yes... the "Elephant" shown on the screenshot is really cool ;0)... besides I think. this Map is still one of the Good ones. fast.. simple but though good looking

A few months ago this would have seemed like a really good level, but as a poster below said, there are so many good levels around these days that a new map has to have something special to make it stand out. I'm afraid this one doesn't make the grade for me. Too monochrome, too dark, and too rectangular - and not much atmosphere. The game play is not enough to compensate when there are better maps that beckon.

This level is really a fun level to play. I think you did a great job on the connectivity,

and the play is fast and furious. I also liked the dog.

Great job. This one remains on my hardrive. Thanks vedder

[No, I'm not beaten that easily - except at Q3A, of course . . . ]

Summary: yes, it's penny plain. But when I feel like a good hard fight I'm more likely to return to this map - didn't win it till the third attempt from cold - than I am to, say, Laerth's new and stylish White Collar Violence (lae3dm2) - won first time out, efficiency eighty per cent, twice as many frags as the nearest bot.

My goodness, this is an epic post even by my standards. Sorry, but a new map by vedder is a nostalgic occasion for me.

I was pleased to see another map by vedder, because my encounter with I Like Your Hair Long (vedq3dm1, perhaps it's best not to ask what happened to dm2) changed the way I approached third-party Q3A maps. Until vedq3dm1 appeared on ..::LvL, my practice was to walk through a map first, and play it only if I liked what I saw. Accordingly, being then young(er) and foolish, I walked through vedq3dm1 and saw not anything to impress.

And yet . . . the ..::LvL review said 'penny plain but fragging fun' (well, eloquence along like lines albeit less alliterative). So I tried it after all, and - don't all faint with shock - the review was spot on. After that I went back and played one or two others I'd passed over, and made the discovery that appearance and playability are at best only weakly correlated.

Since then, I've always approached a map by playing at least one game before the walkthrough. In fact, I've become rather hooked on the excitement of scrabbling to find the RL - or any weapon, I've even come to appreciate the GL - while I still have a few health points left. And I find I pay more attention to learning the layout when I'm being shot at. Above all, I now judge quality of gameplay first, eye candy only afterwards.

Downsides? Well, I often miss things until the walkthrough - I knew there was a yellow armour on this map, because I saw it load and I could hear the bots pick it up, but I couldn't find it in three consecutive games (see under bots picking it up, and I was rather busy at the time). And if you want to argue that to evaluate a deathmatch map properly, you have to know it like the back of your hand - well, that swishing noise you're hearing is me nodding vigorously in agreement.

But with an average of four new maps a day being published - I think my record is fourteen downloaded in a day, and I once read a post in AGQ3 from someone who'd apparently grabbed the entire Fileplanet collection in a single raid - only those that are prima facie outstanding are going to get the back-of-the-hand treatment from anyone collecting more than a few third-party maps. A game or two and a walkthrough are the most that most maps can expect before judgement is passed and oblivion threatens. And if a map obviously stinks, I'll skip the walkthrough - but at least it's been played.

So does oblivion beckon for Whatever? It does not. The bots excelled themselves (yeah, yeah, botplay is gay etc. You wanna buy me a LAN? Can I send you the bill for my aDSL connection when British Telecom finally bestir themselves to come along and tell me that yes, they can install it on my line, and no, it doesn't after all have the persistently rumoured minimum 200ms ping engineered in?).

Unlike Gonnakillya I found that,although the bots didn't completely ignore the RL, they were usually quite happy to leave me to fetch it, Sorlag favouring the shotgun (doing that Sarge thing of bunnyjumping diagonally and working his - or her - way towards you, taking ever larger chunks out of your hide with every shot till you're quickly and unexpectedly dead), Klesk the plasmagun (with which it's very, very good), and Orbb using whatever was available(according to the weapon preference section of the botfiles Orbb should have gone for the plasma even more than Klesk, but I think Klesk just wasn't having it). Most of the action was in "plasma alley" between the PG and LG, and in the open space between the latter and the teleporter; but the bots could be found all over the map - partly I suppose because of respawns, but Sorlag did have to go for her beloved shotgun (I followed her through the teleporter several times), and wasn't averse to picking up the red armour while she was there. And the bots clearly knew the way to the yellow armour better than I did. I never saw a bot stuck jumping for health, but then I never saw a bot pick up the YA either!

