[ck3D]

Started a new map using textures made 25 years ago by Necrobitz (820 sectors right now).

[Ninety-Six]

Very rare to see ck use non-vanilla textures.

What's the story with these textures, by the way?

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 21 January 2025 - 09:18 PM, said:

Very rare to see ck use non-vanilla textures.

What's the story with these textures, by the way?

They were shot on digicams around the north of Spain and handmade into an .art file in the early 2000's by Duke4 user Necrobitz. It resonated with me because I remember doing something similar with cheap webcams around my hometown around the same time period although in my case the intent was to capture the architecture and style of the surfaces to mimic in Build, and so not to downright make tiles (one map that benefitted from that was Downtown Ride - shame the level is quite poor but maybe it can be sensed in the visuals nonetheless that they were helped with references). Plus to me the style is just perfect. It's not that rare anymore that I use new .art, I've done that quite a bit now especially last year churning out levels for Alien Armageddon, just said .new art has to be good and inspire designs I can vibe with.

Necrobitz these days is working on DukeTEK which they intend to be an EDuke reinterpretation of Tekwar with high res art and less of the bad Tekwarisms.

(1100 sectors now, by the way.)

[Mark]

More recently TeaMonster took some photos and a few were looking good enough to convert them to seamless and in game. Finding and taking a proper photo isn't as easy as it sounds. Lighting, camera distance and angles have to be considered. Lots of photos don't make the grade.

[Sangman]

Just AMC things

[Ninety-Six]

I love the colors in the first one.

pretty lights

[Merlijn]

Working on some stuff again

[Maarten]

...been mapping a little bit since 1 or even 2 years & having alot of inspiration. Here a WIP shot @ mapster.
And yes, that's the AAP 1 & 2 tower!
However, this time around there will be some shifts in theme

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[Ninety-Six]

Oostrums back in action, hell yeah let's go

[Gambini]

Sangman, on 28 January 2025 - 01:08 PM, said:

I love this shot!

[Graphics]

I've been busy working on things, big things. Like this map, I'm hoping to make it one of the biggest open world maps. It's Currently about 1/4th the side of the maxed out grid-map. It's an old map, that I've been working on for a little while. I stopped when I came across graphical issues. But after some time, I've picked up new skills and now have a plan to finished this map at maxed out stats.

Current status of the map looks like this when I take out the landscape pieces that made it.
1974 / 4096 sectors
9245 / 16384 walls

By those stats I could make this map a lot bigger. But I have to be careful on how I design things. For example, if like 2000 sectors are seen on screen, I get glitches. The trick is sneaking a wall in there from time to time without making the map look bad. This is the price of having no draw distance and that's not a bad thing, if you know how to work with it.

Anyways, it's been a while since I've posted on here and I wanted to make it a good one for you guys. Hope you're all doing well.

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[Hudson]

Found a new source port for PSP that resolves just about every issue plaguing the other ports and thought I'd celebrate by giving Zombie Crisis a long requested quality of life update. Not a whole lot to share at the moment but I think it's going to be pretty cool!

[zykov eddy]

Hudson, on 22 March 2025 - 09:51 AM, said:

Found a new source port for PSP that resolves just about every issue plaguing the other ports and thought I'd celebrate by giving Zombie Crisis a long requested quality of life update. Not a whole lot to share at the moment but I think it's going to be pretty cool!

This is a wonderful idea. I feel like, of all classic Duke 3D TCs, ZC is the one that needs to be revisited the most. It could be improved in so many ways. The original version feels unfinished, imo. Gameplay wise, it's extremely repetitive, and there's a lot of unused content from what I've found. It desperately needs variety, maybe one or two new weapons (that cost ammo, but do good damage, unlike the pistol), and one or two new enemies. Maybe zombies that do a projectile "spit" attack? Or a faster zombie variant. Also, from what I've seen in the test map, this game could have more levels. I relly enjoy zombies in games and movies, and I'd be happy to see ZC being updated.

