Help: Critique UT 2004 Level Thread

Hello fellow designers, I'm working on my capstone (final) project for Game Design School, which is a Unreal Tournament 2004 level, and I need some help. I'm focusing on gameplay, not looks, so I need some feedback on what people think about the layout of my level and possible improvements.

My level is based on the Gondola Docks from Halo 2, and the bases are on either side of the berth.
Please download the level if you are able, and if you are not, please look at the Images and comment on the layout.

>>> Forerunner-Dock.ut2

Thank you very much for your help.

Even as a shell, it's not finished enough to critique properly. You don't have any bot paths, so offline testing is a mess. If you want to test it online you'll need to organise a server for people to join. Even then, there's no pickups, so a big element of gameplay is missing online and off. Get those basics in place and we can give it a proper analysis.

There's still a few things I can comment on. One is the bases - the spawns are almost on top of the flag, so defence is embarrassingly easy - you die, respawn and can start shooting the attacker straight away. You need a bit of distance and cover between spawn point and flag so fragging defenders actually makes a difference.

The other concern is the near total lack of cover. From most points in the level you have open lines of fire to almost everywhere else. It's just going to be endless weapon spam wherever you are. That includes the spawn points . This makes tactics painfully limited - you spot the flagrunners, you shoot at them. If they are down, spam some fire at the spawn points instead. That's not going to have enough depth to hold anyone's attention for long.

Wish I could find something more positive to say, but right now there's just not enough there to work with. Apologies. I'm hoping it will be much better with some more work

This seems almost unnecessary to comment on but...

Since your doing the concept art and the map, I suppose it wouldn't matter.
When me and the mapper go to concept a map, we have height, we note the RBG color of things (This wall roughly 125 125 140/Concrete), we design fight 'flow' arrows, spawns, highlight certain areas, not special objects, color the area each team 'owns' and show whats outside of the map. (What we call 'cardboard'. As in fake scenery.)

Things are easy to show and see on paper. Doing this will let you really see if a spawn point is poorly located, where flags can be 'camped' and ect.

Primarily though for letting other people know whats what before its even loaded in a map maker.

Thats just my two cents.

I completely understand what you two are saying. I was doubting whether this map would actually work the way I designed it, and the more I mess around with it, the less and less I think it will work. I think I need to go with a more fleshed-out design rather than this one, at least until I get enough experience to be able to craft this map in to something playable.

Thank you for your help.

Edited by: novusvir