[Mister Sinister]

"HEALTH"

This map is prequel to all DN Episodes.
Duke is about to complete his training to join the elite EDF unit and he is offered his final test.
You are given a 100 health and a 100 pieces of ammo: 50 shotgun, 20 RPG, 10 pipebombs and 30 shrinker.
Duke must survive this test using his wits and skills only, no easy way around it. Difficulty setting are not implemented in a traditonal way.
Instead, you are given a choice between two doors: LADY and MAN.
LADY gives player some help in form of a portable medkit, armor and boots and some health scattered around the level.
MAN gives player nothing: only you, your guns, 100 HP and 60 aliens to kill.
Use your ammo wisely and avoid fights if necessary.

PROMODE: Complete the level without using saves
ULTRA-PROMODE: Complete the level without using saves and never get hit.

This map was made in a couple of days and was beta tested by me only. If you find any bugs, please report in this thread. Have fun!
Screenshots:


DOWNLOAD (V 1.01)

MEDIAFIRE DOWNLOAD

[Danukem]

This is a great concept for a map, I will play it after work tonight.

[Ninety-Six]

Just finished it.

Could have used some clearer direction on where to go after reaching the pit on the yellow door pathway. An arrow pointing down to indicate that we need to return to the drink, or something.

In the dark room with the red key, after raising the bridge, I got knocked into the pit with the switch and couldn't find a way out.

Overall I did like the level, though it was pretty difficult. (And half of that I'll say was because of the shrinker bugs where sometimes it will pass right through an enemy and othertimes it will hit and do nothing like it had hit a wall. Could have avoided some of those fights, sure, but anything less than complete and total genocide is unacceptable to me.) I did my damndest to do it in pro mode, but with ammo so precious enemies switching direction at the last nanosecond (and the aforementioned shrinker bugs) kinda put a stop to that. I still did it through only the man door, though.

I will say I'm not a fan of the aesthetic, but that's more of a subjective thing.


Also I could not for the life of me find the secret. Even after I got desperate and used DNSHOWMAP I still couldn't find it.

That is one secretly secreted secret. Damn.

[Mister Sinister]

Ninety-Six, on 09 May 2018 - 07:34 PM, said:

In the dark room with the red key, after raising the bridge, I got knocked into the pit with the switch and couldn't find a way out.

I'm so sorry, I thought I made it sure there were no inescapable spots in this map. There was supposed to be an elevator, I gues it slipped out of my mind.
Gonna update the map with this fix soon. And the arrow was supposed to be there too.

Ninety-Six, on 09 May 2018 - 07:34 PM, said:

Also I could not for the life of me find the secret. Even after I got desperate and used DNSHOWMAP I still couldn't find it.

That is one secretly secreted secret. Damn.

Heh. Yeah, it's pretty well hidden.

Spoiler

Go to main yellow door, drop down from the first slope. Use the wall to your right, it has slightly different shading

Considering the aesthetics, well, I thought it looked pretty good. I really wanted it to have a distinct colour palette.
Glad you enjoyed it despite a few shortcomings. Shrinker bug can be very annoying, but there is nothing I can do about it beside the usual "aim at the feet" advice. Don't waste it on more than one octabrain I guess.

[Ninety-Six]

Mister Sinister, on 09 May 2018 - 11:08 PM, said:

Considering the aesthetics, well, I thought it looked pretty good. I really wanted it to have a distinct colour palette.

As I said, it was more of a subjective thing. For the look you were going for, its suits the job quite well. I'm just personally not a fan of that specific look. I'm not holding it against the map, but I figured I would still mention it just to give the full spectrum of my experience.

Mister Sinister, on 09 May 2018 - 11:08 PM, said:

Shrinker bug can be very annoying, but there is nothing I can do about it beside the usual "aim at the feet" advice. Don't waste it on more than one octabrain I guess.

Yeah, I don't hold that against it either. But again, worth mentioning since it doesn't mix as well with the limited ammo gimmick. That being said, at least after save scumming to get around that bug, I still did have about 10 shrinker blasts left. So clearly there was a little bit more "insurance" provided than I thought at first.

[Mister Sinister]

A hundred ammo pieces is plenty for the job. It's not like you use shrinker exclusively.
Let's put it this way, there are around 40 enemies in this level that can be shrinked at all, really only half of those need to be shot with shrinker. Some of these guys can't even be reached.

