So, I thought I'd get the ruins pack and save myself a bit of time making ruins.
I got the thing, and it installed very easily. Hurrah.
Having placed all the ruins into an empty map, I thought I'd have a look at what I'd got. I have to say I was slightly dissapointed. The models are mostly created side on from a reference image. For the most part this is kind of a cardboard cut out job, with the outline of the ruin referenced, and extruded to give it depth.
I don't want to insult the creator, there is more detail than a simple extrude, but they aren't hugely detailed. This is where my first dissapointment came. The buildings are (on average) 2000-3000 polys, which is pretty high for FPSC, and for that many polys you don't get a great amount of detail.
The textures are a good size and offer alot of detail, although many are presented in rectangles, which run slower than a square texture. Also, they are, for the most part, unaltered front view images, with the sides and top of the model textured using small sections of the front image. It's not so much a texture map, as a model textured with a front view. This means that the scale is sometimes off, with bricks being lager and more stretched on the sides of a model than the front.
While I'm talking about textures.... you get 18 ruins in the pack, but because they are all made from different images of ruins, there is not much continuity. For example, you get ruin_2 and ruin_2B which are parts of a wrecked church. They look great, but there are no other ruins that fit with them.
If you have no modelling skills, then this is a great pack. you can easily make ruined maps with lots of destroyed buildings (watch that poycount). I think it's a bit sad they didn't include some rubble piles and stuff, to make the ruins look more real, but for the most part you'll have fun.
If you're already modelling your own stuff, you can probably do better. For £4.99 it's a bargain, and it'll save you time. But what with the UVs being taken straight from a flat image, and the heavily triangulated models, you're going to have a hard time modding them to give you the variety you need, and are probably better off doing your own set, with a more common theme.
BreakDown (out of 5)
Value for money ***
Quality of models ***
Quality of textures **
Variety ****
Suitability for FPSC **
56%
Overall : a limited yet vaguely useful pack. You'll buy it, check it out, fiddle with it, but probably never use it in an actual game.
