SJC The Palace of Jabba the Hutt - Map Pack

Description
Beholdeth! Sith J Cull Returns!

And he comes bearing his latest creations, Jabba's Palace in both Day and Sunset flavours. I think we have, over the years, all become used to Sith J's creations being masterpieces of mapping design. Yes there are mappers that are technically more skilled with the fancy aspects of mapping like ridiculously complex scripting and the like, but Sith J has been here right from the start, the granddaddy of em all and he has released may maps over that time.

So, let's have a look at his latest creation; Jabba's Crib!

As I said above, this map comes in both Daytime and Sunset versions, each with a different mood and atmosphere. Personally my favourite is the daytime version, primarily because it obviously looks and feels like the more traditional Tatooine map. There are a few small issues with the sunset version though, but I will come to those later.

This map is pretty huge, it features a large outdoors area among the dunes infront of the palace entrance and the interior of the palace itself, which is an incredible maze like structure. Walking among the dunes outside was highly entertaining, especially for me as I absolutely love a good outdoors map. You should watch out for the Sand People though, as they are, as usual, in a foul mood (though who wouldn't be with that lumpy mask glued to your face for your entire life?). This is one of those little features which really adds to a map, just that little extra something that isn't really necessary, buts adds that extra depth.

Wander around a little more and you will stumble upon the Sarlacc pit, although hopefully not too literally eh? :P I must admit I would have liked to see a little more movement out of the Sarlacc's tentacles (which are flat transparent textures rather than being three dimensional), which I am guessing some adjustment in the shader for the tentacle texture could do. Making the image a sprite as well (if it is possible to have a vertex deforming sprite image) may have been a good idea, since the tentacles are flat textures, as you move around them they disappear momentarily. For those who don't know what a sprite texture is, a sprite texture always faces you no matter where you are even though they are just flat textures.

Moving on, you will also come across the ribcage of some once huge beast and nearby you will also find an archway, which looks impressively similar to the ones from the original Ralph McQuarrie concept art. The roof of this archway and also of the palace itself has a fantastic shader on it, which gives it a purply metallic shine. Just ahead of this archway is one of the entrances to Jabba's Palace, this one running underground. The main entrance of course is right at the front, and that famous door which R2 and 3PO stand before at the beginning of Return of the Jedi looks nicely authentic, right down to the sand piled up in the recesses of the door. Also worth noting is the specular shader on the stucco like walls of the palace, which when viewed from a certain angle gives the walls a nice sheen in the sunlight.

Inside the palace is huge, and maze like, it is very easy to actually get lost, there are just sop many rooms, corridors and levels! I have a feeling quite a bit of the inside layout is based on the 'Inside the Worlds of Star Wars' location cross section book, which itself has a very nicely detailed illustration of the innards of Jabba's Palace. For those of you who like feeding your defeated enemies to a Rancor... yes the Rancor pit is here, complete with Rancor. ;)

The texturing throughout the map is excellent as always, accurate too, even all the little patterns on the borders look accurate to all the reference pictures I could find, so a big thumbs up there! During your wanderings through the palace you may also occasionally come across a B'omarr monk, although unfortunately these are only map objects and so don't do anything other than add a little more atmosphere to the place. Personally I think it would be cool if someone could make a B'omarr monk NPC model, since having a few of the disembodied brains-in-jars-with-legs wandering around would be very cool indeed!

To be honest there is so much inside the palace to see that I could write several pages about it, but then again that would spoil the adventure of exploring the map for you guys wouldn't it? With a map like this that is both huge and great to look at, exploring is a big part of it! ;)

Now I said earlier that there are two versions of this map, Daytime and Sunset, the daytime being my favourite mainly because it is traditional Tatooine. However I also said that there were a few issues with the sunset version, and now I shall elaborate.

Basically my main gripe with this version is that the insides of the palace are just [i]too dark[/i]! Its difficult to see all the great detail that went into the interior of the map, and the lights just don't seem to light up the interiors as much as they should do. The outside area isn't too bad though, although there are a few rather dark spots in the shadows. The sunset skybox, with the twin suns setting in the distance, is one of the most amazing skyboxes I have ever seen and is quite beautiful.

Overall this is a fantastic map and I am once again glad to see Sith J Cull return to us with a new creation! I do think the lighting in the sunset version could have been tweaked a little more to make the light levels more comfortable, but you can always turn your gamma up a bit higher ingame if you have to.

Keep up the excellent work Sith J, the community really appreciates that talented mappers still stick around and produce amazing work like this, even after all these many years. I look forward to seeing what you have up your sleeve for us next! :D

[b]New Textures:[/b] Yes
[b]New Sounds:[/b] Yes
[b]New Music:[/b] Yes
[b]Bot Routes:[/b] Yes
[b]Game Types:[/b] FFA

~Nozyspy~

[b][Edit][/b] Shockingly, I forgot to mention that you should look out for Han in carbonite, because... well it isn't Han. Could the face on this frozen carbonite man be the visage of the great man himself?!