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Home Grown Carnage

A mostly enclosed, tight-hallwayed map. (There's open space, too, but the dominant type is closed-in.) A few minor glitches, but mainly pretty nice mapmaking. Flow is good-there are multiple exits from most areas, and you won't get hung up on edges too much. Effort has been put into lighting, which (because of the mostly small spaces) shouldn't affect framerates. (The map could use a bit of sound, though...) Comes in two flavors-heavy on the weapons and ammo, for large groups, and lighter on both, for smaller groups.

3rd and 7

A large football field, surrounded by seats (?). Nicely laid out, if a little bare... but ammo is really sparse, probably for anything more than two people. Gets a little better once you find the entrance to the control booth, but it's still not enough for bigger games.

Descent into Death

A huge arena surrounded by rising hallways. With big groups, this might be fun, but smaller groups would have a hard time getting close enough to kill. There's a switch in the central pillar which I don't understand at all... all it seems to do is make the upper hallways vulnerable from below. Since only those in the upper hallways can flip the switch, it seems, well... pointless. (I suppose it also makes the area around the hill targetable from above... but there is much more freedom of movement down below, so it's more dangerous to those in the passageways.)

Test Arena

A simple concept, elaborately (and extremely well) executed. This is an arena for testing monsters. Standard monsters, custom monsters... doesn't matter. You get lots of ammo, and a safe island, and a setup that allows the release of exactly the number and kind of monster you'd like, when you want it. It's way more elaborate than you'd ever really need for this task, but hey-if you're going to do something, why not do it right? If you need a test map for your new monster, this would work quite nicely.

Not a Good Landing v1.1

A four level solo scenario. Mostly well-built, with nice architecture, and decent gameplay. Play would be better, I think, if it weren't quite so predictable.

Stacked Walkways

A pretty neat demo of two walkways on top of each other. The technique uses scenery items to fake the look of the walkway, so you don't look like you're floating... it seems pretty clear that with a little bit of artistry, the proper scenery items could be created to make the upper walkway look nearly flawless. Also contains an intriguing extension of the author's untextured wall experiments.

Kill the Player (SPN)

A small mazelike map, with an embedded physics model that keeps you on your toes. (It's designed to be played solo-the SPN stands for SIngle Player Network.) You get one magnum (and, if you kill the infrequent vacubob, a fusion pistol), and your job is to kill as many bobs as you can. (There is no end.) Good for target practice... the bodies really pile up. Enough recharge canisters appear that you can keep going as long as you want to.

Nuthouse of Idiosyncrasy

A small level with a pit reached by two long mirrorimage corridors. You got enforcers, you got vacuexplodabobs, you got a jug... you gotta kill 'em all, and still find your co-players. Would be horribly crowded with more than two or three.

The Sons of Ludd

A six-level, action-packed solo scenario. This was released (and announced on alt.games.marathon) last fall, but there wasn't any active archiving going on at the time.

The Marathon Sound Set v1.2

Not technically Marathon sounds, but rather a MacOS 8.5 SoundSet. Pretty well done, overall... a few sounds are rough, but so were the originals.

Duality (SPN)

Bungie's Duality, modified with Bobs that shoot grenades or lava globs. The idea is to give people without access to a network the challenge of a net game. (SPN stands for Single Player Network.) Works okay, except that bobs will never shoot like real people... and not much care was taken with the physics model. (Although the shots are right, the sounds aren't... sort of strange when you hear pistol shots,and turn around to see lava globs coming at you.)

Jugger Station

A space station with one large central room, and several outlying areas. Nice views from the hallways... and the staircase in the central room adds to the flow dynamics. (Not quite as effectively as it could, since the switch to raise and lower it is on the bottom level-if it were on top, you could trap people in the hole.) Big enough, and spread out enough, that two players might get bored.

Spooky

A nicely done outdoor canyon. Frenetic at first, because of the baddies waiting for you, but once they're gone, it's quiet again...There's a fast-moving river through the middle, with access to an underground cave, and plenty of nooks and crannies. A single manmade room overlooks the field, with teleporters to various high points. Probably needs three minimum to obtain decent carnage rates.

Hoth Preview

A preview of the upcoming scenario, Hoth. This contains a single solo level and two net levels... definitely gives you a flavor of gameplay.

Ledges V1.0

A large arena surrounded by multilevel ledges. Lots of weapons, lots of ammo, and lots and lots of bobs... smaller groups will have trouble staying alive long enough to kill other humans, because the bobs will gang up on you. Larger groups should be okay, though...

Toastmonkey's Return v1.0

An interesting KOTH map, with a really raised hill (mostly) only accessible by slow platforms, giving folks plenty of time to pick you off. (In fact, unless you're quick-footed, it's a two step process to the hill... even more time.) This is the sort of pressure that forces secrets into the open... but in any case, defending the hill is no piece of cake either. The area is small, and semi-enclosed, meaning a well-placed pair of spnkr missiles from anyone on the outer ring is gonna toast you.

Infection

It's hard to know what to say about this one. It starts out slow, and there are lots of sloppy mistakes-spelling is atrocious, lots of untextured sides, baddies stuck in walls and ceilings...

CrackPark

Big, dark (mostly), multilevel, very nicely constructed. Great flow.

Klaatu Verati Nictu!

A simple arena, in principle... but play it for a little while, and you might change your mind. The hill is accessible via 5D passageways from the outer ring... and you come out on the far side from where you started. Big weapons are on the hill, everything else is in the pit surrounding it... and to make matters a bit more complicated, 3x canisters can be found in sort of hidden corners (we found ourselves shooting at them just out of principle... you never knew when someone would be in there). Adds up to serious carnage, with anything more than 2 players.

WITE

A couple of levels, and a small shapes patch. The first level is seriously claustrophobic, and you'll be hitting your head on the stairs every time you go down. The fun part comes in with the small shapes patch...

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