Why ac_unfrozen never reached version 1.0
This is mostly a test to make sure everything works smoothly here, so it’ll be nice and short. As most around here know, ac_unfrozen was a map created by myself that earned the award of Best Newcomer in the 6th Official AC Mapping Contest, despite being in it’s beta phase. While I was proud of it achieving it’s goal, I haven’t completed any fix-ups or remakes of this map. Here is why.
This layout was designed for fast paced, fun gameplay and was designed well before this map contest even existed. I planned on creating it sometime in 2012 once my mapping skills and ideas were improved. In mid 2011, this map contest pops up with a snow theme, and I felt it had to be done then. This map ends up being made while I was still grasping modern AC map detail, especially with the industrial style seen in most AC maps.
The final product was a map that seemed random with lots of stuff that was out of place. Nobody can guess what this map’s locatiion is, or even what it is supposed to be; a town? a village? The gameplay-centric original design didn’t have these things in mind. So it ends up looking extra weird by having realistic industrial details built in. The river, the snow areas, the industrial indoor areas, none of it has synergy. If it gets remade as a super simple low detail map, then it looks like I’ve taken stuff away and marketed it as an upgrade. For a move towards a more realistic area, the layout doesn’t make much sense.
I used fov 90 when making this map. Once I was taught to use fov 120, this map looked completely different. The consequences were a river that was longer than it was supposed to be. Rooms were larger and spacier than they seemed at first. So at this point, the map is larger than it is supposed to be, and it has an identity crisis. Remaking it to suit realism and fov 120 will change it to the point where it is no longer ac_unfrozen. So at this point it seems I will let the map rest in beta phase forever. As a personal hater of restrictive licenses, it only seems right to make this a public un-licensed map, free to edit, free to do whatever. Maybe it is a solid starting place for future new mappers.