With the birth of automatic map downloads, stumbling on a new map for the first time will be a little daunting. A small voice in your head will echo 'where the [:-censored] am I and where do I go?'.


I propose a little jpg picture or some other miniturisation of the entire map being viewable before joining. Perhaps have it as an option to click on and view when you press ESC too.

Or, when you've downloaded the map, a preview of it covers the screen, like a full zoom-out with the map maker does. Then just click anyware to close the image.

no, there is no point of previewing the map, if you stumble on a new map, just download it and walk around. It only takes like 5 seconds to download and play the new map anyway.

Yeah, it's too much work to implement something like this. If you download a new map, and don't know where to go; explore. Who cares if you get killed, at least you know where to go :) Plus, with Cft maps it's pretty much straight forward, it's obvious where to go, cause most of the time your bases are dead-ends.

It only takes 5 seconds... unless it's full of custom sceneries!

No seriously a preview is pointless, however here is another idea:
When you've just joined a map and still aren't playing (you haven't spawned yet),
there could be a wide zoom-out (like 300% or something) and you could see the little soldiers who are already playing from far far away. It would give you an overall view of the map in action. See what I mean? ;)

Bah, just forget it and leave the game as simple as possible.

I perfer exploring though... like that map with the nucular stuff where thiers a hole in the middle with nades and med kits... thats just cool

..i like GluLm's idea...otherwise, yeah. Not extremely necessary.

it's an alright idea, i think its been suggested before, dispite it being unecessary, I think its an alright idea O.o

5 seconds... it took me a long time to figure out where i was going on that crash map :XXXXX