Reflex Roundup -- Jul. 12, 2015

In this edition of Reflex Round, we'll try to cover all the community happenings, with our standard fare of covering past, and upcoming tournaments, then touching on other community developments.

Breaking: Sneak peak at new weapon models:


There were two tournaments that took place this weekend, one in North America on Saturday July 11, 2015, and one in Europe on Sunday July 12, 2015, both of which were prepared for the most recent update to tehace's thcdm13, featuring a total eight invited players, playing in a round robin format, to determine their respective regional champions.

The THCDM13 Duel Cup featured AZK, gramz, Kwong-Lo, and myself ( xero) for the North American tournament, and afgh4n, Bjarke, HAL_9000, and Miha in the European tournament.

These tournaments both encountered some technical difficulties as two out of the four European players did not show up for the scheduled date, and the tournament was re-scheduled from Saturday, to Sunday. Over in North America, two out of the four players that were initially invited, grape, and sane, magically disappeared from steam an hour before the tournament... I suspect AZK's recent performance has some people slightly shaking in their boots. Luckily Kwong-Lo was able to show-up in the nick of time to save the tournament, and it turned out to provide a twisting narrative, with everyone beating everyone.

THCDM13 Invite Duel Cup North America

• The first match pitted me against AZK, and after a tense and close match for the first seven-and-a-half minutes, where there was a score difference of one frag, AZK went super-saiyan, and closed the game out strong. In fairness, I felt like I was out of control for the whole game, and he was dominating the items successfully. In short, I was lucky to have kept it that close, and my slightly superior movement meant he couldn't chase me down as much as he wanted to, regardless he won.
• Losing to AZK meant that I had to play gramz, and the similar story played out, after a close game for the first seven, to eight minutes, I ended up giving up too many frags off the spawn late in the game, putting me down 0-2, and other two players up 1-0 each.
• These results set up what we suspected to be the final, as Kwong-Lo had not appeared yet, so AZK went up against gramz in a best-of-three series, taking gramz out in a clear two-zip victory, both maps being blown up in the middle of each map.
• Now at this point something interesting happened, Kwong-Lo showed up, and was able to challenge AZK, and gramz, convincingly beating both of them, but then by some misfortune played me last, and lost.
• Kwong-Lo was crowned the champion, but I'll take whatever moral victory I can from this tournament.

THCDM13 Invite Duel Cup Europe

• The European tournament featured full best-out-of-three sets for all the games, and the first set started off with a bang as Bjarke took the first map of the tournament off afgh4n, in a highly contested game. However, afgh4n woke up soon after that, edging out Bjarke in both of the next two games, giving himself the first set in the event.
• The following game saw fan favorite HAL_9000 going up against the up-and-coming Miha. Before we go on, I'll point out that I was wrong in my earlier statement that Miha was from Quake Live, in fact he comes from cpm! My apologies. Just like the first set, this once again provided very tense, and close games, as the Bulgarian was tested at every turn, and given very little room for error. Even though HAL_9000 took the set 2-1, the most convincing victory was by Miha in their second game, as he won by nine frags.
• After such a close set of games, HAL_9000 had to shore himself up as he went up against Polish Big Ben, afgh4n. The Bulgarian found himself in good form on both maps, taking a clear 2-0 victory, although the games themselves were both very close.
• The next set pitted against Bjarke against, Miha, with Bjarke seemingly losing some of his earlier magic, and Miha winning the first map by the skin of his teeth, however, Miha would end up taking the second map in a comfortable manner.
• At this point HAL_9000 had a 2-0 record, with both victories against the people who posed a threat to him in the standings, meaning regardless of the outcome of the two following sets, HAL_9000 was already the champion.
• When afgh4n, and Miha did square-off they provided arguably the most tense series of the event, as it went the distance, with each map coming down to the wire, and Miha just barely sneaking out two, out of the three maps.
• In the final series of the tournament, with the standings already decided, Bjarke put up a valiant effort in the face of HAL_9000, but the pressure the Bulgarian was putting up was too immense, and he fell in a quick 2-0.

Upcoming Tournaments

Just in case anyone has forgotten there are still a couple of tournaments planned for the month of July, covering Europe, and North America. Registration is still open for both events, please sign-up! There small updates for both them, and they are as follows:

#DP_TWO Duel Cup

• The final map list for this tournament has been voted in by the community, and looks like so:
  dp4
  dp5
  thcdm13 (Note: There is a new version that is expected to be released on July 6, 2015)
  thct7 Download
  Monsoon Download

SANETOPIA 2: The Return

• The tournament has been moved from it's original date of Saturday July 19, 2015 , to Sunday July 26, 2015.
• More people have come forward to donate, and the current list features:
  sane: $50.00
  mistergreen: $30.00
  AZK: $50.00
  clifford: $10.00
  voltran: $34.92
  Holi: $10.00

Maps, Mappers, and Mapping Guides

In our final segment, I'd just like to highlight a couple of things I thought were interesting.

Firstly, I'd like to bring some attention to poub's latest screenshot of his yet-to-be released map PDM1. I find it incredible that mature level designers can take so few resources, and be so creative with them, building interesting geometry, and tense, stifling atmospheres.


The next piece of information, is that veteran Quake mapper pathe has joined the Reflex community, and I'm quite excited to see what he can do with the current tools. He brings with him an excellent pedigree, experience, and expertise, some of which is demonstrated by his terrific, and helpful design guides:

• Connectivity Systems
• Item Placement Guide
• Fundamentals of Gameplay

That's all the folks, if you have any news, or information you'd like posted in these segments, please let me know.

Links: Reflex Official Website, #Reflex