[ck3D]

2121 A.D. was such a crazy map at the time, I remember that one. I remember I wasn't a huge fan of all the design back then (I'd need to replay it after nearly twenty years to appreciate it now, maybe) but it had some really good ideas for its time as well as some not so good ones such as that gigantic Battlelord. Funny story, I remember play testing one of my levels I think back in 2003 and not realizing I still had the 2121 A.D. .con files enabled. So as soon as I ran into my first Battlelord, completely unexpectedly it instantly resized to the gigantic size and I remember that scared the shit out of me for a second.

Also now I just remembered I actually got in touch with Bob Masters for the span of a few emails back when he still had his reviewing site up (boy...), I was a way worse mapper at the time to the point where he wouldn't publish my maps yet still he'd encourage me to keep at it which in retrospect was really nice of him.

[Ninety-Six]

ck3D, on 16 August 2020 - 03:21 AM, said:

Here I'm walking a fine fun line because I essentially want to retain those exact strengths so that playing the episode feels like pure Duke 3D, just on a larger scale and in differently stylized settings. I'm not saying I'll succeed but that's the basic idea and motivation.

I thought the prospects couldn't look better but here we are. New episode in a long time, gorgeous screenshots, and at least attempting to play just like the base game. Success or fail I can't say it isn't at least looking to be a great time.

ck3D, on 16 August 2020 - 03:21 AM, said:

and also a smaller one to L.A. Rumble with that big screen on the building (but then again I feel like I'm paying tribute to L.A. Rumble every time with those - also coincidentally, one of the original maps with the strongest Blade Runner look and feel to me).

Yeah, likewise. Really tall buildings and the massive screen with the winking woman; they weren't even trying to hide the influence there (which I respect).


I've also actually never played Siebenopolis or Slum Noir. I got time to kill this morning so I may as well.

I did play 2121 AD a few years back. I don't remember finding any section particularly bad. Then again I also don't remember the giant battlelord so maybe I should consider replaying that, myself...

[ck3D]

Thank you, yes I'm definitely trying to pay homage to the original game first and foremost here (otherwise I'd still be making more 'one-off' user maps is how I'm looking at it). I'm a big fan of the base game just as much as the next guy so if I'm making an episode I want to make sure it's not just a random succession of levels but there's actually coherence to it both as far as the ensemble of maps is concerned but also with the original material, stylistic choices aside (if anything it's interesting to experiment with how far I can retouch aesthetics without sacrificing the core). The vertical action is one aspect, the interconnected layouts with plenty of options for Dukematch although I hear Dukematch's currently partially broken is another. At least it's my perspective on what made for a lot of the fun and spirit of the original episodes and I kind of want to see if I can confirm that by keeping the same ingredients in my own little recipe.

I think back when I played 2121 A.D. I was still finding out about all the crazy stuff people had been putting in user maps since 1996 and thus I was rather easily fascinated by really detailed maps, which 2121 A.D. wasn't - in general, in that time period I think there was more general curiosity regarding how far it was possible to push realism in Duke 3D and for a bit, levels that didn't align with that trend would tend to fly under the popular radar (although there always was a core of players who appreciated them for what they were, lots of others were also in the pursuit of pseudo-photorealistic novelty). Eventually that trend died out after people got a clearer idea of the possibilities and everyone started appreciating classic maps again. I remember I was impressed with 2121 A.D. but not in the way that would speak to me at the time. I really think if I played it now though, I would disregard what I remember as some of the blocky design in parts and whatnot (I especially remember not being a huge fan of the indoor areas) and appreciate it a lot more, as I was saying.

Siebenpolis is bound to be hit or miss depending on your tastes, I wish I had released a version of that map with visibility raised so that its navigation would have been more practical, at least. MetHy has a video on his YouTube if you ever get stuck. oasiz's Slum Noir on the other hand is a little gem. Thanks again for the positivity and I hope you have fun!

[Ninety-Six]

ck3D, on 16 August 2020 - 04:29 AM, said:

Thank you, yes I'm definitely trying to pay homage to the original game first and foremost here (otherwise I'd still be making more 'one-off' user maps is how I'm looking at it). I'm a big fan of the base game just as much as the next guy so if I'm making an episode I want to make sure it's not just a random succession of levels but there's actually coherence to it both as far as the ensemble of maps is concerned but also with the original material, stylistic choices aside (if anything it's interesting to experiment with how far I can retouch aesthetics without sacrificing the core). The vertical action is one aspect, the interconnected layouts with plenty of options for Dukematch although I hear Dukematch's currently partially broken is another. At least it's my perspective on what made for a lot of the fun and spirit of the original episodes and I kind of want to see if I can confirm that by keeping the same ingredients in my own little recipe.

