fileball.whpress.com
February 9, 1999

August 1998

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January 1999

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Timeline

Dirt Mines of Aldebaran

I'm not sure this one's playable. It's really, really, really big... and sort of boring. You'd have trouble finding people to kill with 20... good luck with 8 or less. Interesting experiment in mapmaking, though...

Escher's Bowtie

Amazingly simple, but pretty convoluted... two completely overlapping rooms, with a shared pair of pillars. There's a moving platform between the pillars (you can use it as cover, or as a travel aid), and each time you circle a pillar, you end up in the other room. One room has drones, the other has a single cyborg-leave aliens on during net play, and you can use the wreckage to orient yourself. Beautifully done.

Escher's Fire Walk With Bob

A small arena with a pillar in the center and a river of lava down the middle, leading into a lake. Sounds simple... except if you drop around the pillar, you'll lose your buddies. They won't turn up the next time you go around, either... or the next time. In fact, the room wraps around the pillar four times before reconnecting with itself. Wow-that must be some sort of a record. General mapmaking is quite good (except for an untextured wall in each of the 4 lava lakes-but you shouldn't be too distracted by the smearing, since you won't stay alive too long out there...).

Escher's Shell Game

This is one of the most convoluted (and unpredictable) 5D spaces I've ever seen. A large open area with three pillars... but there are actually 3 open areas, and in each one, two of the pillars are connect points, while the third is not. (Obviously, it's not the same pillar in each arena.) Two-thirds of the time, you can avoid enemy fire by ducking around a pillar... but that last third will kill you... literally. The one saving grace is probably unanticipated by the level creator.. but also by your playmates, most likely: you can actually kill people through 5D space.

Escher's Vertigo

Um... it's a star... no, it's a bunch of triangles that meet in... no, it's, um, it's...Dang. Download it, play it, get totally lost. It's really small inside... but the walls just come and go! There's a tiny bit of smearing, due to a hacked pillar, but you have to work pretty hard to see it... and if your friends are any good at all, you won't get the chance.

Hill From Hell

Sort of a solo net map. Hmm... that's not right. You've got two kinds of bobs, and you can team up with either one. One defends the hill (the map is a fine KOTH map for large groups all by itself), the other the outer passageways. Nice construction, decent lighting, good flow (once you've figured things out)... This one works well as either a net or solo level.

Searchlight

A clover-shaped space station. Nice lighting effects, and the windows make finding people pretty simple... although you can't actually shoot them through the windows. (It is a space station, after all...) Large groups would feel cramped.

Somewhere West of Aldebaran

3 ships, all with strengths and weaknesses, all centered around a nasty (regenerating) jug. Pick your location, attack the jug (or your friends). Don't like the ship you're in? Teleport to one of the other two! Mapmaking is quite nice, gameplay is a bit frenetic.

SPNKman

A pac-man like maze, filled with pfhor and... spnkrs? Geez. This one will seriously fine-tune your spanking. After 10 minutes, you should be able to kill pfhor (and your friends) that are in your face by dropping a missile on the ground behind them. (Hint... shoot left.)

The Well

An interesting spiral-staircase-centered level. Some funky 5D going on, and watch the dark pit at the bottom... And beware. We had two separate crashes as people exited the bottom area for the stairs-looks like it might be a too-many-transparent-edges problem. (Doesn't come up every time... just sometimes when you turn right too quickly.)