Duke4.net Forums: [RELEASE] Null Moon - Duke4.net Forums

Hello. I made a wee wintery map - it contains snow and aliens.

Very nice screenshots, especially the outdoor areas. I just downloaded the map to play it when I have time.

I had a blast playing this map. I enjoyed the how the level unfolded and how you introduced new battles to existing areas. It's nice to have an introduction to a section of a map before coming under heavy attack.

Your map has been added to: http://www.dukemaps.net/?p=13044

Paul B, on 26 March 2019 - 07:47 PM, said:

Vielen Danke!

Funny map. Altohugh too challenging for wimp like me. Details were perfectly done. As an average player, i will give it 9\10 mark. Everything is absouletl perfect, exception is that i too wimp/average to handle such a complexity and monster placement, but of course this is my opnion. And sice most my mown made levels are shit i wouldn't give them more than 5 out of 10, so i don't sound hypocrite here. Hope you understand. Thanks for sharing your level, expect to see more great levels like this in future! Thanks

just played through this, a nice fun map - I didn't manage to find the secret so gonna give it another spin and see if I have more luck.

Looking forward to playing this map soon, I played Magdalene not too long ago and quite liked it; at first glance, this looks like it rather nicely and freshly breaks the continuation of the city theme after that one and Day Of Night.

If I could make one observation though, just based on Magdalene and the screenshots I've seen of Null Moon - I would really love to see you experiment with stronger shading and contrast. A lot of your geometry (i.e.. those rock formations on the first and last shot) looks pristine clean as you design it in the first place, but I often can't help but notice a waste of potential because of all those similarly shaded walls (with the occasional subtle variation) that make certain sections look flatter than they could with just some heavier +/- play. Not trying to criticize your style if that's the look you like to give to your maps, of course - just saying in case you might be looking for an area to explore in order to maybe take your aesthetics further.

ck3D, on 28 March 2019 - 04:24 AM, said:

I actually just played that freshly released Shocking Twist, and noted how well strong shadows were used - just like in the Duke's original levels. Magdalene was built with like three or four different shading values - because of the rainy weather, I thought every surface should scream "cloudy weather outside, gloomy gloom and clouds". The map does look dull when I play it now.

Null Moon is the first map in which I found out how useful the sector visibility value is - I used it for some indoor areas to give more depth for them. The outdoor areas have less stark contrasts, which was somewhat intended (of course I say that now...). I wanted to capture the feel of afternoon, so that sun isn't too low to create really dark shadows. This plan kind of backfired in one section, where a bigger part of the town is just shaded with one single tone (thanks to the position of the cliffs I made there). Other than that, I'm quite happy with the looks of the result. I shall explore stronger shading in my next map, since it will take place during nighttime.

I thought it was a really fun map! The lay-out is good, I like the aesthetic of the outdoors section and the indoor parts offer plenty of variety.
Final battle was nicely staged, it offered a challenge but wasn't frustrating or unfair in any way.

The smoothie factory was nicely done, the liztroops with different uniforms were a nice detail.

The secret was a bit BS though, really hard to find haha.

Merlijn, on 28 March 2019 - 09:32 AM, said:

Danke! The secret is silly indeed, at first I didn't want to put any secrets there, yet I ended up hiding some good equipment. Originally the factory was supposed to be a distillery, but beer bottles didn't work well with teleporters, so I used smoothies. It was a good excuse to apply more colours (using small amounts of bright colours became sort of a "theme" in this map).

Played this map last night and had a blast.

Took me a bit under 45 minutes - I took my time, but was impressed on how the level just kept on giving. Some remarkable, genius subtle ideas sprinkled throughout the map to suggest further progression, like those (originally) unaccessible areas with visible items you don't know whether they will be accessible later or are just there for trolling purposes when you're in a shotgun shells drought. Speaking of which, the pacing of the gameplay was delicious, I really appreciated how delicately you approached providing the player with every weapon. Having to make do with mostly the chaingun for the first quarter of the gameplay (occasionally running out of ammo and being scarcely provided with it too) I thought was quite refreshing, eventually running into the shotgun was a relief; and even then you maintained the pace with the ammo distribution, always making sure the player would need it when they find it. That was some smart, measured, smooth balance.