[Hudson]

zykov eddy, on 29 March 2025 - 03:02 AM, said:

This is a wonderful idea. I feel like, of all classic Duke 3D TCs, ZC is the one that needs to be revisited the most. It could be improved in so many ways. The original version feels unfinished, imo. Gameplay wise, it's extremely repetitive, and there's a lot of unused content from what I've found. It desperately needs variety, maybe one or two new weapons (that cost ammo, but do good damage, unlike the pistol), and one or two new enemies. Maybe zombies that do a projectile "spit" attack? Or a faster zombie variant. Also, from what I've seen in the test map, this game could have more levels. I relly enjoy zombies in games and movies, and I'd be happy to see ZC being updated.

The intention of Zombie Crisis's development was to make something short and sweet, more in the vein of Wolf3d instead of Duke3d and to that end I think we succeeded it just pulled the curtain back on what kind of potential the game had to be something greater than it was.

The Director's Cut aims to remedy some of that and will add more variety to the game in the form of a major quality of life update, while not a sequel (and shouldn't be thought of as one) it will help me gauge people's interest to potentially develop a true successor to the game. I've been able to update the majority of the game's systems, including a complete rebalance of enemy and weapon values and adding new features to the game but regarding levels it will be using updated and remixed versions of the original releases maps as I am not very skilled in level design to create new ones. My hope is post-release maybe interest from the community will inspire volunteers who would want to help make a new episode for the game that would take advantage of the updates and provide a new experience while staying true to the game's core theme and concepts.

Updates and features I have implemented thus far for the Director's Cut:

• (PSP) New tech! A new source port resolves practically all issues from the original release and provides a solid and feature complete experience.
• (PSP) New “FPS” control scheme with re-mappable buttons provides the best experience yet. Also includes the original control scheme as an option for those that prefer it.
• Ludicrous gibs! Enemy effects have been dramatically tweaked and enhanced with more over the top blood and gore to enhance the campy atmosphere.
• New weapons! Use the new assault rifle, sub-machine gun with grenade launcher and the shotgun along with classics like the pistol and chainsaw to push back the undead hordes.
• New enemy! A new zombie type with tweaked AI adds an extra challenge and provides variety to the experience.
• New but familiar! All levels have been updated and optimized for the new Director’s Cut additions and features. (In progress)

I've been considering putting together a short trailer of the progress made thus far, if I am able to get around to it I'll be sure to post an update with a link to it. I'm currently in the process of updating and remixing the levels with Director's Cut additions but afterward we should begin play testing (for both Windows and PSP) in preparation for a future release. If anyone here has a modded PSP and would like to help with testing with it please let me know, the source port I'm now using supports both "Phat" and "Slim" PSP console models and I plan to also release signed versions for them that should theoretically work on official firmware and non-modded consoles but we'll have to see how that works out in testing.

[VGames]

Polishing up version 0.99 of Savior of Babes for a weekend release.

[Maarten]

Made some nice progress on AAP 3 lately! So..it's time to a little bit more.
As you can see it's very E1L5 inspired...but it will take it's own AAP-styley way as well

Here are some shots, please keep in mind it all needs some fine tuning, especially shading-related is WIP.

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[ck3D]

Fantastic! Always a great sight whenever you post news. Congrats on progress.

Spent the last two days learning true room over room:

[lllllllllllllll]

It's not going to be an enterprise anymore.


Found these screenshots from when the incubator doors were closing
unsynchronized. The solution was to use 1 single door close delay
among all the sectors for any door.

[oasiz]

Still working on the script rewrite bullshit...
I got one obstacle resolved for filling stuff with rotatesprite & clipping regions.

I think I'll go for a "basic v1" release soon once the basics are stable, i.e. the slope sprite has a small bug in the video that's easy to fix but I didn't bother getting it in now..
There are a lot of things I want to still do but I think it's getting production ready.

