Assessment post.

Nice use of HTML, good contest idea. Clean thread layout, and easy to understand with good grammar, spelling, punctuation, and nice use of paragraphs.

This seems to be a very good map mini!

The light_environment suits the textures very well overall, and all of the textures suit eachother nicely, which proves to be a difficult thing to do sometimes when mixing concrete bases with foliage / grass. Indoor lighting could be improved, but is still pretty average if not slightly better. Plenty of props used to keep realism, and nice amount of detail with decals and such.

Although small, I found this map to be a rather perfect size for the supplied guns, and the layout really helps it because it is very difficult to rush, unless the other team is camping behind boxes.

Optimization seemed pretty well done, no brushes contained unnecessary parts to them, and judging by my fps you probably used nodraw in cases you should have.


Now then, improvements were difficult to find for me, but here it goes.

• Rotate the boxes that are stacked upon eachother slightly, it ruins the overall realism of the map to have perfectly aligned and stacked boxes like that, if you don't know what I mean just tell me and I'll try to explain further..
  
  
• Use more dynamic lighting in the tunnels, or try to keep the light entities further from the walls, because the lighting as is looks kind of splotchy, it's nice that you used some props for light sources, but it still looks strange and unrealistic. Although you did do a good job of avoiding splotchy shadows.
  
  
• In the case of cover with a gap between them, please enlarge it enough so the player can fit through. It's a bit of a killer for the gameplay when you go hide behind a box, then when you try to switch to the next you have to start hopping over obstacles in the way, or go all the way around them leaving yourself wide open to enemy firing. here is an example of a gap that is just too small to fit through, which tends to frustrate you while in the middle of a firing battle.
  
  
• Perhaps shrink the brush you have to block firing through the glass so that it isn't pertruding outside of the glass, but only inside of it so that bullet holes actually affect the glass properly. I'm referring to this glass.
  
  
• Try to reduce blockiness of the areas around the spawn, the consistent wall level makes you seemed trapped and overall it's kind of just weird. Perhaps have the outter walls slant downward in the middle like you did with the ground, so that it kind of follows with the ground rather than staying perfectly level.
  

These little things are really all I could find for improvements - Besides strange prop shadows, which I believe you have no power over. :P



On a side note, Merry Christmas bud. Sorry it took so long to assess this. :D

Very detailed whilst going straight to the point. You described everything perfectly making it clear what to do next.

Sorting it into many sections and emphasizing parts where you list properties (by using the --- thing) really helped make this tutorial more readable.

This is a prime example of where HTML is not needed, simply for the fact you found other ways to emphasize / sort things.

Could use references to which screenshots are where by leaving a little bracket note saying (Screen 1) or something, but I found it was easy to see where you meant for the screenshots to use.

HTML could still help this tut, but overall isn't needed.

Good work.

Balance:

In all honesty, this map is not very balanced at all, cts get easy headshots down the elevator shaft, whereas T's have to constantly look up straining to find the people picking them off. However, with this style map this is to be expected so I went easy on you here. You get brownie points for not having a single ladder going all the way up/down though, because when that happens it becomes beyond biased for the ct's, seeing as they could just jump down and grab ladder near the bottom to rush. Then there would still be people sniping up top.

Design:

Design was very well done. We all know how small an elevator shaft is, and how difficult it would be to play in, however, you did a good job of expanding it and making it easy to play in CS:S. There is multiple routes up and down which is a great benefit. Also, although the floors were rather repetitive in shape, that is realistic, and you helped to prevent it from being repetitive by varying the props.

Gameplay:

Multiple routes help to keep Gameplay from getting repetitive, however, the balance is still an issue here as well. The gameplay is rather ruined when it's so one-sided. I will, however, admit I had quite a lot of fun playing as a ct, just picking off the clueless terrorists. (No fun as terrorist thouh. :<)

Looks:

The texture use in this map is superb, it varies greatly and altogether seems to match the lighting and theme very well. You included many detail props to benefit the map's looks, as well as many decals and other small details such as the vent visible in screenshot 3. Lighting is great with no blotchy shadows, however there is slight circles visible on the walls taking away from the realism slightly. That isn't what lost you the point though.
The problem I found was that there was a few cases of poor texture alignment (This is the same on every floor, and there is a few other cases I spotted but didn't feel I needed a screenshot of them all.

There was also a couple intersecting brushes, but nothing too bad.

Overall:

Texture use is very good, despite a couple of poor alignments, and lighting is fantastic with no splotchy shadows. Could have gone with some dynamic lighting perhaps, but still, it's good. Gameplay is biased towards ct's, but I expected worse with this kind of map. You did a good job of adding in many extra details to the map.

A large problem I noticed within the map was the fact that you probably have a leak. I know this because when I go spectator and float out of the map I go into the void.

If you could fix this leak it would greatly increase fps, but as is fps is fabulous anyways. Great optimization.

Overall a decent map but overall it seems as though there was very little effort and thought put behind it. The layout is scattered and random with no real theme, you mixed dev textures with real textures (which is a big no no) and the lighting is a little too orange to suit the map. In the future you should set the ambience / brightness to colors closer to white making them more pale rather than so solid.

Some of the ideas are good, but it looks like you just randomly decided 'Hey, I should add this', rather than going with a thought out theme. I really like how some of the barrels look, and the idea of a wooden person in the doorway of the spawn was pretty good. :P

Throughout the map there was many 'errors' like floating brushes and intersecting brushes. Here are some examples:

1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

There are many similar errors, but you get the idea. In the future try to spend more time lining up brushes.

Improvements:

• New texture for the fence surrounding map - This one fades as you get further and overall looks very strange in a map this size for the outter walls.
  
  
• Choose a more pale light_environment color.
  
  
• Give weapons you start with ammo so people don't run out so soon in the middle of the round. (You can do this within the properties of the gun, there's a tutorial here. Sorry, it'd be too long to explain in this assessment post.
  
  
• Use displacements (1, 2), it looks very bland and unrealistic with just flat grass with no irregularities.
  
  
• Plan. Always think out ideas before adding them to a map, don't just place props on a surface.
  
  
• Fix intersecting brushes / floating props and stuff.
  
  
• Stick to a single theme throughout textures, props, lighting, and all of that.
  
  
• More intricate 3D skybox, or just have the ground stretch out further, and change skybox texture to a more suitable one.
  

In the future please try to spend more time fixing up your maps and think it out more. This shows you understand how to use Hammer pretty well, but you should really think out concepts more in the future rather than rushing to finish it. This could also improve the Gameplay of your maps in the future.