Obviously I take back some of what I originally said about the shading based on nothing but the screenshots you posted. More variations are visible whilst navigating the map itself, as opposed to still shots of specific sections that then do look a bit flat and uniform, because they're taken out of context. Lighting / shading in general were nice, and in your own style (or one that's different from the original levels that is - maybe less ambitious or of smaller scale). Similarly-shaded adjacent walls still are a pet peeve of mine, though; Sanek also used to have that problem a lot. It's a style I can respect, and that I like to think I understand because even though I always watched my shading, I used to be on a similar level of ambitious with it as well. I'd shade adjacent walls differently and everything, but by barely noticeable increments of 2 whereas now I'll use increments of 3 (influenced by William Gee who described his technique on AMC eons ago), 5 / 6, sometimes 9 / 12. I'll also break down a lot of my walls and sectors into smaller sections just to be able to enhance some of the depth lighting / shading can give, and give them starker differences than I would have ever dared a few maps ago. Then as you said, the sector visibility feature is priceless (and I'm glad you used it) - not being aware of it, or straight up forgetting about it prior to the release of some of my maps, only to release them with the default visibility everywhere when it would have taken five minutes to fix actually ruined some of my maps / releases, I think. Levels like Anorak City or even Siebenpolis would have been a lot more enjoyable and remarkable with full visibility; basically, it really has the potential to make or break large maps.

Having read this thread, I knew there was a hard secret to find somewhere so I kept looking for it the whole time, but didn't find it until I had a look in Mapster. I wasn't looking around too hard, but still hard enough that I found that one hidden button and its corresponding switch by myself, before even getting to that viewscreen (I also spent a good five minutes trying to activate the hidden switch, then quickly jump onto that vase and then onto that shelf to make it to the next switch and directly press it, I almost did it once and then figured I'd just give up and shoot it). Finding that secret place would have been a gameplay changer for obvious reasons, but missing it enabled me to complete the map on 'hard mode' I guess, especially seeing as I don't think I ever found the RPG now that I think about it.

My favorite part of the level was the last section with the big fight in the village, especially the last part with the Battlelord and tanks was a blast. Because of the layout of the village and the streets being interconnected, I had to stay on my toes the whole time in order not to get encircled, with only the freezer to use against the Battlelord all the while being low on health and ammo the whole time. While those are two basic foes to encounter in open environments, that fight turned out to be eventful, full of surprises and I appreciated the challenge and how appropriate the arena was.

So yeah, tons of fun. My only gripe with the map in general would be the sense of small scale. The same location but built Clear the Coast style, with more vertical progression actually making use of those cliffs and streets that would then feel a lot less like confined corridors with outdoor-themed textures would probably look amazing, given your style. You can design clean-looking structures very well, I would love to see you take those skills to the next level by playing with implementing them in more ambitious, open environments. For instance, again I really liked how you connected all those streets and sections of the maps together; but, say, it would have been the cherry on the top of the cake if the (ironically) null area in between them had been accessible or at least visible player space somehow. You did design some cool unreachable places adding some well-needed space to the level, but I'm sure you could expand on the concept. On the other hand, your design style feels fresh in how a lot of the decorative elements, buildings, shelves etc. aren't directly connected to walls (a typical newbie mistake that also has the annoying side effect of using up walls for nothing), allowing for a lot of navigable nooks and crannies. I did get squished behind an element that had to be too close to a wall with a certain odd shape I guess, in that room where you spawn that first Battlelord, just upon spawning it.

Oh and I wasn't a big fan of the teleporter action originally; getting sent back to the yellow key room like that was weird at first but then the ending kind of tied it all together credibly (adorably enough in a fashion that reminded me a lot of certain user maps from 1996 / 1997). That section of the map you used twice with an alteration I won't spoil is one of my favorite things I've seen in a Duke level recently and was a very nice touch.

I also very much appreciated your use of those sky textures nobody really uses.

I have finished the map today. All your maps I have played are AMAZING! Very balanced and detailed!

I wish they could support coop as well!

ck3D, on 30 March 2019 - 12:03 PM, said:

Thnx! I'm very comfortable with building linear maps, since they are easy to control - like in this map, it was fun to dictate when player gets the shotgun and when they have to survive without it. More open/connected maps are scawy because of the balancing challenges. I think my next map will resemble Null Moon in many ways, but it should have much more linked structures and water for swimming around.

conqueror060, on 30 March 2019 - 04:55 PM, said:

Danke schön! I like crafting details - little bottle there, some pieces of garbage there and a weird wooden pole there just for fun.

I haven't even played Duke 3D in coop; it's something I've never been interested in. But maybe one day, if I become more social person (quite unlikely though).

I play through the entire map, nice detailing and lighting overall the map was well designed, with good enemy placement and just the right amount of ammo to get the job done. I had a lot of fun with your map.