[jimbob]

 Mark, on 01 February 2023 - 05:39 AM, said:

Yeah, I hear its in the Mapper's Handbook Vol. 2 that you have to do a train level. Moving or static is acceptable.

you get there right out of the sewer, after the big office map
im going to be original though and make a graveyard on the train!

[dwtietz]

New weapons menu option added into Ion Jungle tonight!

If "PISTOL START MAP LOADING" is "OFF" and the player loads one of Ion Jungle's campaign maps out of sequence via the console without having played through the prior maps, then the game will simulate having played through those levels by giving the player all of the weapons that they would have obtained prior to reaching the map that they are about to enter, along with a randomly chosen amount of ammo for each of those weapons.

The alternate option of having "PISTOL START MAP LOADING" turned "ON" loads the map in the customary way in which the player will start the map with only a pistol and nothing more.

[Graphics]

 jimbob, on 01 February 2023 - 05:17 AM, said:

working on a obligatory train map

Something wrong with my account. It's only allowing me to give one like to this. But what you've done deserves more. Keep it up.

[Graphics]

A little something I'm working on. I had a really good idea recently. It's that island I did. But now I'm creating a city around it. It's not done and I haven't added the textures. But you get the idea.

PS: As much as I love the 1/10th scale pieces. I'm just better at making maps on a huge scale. I will try to make something detailed. But the Build Engine limits can be tricky.

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[MC84]

 Graphics, on 06 February 2023 - 12:53 AM, said:

PS: As much as I love the 1/10th scale pieces. I'm just better at making maps on a huge scale. I will try to make something detailed. But the Build Engine limits can be tricky.

Looking good - although to be honest the only way I can ever see maps of this large/open scale really ever working in Duke would be to make a mechwarrior-style mod; then you never really have to worry about building interiors etc, it could be purely outdoor

[Graphics]

 MC84, on 06 February 2023 - 01:40 AM, said:

mechwarrior-style mod

Not going to lie. That would be epic.

[Bruno]

Still working hard on the sequel map to Brunohh1 & 2 maps. Abandonned caves sewers and secret warehouse before Duke go to Red Light District. More an ambiant map, and less enemy.

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[ck3D]

Really cool, maybe some of my favorite design I've seen from you so far, really into the emphasis on contrasted lighting/shading here, that and solid sector architecture never fails. First shot is my favorite, moody stuff.

[Bruno]

Thank you! But it seems to dark. I think I should quickly adjust the global shade of the map.
Moreover, hard to work with alien textures. It is a pain to align those textures.

[Graphics]

Awesome shading Bruno. The contrast looks awesome. I wouldn't make it brighter. It's perfect from my prospective.

Here's an update to my unlikable open world map. I added a basic looking city, with an interactive mountain behind it.

PS: I'm currently only using about 65% of all sectors and walls I can use. Meaning, there is a lot of room for detailing.

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[Graphics]

So on a side note. I'm making a whole new open world map. Using all the stuff I've learned, as well as new designs. It may not look like much. But this might be my best open world map yet.

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[Graphics]

Expanded the terrain a little bit. Added another mountain, because why not. I plan on making this map into the biggest open world map, ever. The map is currently using 619 sectors and 3936 walls. Well within the standards for DOS gameplay. The size of the map covers about 25% of the whole maxed out grid map. Look at the pictures if you need proof. This is going to make one epic mech level for AMC.

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[Mark]

Work continues on my Polymer user map for AWOL.

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[Graphics]

Nicely done Mark. I love the lighting. Always wished Polymer worked with my huge map designs. But without a draw distance, it tends to glitch out.

Just an update to that map. Had time to work on it today. There is still a lot of work to be done. But I'm having fun making this mech level for AMC.

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[Graphics]

Just wanted to share a lot more pictures of the work in progress. I'm very proud of this map I'm doing for AMC. Should be fun with a mech. I lowered the roof of the whole map, including the mountains. Raised the buildings and even made a few you can enter, eventually. I've also added a sky train. But that might not be fictional with all the wall limits of the engine. I'm also just about passed the DOS limits. So there is a lot that can be added. But I plan on making the map bigger. And hopefully, push it too the limit.

Thank you for letting me share this here.

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[Mark]

Just be careful how far you push it. CK learned the hard way and had to scrap his first huge map for AWOL because it was unplayable. His next one was unplayable for some with older systems. Me included.

[Aleks]

Graphics, on 17 February 2023 - 05:54 PM, said:

Just wanted to share a lot more pictures of the work in progress. I'm very proud of this map I'm doing for AMC. Should be fun with a mech. I lowered the roof of the whole map, including the mountains. Raised the buildings and even made a few you can enter, eventually. I've also added a sky train. But that might not be fictional with all the wall limits of the engine. I'm also just about passed the DOS limits. So there is a lot that can be added. But I plan on making the map bigger. And hopefully, push it too the limit.

Thank you for letting me share this here.

Looking great, the more I look at it right now, the more I feel this could work great as kind of a dream scenery from "Inception" - this would allow you to leave out a lot of the abstract stuff like the whole island ending abruptly at the edges, kind of like the world is collapsing there. Could also justify little details or just the details that matter. Then you could add some huge effects that would reshape the whole map, buildings changing their heights, stretching or moving at random etc.

