Breli's Backwater Map

Comments

• History and concept: Backwater was my second map and, in hindsight, a failure. Once again, I had no general idea/concept I was following for this one and invented on the go instead. The brushwork was less crude and a tiny bit more advanced than in Nightfort. Ironically, gameplay wise it was a step back in the wrong direction. The reason being mainly the mountain ridge that separates the map in two halves. Back in the day we had performance issues since the Quake engine did not handle outdoor scenes well. It was designed for "tunnel like" maps. Thus, I tried to limit visibility by separating the map in two halves. While that might have helped performance, it severely hurt gameplay. Moreover, the whole atmosphere is not really western like. All of the buildings and textures are mixed and the scaling is also off.

• My own review: Looking back, I am not happy with this one and believe the overall design and layout is messed up beyond any hope of recovery. The design on this map requires at least 8 players for half decent DM gameplay. BR might work due to the passage style character of the map. I think it is a good case of a design gone wrong that started with good intentions.

• Map facts:
  • Gamemodes: DM, TDM, RTP and BR
  • Release year: 2005 (possibly)
  • Bot support: Yes
  • Size and brush complexity: 5466 brushes and 557 entities

Screenshots

License and sources

It is released now under CC BY-SA 4.0 and may be used accordingly:

Backwater source file (DM and BR version)