In that sense, it almost sounds like (but very obviously isn't) a spiritual successor to Metropolitan Mayhem. Which is great news for me. It may not have been 100% accurate to the 3DR style, but it was (and still is, really) one of the best map packs in terms of pure gameplay, in my opinion. I still very often go back to it if I want to knock out a couple hours. If BR is going for a similar gameplay style to vanilla (again, albeit expanded), maybe it can join that same illustrious rank.

[Aleks]

Hey guys!

Some of you might remember me back from AMC forums, if you have been around like… 15 years ago. I was known there by the silly name "ShrinkDuke" (which I will keep here on Discord now). I've authored a map called Alex City, which scored surprisingly well on MSDN for its mediocre quality, and participated in a couple of CBP maps.

Then I started an episode which seemed to be a project I couldn't really undertake alone at that time – I've always been too pedantic about my maps, so finishing 5 of them at a decent time would be quite a challenge. After 3 maps, I became uninspired/demotivated and took a long break from Build and Duke community.

I've had some brief streaks of using Build in the meantime – one of them resulted in starting a new level (about 10 years ago, too), which is… also still unfinished. All in all, I haven't really touched Mapster for like 2-3 years until recently.

Few months back, I've found a collection of very old maps (1996-1999), gathered back in the day at the depths of still forming common Internet access. Most of them were crappy, some were surprisingly good (LEM series for example), but in general I've enjoyed playing them, so the natural consequence was getting back to Mapster. Ah, I forgot how relaxing it is (unless you're dealing with some effect which just doesn't wanna work…)!

Then I've come across MSDN and found Maarten's newest map – it was quite surprising to see people still releasing "classic" maps for Duke after so much years, but then it seemed like a good reason to finally get to work and get my stuff released as well. Besides Wudrichem (and Duke's Anniversary World Tour), the most recent release I have played was probably "Clear the Coast" long years ago, so I will have a lot of stuff to catch up.

Now, enough of the heart-warming stories – let's talk business.

My episode, which goes by the working title "The Tongue of Fire", has now been in development for longer than Duke Forever. I should have probably released the completed levels back in 2005 or 2006, but then I would have zero motivation to finish the whole thing and it would end at pretty awkward place. Nevertheless, I've always had in mind that I would finish it one day – just wasn't sure if anyone would be still playing Duke then.

My general idea was to make strongly mission-based levels, instead of just key/button hunting. Although the maps use some new art and minor new coding, it's only applied when necessary and in general I keep the classic Duke look. In first mission, Duke is about to open his new casino, which obviously gets sabotaged by the aliens – so while dealing with them, he also has to maintain the opening routine by lighting the logo at the entrance and letting "invisible people" in.



Another one takes Duke to a remote magazine where the aliens have been doing some gruesome experiments to stop them and destroy their data and… results.



In third one, Duke is sent to an arctic base which is being under attack by aliens. My favourite thing about this one is that there's a lot of scripted "life" and action going on in which player doesn't really participate, just to build the story. Don't wanna show too much here not to spoil it really...



4^th one – which is about halfway done now thanks to my recent mapping inspiration – will be escaping an alien fortress in desert, and the final one (which has not been started yet) will be going to alien planet to assassinate their general. It's about 900 sectors now and going at a pretty decent rate, but screens will have to wait.

The first 3 maps were started before the coding magic enlarged the sectors, walls and sprites quota, so they were aimed at the standard 1024 sectors and especially the first two ones are quite small for today's standard, but I feel they are complete, so they would stay this way. In the one I'm currently working on, I hopefully will be able to build everything I want with enough detail within the larger limits.

Then there's the single map – this time I don't wanna use any new art, cons or sounds and don't really need them. I just started building something one day about 10 years ago, taking inspiration from some LHC photos seen in some magazine (the map file is still called hadron.map), but it evolved in quite a distant direction to become an underground mining and research facility for the green crystals used for shrinker. This one is about 75% finished I believe, but I have luckily drawn and written a scenario for the whole path not to get lost over the years. In general, your objective here is to escape, and to do this, you need to follow two paths which are quite non-linear and parallel, so it should offer different types of gaming experience. There's a lot of cool effects involved, but unfortunately some of them got bugged in the newest Eduke release and I don't feel motivated at the moment to fix it – but it will get completed one day, perhaps after the episode.

