Originally Posted by
horsefeathers
overall not bad for a first map, there is a lot of interesting surf in the map and parts seems to flow well. But, there are other parts that are awful, like the spin near the start: the entrance is too small and awkward. Also theres a fair bit of blind jumps which are hard to judge. It would be a nice smooth map if there weren't some jerky awkward parts in it.
The details are not good. At all. The textures you used were really bad generally. Try to avoid textures that have bad tilling, and try to keep textures themed together so that they look like real materials instead of pictures overlaid on walls. The lighting is bad as well, try to keep the light coming from visible light sources and always avoid hot-spots or light blooms. A nice easy way to create nice lighting is to have a light_environment with high ambient light and lots of windows. Increase the lightmap scale to get sharp shadows too.