I'm considering making a open, nature-themed HL2DM map at the moment. My basic gameplay idea is to ditch most of the physics clutter in favour of a focus on major weapons (perhaps even with a Quake-inspired 2 RLs or pulse rifles), and have little armour-like stockpiles of HEV energy. That should make play a little different from the stock maps, which is desirable IMO.

I think there are plenty of things to be done to minimise the effectiveness of spam and cheap play - adjusting the average size and weight of physics items is an obvious example - careful attention to layout is another. No fucking camping ledges next to the RL. No narrow, critical stairways that can be jammed with rubbish to break the map balance. I like the DM, I see that it has problems, and I think some of those can be helped with suitable application of mappage. 

So far I have played about an hour of HL2DM and I found the gameplay to become very boring vert quickly. I have no further interest in playing it until the make the gravity gun a collectable item (instead of making the player spawn with one) and reducing the amount of throwable objects in the maps by a lot. 

HL2DM is a joke IMO. It's not fun, the levels are horizontal and not very good. I've always had choppy gameplay, even when my ping is ~50 or so. Throwing stuff is not very fun. It's a bad version of pong.

As far as Steam multiplayer goes, so far it's complete shit. HL2DM and CSSource are all we have. I will be much more eager to play DoDSource or HoBSource, who I know the team is working on porting over to Steam from Call of Duty.

I would've entered the HL2DM contest simply for the money, but I realized I don't want my name associated with that POS.

The game's crap. 

I found once the fun of killing someone with a radiator/wash basin and getting the little toilet sign up in the top has worn off then there isn't alot left to it. Tfc2 should be on the way soon. 

Not convinced so far. Weapons are okay. Gravity Gun is kinda cool, I get killed by it more than I kill. Some tactical options are very interesting. The maps blow pretty much. Lag is kinda bad. The sprint thing is fucking annoying.

It could be good in the right circumstances i.e. small numbers of players, very well balanced weapons, easy to navigate maps with good layouts, LPB connections....etc. 

I take it there is little to no interest in getting some kind of game together then? 

pissed me off in the extreme. It should be a server-side option (infinite sprint juice) - then again hitting anyone with anything might be a bit annoying.

Personally I enjoyed the game. It feels so much different to most other games, and a lot more lively, thanks to the gravity gun and physics. I tend not to take multiplayer games particularly seriously (EXCEPT H&D2 AND VIETCONG!) so this was very enjoyable.

Agreed about the very unbalanced weapons and general ease of killing and being killed, although I kind of got used to it and managed to own the prison map by holding an area in a big FFA game (I AM THE KING!)

As I mentioned before somewhere, I like the fact players don't start off defenseless. 

<Shambler> hmmm
<Shambler> there's no hl2dm map review site
<Shambler> i should start one
<Shambler> that would be a hideous ball-ache i could really live without =)

Okay, in the absence of any HL2DM review sites, and given there seems to be quite a few custom maps played on servers - almost all of which will suck shite straight from my sweaty sphincter -, does anyone know any good HL2DM maps apart from CZG's??

Or any useful resources for finding them,..? 

Try these. I haven't played any, but they seem to be the least crap.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=60666

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=66389&page=1

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=66461&page=1 

2nd one is the only one that looks worth playing. We might have to try that one out :D 

HL2DM is fun for a couple games, and it will be impossible to adjust it to get the game to a half-competitive state.

Rocket Launcher is totally overpowered, the other weapon whose secondary attack is some plasma ball bouncing around is also pretty fucked up. Physgun is fun for a while, but gets boring and slow. Also, the lack of some sort of trickjumping doesn't help to make it more fun.

I like it for a couple mindless ffa's, but no more than that, and the game will never be popular or competitive, so I think it'll be hard to see a growing mapping scene for it. I may get wrong, thought, given the large fandom base that HL2 has. 