After the games, the walkthrough: when I really began to appreciate the neat multilayered layout of what's actually a surprisingly small map, and discovered that apart from the obvious RJ both ways between the RA gallery and the MH, you can RJ off the edge of the platform across from the SG and wedge yourself in the left-hand corner of the open roofline opposite. From there you can camp YA and the approach to the teleporter (and, I suspect, get melted by plasma in under a second - I couldn't do the jump reliably enough to attempt it in gameplay, but then the wonder is that I managed it at all: I must be starting to get slightly less incompetent).

The map is 'atmospherically lit' (aka dark) in places, but I played at night and walked through then played again during daylight. Sometimes a map that's dark but playable at night can be turned into an unreadable grey blur by daylight glare off the screen, but I managed to find my way around without a white stick, so the lighting gets a pass from me.

Summary... message has been cut short by LvL admin.

A good clean not overdone vertical dm, love it. Sorry dont agree about the eye candy issue, playability should allways be first. Oh! and damn the r speeds are fine as well

Nice one vedder gimmie more

When I said "I'm one that is fortunate enough with a decent web connection to really care about bot play".....

What I meant to type was...I'm one that is fortunate enough with a decent web connection to really NOT care about bot play.

D'oh! Stupid fingers!

Hairless...not skinless.

D'oh!

When the levelshot came up while loading yer map I saw the skinless cat, but like Niptlar, I was reminded of the Taco Bell rat myself. It's funny...as the map was loading all I could hear was that little mut saying:

"Come on, man! Drop the Chalupa!"

Anyway....this map rocks. When I read what you said about maps that are fun to play during yer lunch hour, I completely understood where you were coming from. This map's layout and multi-leveled connectivity reminded me of another custom map that I love: Satan's Playground. The kinda map that moves quick, has constant elevation changes and really shows off a player's ninja abilities. Well done. This is my kinda map.

I did however find a glaring error in terms of finish. Go to the RA alcove, look towards the center of the map and rocket jump to the ledge above. From there, all I see is a slight HOM and transparent brushes from the caulk that is up there.

D'oh! Anyway, it's not that bad. Depending on how high the brush is, you might have to change just one texture....or just clip the whole thing off. I just thought I'd let you know about it. Too bad it wasn't caught in beta. Oh well.

I agree with the reviewer that the teleporter didn't help overall flow. No biggie.

The overall texturing was a little too "subdued" for me but not bad, nonetheless. It certainly fit with the mood of the map. Bots tended to run straight for the RL but most bots do anyways. I'm one that is fortunate enough with a decent web connection to really care about bot play...even on my own maps.

I do fully appreciate the size of the single-player community and the importance of a bot file with custom maps*

I'm just not one to lose sleep while developing my map over why the bots aren't getting to certain areas of the map all the time. Bots are stupid and can congregate at any part of the map depending on the local goodies and number of targets. It's hilarious to watch sometimes. They just go where the action is.

I'm done blabbing.

Your shit is good.

You don't need some big goofy crane. Downloading one of the many custom texture sets out there and using more in game sounds would do the trick and not really take an extreme amount of time to incorporate.

Heh... I figured the hairless cat would make up for my lack of custom textures =)

I see your point, but the point of my maps is to have fun playing them.... sure having a giant swinging crane in your level (like that RA3 map) is cool and unique, but does it make the map play any better?? And after you are used to it being there, is it really worth the rther large FPS hit to have an unused, eye-candy only feature??

I very much think that my maps tend to be "simplistic" visually, I worry more about things lining up, not having overlapped brushes and so on rather than spending 20 hours making a segment of wall look great... as art, I prolly fail, as "innovative" I prolly do too, but at maps that are fun to play on my lunch hour at work (which is why I make maps =) I think I do OK .

Actually, it does have one unique feature. The levelshot ownz. :]

It has good flow and a decent layout but there's absolutely nothing that's "above and beyond" so to speak. This one is just going to fade into the hundreds of others that have nothing particularly unique about them. Mappers are going to start having to go the extra mile if they want to stand out from the crowd.

We want looks AND great gameplay AND great sound! Yes we ARE ungrateful! You're welcome! Thanks! :]

Umm, so yeah, I like it, except for that ugly arena shot. I've had enough of that Taco Bell dog already.

I personally like how the level should play in theory (I haven't played the bots yet), and while the level doesn't look special, it doesn't look bad either. I remember one level that had good balance and a pretty nice layout, but the lighting was horrible. There is a substantial group of people who only care about gameplay, and there are others who almost only care about visuals (don't kid yourself, there's a good chance you're one of them). I fall somewhere inbetween, although my preferences tend to drift out onto the item selection/placement tangent.