The bottom of the map has two opposite ends. In one end we have two lifts, the armor, shock rile with ammo, health packs and rocket ammo. The opposite end we have the rocket with ammo and a teleporter. The area has narrow walkways over the acid and there isn't much space to dodge shock combos or the blast radius of rockets. The player can take the teleporter to the super weapon or the lifts to go up. The third way upwards is to take the jump boots which allow the player to jump to the area where the minigun is. Or, jump to reach the shield in the midle of the acid and from there jump again to higher grounds. There is another use for the jump boots which is to combine them with the lift jump to reach the super weapon without having to go to the teleporter.

Citing Hourence's level design book, I'd say that the bottom area of deck16 isn't a good design. It forces the players to run through narrow spaces and very long routes to reach the weapons or exits. The area where the lifts are has a very difficult flow because there are some boxes there that block the player's path. From the point of view of a single player map and the environment, the boxes have their place. But in a multiplayer map intended for fast action it seems strange to have them there.

Over the rocket weapon there is thick supporting structure that completely blocks lines of sight from above. I suspect that whoever decided to add the structure there made a mistake. If a player is above, near the minigun, they have a clear shot. However, whoever is at the bottom cannot see their enemy firing from above. The player at the bottom is at a very disadvangetous position. It's somewhat contradictory that the teleporter there leads to the super weapon. Yet, it's protected from players sniping from above.

The shield belt has some heal vials next to it that make a pick up sound which can be heard by other players. The location is dangerous and the player has to jump some step to get it, which further increases the difficulty and makes grabbing it even more dangerous.

Stairs x Jump pads x Lifts. I'd say that this is more about gameplay than asthetics. A lift has the player moving up or down in one axis. The same for a jump pad. With stairs we have a different scenario. Stairs take up a lot of physical space and they force the player to walk over a much larger distance. Citing my own legodeck version of this map, I decided for jump pads to allow the players to go up faster than they would be able to with lifts.

Both lifts start at the bottom because the player can drop down without taking fall damage. Had the height been higher, the player would've needed a lift to go down without taking fall damage.

For me there was a strange decision to place rocket ammo over the boxes on the area with the two lifts. It's hard to get the ammo. I don't understand this decision because the rocket is less effective in this map due to the very long corridors and open areas.

The middle walkway over the acid is a quite dangerous path because the player is exposed to attacks from multiple angles. However, the three ramps that pass over it provide some cover to protect against players from the area with the boxes. The player can safely drop down to grab the shield or not without taking fall damage. The players can jump from the area with the boxes and the pulse to the middle walkway, but the other way around is not possible because of the lower height of the later.

From the area with the boxes, U damage and Shock rifle the players can use a dodge jump to reach the shield belt faster. Players that are skilled in this jump don't have to go to the middle of the walkway and drop down there.

To grab the U damage the players can use rocket jump, hammer jump or take a longer path, walk over the ramp and jump from there. The health packs near the U damage seems to been placed there for the purposes of a rocket jump.

Why place the two health packs on one side of the boxes and not on both sides? One health on each side would make the flow more complex. With the health packs on one side it makes the flow more predictable. Could the boxes have been removed? Maybe, I don't know how they planned the map. But the boxes where the shock rifle and U damage are can't be removed because they are there to make the U damage harder to get.

This Flak cannon was placed in a dangerous spot. The player can easily jump down to get it, but they are forced to walk a long way to get back. I can't say wether placing two flak cannons was a good or a bad decision. Could the armor or the U damage had been placed there? Maybe.

The rocket inside the corridor was placed in a dead end. The player who goes there is an easy target to whoever is behind.

The other Flak cannon is in another dead end. There are two big boxes and some heal vials. For me the boxes and the heal vials are there because it works as a sort of trap. The player is cornered without room to escape. The pitch black shadows hide a player standing behind the boxes and the heal vials pick up sound alert whoever is nearby. In the opposite end of the same corridor there is a sniper and it was clearly intentional. The player with the sniper can clearly shot down whoever is going for the Flak.

The acid pool under the sniper seems to be there for purely asthtetics reasons. There doesn't seem to be a gameplay reason behind the pool there.

The ripper was placed inside the curved corridor. In here I'd like to comment that the corridor's shape are trapezoids and this doesn't help the ripper's blades to bounce and hit the players. The angled walls hinders the ripper's blades.

I can't say that I like the boxes on the largest area of the map. They end up hindering the player's movements. The heal vials behind the large pack of stacked boxes seems to have been placed there because it's dark. The boxes by the thin pads, I have no idea why they are there. They don't seem to have a purpose other than the deck's theme.

The highest part of the map has the bio rifle in one corner and a sniper rifle in a location where the player can have a clear shot of almost everyone who tries to reach the highest ground.