Some of the functions once again,
- Whole system for the textboxes you see, goal it so to make it easily extensible for modders
- Change functions for all tags, velocities, clipdist, etc.. Not all hotkeys are final but i.e. ALT+T now works in 3D mode and things like ALT+S adjust shade. Less reliance on 2D.
- Independent paste keys for slope/shade/panning/palette/picnum/z.. works for sectors and sprites.
- Paste and "set" functions now apply for pointed object or a selection of objects (set lotag of all selected sprites for example).
- Various handy things like slope flipping, raise/lower selected sectors in unison (sprites and all, A real Z adjustment for selection)
- Select sprites/sectors while inside 3D mode, due to engine limitations you can only have walls & sprites OR sectors selected at a time though.
- Live documentation for various things, for now it's SE focused.

Whole things has been written to be quite modular so adding functionality should be very easy later on..

[Graphics]

So, I recently came up with a new method to making landscapes faster then before. The plus side, it's a lot more sable in open terrain. The down side is, it's not well suited for creating islands. But that's okay because the large sectors that make up the water are buggy anyways. That is if, you're not using mapping tricks like tightening the walls or dividing the sectors. Needless to say, for this engine, it works.

Currently at 1496/4096 sectors, 6939/16384 walls and 1591/16384 sprites being using as floors and walls, this map looks decent for a few days work.

I've managed to get a lot done. But it's not over yet. To be honest, I'm probably going to have the texturing done by tonight. Then it's building a walls for the gated community and adding an outside area the player can't enter. I'm giving myself a few weeks to get this done. But at this rate, I might even be done in a week.

Thank you and I hope you're all doing well.

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[Graphics]

Graphics, on 21 April 2025 - 02:53 PM, said:

Currently at 1496/4096 sectors, 6939/16384 walls and 1591/16384 sprites being using as floors and walls, this map looks decent for a few days work.

Oops, I made a small mistake. Turns out when I subtract the sectors responsible for making the map, it's enough sectors to run in DOS mode. So, my numbers where way off. My mistake.

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[NNC]

We have been discussing Duke Xtreme on Discord after I have been digging through the levels a bit (with playing without those horrid new monsters/weapons), and many agree that some of the unfinished maps of the pack had some potential. Most of them felt like a few well designed sectors and end a minute later or just long corridors with just a lacklustre dead end with an ammo or a monster.

I decided to hack one of the maps, Dim Park, because that level looked really cool with very nice, layered and nonlinear layout (but with some missed assets like spritework and ambient sounds, not to mention the terrible monster balance with everything at you at the start, but nothing to shoot after a while, a typical Sunstorm problem even with their flagship levels). I thought having some mini overlords here just work for the map's style and ambience.

Just for the sake of fun... (you need to use EDuke32 World Tour Stopgap for this, because normally mini overlords die immediately.

 DimPark Revisited.zip (46.03K)
Number of downloads: 8

[DNS]

NNC, on 27 April 2025 - 11:14 AM, said:

We have been discussing Duke Xtreme on Discord after I have been digging through the levels a bit (with playing without those horrid new monsters/weapons), and many agree that some of the unfinished maps of the pack had some potential. Most of them felt like a few well designed sectors and end a minute later or just long corridors with just a lacklustre dead end with an ammo or a monster.

I decided to hack one of the maps, Dim Park, because that level looked really cool with very nice, layered and nonlinear layout (but with some missed assets like spritework and ambient sounds, not to mention the terrible monster balance with everything at you at the start, but nothing to shoot after a while, a typical Sunstorm problem even with their flagship levels). I thought having some mini overlords here just work for the map's style and ambience.

Just for the sake of fun... (you need to use EDuke32 World Tour Stopgap for this, because normally mini overlords die immediately.

DimPark Revisited.zip

I had always hoped that someone experienced with mapster would do a modified version of the Xtreme Expansion just simply modifying each map for a pistol start so that you could play through it the way it was ment to be. Even though it's regarded as the worst of the official addons I think it still deserves this proper treatment even if only for archival purposes. Unfortunately I haven't seen this done anywhere yet.

Not sure what this would entail exacty. Maybe this would be an opportunity for me to learn some mapster basics once I can dedicate the time to doing so. If anyone could provide a newb friendly step by step process to achieve this it would be appreciated.

