Omni42 submitted a new map: Torvus Clockwork - Though Torvus Temple was flooded long ago, the engine beneath it churns on, devoid of purpose. Read more about this map...
Besides the map being pretty much unplayable due to performance issues, the scripting and look of some of the gears is cool, as are the tunnel lift things. The layout could be better and I think I'd be cool to see this map re-scaled and consolidated to allow for better performance, a better layout and more consistent art
What kind of performance issues are you having? I had five people playing on it at once yesterday and none of them reported any problems. Also, what do you mean by "more consistent art"?
Really bad framerate issues for performance, like 10 -20 fps at best all over the map, not just in corners and art consistency being certain rooms have more detail than others, rooms have drastically different art that isn't seen anywhere else and isn't meshed well etc. (For example, certain walls being detailed while others are left blank, like in the dead - end room connected to top mid, the route with the trees over head which is only seen once and the art doesn't do a good job of conveying that the map itself is overgrown or anything, especially when the tubes give you the feeling of being in the middle of the ocean. The cable cave, while cool, also felt out of place since it is, once again, only seen in that one spot, with the crystal room (the crystal rock itself is also only seen once and isnt made to look unique, so it just looks like there should be more crystals) , doing a similar type of back wall, but chunkier which made it feel even more confused. The map just felt very "all over the place" with the art, hence my feedback regarding consistency. I do think the map has cool ideas but I think it could be executed better since the layout is just a big donut and the art feels confused, which could be helped with a larger budget by down scaling the map.
With regard to performance issues: is this in Customs or in Forge? Because I have had plenty of framerate drops in Forge, but it's worked just fine in Customs for everyone else so far. I wouldn't have published it here if they'd reported the kind of sluggishness you're describing. With regard to the art: this is obviously a lot more subjective than framerate problems, but the intent was to make each of those areas feel visually distinct. The Yellow Pipes room is overgrown, so its side passage is too. The Cage room has those big chunky bars, so its side passage does too (though much smaller). My hope was that each area would feel unique; one of the big problems with this map earlier in development was that all the rooms looked pretty much the same. That said, I don't disagree about the level of detail being inconsistent. Believe me, I wanted to have more of those purple crystals and spruce up the flooded hallway; I simply didn't have the budget for it. I've already removed a lot of detail in the name of freeing up budgets--there were dozens more gears originally--so at this point, I don't think there's anything truly superfluous left that I can get rid of without redesigning the whole map. I know it's not as good as it could be, but I was tired of having it sitting around in my files collecting dust, so to speak.