Tried the following, going on what's being played and general recommendations:

dm_bounce - kinda nice style with an open area and jump pads, but looks like annoying movement throughout.
dm_casual - bit of city, bit of subway, reasonable size but on the bland side for design and feel.
dm_crossfirev2_b2 - very big, bland, arbitrary, annoying movement.
dm_dockside - biggish and squarish, nice enough setting, long distances to travel as usual.
dm_infiltrate - big bland, bright and boxy building business.
dm_lostvillage - square yet again, some decent outdoor styles, too big.
dm_lostisle - atmospheric and attractive, decent style and varied, not sure how it would play but I would give it a try.
dm_pit - unusual, Quake style, nicely done and a decent layout, might be a bit overscaled for HL2 speeds.
dm_revolution - good atmospheric style in a ruined city, decent size and well connected, not too open, would try this too.
dm_stalkyard - reasonable style for a warehouse thing, long distances as usual, bit big for me.
dm_substorage - same as stalkyard, some good styles in it but too large a scale and size.
dm_watergate - same as dockside but a bit prettier.

----

The basic features of most of these maps are: On the too big side, on the overscaled side (like, don't they know that sprint runs out?), on the bland side, and on the boxy side. None of them are really comparable to czg_hl2dm1 for interconnectivity, scale, or gameflow.

However, dm_revolution looks like it will come close in scale and playability, and dm_lostisle is a good size and a real nice setting. So next time I'm hosting, I'll have those two in rotation to vary things up. Go download them now rather than later (lostisle might also be lostisle_v1 or summat). 

DM_Overflow: http://www.planetquake.com/greyvoid/dm_overflow.zip

DM_Lost_Isle: http://homepage.mac.com/forrestdowling/hl2/dm_lost_isle.rar
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=6088

DM_Revolution: http://www.fileplanet.com/dl.aspx?/planetunreal/specularity/dm_revolution.zip
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=6091 

thanks for the useful stuff0r 

That's just my views and all, feel free to check the shit out and disagree. But I think for map size goes, we don't want anything too big for #func games.

I'm open to suggestions, but would like to have some variety along with overflow. 

Just downloaded the two maps shambler suggested, gotta try those, since I would like to play HL2dm from time to time, and yeah, a nice pool of maps to play is always appreciated.

Btw, shambler, do you use HL2 dedicated server? we should try that out... 

Revolution is fine, plays pretty well and a fairly distinctive feel to it. Needs 4ppl or more though for most fun, 3 is just feasible but slowish. Worth sticking with I reckon.

Lost_Isle is still pretty pretty but unfortunately was hugely laggy online....will have to test this again as otherwise it would be fun in a different style, but at the moment it's unplayable. 

Tried lost_isle again with just vigil, worked fine, no lag problems. Think it might have been Prodigy's connection assing things up before.

Anyway, pretty fun level, a bit different, some good long range business. 

http://www.map-center.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=5948

ppl at forum say it's ok 

Nice one, looks cool from the shots, I'm really into finding something more hi-tech and less like ruined RL stuff. Will check. 

Symetrical space map business it might be, but it's got a nice style and good lighting, so I will run this one. Looks good for 1on1, no tau balls, no RL, but plenty of XBow action. Nice to have some variety too, w3rd.

Direct download for you hoes:

http://www.kain-9.com/maps/HL2-maps/dm_void.zip 

First czgs was the best of the bunch pretty easily. There was plenty of orginal brush work in there as well as thoughtful use of the models supplied with the game. Lost Isle seemed good enough. Running through it though you can see this map relies way to much on props to create detail and the brush work for the most part is rather tame and boring. Finally revolution looked rather lack luster. The layout is much larger than one would expect from a run outside in the court yard. I found the performance of that map to be rather crap tastic because in the courtyard there is a lack of vis blockers that can really dump your FPS. The broken wall models don't meet up with the face of the brushes well either and you can see gaps in some of the walls as well.

Overall I think the 3 maps that Sham pointed out do a good job of showing how props and models can really hide a mappers poor brush work. Which I guess is a good thing, but I can't help but feel that it can cheapin what we do as mappers. Thankfully czg's piece is an example of how quality brush work can be accented and be improved through them. 

I'm not bothered about how a mapper created the work, I'm just bothered about the overall effect for both looks and gameplay. If a map relies on props and looks and plays good, sobeit.

I'm surprised you found Revolution slow-running with your uber-HUGECOCK machine, I had no problems.

As always, I'm open to suggestions of other good, small maps. 

Not looked at the map, but the screenshots look quite sexy - http://www.thevon.net/ 

Yeah that does look good. Kind of reminds me of the Counter Strike construction-zone map though.