Why no guards on the ramps and edges? Because this is a multiplayer map and the guards would disrupt the player's aim and movements. For a single player map or a game where cover is important, then they would make sense.

The highlighted points are about assymetry. For some reason the corridors aren't perfectly aligned. It doesn't harm the gameplay though, because the flow is unnaffected by it. The only grip that I'd have with this map is that the two ramps aren't aligned with the corridor's entrances and this is caused by the boxes. The boxes were placed such that they disrupt the player's movements. I don't like how the boxes were just dropped in the middle of the player's paths.

The assymetry feels off because the three ramps were symmetrically placed. The middle ramp is perfectly centered in between the other two.

In Unreal Tournament 3 they've changed the architecture with those pillars and a much higher ceiling. I see a problem with their environment art decision. Those pillars create guiding lines that invite the player to look upwards but there is nothing upwards, just ceiling and decoration. Players won't reach there. In the curved corridor behind the Flak there are horizontal pipes that create horizontal lines. On the outside the inconsistency is even worse! There are vertical lines conflicting with some horizontal lines behind them. Notice how the textures have some horizontal pattern which fights against the pillar's verticality.

The texture used on the ramps has some grate that is perpendicular to the ramp. It creates guiding lines that are perpendicular to the player's natural path. It's completely misguiding. I'm not saying that the players are going to fail to recognize the path or that they are going to be lost. It's the texture that guides the player's eyes in a direction that is completely perpendicular to the player's path. 

The square tiles texture has too much contrast. The space between each square tile is black and it creates too much contrast between each tile. From a distance it's too noisy and makes it hard to distinguish actors from the background.

The ramps are completely opaque. I don't think having a see through texture (grates) on them would add much to the gameplay. In fact it would the gameplay worse. The ramps by themselves are guiding lines that invite the player to go up. Had they been transparent, with masked textures, it would disrupt the flow even more by showing what is under them.

The other curved corridor does not have the same horizonta pipes on the walls. Whoever made this level did not maintain consistency. The new corridor that connects the shock rifle to the flak cannon has two giant doors and a texture that suggests a path to the outside. Why did they put a path there with a negative curve? By negative I mean that while the corridor itself bends in one direction, inside the arena, the texture on the ground bends to the outside, where the players won't ever go because there are invisible walls blocking their way to the outside.

I can't be helped but they added a new corridor to improve the level's flow but kept the box with the flak right in the same position! Why keep the box right in the middle? That's nonsense for me.

There are structures behind the windows and a whole 3D background to make the level feel part of a much larger environment. That's fine. What I felt strange was the decision to place locked doors in some places. They lead to the outside part but the players can never open them. It feels rather strange to have doors where they placed them. 

I didn`t like the dead end where the Flak was. I added a corridor and stairs to connect to the Sniper point. In turn, the Sniper point is now connecting both the place where the Bio gun is and a new area above the boxes and the Pulse gun. The place where the pulse gun is has been remodeled. The domes represent the top of storage tanks. I`m not quit sure about them, but they are symmetrical. In contrast with the original placement of the boxes in the original map. About the floor my idea is to place grates, see through floor there, because underneath there is a new area. I imagine the pits where the tanks area to be filled with pipes and pipes that go to the acid pool. The teleporter was moved from the end of the acid pool to behind the three tanks. In addition, with the new paths, I think that the teleporter can be two way. I also added new rooms for pairs of lifts, to the right and left of the acid pool. I felt that they were much needed to help connect the different floors and extra corridors. The stair that connects the Flak cannon to the Sniper place could be replaced with a lift too, I don't know.

There are new places to put weapons and I'm not sure about where to place boxes now. The stair that connects the area where the Flak cannon was with the sniper. I think that a platform could be added on top of the corridor's end, to be accessed by rocket jump or hammer jump. The place where the jump boots were has been repurposed as a trap chamber, much like DM-Pressure. The large cluster of boxes near the place where the shock rifle is, with the two med boxes. Up there could be a path and some power up or weapon could be placed there.

The corridors are narrower than the original version. With the angled walls I don't think it's necessary for them to be so much wide because the player hits his or her head and part of that width is wasted space. I'm not sure about having the walls angled from the ceiling to the floor like that. It could be changed in a later revision.

The ceiling above the main area with the acid pool is open, like in UT3. In the original UT it was closed. From my point of view I prefer the open ceiling, but this level can be made with a closed off ceiling. It depends on the architecture, which wasn't my focus.

I said in the previous part of this analysis that guards on edges would disrupt the player's movements. Yet, I did place guards in my blockout. Why? I choose to place them on high places. They are high enough that the player would take fall damage if they choose to jump from up there. However, I must say that I didn't playtest this. I may be wrong about the players not wanting to jump down from high places.

My focus in this blockout was to provide more paths, routes and more space. I didn't focus on architecture. It was all about trying to figure out better level's flow and offer the players more routes to go to.