[ck3D]

DNS, on 30 April 2025 - 05:34 AM, said:

I had always hoped that someone experienced with mapster would do a modified version of the Xtreme Expansion just simply modifying each map for a pistol start so that you could play through it the way it was ment to be. Even though it's regarded as the worst of the official addons I think it still deserves this proper treatment even if only for archival purposes. Unfortunately I haven't seen this done anywhere yet.

Not sure what this would entail exacty. Maybe this would be an opportunity for me to learn some mapster basics once I can dedicate the time to doing so. If anyone could provide a newb friendly step by step process to achieve this it would be appreciated.

https://infosuite.duke4.net

https://wiki.eduke32...i/Level_editing

https://wiki.eduke32...yboard_Commands

All you need. Dedicate half a day to following the The Basics section on the Infosuite and you'll be set. The list of commands on the Wiki can be searched through when looking for whether a specific manipulation or possibility exists. You'll assimilate new shortcuts daily.

Also:

[DNS]

ck3D, on 30 April 2025 - 08:28 AM, said:

https://infosuite.duke4.net

https://wiki.eduke32...i/Level_editing

https://wiki.eduke32...yboard_Commands

All you need. Dedicate half a day to following the The Basics section on the Infosuite and you'll be set. The list of commands on the Wiki can be searched through when looking for whether a specific manipulation or possibility exists. You'll assimilate new shortcuts daily.

Also:

Thanks for the quick reply.

I haven't dug through everything you linked to yet but from what I can gather in the few minutes I have spent, do I simply have to delete the starting sector of each map in order to pistol start after completing the previous one? I don't really have much interest or purpose in learning how to build full maps.

If you could just run down the steps on what needs to be done to achieve this I can then reference the material you linked to on how to accomplish each task.

Thanks again.

[NNC]

I think the only map in the Xtreme set that looks like a proper "Hot map" by MSDN standards in its unaltered form is the one with the absolutely worst title, "Garbage". Other than weapon inbalance at the start (if you use vanilla weapons, as Xtreme pistol is stronger), this is a rather fun, uncomplicated romp through a sewage facility with some nice look, strong effects and good gameplay. I still haven't played through the entire level set of Xtreme (sometimes I switch off as soon as I see the opening room, like in the very first map, "Convention" lol), so there might be some more ok stuff through the end, but Lunick's YT videos didn't look that promising.

Others, like the Final Destination or Exanagon can be copied to another sunstorm map (or even better: finish it properly), because they are just a sub station and a space station segment respectively. For that short segment, Final Destination is more or less designed very well (if you forget one amateurish glitch at the conveyor belt), then enter the subway, and the author just finished the rest of the level in like 20 minutes with crap texturing and no effort.

Dimpark was the easiest pick to revisit, because it has a good foundation, a strong and complete layout (the layered sewer below road with two exits reminded me of Levelord's sewer, even if it was unfinished), but totally empty from gameplay after the initial monster spam (a genuine issue in Sunstorm levels, even the good ones, but this is even more notable here). I added coop and DM points too as I think this layout is good for DM. I didn't add jetpack, because you can fly up higher than the border level and that can result unpleasant graphics due to the engine (and raising the walls would have been ill advised), but maybe placing it somewhere would have escalated a DM play more (at least if anyone cares).

EDIT: Checked a few more, Rigel looks like another one with potential.

[ck3D]

DNS, on 30 April 2025 - 09:51 AM, said:

Thanks for the quick reply.

I haven't dug through everything you linked to yet but from what I can gather in the few minutes I have spent, do I simply have to delete the starting sector of each map in order to pistol start after completing the previous one? I don't really have much interest or purpose in learning how to build full maps.

If you could just run down the steps on what needs to be done to achieve this I can then reference the material you linked to on how to accomplish each task.

Thanks again.

No, you do not delete the sector or that will just kill the player spawning Duke out of bounds. You draw a new tiny sector around the starting position (make it actual player space with Alt + S) and do the following: https://infosuite.du..._general_nomap3 mind you depending on whether/what the original starting sector is tagged, the new sector will by default inherit of it, which is to be careful about so you don't duplicate or break effects.