[ck3D]

Mark, on 18 February 2023 - 05:34 AM, said:

Just be careful how far you push it. CK learned the hard way and had to scrap his first huge map for AWOL because it was unplayable. His next one was unplayable for some with older systems. Me included.

If Graphics' map is meant for base Duke then there still is a lot of margin here, what would make those maps lag in A.W.O.L. for the most part wasn't so much their relatively bold construction per se but how they were incompatible with the AI routines (that were since reworked and are still being refined), as well as the forcing of Polymost and models in that game, but in classic 8-bit Duke they always ran smoothly without a single noticeable issue. A lot of Blast Radius maps take up most of max grid, some are probably twice as big as the first Dubai map with all resources maxed out, all red walls in plain sight and projectiles from hundreds of enemies constantly flying everywhere: still zero slowdowns in classic. Even Polymost seems to handle most of them fine without slowdowns but on very old machines.

That is not to say I learned nothing, but context matters a lot and for base Duke 3D this doesn't look unreasonable at all performance-wise.

[Reaper_Man]

Yeah the problem was AWOL has significantly more code overhead than Duke3D, and the original map didn't fully take that into account. I actually wonder if it would run better now - not great, but better - since we did so much work on performance for release.

[Mark]

I ran the Dubai map from Nov 10th today. I don't know if there was a later version or not. Except for the start where I wait for over a minute for AI to implement, I no longer get total freezes anywhere else. However I still get 2-8 fps moving around the streets of the city. Better than before. On a side note, the visual changes made to the cityscape and skybox look great.

[Graphics]

To Mark: You make a good point. That's why I'm trying to wrap it up. Make it into an island. Now that I just passed the DOS sector limits. Still, being careful along the way.

To Aleks: Making it a dream is a good idea. But let's save that for when I've figured out how I'll make the floating islands properly. I think that would work with this idea.

To ck3D: Remember that Road Kill map in A.W.O.L I was graphics testing? I don't know about you. But it didn't lag for me. Then again, I've had this 3090 RTX for years now.

To Reaper_Man: The problem with A.W.O.L is, it's awesome. Too awesome for it's own good. To much code you say? Well, I'll just ride the jeep with my sunglasses on.

Here's an update too the map I've been working on. Finally got passed the DOS limits. I've also expanded the map even more. Everything seems to be stable, so far.

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[Mark]

I hope your Mech has a freshly charged set of batteries to climb all those hills.

[Graphics]

I hoping it'll be a gas powered mech. I mean, have you ever seen an electric tank? I'm pretty sure Elon Musk might have one. But I haven't seen it.

More development shots from my map, I'm naming Grand Theft Build Engine. What makes it amazing, is this map is under one megabyte in file size.

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[Graphics]

Created a new landscape piece today. Believe it our not, I haven't created all possible combinations yet. But I plan too.

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[dwtietz]

Not any "in-game" stuff to see here, but I'm currently experimenting with coloured ascii art for use in the batch file for launching our game mod:

[brullov]

dwtietz, on 23 February 2023 - 07:00 PM, said:

Not any "in-game" stuff to see here, but I'm currently experimenting with coloured ascii art for use in the batch file for launching our game mod:
ascii_sample.png

This is amazing!

[dwtietz]

brullov, on 24 February 2023 - 03:45 AM, said:

This is amazing!

Thanks. It did turn out better than I thought it would. The site that I used to generate the ascii-art wasn't entirely perfect, but it was pretty good and it wasn't difficult to make colour modifications to some of the cells that form the lettering to really make it stand out and be more readable.

The hardest part was porting the ascii characters with the colour changes into a format that was readable by the batch file. The site's ascii-art output was entirely in html which was of no direct use to me, and because of "what" and "how" the batch file does to produce it's output, I had to substitute some of the characters for another that would be somewhat similar (% > X, : > ;, . > ,, and spaces were sometimes tricky); I tried using common escape characters to preserve the originals but none of them seemed to work, but that's fine... I'm content with what I ended up with.

[Graphics]

Some pictures of my mod Retro Deathmatch. Showcasing the maps, with textures that have been newly pixelated.

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[dwtietz]

Revision 2 of the batch file for launching Ion Jungle is now in place.

In this version a message was added at the top of the window to try to explain why the logo that is displayed appears to be typed out on the screen line by line, cuz that's just how the colour changing thing works. It also actually loads the game now as soon as the player presses a key:



The next update to this batch file will introduce the options where the players selects whether they want to load the Ion Jungle group file, or an alternate grp file that contains SPYmaps first three Ion Fury user maps (prior to starting any work on Ion Jungle) as a bonus mission, similar to how Ion Fury allows the player to play the preview campaign as a bonus mission in the base game.

We'd considered adding this bonus material directly into Ion Jungle's "new game" menu but decided to take a different approach since adding those maps there would give the first three maps access to all of the script changes, weapon changes, etc. that can be found in Ion Jungle, but these maps really are intended to be played with the base game's stock code so this should be a more ideal approach.

[dwtietz]

Not revealing to much, but we have a few new Ion Jungle screenshots to share. Maybe there will be some more some time soon: