DescentBB

Vote for your favorite of the submitted maps! Voters get 3 votes each. Top 5 winners will advance to Phase 2 voting, consisting of DCL matches to see how the maps hold up in the competitive scene. Good luck to everyone!

Here are the contestants:

PPski's Dukebox
Homeyduh's Echoes
Homeyduh's Arising
Lotharbot's Ezra
Drakona's Valor
Shroudeye's Pyro-juitsu
SeaWyrm's Cenote
SeaWyrm's Saunterdown
SeaWyrm's Antbend
sdfgeoff's Munroe 4942

Here's my feedback --

Dukebox Good size for a 1v1 level. Good mix of missiles -- lots of homers, but the spaces make them easy to dodge. I found it hard to get into a rhythm; the flow is a bit choppy because of the sight lines and dangerous tunnels. Spent a lot of time trying to stay out of sight and catch a glimpse of my opponent.

Echoes Too large and repetitive for 1v1. Nice structure for 5-6 player anarchy.

Arising This looked like a lot of fun, and was great for the first 5 kills or so... until I unleashed the reactor and all the extra homing missiles. Then it turned into an exercise in stealth, intentional noise-making, lobbing homers, and definitely not dogfighting unless you like the reactor stealing your kills. Without the reactor/extra missiles this might have made my top 3.

Ezra I made it because I like it. The restricted weapon set and the funky shapes (artillery/cave/natural terrain yo) are going to make people either love or hate it.

Valor Good weapons balance, adequate but not overpowering secondaries. Great flow, encourages a mix of dogfighting and hit-and-run, but not really camping. There's nothing extraneous -- every part of the level plays.

Pyro-juitsu Feels more like a campaign finale / boss room than a multiplayer level. The spaces are too large to reliably hit another ship in (though another half dozen megas could at least turn that into a viable possibility.) Could be popular among the casual crowd at the LAN with 4x weapons, but I don't even have the slightest idea how to approach this level in a competitive setting.

Antbend Strong level. Just a little bit of 4D. Everything is unique and interesting -- no cookie cutter rooms here. Pretty good flow.

Munroe 4942 Reminds me of pillbox. Tight, well connected. Totally lacking in energy, which is a fatal flaw (going on a 4-kill run means you suddenly have to play very conservatively.)

Cenote I'd highly recommend it for 4-player anarchy. As a 1v1 level, it caters to camping/ambush styles much more than I like. It's big and slow.

Saunterdown A lot like Cenote, I found the majority of my time was spent sneaking carefully from camping spot to camping spot. Much like Dukebox, an excess of gratings and other long sight lines interfered with the flow.

Thanks for the feedback, Lothar! I'd love to improve upon my future anarchy level designs.
Cheers!

Yeah thanks! I was iffy about the reactor in the first place. I should've gone with my gut x.x well I have something fun for your guys for the fall contest XD I'm experimenting with 4D maps XD

Hi,

I have looked at these maps, and I have found Drakona's "Valor" map to have a couple of geometrical errors stretching the D1/D2 engine in a way it doesn't like. You cannot build triangular sides there (you can for the D2X-XL engine). I have created a fixed version of that level. The level's lighting also was completely off, at least when viewing it with D2X-XL. I have fixed that, too. If you are interested, I can make it available here. My version of that level will also work with other Descent variants using the original "baked in" lighting.

"Antbend" also has a lighting problem in D2X-XL. I have fixed that too. That fix also is backwards compatible.

"Arising" has a misaligned (overlay) light texture and could use a few less lights imo.

Ditto "Dukebox". Dukebox also has two degenerate segments (cubes - I prefer to call them segments, as they can be quite different from a cube or cuboid); They are completely flat and can be removed (which I did). Hint: Using DLE's diagnosis feature during level construction is always a good idea.

Edit:

I found that Dukebox looks much, much darker when using "basic" or "standard" lighting in D2X-XL than it does with lightmap based lighting. The reason for this is that it uses the energy field wall texture and the blue and red light stripe texture as base textures (i.e. not being glued on top of another texture). D2X-XL's lighting considers such lights as intended to only light the segment side they sit on. D2X-XL v1.18.57 has this fixed, but light textures should nevertheless generally be applied as decal to a base texture. This will make D2X-XL produce a glow effect for them (if desired; light glow can be toggled in D2X-XL's effect options dialog).

Edit 2:

Here's the link to the archive with the missions I have modified: http://www.descent2.de/files/missions/3 ... st_2015.7z

The feedback to my post is overwhelming.

Half of the DCL has been busy with a LAN over the weekend, so responses have been a bit slow, yeah. That and many of them don't visit the DescentBB much anymore... there was some second-guessing over whether the poll should even be on this forum. For this instance of the contest it is, though.