Myers has raised the age-old question of the default hi-res texture pack in the (latest) future of dp thread. Certainly a new texture pack would make the game more visually appealing.
But apart from textures, I think DP in it's decade-plus lifespan may have reached the point that it just has too many maps. And some of them are not very great, and not very pretty.
The map-making community has been a strength over time. And I think that we have reached a point of more precision in the maps that have come out lately. The maps now make things look better and play faster, with more emphasis on speed and jumps.
But the huge number and variety of maps is not necessarily good, at least in my mind. And it grows all the time.
One of the reasons that I am not wanting to get back into the clan scene (apart from the fact that I cannot aim and get capped on) is that it takes time to learn all the maps necessary to play at an adequate level.
Even taking a break from DP for six months and then coming back meant I had to learn a number of new maps just to consider matching. And for someone just joining the community it is an even more daunting task. The game has a big learning curve to start with, but to match you have to learn all of the jumps, and all of the lining spots for all of the maps.
Many of the most popular maps, often older ones that have stood the test of time, play well but do not look good.
Could both aesthetics and map issues be solved by a re-boot of sorts?
What if the community settled on 30 maps that encapsulate everything they love about dp, and re-did them to look and play better?
They wouldn't just have to incorporate better grass and stone and plywood textures, but why not change the basic look of dp to be more modern?
The current dirt, grass, wood and stone backyard warrior motif comes from actual paintball. But actual paintball isn't what this game is about. It is about fast paced, jump oriented, one-shot-one-kill gameplay. And if you could really play paintball anywhere, in any kind of arena, and jump as high as you wanted without killing yourself, without worrying about real-word problems such as cost, would you make it somewhere as ugly as some of the dp maps?
The engine that dp uses is just not designed for lots of fine detail and organic matter. Trees have almost always been hideous beyond belief in dp, and plants are usually not much better.
So why put those things in? Why not make it more about large spaces with fast jumps and more modern textures?
What if dp did not look visually terrible? What if everyone could focus on learning a core of decent looking, decent playing maps? What if two issues could be solved at once?
What if the more skilled mappers of today were to build on the proven ideas of yesterday to create a new core of maps that would be played most of the time. (You could still have some classic servers, the engine wouldn't change)
I imagine some would get bored by the same maps all the time. But it is the people that add challenge and variety, not so much the map. And everyone gets bored of a particular game at some point.
We could have a decent looking game and competition might be benefited by having a set of maps that everyone learns and knows well.
Maps are one of the things that can be customized by the community. For a lot of features Jits needs to be involved. But to re-boot the maps he doesn't have to be. He could certainly get on board if he wanted to though. And with the faster downloading of today a default texture pack is less important.
To get server operators on board perhaps a whole new re-launch campaign could be designed. The site could be updated a bit on the aesthetics, the name could be changed slightly, either dp3 or some new twist, and some buzz could be generated.
It would give new players an excuse to check it out.
So what are your thoughts? Don't hold back. Not that holding back is usually an issue for this crowd.
And Jits, what do you think? You have said before in the past that there are some maps that should not be played and should not be on servers.
