DM 300K Parched

DM 300K Parched

UT Deathmatch, Medium, 4-8 players. Ancient Egyptian Temple. Released Blito3 300k contest 2008 map pack, November 2008

Map #3 for Blito3's Annual 300k Contest, Nov-Dec 2008. Parched is set in an Ancient Egyptian Temple, with a few visual elements right out of my Egyptian architecture books! The upper areas are blocked from access, otherwise game play would invariably turn into a hide and seek sniper match, which would spoil the otherwise decent flow.

As it is, In this type of map, you have some room to move and dodge, you have enough cover, and retreat is often possible, giving you a slight chance to think of your next move (unless you're up against Lokai... Unlike most of my projects I actually like this map! I hope you do too! This map took around 8 hours altogether to make - had to do a lot of things more than once to get the optimal build. I think it was worth all the effort though :)

Notes:

The DM 300K Parched layout was essentially copied from and earlier deathmatch map I'd started back in 2004 called DM-Parched2K4. This 2004 map never progressed much beyond initial testing with BOTs, so I scaled down the layout and it worked quite well in the UT99 map. Later on I ported the same 2004 layout into a UT3 deathmatch project in late 2007. There the layout became quite a bit more complex and the theme is definitely NOT Egyptian (see DM Gas Works) .

Several optimizations were necessary for 300k, including using low shadow detail, too bad, but the shadows do look okay, imo. The 2k4 map has the potential to look much better. We'll have to see how that one pans out :) Many thanks to Blito3 of course, for having the contest and to Tom_caT for testing and suggestions!

Music is Cannon from the game Unreal Tournament.