UDK LEVEL: IN PROGRESS (TEXTURED)

      What was supposed to take me 3 hours, took me 8 hours. 8 solid hours of university work out of class to get the last two buildings constructed, add in the actors and paths and apply the textures. I lost my work twice and had to start again, and in doing so, ran into many game breaking bugs that prompted drastic design changes to the map. The result? Something I'm happy with, but not elated about. Take a look at the textured map (still in progress) below.

COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS APPRECIATED!

UDK LEVEL - TEXTURED (IN PROGRESS)
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL - THE ARENA
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL - THE BRIDGE
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL - THE PIT
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL - THE SMALL BASE
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL - THE SMALL BASE (INDOORS)
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL - THE SNIPER TOWER
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL - THE MAP (TOP-DOWN)
by Christian Whelan

UDK LEVEL (SIDE-VIEW)
by Christian Whelan

    The first thing to mention is the two buildings (or one, if you consider they are duplicates). To be honest  I don't like them, they add verticality and variety, but the size ratio between the player and the rooms is to drastic - it looks cheep. 

    Secondly there was the planned second bridge. Now, this was in construction, but due to it being an extrusion of the already complex building, there arose some clipping and collision detection issues, so I had to delete it. Deleting the glitch ridden bridge only caused more problems though. Visually the bridge was no longer there, physically, it was - any object paced near it would disappear. I still don't know why this was, but I just welded vertexes together to hide the giant glitch hole. In it's place? A jump pad.

    So now, the map was seemingly complete, I added in the items and vehicles. The idea, was to have the action drawn to the middle. So, the most powerful vehicles and UDamage is placed in the middle, and the lesser vehicles, power-ups and weapon are around the four buildings. Less useful, but still beneficial power-ups where hidden and the ammo was spread out evenly around the map, especially around the middle where it's always close to a player - this keeps the action going.

    Finally I made some improvements and textured. The improvement was the third floor (connected by jump pads) facilitated by taller building to provide sniper points and variety. I liked the idea, considering the maps size was an issue, I might as well embrace it. Finally I textured it, which to be honest, I'm not happy with. Along with the lighting, the map just looks bare, boring and confusing.

Now that I've added everything and the bots work fine, I need it play test it to see how it really player with real players. Only then, will I know if there are any glitches and if it even plays like I want it to.

NEXT POST: UDK LEVEL: PLAYTESTING