[Sanek]

@Aleks you're a legend already, didn't you know?

I remeber playing Alexcity and I thought it looked very good back then. It's kinda small compared to the rest of "hot maps" of the day, but at the same time it's very well designed. It's still a good map IMO.

The stuff you're working on looks great btw. The city map looks like Alex City Part 2! Don't know how it'll make sense story-wise but there's some explanation I guess. The last bunch of screenshots looks like a throwback to the maps that guys like Alejandro or Kef used to make like 17-20 years ago, in a good sense of the word of course.

As you can see we're still kicking here. You definitely should released some of the stuff that you showed!

[Aleks]

Thanks, Sanek, I really appreciate the kind words! But the only "legendary" thing about my maps is that there are rumours about them back from ancient times, but noone really ever saw them...

As for my episode, there's plenty of locations, as Duke is sent on missions by EDF - most of the real levels will be proceeded by very short "mission briefing" levels serving somehow as "cutscenes" (idea taken from old Pray Your Prayers TC). For maps 1-3 I was taking a great deal of ideas from games of the time: 1st Call of Duty, GTA Vice City (the whole idea behind the casino map was actually jumping on the windowsills to turn on the logo as in that mission where you used a motorbike to jump on the rooftops to light a spotlight with titties on the sky), Doom 3 (in map 3 there are "PDA's" literally ripped from Doom 3). Map 4 will start with a nice little "minigame" and in the final level I am planning to make more of a stealth level than normal ass kicking.

And as for the single map, well, I have probably taken bits and bits of inspiration from every mapper out there, but my style (or again - pedantic nature) always kept concentrating on little stuff like shadows or spriterworks noone would notice The map is about 1500 sectors and 6000 sprites at the moment, it doesn't have any really large areas, but just going through it to visit every location and turn everything on takes me now about 10 minutes even without any monsters and with keycards placed at the door for faster testing, so I might be able to meet today's length standards...

[quakis]

Aleks, on 16 August 2020 - 10:20 AM, said:

Some of you might remember me back from AMC forums, if you have been around like… 15 years ago. I was known there by the silly name "ShrinkDuke"

Honestly it's a nice surprise to see an old face, welcome back! The first screenshot does seem familiar, I recall those casino table textures from a project of yours back then. Stick around, I look forward to a new release from you after such a long time.

[ck3D]

My man Alex, that's so crazy! I was reminiscing about AlexCity1: Bank Heist (that was the name, wasn't it?) just the other day and even looked up a video of it on YouTube to get to look at that map again. We used to talk on AMC and MSN (... shit) quite a bit, out of all memories I specifically remember being like 16 and exchanging opinions with you over which songs were the best on Smash by the Offspring, lol! Honestly AlexCity was a pretty iconic map of its time - always found it representative of the blossoming 'detailed' mapping style people were experimenting with post-Roch, but with your own meticulous twists and cinematic ideas to it. After all these years I can still sense that personal approach in your style, just developed further ahead and refined and I think that's really cool.

And here I thought Real Life™ had gotten the best of you. Welcome back to the vortex - although from the looks of it, the vortex never really left you. I too am happy to see you've been working on stuff and will keep an eye out for your releases. Good luck!

[Jimmy]

Aleks, welcome back dude! What a pleasant surprise. I've steadily recommended Alex City 1 for years when people ask for maps to play. Crazy to think you're still working on projects for years under the radar. Those screenshots look great and have a nostalgic feel for me.

[Aleks]

Thanks guys, it's great to see you are still active!

@Quakis:
I think you might have even played the casino map during some beta testing years ago, I'm sure the first 3 maps have already been beta-tested - although they will still need another run, mostly gameplay wise. I've spent about 2 first weeks after coming back to mapping now just checking these levels for potential bugs and having them fixed, also doing some little tweaks.

