o hai. author here. Couple things. First, one of the design goals of the map was to surpass the pacing and complexity of movement that existed with offhand grapples — in Expert Quake, at least — without any grappling hook at all. So rather than covering a lot of ground with a grapple, make an extremely high-density map with extremely high interconnectedness. (Exhibit A: the six staircases in the LvL screenshot alone, plus two more and a jumppad just out of view.) Unfortunately, both the flatness and the potential for orientation confusion were a pretty direct result. (It also didn't help that I gave up on a second base wing design and just made the wings symmetric.)

Second: I WUZ ROBBED, MAN! The entire map was designed with thru-floor splash damage in mind. See all that black wire texturing? I was trying to telegraph, "hey, you can shoot at the bottom of this and the people walking on it will get hurt". When id killed that off in.. what? 1.18? it completely wiped out much of the nuance of running through the lower levels. I highly encourage playing this with server_thrufloors 1 in OSP (or, heaven forbid, vanilla 1.17) if anybody ever gets the opportunity.

Anyways I'm glad people still play it.

I'm glad Raspatan pointed out the flatness of the gameplay. I also think this is the exemplar, of what was to become the very popular crossings layout which all followed the basic figure 8 level format. What I find frustrating about the crossings format is that you can often find yourself quickly heading back in the direction you just came. This can be slightly less frustrating when the grapple hook is in play and you can cover large stretches quickly. Although I've only recently started dabbling in alliance, some of the most exciting and fun maps are the flatter ones, where plenty of opportunity exists to target an opponent and then finish them off with the saw blade.
Edited 50 seconds after the original posting.

A decent CTF map, later included in the OSP mod as "ospctf1". The main problem is its flatness. Compare with "ospctf2" (lvlworld.com/review/id:567).

cool

cool map

This, on the other hand, IS a good level...base defense is challenging but not impossible, there are MANY routes and convolutions you can use to elude chasers as the FC, the powerup in the middle becomes a major focal point (even though it spawns at semi-random intervals...why is that exactly?), the defense has to move around to stay healthy...generally an excellent map. Other than the insane brightness that it has in my config that is (I have to turn down my r_gamma when I play this one).

Fantastic work, Mr. Scipio! Unique, delish, fun, I won't wasted any more words. A 9!

never mind, tig... it went on the "top ctf" list when it got up to 20 votes.

tigger-on, why isn't this map on the list of top ctf maps? by its rating it would be in the top 5...

Now we now what a CTF map on crack looks like. This map is amazing, it gets a 10 from me!

Yeah. Right the ctf experience! You earn 8 from me, for the layout and playability. This map gives me somehow this "american gladiator" feeling. Very cool!

Great Map ! Im not sure how it feels with more than a few poor bots, so we put it on our Alliance Server called MetzelArena. Perhaps you want to play that map under Alliance CTF-conditions so feel free to hook over to

MetzelArena

131.220.162.241:27960 | <a href="www.metzelarena.de" target="_blank">www.metzelarena.de</a>

By the way, see this thread on the Q3W CTF forum if you want to see a couple of game demos on this map: <a href="www.quake3world.co...TML/001416.html" target="_blank">www.quake3world.co...TML/001416.html</a>

Fair `nuf, Tig. :-) I think I must have skimmed the review and just misinterpreted that last phrase.

This map will be added to some ACTF servers rotations in the near future, as we are awaiting the final 1.2x code from ID so we can release Alliance 2.0! So far, we are looking at having a total of 30 maps in alliance 2.0. All of which are just absolutly amazing! All you guys who read this message should really give alliance a try and come play gainst us on VK-12 and Interstar servers tonite! (we populate the servers everynight and have a East Vs West battle every Wednesday on Thunderdome alliance)

ooh-la-la!

Johnny Law - Bots do play this map as good as any Alliance CTF/CTF level. I guess I was really saying that this map deserves good team play that come from playing human opponents, the kind of team play that bots don't seem to have. Sure add a bot or two to make up the numbers, just not on my team :]

Lighting's a bit rich (esp blue base) and some texturing is awkward but very good layout and gameplay.

WOW !

What a map.

No bots? Hrm? I've played bots on this map quite a bit, they're not that bad.

Anyway, like you said, good map... and different, too.