Ace of Spades review

As a part of my game game creation I have decided to review some games that are similar to what I hope to accomplish.  Please keep it in mind that these games are part of what has inspired me to take on this project.

First a brief introduction.  Ace of Spades is a multiplayer FPS sandbox game in which the goal is essentially capture the flag.  Players come equipped with a basic rifle, a shovel, a pickaxe, 50 blocks, and 2 grenades.   The main feature of this game that sets it apart from other first person shooters is that the landscape is completely editable.  Players may place the blocks in their inventory and make use of the pickaxe or shovel to remove blocks.  It is a simple game, yet very enjoyable to play.

A few lessons I have taken from this are as follows.  One, the map can become a mess quite fast with every player having the ability to place blocks and destroy nearly every part of the map.  I feel that the best lesson learned here is that there should be a basic landscape which cannot be altered by the player.  I also feel that placing blocks needs a good bit more thought put into it, which is why I plan on making it so only blocks that have been brought back to the main base may be placed.

Two, because there is no registration and anyone can download and play the game there is no control on who may enter the game.  As such many of the players are of the lowest quality that I have ever seen.  Trolls, bigots, griefers, and just plain rude people often join the servers, with the apparent goal of ruining the game for all.  It doesn't make for an environment which I would want my children the play games in.  If a game is to be released to the public then rules and regulations are going to have to be set forward and enforced in order for the game to make it.

Three, it is important to thoroughly check over the keymap to make sure that all the key are not only intuitive, but don't lead to cramping.  In most FPS games there is a fairly consistent keymap with things like wasd directions, etc...  In this game I find that holding the left ctrl down for long periods leads to cramping and the reload key is directly next to the chat key which can cause serious problems during gameplay.  Little things like this will hopefully come out during testing, though I may be looking at testing the game on my own.
While I'm sure there are many more things that could help me by further analysis of this game, I'm going to stop here for now.