The combat is realistic in terms of space movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac...

take the easy side of a argument. 

starwars 'physics'. i hate that like every space flying game has them. :\

As I recall, Frontier, the sequel to Elite, had very realistic physics. At least, it allowed for the facing-reverse that bambuz described.

btw, kell, did you actually design the Shirow ship on your site? it's not really clear if all 3 ships there are from movies (as the sulaco is).
if you did design it, nice one. it's a sweet silhouette. :)

Yes I did. I designed the Ohio as well, extrapolated from a very small and simple detail in one of the diagrams in the afformentioned Aliens Technical Manual.

i loved the look of the aliens sulaco ship when i first saw it. it struck a chord that i never found in other mainstream scifi.

As I say on my page, I believe it's the most influential ship design because it manages to strike such an effective balance between 'realism' and 'believability'. It just feels right somehow. 

and Bambuz/Lunaran,
what part of the word 'earthling' made you think that post was serious? 

 

yeah, I thought those letters had more gravitas than the others. 

Warp Spasm (by ijed)
Vertical Map Pack (by trinca/lurker/rudl/spirit)

http://underworld.planetquake.gamespy.com/index.html 

 

Of course. 

nice reviews ;) thks 

main thanks to tronyn for those excellent reviews. now onto Travail and a few others ;) 

Err, I just read the Five Rivers Land review, and I'm confused you didn't mentioned two things:
- the maps are supposed to be a "down-make" of Doom3 Hell level...
- my effort of environment new sounds

Well, not so important in fact, just missing some precision... anyway nevermind... 

bigger=better 

probably someone like bal or czg would like it:

http://samehat.blogspot.com/2007/06/abstraction-by-shintaro-kago_26.html 

I've been seeing single pages of that pop up on the livejournal random image genereator lately. It was nice to see the whole thing, but not really that interesting in itself. 

It's interesting in a completely weird and sick way I guess. I like the presentation and the whole surreal vibe, but the sex and gore are just not for me. 

is sooo money! You better copyright it before anyone else catches wind ;) 

I just want to say your reviews make basically zero sense to me, in that they reflect nothing on the score you give. Positive comment 1,2,3,4,5,6 followed by "pack should have been one big map so um you get a shitty score."

Do you have an objective methodology for how to rate maps?

I (we?) really appreciate what you're trying to do, but for the amount of time people put into these projects, the least you could do is provide justified ratings and/or objective criticism. 

I'll respond first, in saying that the reviews I write are ultimately my responsibility, whereas the final scores are always up to UWFm although he rarely overrules my suggestions.

I've been thinking about this myself lately, the question is, should I "rate it for what it is" or "rate it as opposed to the best Q1SP ever." Something could be the best 100brush map ever, but what score should it recieve?

Anyway, I never really brought this up, but we never really established a scoring guideline, and I think that this is the dichotomy we should look at. Since it's for the community, some input on how things are scored, would certainly help. 

i dont give a shit about the ratings... i just like to read about the maps and reviews and pics are always interesante to read... 

Coolness. 

... it is a question of personal taste.. I mean that even with tons of effort to be objective, you always have a personal feeling on a map, and it influences the comments you made, more or less conscienciously...

However, Underworldfan / Tronyn / and all, deserve to be thank for the review they provide each new map.

At least it is very good to have this bunch of reviews, just to have a comparison point to other maps... 

The most interesting "reviews" are the news threads here at func. At least I think so. You'll get a load of comments directly from the people, and some will like a map more than others etc, so by reading such a thread you get a good average of all the different opinions.

Of course, the somewhat simplified reviews also have their place and UWF's site has been bookmarked for a long time.

Perhaps put two scores, like

UWF says: 15
Number of votes: (...)

and just have a vote button on the review page, like with webcomics etc. A simple javascript should do it, perhaps with a captcha to remove bots.

Another possibility would be some formula that counts the votes, then divides them by some magic number so the result is always betwen 0 and 20. So an often-voted for map would be close to 20, while others would be more near 8 or so. 

Thanks Tronyn 

The effort is really appreciated, and its nice to have a solid review site so that you don�t have to find the relevant thread here at func.

As to what score to give a map, its very subjective. A mark out of twenty of gameplay vs. asthetics is a tough call to make and youre never going to be able to justify to everyone.

Personally I'd say a much more fuzzy grade system would be more worklike - like spirit uses over at Quaddicted; crap, average, nice, excellent.

And with the same detail that you already put into the reviews nobody can complain. It's obvious when a map falls into one of those catgories, but not always so obvious how a rigid score /20 (or any number) is reached, because everyone has thier own opinions.