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Wheel of Time
(General site: Shadar Logoth, forum: WOT game forum.)
How to play WOT levels: Unzip the map files into the appropriate folders in Wheel of Time, start the game, bring down the console (using ~ or `), and type "open mapname".
23/09/00: "Illhaven" by Kew
Download: Illhaven_WoT.zip (1.1 meg.)
 
Score: µ˜ / æ©©
Factual:
The only WOT SP map, a conversion of the legendary (pun!) first Illhaven Unreal map, in which you are searching for the mythical Kew, who had returned to Illhaven to find it overrun with monsters. The map consists of a series of interlinked medieval buildings and courtyards surrounding a deserted moonlit harbour. The strongly themed buildings all have very good medieval designs: with peaked rooves, arched doorways, stone walls, leaded windows, and wooden decor inside. Texturing is appropriate but sometimes scruffy, such as blurry textures adjacent to detailed textures or some poorly used stone textures. Lighting fits the night setting, there's ambient music but few other sounds. The layout allows the player to explore in any direction through all of the buildings, to find a key that gives access to a hidden boat - there is no indication where the key is kept. The map is infested solely with lurking Trollocs, and gives simple 1-on-1 fighting with limited offensive Ter'angreal. Combats initially are more difficult than the WOT average, until more TA are collected. Some routes are harder than others as far as collecting TA goes, but the overall combat balance is mostly consistent.
Personal:
Ho hum. Kew 0wnz me but the first time I played this I was disappointed....it's not as good as the Unreal version that made me his bitch. Unreal's Illhaven really set a standard for design quality, and it stood well above any other Unreal maps. But since the standard of WOT game maps is so high (including Kew's own excellent contributions to Shadar Logoth), I wasn't so inspired by this. Maybe it was too soon after playing Illhaven and WOT itself, because the second time I played it - despite still only getting the key by a *lot* of aimless bumbling, and finding the combat repetitive and hard to start - I was more inspired, particularly by the architecture and night-time setting. I wish it had been done better, but taken on it's own merits it's definitely a good map in a classic setting.
Improvable:
Polish up the texture usage - less stretched textures, more consistency between simple and detailed textures. Exploration is good but directing the player and giving them more purpose and logic to their search would have been much better. WOT has a wide range of interesting TA and it's a pity these weren't used - the map needed more variety in combats. Also, the various routes could have been better balanced.
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