that supports text on digital platforms. The entire map is textured in white with black text.

SCMapDB page

Author: enuze

Date of final release: 2008

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Ascii Art

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | July 16, 2022 | 4369 characters

    I remember playing this map way back in the day, probably in 2008 when it came out. I remember riding the longest elevator of my life with two of my buddies. One of them jumps on my head and due to a quirk in the engine I immediately explode followed by me rage quitting because there was no way I was riding the elevator again. Well I've played it again all these years later and that elevator ride has not improved in the slightest.

    So ascii art is a map made out of ascii art. For those who don't know what ascii art is, ascii is a character encoding standard, which is fancy talk for how computers handle text. The whole map is textured white with text making up all the art and detail of the map. The author is Japanese so there are plenty of Japanese characters and I can't understand any of the text in this map.

    The map itself is a sort of square plaza, with four branching paths from each side of the main area. The player spawn is down one path, a fountain and two ball sculptures are down another path, a museum of some sort down a third path, and a locked door in the fourth. In the middle is a skyscraper with a reception desk and some receptionists. There is an elevator here. It is a very long elevator. It is indeed the very elevator from my memories. My friend and I rode up quietly and tense. He jumped and I told him to cut that shit right out. Then when we reached the top he exploded for absolutely no reason. He opted to noclip instead of ride the elevator which is totally fair and understandable. At the top of the skyscraper is the office of the mapper, enuze. There is a map which displays a list of objectives, all in Japanese so I don't understand a word of it. There is a button that shows players a timer that reads 3 minutes. Thanks to the map description I now know that is a countdown to when enemies appear and when the locked door down by the central plaza opens up and reveals the next area. I ride down the elevator and it takes forever, he opts to just kill himself. When we finally arrive at the countdown clock it reads 1 minute, it took two minutes for me to ride that elevator down and walk to the next area.

    The next area spawns in some zombies, we don't have weapons or medkits, so we have to dodge the zombies and go down another long elevator that succeeds in splattering me for no reason this time. At the bottom is a Desert Eagle, M16 and SAW along with lots of ammo. There is a prison looking area down here full of enemies in tight corridors but the SAWs make short work of most of them. Past a boss and up a spiral staircase with a teleport and players are back in the lobby of the skyscraper and there are more enemies here, plus supplies in the lobby. Killing all the enemies spawns a final boss at the top of the skyscraper. Killing him ends the map.

    The map is surprisingly short, if you cut out the elevator rides and noclip everywhere. Really, the map would be short and sweet if it weren't for those elevators. Throw in the fact that the elevators will randomly splatter the riders and it becomes a huge problem. I think the map is great, it's fun to look at and explore even if I do think the ascii aesthetic wears thin halfway through. The combat is ok, I really like the SAW and I'm glad that was the main weapon for the map, but some of the baby gargs would shoot fire through sliding doors and it was hard to exit some areas to engage the enemies. There was a gonarch stuffed underground that didn't really fit and it died shoved in a small hallway. The map is fun but it does have rough edges, and the elevators are there to troll the player.

Pros:

• Fun atmosphere
• fun map design, except the elevators
• fun custom models
• I liked the focus on the SAW
• despite not being able to understand the language, I still was able to follow the map fairly easily

Cons:

• goldsrc has some trash elevators and this map exemplifies the worst of them
• the elevators are slow and long, these elevators were made to troll the players
• I feel the combat could have been done better, the gonarch fight was wasn't fun
• The author felt the need to do the needlessly long and slow elevator gag twice

Score: 6.5 / 10