[Ninety-Six]

Mister Sinister, on 09 May 2018 - 11:31 PM, said:

A hundred ammo pieces is plenty for the job. It's not like you use shrinker exclusively.
Let's put it this way, there are around 40 enemies in this level that can be shrinked at all, really only half of those need to be shot with shrinker.

Of course, but there's no knowing that in advance. Having stats on screen doesn't tell you what kind of enemies you're up against, only the number. So naturally I try to conserve the shrinker for some of the bigger surprises. For instance for a good part of the level until I started running out of shells to deal with the sentry drones (and the protector drones, for that matter), I was honestly using the shotgun to take down the octabrains. Two blasts, and if that doesn't kill them, I kick them the rest of their way down to 0 hp. Of course I learned the hard way this was a bad idea and started using the shrinker more liberally, but even then I was still a bit paranoid about wasting shots in case a Battlelord showed up.

[Mister Sinister]

No man, I'm not that cruel hence why there's only 4 hitscanners in this level.

[Ninety-Six]

Mister Sinister, on 09 May 2018 - 11:40 PM, said:

No man, I'm not that cruel hence why there's only 4 hitscanners in this level.

And I appreciate that. But my point was there's no way to know that in advance. I've played many a map where I got screwed because I was not armed enough to take on a surprise battlelord. It conditioned me to really conserve ammo (hence the shotgun-octabrain strategy which I typically employ in the absence of a chaingun or freezethrower).

Of course the ironic part is that the conditioning to conserve ammo via the weaker weapons is what partially screwed me over here.

Spoiler

I DONT KNOW WHAT TO TRUST ANYMORE

[Mister Sinister]

Update 1.01
- added elevator in red keycard room.
- added an arrow in the underwater pit to clear up where you're supposed to go after you get the yellow keycard

MEDIAFIRE DOWNLOAD

Attached File(s)

•  health (1.01).zip (37.31K)
  Number of downloads: 197

[Mister Sinister]

Here is MSandt's fair review of the map: http://msdn.duke4.net/hothealth.php
Pretty much on point about "position of ignorance".
I guess it's gonna be a common thing among almost everyone who played this map since you can't know in advance what's going to happen next.
My general advice would be to forget all about your basic Duke Nukem insticts and ditch the shotgun.
Use it for enemies hard to kill with other weapons (drones and newbeasts), it's gonna be more enjoyable that way.
Don't really see how sentury drones are overused though because there's only 7 of them.

[Ninety-Six]

Mister Sinister, on 14 May 2018 - 03:24 AM, said:

Here is MSandt's fair review of the map: http://msdn.duke4.net/hothealth.php
Pretty much on point about "position of ignorance".
I guess it's gonna be a common thing among almost everyone who played this map since you can't know in advance what's going to happen next.
My general advice would be to forget all about your basic Duke Nukem insticts and ditch the shotgun.
Use it for enemies hard to kill with other weapons (drones and newbeasts), it's gonna be more enjoyable that way.
Don't really see how sentury drones are overused though because there's only 7 of them.

I think he meant they were "overused" in the sense of them presenting identical challenges to the map. Namely trying to dodge explosive pain in cramped corridors. So using them again doesn't really present any new challenges, just the same one which I don't think he was the biggest fan of.

That's the takeaway I got, at least. It's kind of hard to put to words.

[Sanek]

Finally played this map.
I like the design and the unusual gameplay. It really looks like some kind of a military training ground. I've never did so much sneaking in a user map before, which is a refreshing expierence. Commanders is a little bit overused for a map like this, but you get used to it if you'll play it again.
It's hard to finish the map without saving, unlsess you're the author, or you're already familiar with map after a couple of playthroughs.

[Mister Sinister]

Glad you enjoyed it.
Completing the map without saving once is hard indeed, but maybe it adds some replayability, I don't know.
I can do it for example with losing only 40 HP. Maybe somebody very skilled will make a video, it'll be very interesting to watch.

[Mister Sinister]

Shameless bump, but I did it. Very twitch inducing, but in fact possible, if you know what's coming.

Spoiler

[Jan Satcitananda]

Played it the "man's" way, but with a lot of saving; took me 15 minutes. Too sissy to make through it without being hit all the time. Usually I hate maps with too few supplies (medkits etc), but this one has nicely made it a part of the challenge. Gameplay is pretty fair, but requires one to learn the map thoroughly to play it with no saveloading. In overall, a quick map with no excessive detailing, just pure gameplay brought in, reminds me of original Doom levels. The Depeche Mode theme fits pretty well.