Duel Map Contest Poll

[Circa]

We've got a bunch of submissions for the Duel Map Mod Contest, and they all look outstanding. This will be a very hard decision! Please vote for the map you believe should win!

Due to the great turnout with the number of submissions, we're going to do a GOLD , SILVER , and BRONZE award for this contest, depending on the votes they receive. Votes are all public, just an FYI. Vote manipulation will result in disqualification.

I highly recommend actually downloading all of these and taking them for a spin ingame. Pictures say a thousand words but experience is priceless.

Voting will end 7th of March 2025. (This was extended from original announcement due to more submissions than expected)

View all Contest Entries

 

See a short preview of the maps in the video below, but please do your due diligence and try them for yourself!

 

[DEAD]

Castellaris looks stunning, love the vibes of Racto Droid Factory as well.

[Qira]

This was a hard choice but I'd have to go with TFFA Brutal. I absolutely love the thought and architecture that went into this map. 

My second choice would most def be Castellaris. The skybox is dreamy and beautiful. 

[Smoo]

My favourites are Echani Training Grounds and Rishi Station 2 because they look awesome and are best performance wise. The Skyboxes on Castellaris and Oasis Mesa are very beautiful though.

[GamerRedNeck]

These are all great, but Castellaris just vibes with me the most.  The skybox is excellent and the overall layout and architecture of the map is fantastic.

[Noodle]

After downloading and testing all the maps these are the general criticism I could muster of each one

Castellaris:

This is an incredibly creative map with an uncommon use of colors that are often avoided when it comes to mods. The castle's architecture is very interesting and it has a nice use of lighting. There's also a very good use of horizon blending that makes the surrounding sea feel very vast. That said, for a duel map, it feels awfully big and maze-like, which can be very tiring. I found the choice of music to be kind of a vibe-killer (I like medieval music, but Giaccona might not be the best choice here), the sky texture seems to be AI generated which makes it look alien-like, but at the same time the lack of general movement makes it look more stiff because of how over cluttered it is. Custom shaders could have made it more unique in that regard. And on a personal preference, I'm not a fan of teleports in maps. 

My score: 4/5 

TFFA Brutal:

The moment you see the map you can see it was clearly inspired by brutalist architecture, though I could also feel a general influence of art deco in it. Great sense of scale and aesthetic consitency. The brushwork is immaculate and it has a great balance of artificial and natural lighting. There are some art pieces made with brushwork that look really good and the map's size is great for duelling and tournaments. The elements that I'd criticize are mainly the bland music choice and that I wasn't personally a fan of using plants to decorate this kind of structure. 

My score: 5/5

Droid Ractor Factory:

This was such a fun map to explore, it's full of well thought details, like a collapsed gas tank that blocked one of the production lines. It also has a general aesthetic very similar to Coruscant as seen in the vanilla game and I love Star Wars themed maps in general. Lighting wise its good,  but there's a general lack of shadows in some areas that make it look flat. Some contrast would've been nice. The conveyor belt with the little pieces moving is great too. On a more critical note, the frames drop at certain bits and that's not good for a duel map, on that regard, there's an area that's accessible only with jump 3 and it could be used for time waste, which is also undesired in duel maps. Here, the music is star wars themed but its also very dull for the map in general, feels almost like an after thought. I'd have liked some immersive sound design, like an alarm where the tank fell, and I wish I could interact with the control panels.  On a personal preference, I'm not a fan of randomly placed crates, though you could have added more clever clues to explain their rather illogical positioning. 

My score: 4/5

Rishi Station:

This one is great. The Clone Wars inspired, perfect size for duels, original textures for the control panels, nice view outside of the window, its everything you could want for a Star Wars themed duel map. Only things I'd have added would've been ways to interact with some of the control panels (even if its just to play a sound indicating that you can't open the doors with them) and maybe some music from The Clone Wars instead of generic John Williams tracks. 

My score: 5/5

Jedi Dojo:

I really appreciate that the .map file was added to the .pk3 so that future modders can play with it. The map has some nice wood brushwork and decorations made with this technique, it is super close to what's seen in Star Wars Rebels and its a good and clean space for duelling. The use of colors and textures is generally nice and I think it fulfills its objective quite well. That said, some textures are rather flat, specially the banners, the music choice is a terrible one for the map's general aesthetic and I do wonder if there's any need for the small corridors in opposite sides of the map. They feel like an unnecessary distraction. There are very few light sources in the map and it doesn't make sense for how well lit the overall space is and personally I find it annoying when doors randomly open and close when you get near them, specially in duels. 

My score: 4/5

Oasis Mesa:

This map was made with Rend2 in mind, which is an immediate plus for me. Its a great experiment of work methodologies, since it wasn't made in Radiant but rather Unreal Engine and then ported to Radiant. It works well in this regard, thought since there's no brushwork involved you don't get lightsaber trailmarks on the surrounding spaces. The music and ambience in this map is top notch, and even though the space is huge, there's always clear visibility so that it doesn't become an issue for duels, which here work great both with sabers and guns. I really like some things like the crates covered in cloth and also the big entrance to an abandoned and ruined building. The things that could, in my opinion, be improved are the lack of horizon blending, making the sky texture move a bit so that it doesn't feel stiff and adding collision to the hanging cables. 

My score: 5/5

Hand of Thrawn:

Another great Star Wars inspired map. This one is tougher since its source is literary and not visual, which adds a level of challenge for the adaptation to a map. I really like its round shape and the use of small caves to hide stuff on it, same as the brushwork on the sparsi clone tank and the general use of lighting. This is also a great map for duelling. I did think the floor texture was a bit monotonous and I wasn't a fan of the inconsistency in the textures of all the surrounding control panels. Still, it's a great map in my opinion.

My score 4.5/5

Echani Duel:

I think this was inspired in the Telos academy from Knights of The Old Republic II. The general aesthetic and moody blue light are great in that regard and I really like the brushwork of the map, which makes the random crates in a corner more annoying since they clash with the appearence of all the other decorations in the map. The map size is perfect for duels and the use of light, as said before, is excellent. The only thing that I regret is that the map has such a good ambience that the poor choice of music completely ruins the vibe. Also, there's a missing texture in the roof's beam. 

My score 4.5/5

Overall, all maps are great so its really hard to vote between my favorite pics, but just for the eerie vibe and the fact that its rend2 friendly, I vote for Oasis Mesa, a true wonder in the field of mapping for JKA. 

 

 

 

 

 

[SpeedyJDFox95]

I have reviewed some of these, tested them out, but only one can win the contest. At the time of me making this post, I have hopes that there will be one first place winner.