Here's what the maps creator, Voxel, has to say about Dead End Street:
Running and gunning in the streets, hiding in buildings, falling off the roof... it's all fair game. Lots of windows in this one, quite a few doors, most buildings are 2 stories high, few accessible roof tops. I'd consider it a good size map, good for 40+ players.
Presentation / Technical
The first thing that struck me was how dark the map was. Ok so I know its set at night but pitch black areas in a map are undesirable, especially when it might stop a player decerning routes through the map. What surprised me was the lack of lighting indoors. Most rooms only had 1 light, which was barely adequate to light them effectively. Where there was lighting, there were light sources (ie lights) which is a plus point and always good to see.
With the lack of light, the texturing just looked passable. On the good side every brush seemed to be textured, and there was no visible z-fighting that I could see. Most of the textures look over large and maybe Voxel should have scaled them down a little. Again this might just be my preferences and they don't really take away from the map that much.
There was just nothing that inspired me about the buildings either. Whilst the buildings are well constructed, there seemed to be little variation of the square room. A few balconies and such do improve things slightly, but I felt the map had a very square, unnatural look to it. Performance wise, I got a pretty good FPS at every corner of the map. It did dip below 50fps on the odd occasion but this was rare.
Playability / Game Flaws
This map is large, very large. In fact unless there are above about 16 players you may be alone for a long time, but I think that Voxel was going for a map that was suitable for a huge number of players. I couldn't find a server hosting this map with more than a 8 players in it, and its large size works against it in situations such as this. There are a multitude of different routes that you can take around the map, leading to varitation, but it can be more than a little confusing to work out where you are. There doesn't seem to be one focal point that all the action takes place in and at times the map can seem a little unplanned.
Conclusion
If your a fan of Voxel's work you might enjoy this map. Its not worth playing on a server with less than 16 people which will work against it. I, personally, wouldn't have this on a server rotation but others may disagree with me. Its a commendable attempt at a town map,but there are better maps of its kind out there.