@MRCK:
Haha, yeah, we used to talk a lot! I've just listened to "Smash" after reading your post, it's still a great album, even though I have moved mostly to much heavier music since then. I see you've become a mapping star now, whole MSDN hot maps section is screaming your name, that's great! The last one I've played might have been "Rural Nightmare" I guess, and I probably still have some beta versions of your maps (Anarchy CIty era) on my disc somewhere - I will have a lot of catching up with new maps in general, but you and the Oostrums will probably go first. I'm very curious how your style developed, the screenshots I've seen look awesome with more "urban structure". I've usually had a problem imagining a large area and composing it together with a lot of different stuff before building, so things like these (or William Gee maps) are always what impresses me the most. Great to see you guys still doing maps for "classic" Duke, I've tried different versions, might be nostalgia, but I definitely prefer the vanilla one in classic mode, with such a broad and greatly picked set of pixelated textures. I've also read through a couple of your last posts in this threads and I like your "mapping philosophy" talk, in fact I've had quite similar thoughts about many mapping related issues, main being that it's pretty pointless to map when you feel uninspired. There's been times when I really felt like mapping, sat down and made some stuff, but then I thought it looked like crap and took another break Even when on a building spree, I tend to spend a lot of time picking the right texture. In fact I consider building maps as a great creative task which requires both technical/engineering skills and good aesthetics feeling, which is why I keep coming back to it. There's always this little satisfaction each time I'm happy with either some design or some effect I've just made.

And talking about my style being meticulous... I've spent most of my mapping session yesterday doing these shadows



@Jimmy/BlitZ:
I've had to review your name history to find out who you are, nice to see you again! Thanks for recommending AlexCity to people. I have uploaded it on Steam two years ago for Duke 20th Anniversary World Tour. I still have a sentiment for it and like a lot of things about it (spriteworks, details and some effects), but then there are things I hate (skybox texture, the decision that I went for really short buildings instead of a regular tall Duke city and some texture choices which suck). As for "working on projects under the radar", considering my work rate I would probably be able to show one very not-revealing screenshot per few years, so...

I hope I can release something this year, so these are not just empty screens and words from me

[Merlijn]

Hi Alex, always great to see some old faces re-appear!
I seem to remember some conversations on MSN and a particulary bad Disturbed cover.

Those shots look very nice, I'll be looking forward to playing it.

[Aleks]

Merlijn, on 17 August 2020 - 09:25 AM, said:

Hi Alex, always great to see some old faces re-appear!
I seem to remember some conversations on MSN and a particulary bad Disturbed cover.

Those shots look very nice, I'll be looking forward to playing it.

Nice to see you're still active here, Merlijn!

I remember that "The Game" cover, but now Maarten showed me your more recent musical endeavours and they're actually really good - in fact "Dancing Dinosaurs" is such a damn catchy song i couldn't get it out of my head after a couple listens

[Merlijn]

That's cool, glad you enjoy that song! It's funny how similar the learning curve for music and mapping is (for me at least). You first have to suck for a while before you get better.

[Mark]

You first have to suck for a while before you get better.

There's a joke in there somewhere.

[juvenite]

Tea Monster, on 11 February 2020 - 06:15 PM, said:

Spoiler

Just practising some sculpting this evening.

This is just roughing out shapes at this point.

I know It's been a while ago, but I'm a simple woman. I see Octabrain, I upvote.

[Tea Monster]

Katrix Kytarix, on 19 August 2020 - 08:30 AM, said:

I know It's been a while ago, but I'm a simple woman. I see Octabrain, I upvote.

Thank you!
I've been working on a few reproductions of the original Chuck Jones models.

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[Mark]

Looking good. Put some ballet slippers on the Octabrain "legs" and use it in a Black Swan mod.

[Tea Monster]

I can hear the piano tippy-toe sound effects.

[juvenite]

Like this?

[Tea Monster]

Katrix Kytarix, on 20 August 2020 - 11:33 AM, said:

Like this?

LOL!!!

Exactly!!!

[Mark]

I want 5% of the gross for the movie. It was my idea.

[Merlijn]

SG3 is pretty much finished, I'm doing some final touches right now. Soundtrack has also been recorded this weekend.
The map will released on the 27th of August.

Here's a final screenshot:

[Aleks]

Merlijn, that looks quite original (just hope there won't be that annoying Babe Land mouse scavenging on that cheese market!), but very vanOostrumish! Nice that you've already announced a release date, I will be able to catch up with the 2 previous levels, then play this one when it's out

Last week I started playing with sloped sprites. It's probably my favourite new feature in Mapster since... Enhancing the sector/wall/sprite limits I remember how much I wanted this thing 15 years ago, would kill for it! Here's a shot of the level I'm currently working on. A lot of decorative sprites like plants etc. and some shading are still missing, but I like the look of this area. The map is very open, so it's difficult for me to make a nice screen of something not too revealing, but still showing something...

