WTF? Where are the New Reviews?

The new reviews have all been put on hold until the new 6th Floor is up and running. Any reviews I do now, will not make the grade for the upcoming and improved 6th Floor. If you would like opinions or comments on maps, just email me. I will also be posting comments over at AQMD, with a few here at this site. The new site, with new review format is coming along. I feel it will provide the players and mapper with much more information, as opposed to how I currently review. Along with reviews, which we shall call “good”, will come the “bad and the ugly.” Although we will not dwell on these maps, but there will be comments on them. Please check out some of the new maps, as they look great. I love those photo realistic textures. More news to follow…

A Big Thanks

First, I would like to thank a few people for keeping my little web experiment going. Mikey at Action World, [MM]THX at Action Quake Forever and Death Magnet at AQMD for their time in trying to keep you, the players updated as to the whereabouts of The 6th Floor. It has been a rough and ugly month, but it looks like troubles are now behind me. It is now official and I do not expect to see any sort of response from the party who has control of the server in Scandinavia. This has been confirmed by another source. No big lose, it will take some time to win back a few supporters of the site.

I know I keep talking about big changes taking place. There are many in the works, such as a new and improved look of the site, better navigation and better quality of reviews. I have been working with a second party about revising the map reviews. It is actually an interesting idea when it was proposed to me, and it makes quite a bit of sense. After I we draw up the specifics, I will share them with you. All of this is leading to a better 6th Floor to server you, the Action gaming public. Because, isn’t that why I am here?

Onto the new maps…there have been a good amount or releases lately. Since I have been unable to really do much in the way of daily updates and notes on maps, I have been spending much more time playing and fine tuning my sniping skill (all my clan members quit your snickering). From Jesper Myrfors comes three maps, all of which offer up some excellent texturing. There is something to be said about photo-realistic textures. His released maps are: alley1, alley2 and hwy666. Check out this screen shot from alley1. Some of the best texturing I have seen to date.

From Squirrel comes his follow up map to Loveboat called temple. This map transports you into a Indiana Jones type movie setting and as Death Magnet mentions feels a bit like jungle1. The other releases include snakesmap by _Solidsnake and camel by Joost van der Velde and Nick van Ginkel, known as The Riddler and Mindmaker.

The Weekend was a Blur

What is a LAN without alcohol? Uh, I cannot remember…but I will tell you this, I did not make it on Saturday night. I did get to play a few new maps over the internet before succumbing to darkness. However, I did not make it for our clan play. So much for a body powered by Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I did update the review grid with three maps which will be reviewed this week. Also included on the bottom of the review page is a smaller grid which now holds reviews for the support programs, like CGF and AMDi (the only two I have reviewed). I do plan on down loading the CGF mission editor and the CGF launcher.

I need to apologize to [tBd]NRGizeR, author of the newly released mxcity. He has been trying to get a hold of me the past weekend to get an interview, but I was a bit busy with out of town guests and then Saturday, I was at the NT LAN in ‘N/A (Extended Away) mode on ICQ. If everything works out, I should have his review completed later today.

Some time back, I did mention I was getting a new format for The 6th Floor. It is still coming, but [NT]Overkill is having a small problem which requires some extra programming. He did not give me an exact date, but he did say it is looking good.

LAN it Up!

It is that time again…the weekly Netzwerk Terror LAN gathering. I have zipped up four maps to play when the Action period rolls around today. Two of the maps which have been released are fortcave by [CHAOS]Homicide and mxcity by [tBd] NRGizeR. The other two are test maps, which show considerable spunk and promise to make it to the “show”. Those maps are nakatomi by Shadowfire and coverme by Sir Caliber. It will probably be late tomorrow before I get something posted as to how the maps really played.

In other 6th Floor news, I am hopefully going to be getting through more reviews in the coming weeks. These will be the same objective and complete reviews, but without DM or TP comments initially. From what I have found, most people want to check out a map before taking time to download it and realizing they do not like it. For those on cable and DSL, this is no problem, but those the 56k people, like myself it is a bit frustrating. By doing this, you can get a general idea for the map, how it is laid out, how it looks, r_speeds and all the other information I provide on a review. As these maps make it into the NT Clan rotation, I will update each map accordingly and revise the review. This way, you do not have to wait weeks on a review for a hot, new release.

As for interviews, I have three lined up, two confirmed are NRGizeR, who created the aforementioned, mxcity and the_HUNTER, who has created the Lock ‘n Load trilogy and Night Raid. Look for both coming soon. As soon as I get word on the other interview I will let you know who it is.

And as you can tell, it has been a few days since the last update, this is due to a buddy of mine in from Chicago, so we were doing the “tourist” thing the past few days in SoCal. My vacation is upcoming, which means I should be having many updates and new reviews. Oh and one final thing…consider this somewhat important (that’s why it is last), my oswald [at] actionquake.com email is not functioning correctly. If you need to send me something, please address it to sockit [at] loop.com. I am still trying to figure out why the mail server does not like my password. Of course this only happened after I reformatted Windows98SE…gah!

More New Maps

I feel like I am falling behind in the number of reviews, relative to the number of recent releases. Rest assured, I will get about 5 new maps in this weekend after I attend the NT LAN, which I have been unavailable for the past few weeks. On that note, Action Quake Map Depot released mxcity by [tbd]NRGizer. I spoke about this map before, mxcity: Malax City 2083 by [tBd] NRGizeR: This map is reminiscent of a deserted ghost town. Although this map pushes the Quake engine too far and begins clipping, it is still worth examining. The layout has three groups of buildings of varying proportions. When your view is not impeded by the clipping of the map, there is the possibility for some long distance kills. Another mentionable, which might prevent it from official release. The use of questionable texture. That texture is a ‘Dr. Pepper’ logo which is on a soda vending machine. The prefab looks outstanding, but we know how they frown on illegal textures.

In other map news, there are a new set of maps up and available for official testing: snakesmap by _Solidsnake, which has been on the Matrix for a few days. acmet by INTERVAL, which is a great looking, but large city, may new textures! coverme by Sir Caliber, which is a small city map, looks like it could yield come good TP. tbcity by GermanFF & Slasher, this map looks outstanding, from the unique, well textured streets and buildings to the colorful billboards, the only drawback are the r_speeds which run a bit high.