The Ascendancy - Excellent Maps for HL2:DM

[Physicles]

A while ago, I posted this thread about a site that tracks the very best maps for HL2: DM. It became clear that one doesn't exist, so I decided to search through all the maps I could find and write down the best ones.

The result is The Ascendancy. I've pared down my list of 500 original DM and TDM maps to just 21 DM and 7 TDM that are truly top-notch. On the site, you'll find screenshots, brief descriptions, and links to download each maps.

It's my ultimate hope that Valve would implement a map favorites system with Steam, so that you can give it a list of maps that you like, and it would separate the servers running maps that you like from the ones running maps that you don't like or don't have.

Enjoy. I'll be adding TDM and Remake maps in the next couple days.

 

[Lanthanide]

Wicked. It's about time someone did this.

 

[Mr. Redundant]

brilliant work.
thanks for this

 

[Lanthanide]

Oh, some things though:

It'd be good if you had some stats about the levels. For example:
Number of spawn points
Recommended number of players / max number of players
A quick way of denoating which weapons appear
Perhaps a note about the scarcity of health/armor (Lockdown would be 'plentiful', overwatch would be 'scarce').

Eventually you'd tie that in with search functions to allow people to show all maps that support 8-16 players, for example. Although right now there aren't that many maps in the collection so a search function isn't really that neccesary.

 

[Funky Munky]

Good job my friend. This is a badly needed asset in the HL2DM community.

Nice site design. I downloaded a few. Going to give them a whirl now.

 

[Noobulon]

:O
So many awesome looking maps I don't have!

Best get downloading

 

[ComradeBadger]

Or you could just use the HL2CCL map pack or pHenylshouse...

 

[Physicles]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

Lanthanide, you have some good ideas, and I'll look into implementing them. I'm not entirely sure how to judge player count; perhaps that would require playtesting. As for the search function, I'll need to wait until I get a server that allows custom scripting (either php or asp), as the U-Mich servers don't even allow you to write your own cgi scripts.

ComradeBadger, way to rain on my parade! Haha, j/k. I've at least looked at all the maps in the HL2CCL pack and at pHenyl's House. They're both good sites, but they don't have what I want.

I've read some of the threads at HL2CCL, and there is quite a bit of overlap between my list and their map pack. A couple that aren't on my list, like dm_island17 and dm_substorage, I had on it at one time, but pulled at the last minute (might re-add dm_substorage though). I wasn't particularly fond of any of the maps with "station" in the name (I looked at all of those too), but I'll probably take a look at some of them again.

You'll notice that neither site has dm_fallout, dm_inevitableconflict, dm_scorpius, dm_abyss, ... I'm trying to make a complete listing of all the good maps. I get my information from about 30 seprate sites.

I'd love more suggestions. Keep them coming. Meanwhile, I'll get to work on the remakes...

 

[daverince]

Excellent work. I was just thinking that I needed something like this, and WHAM, you went and did it.

Cheers,

Dave

 

[Finger]

Hey, this is a much appreciated site! Had a look around and just wanted to say thanks for the community effort.

I noticed you had my map dm_swamplight_final on your list (thanks, btw), and a clickey from my name. I have a website www.duncanmoore.org, that you can link to from my name, if you like.

Anyway, nice to see people promoting the amateur mapping scene.

 

[Physicles]

Thanks a ton, Finger (or Duncan... hmm). You and the other mappers do good work, and I want to show it off! I just had .com instead of .org under your name link, so that's fixed. Thanks for letting me know.

I've added 7 remakes to the site. Be sure to check out Stack and Prisoner; I didn't even know about them before I made this site. And word on the street is that gasworksinc is going final pretty soon (there's some activity in the steampowered forums).

 

[Bastion]

Very Very nice job Physicles!!!!!!!!!! The site is easy to navagate and the screens are awsome, I run a server and its nice to go to your site and see the GOOD maps. One thing I try to do is download the maps and play them on my machine which is pretty high end BUT I know alot of ppl dont have a 6800GT or a X800 so with that said I run the maps and make sure they run above 80FPS solid then ill upload to the server. I dont want to use maps where not everyone has a smooth experiance, some maps look awsome and they did a awsome job but if everyone on the server is playing in the map and its a slide show that sux. I wish there was a way to post someones pc specks and say something like the lowest FPS I got was 56 or what ever. BTW keep up the great work man ill post your site link on my site.

BTW Finger, dm_swamplight_final is on my server and runs like butter great job man, everyone likes it.

 

[Top Secret]

Thank you for this addition to the community. Well done good sir.

 

[Physicles]

Bastion, I like your idea about posting map performance specs. I'll get to work finding a way to do it that's objective and concise. All of the maps on the site are playable on my machine, an AthlonXP 2200+ GF4 Ti4600 (they run mostly over 30fps on medium-ish detail). I'll check out the Valve hardware surveys and find out where I stand -- probably toward the bottom -- and probably target a rating that's useful for 80-90% of the population.

 

[Frraksurred]

Most excellent work. Very constructive, I can see a lot of people benefiting from this site.

*favorites*