Arious

Description
Well, well, this one was a nice little surprise.

Presenting to you one of the most scenic and playable duel maps we've had in a while. This map strikes the balance between eye candy and usefulness quite well, looking good and having almost no impact on performance. The general concept is a forest clearing, with the obligatory waterfall, and some ruins. Sounds awfully simple, doesn't it?

Aesthetically, the map is as pleasing as one would expect. Texture usage flows together solidly, the brushwork and terrain crafting has been masterfully done, and above all, it's true to what this environment would look like should you happen upon it. The environment itself responds to your presence as it should (taking into account the Q3 engine's limitations). My only real complaint was the almost uniform lighting, a bit of sunlight and shadowing would have been great.

Throughout testing, the map held at a steady 35 FPS on highest settings with Media Player, two MSN Live instances, Xfire and the Rise of Legends demo download going. That's pretty impressive, and considering my system specs, I can only assume the author took playability into consideration all the way through the project.

If you have a duel server, I advise adding this map into the rotation. It could also work for a Duel FFA server, provided the mod in use had duel alpha features which wrapped duelists in their own little pockets preventing interference or distractions [i]*cough*JAE*cough*[/i].

I like what I see here, and I'm hoping to see more maps from Demo in the future.

~ Kouen

[b]Bot Routing:[/b] Yes
[b]Custom Textures:[/b] Yes
[b]Custom Shaders:[/b] Yes
[b]Custom Models:[/b] No
[b]Custom Music:[/b] No