[Jimmy]

Looking good boys. I kind of missed some of the discussion further back in this thread because of Aleks' return.

Ninety-Six, on 16 August 2020 - 02:36 AM, said:

To be honest I've only ever seen [Blade Runner] once, and I hardly remember anything about the plot or the characters (in fact I remember having a hard time following the plot for some reason).

It's because that movie is an absolute mess. The atmosphere is the only thing about it that's coherent. There's like 7 different cuts of the movie which should tell you right there they really didn't know what to make. Ridley Scott is greatly overrated because of how great Alien turned out. He's very hit-or-miss.

Sanek, on 16 August 2020 - 03:32 AM, said:

Am I the only one who's thinking about 2121 A.D. while looking at ck3d's skyscrapers? I know that you're looking for your own or maybe the original game's style as far as layout it concerned but it just have that look of that old map. Perhaps it's been such a long time since we saw anything like it (5th element map maybe) but the tall buldings really stand out now! Can't wait for some vertical gameplay action!

2121 A.D. was awesome for the time and really pushed some limits here and there. Total classic.

[Aleks]

Jimmy, on 23 August 2020 - 01:30 PM, said:

Looking good boys.

Thanks, Jimmy!

Quote

It's because that movie is an absolute mess. The atmosphere is the only thing about it that's coherent. There's like 7 different cuts of the movie which should tell you right there they really didn't know what to make. Ridley Scott is greatly overrated because of how great Alien turned out. He's very hit-or-miss.

I'm on the completely other ide here - I loved "Blade Runner" not only for its great atmosphere and ambience, but also for the plot. I've seen 2 different renditions of the movie, and the changes were rather cosmetic, both slightly more or less hinting about Decker being a replicant. It has a slow pace, especially by today's standards, though, which might be why it's not so appealing to people now (speaking of slowa pace, there's still much more going on than in "2001 Space Odyssey" or "Stalker"...). Loved the Villeneuve sequel too with its grand visuals as well, especially considering where the plot took to. In general, the aesthetics of both these films work very well in Duke maps.

And of course the Roy Batty speech is one of the most beautiful scenes in any movie!


On the other hand, I'm not that much a fan of Alien series. First movie was very good (mostly also because of atmosphere), but the pace in the end also went to a very slow tempo in the end (to the point I almost fell asleep last time I watched it). 2nd was OK too, 3rd was a complete disaster, "Resurrection" was great because of the visuals (and how they actually inspired E4 in Duke), didn't really care much about the newer ones, I think I only watched "Prometheus".

[Merlijn]

Thanks Jimmy & Aleks! Don't worry, there are no mice in the map except a really greedy one on a movie poster..

Aleks, that's some sweet spritework!

I concur that 2121 A.D is a real classic. I don't think I've played it since its original release, but I can still remember how it looks and many of the features.
That's how much impact it had haha.

[Mark]

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[Tea Monster]

[Aleks]

Merlijn, on 24 August 2020 - 10:19 AM, said:

Aleks, that's some sweet spritework!

Thanks, Merlijn! Another great use I found for the sloped sprites is for overlapping horizontal sprites (like the diagonal decks on previous screen) - the "visible" part of deck is sloped just the tiniest bit (8 units) "up" to always appear above the other sprite and prevent visual glitches (overlapped sprites flashing).

Some more screens - the map is going really good now, currently the resources are at 1171/10817/5293. I was aiming for a clear sunset setting, with quite long shadows on the outside. There are still some unfinished parts visible, but before I move for further landscaping and planning the natural "borders" of the map, adding plants and extra topography elements, I want to make the interiors of that large building visible on 1st screen which is planned as a 3-floor SOS. This is also why there's just "temporary" random building texture there right now. Detailed architecture will have to wait on how the exact windows positions turn out from the inside. After that, I will have to see how many resources are left for landscaping.

Been playing with sloped sprites as well - I figured that since I'm using new art files for these maps anyway, I can just trim some textures to fit the needs of creating proper sloped spritework. I'm especially happy on how the speedboat's prow turned out, it was quite a hassle to properly align and trim the sprites there...