[Merlijn]

@ ck3d & Aleks: I agree about the layered shading, it's a great tool to use. I especially discovered it after getting rid of the black fog. Sometimes, you want to have a similar visual effect without the actual fog being there.

As for the screens not showing much: the building actually turns out to be pretty intricate, with 2 levels stacked on top of each other (so fans of sector-over-sector should be pretty happy ) and a pretty complicated floor plan. Meanwhile, there's the flashing sky and the thunderstorm raging outside the building. It has a really apocalyptic feel to it, but that's hard to capture with a screenshot. So for now, you'll just have to take my word for it.

[Maarten]

Haven't used Mapster sinds July.....but the last few days, I added 220+ sectors, and almost 2000 walls... :') Screenshot added - keep in mind it's WIP! (Also...yest, the 'Woudrichem' story continuer's!)

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[Ninety-Six]

Yes! I was hoping we'd see another installment!

[Telee]

It's great that the Duke community is still alive all these years later. Here's a peek at a couple levels I've been working on for an episode. The first map (plane) is basically 95% complete, sitting at 16,321/16,384 walls so not much more to be done but tweaking and gameplay testing. The second map (airport) is at 9,992 walls, a lot of work done but still much to do (including shading which I'm waiting to tackle until all the architecture is complete). Having a lot of fun with it.

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[ck3D]

Damn that's some great news and shots back to back, best of luck with your respective projects, Maarten and Telee! I'm sensing some golden times for Duke 3D in a rather near future with all the cool stuff being worked on right now.

Telee's shots in particular remind me I also want an airport and airplane map(s) in my own project, topping the strength of those aesthetics is going to be tough though, loving the detail and texturing. Maybe some stronger wall shading and contrast around all the angles would help complete the look. Ceiling lights in the last shot could also look a bit less flat and/or cast shadows above them for some variety on the ceiling and extra depth, otherwise I'm a fan.

[Telee]

Thanks for the kind words and feedback, I definitely agree that shading is what I need to work on the most, I'll probably find myself going back to these older maps / areas and touching things up as I continue to gain experience. I don't think there are many good plane or airport maps out there so it'd be great to see your approaches to them as well!

[ck3D]

Ah there's actually been quite a few airplane and airport maps (although indeed not that many people have tackled the theme), for instance Letiste was a good airport map that I can remember and I think Passenger Jet was a really sweet-looking plane map (or maybe I'm confusing the one with that name with another plane map, there's been a handful in the past that looked similar and so in my mind they sort of blend in). IIRC Shadow Warrior had one notorious plane map too, although I never played that game. For mine I have/had quite the number of ideas of scripted sequences, but I also want some base game level type of flow for the episode in general so the final product probably won't be that linear. Anyway, thanks!

Shading I always recommend is a good habit to pick up on the go, also working with increments in powers of 3 from adjacent wall/floor to adjacent wall/floor from my personal experience is what I find looks best, don't hesitate to try and go for stark contrast here and there when you experiment and you'll most likely be amazed yourself at the extra depth it directly gives to one's own piece. Also for stuff like floor/ceiling shadows, remember you can always use a flat sprite with pal 4 (or a very dark shade value and/or noshade if your parent sector uses light/palette effects), usually the same one used for the actual object in the first place, for a resource-efficient way of making them.

[Telee]

Shadow Warrior's plane map that you're referring to is part of the Wanton Destruction addon and is quite good, I have played that one. In terms of Duke stuff the only ones I've played are Passenger Jet, Boeing 747 and SkyCity 2 - the latest of which is over 12 years old. Definitely not a new concept don't get me wrong but I'm hoping I can make it feel fresh enough

Haven't heard of Letiste, I'll have to check that one out. Gotta remind myself to take a break from the mapping once in a while to try out some user maps, especially the latest stuff being put out by the community - I've missed a lot over the years.

[Sanek]

Telee....I remember you from a long time ago, you were a velociraptor...
The WIP shots of yours looks very good, so welcome back!

[ck3D]

Telee, on 20 January 2021 - 08:12 AM, said:

Shadow Warrior's plane map that you're referring to is part of the Wanton Destruction addon and is quite good, I have played that one. In terms of Duke stuff the only ones I've played are Passenger Jet, Boeing 747 and SkyCity 2 - the latest of which is over 12 years old. Definitely not a new concept don't get me wrong but I'm hoping I can make it feel fresh enough

Haven't heard of Letiste, I'll have to check that one out. Gotta remind myself to take a break from the mapping once in a while to try out some user maps, especially the latest stuff being put out by the community - I've missed a lot over the years.

Letiste is a 1999 user map by Peter Kucera: https://dnr.duke4.ne...ps/Letiste.html so it also dates from way back. Also I remember back when the Skycity maps came out like yesterday, it's crazy to think it's been twelve years but you're right. I remember especially liking the first and third of those maps and to this day wish the author had kept going, they were onto something with that style.

I'm also with you on that I don't play user maps as much as I should, to the point of feeling guilty of not completely recognizing people's efforts at times, it's just so tempting to create and map instead all the while still appreciating the new releases from afar. I've been getting this idea that part of the community is getting less interested in actually experiencing user maps first hand now than in appreciating new releases like fine art pieces; it's funny how 'passive' YouTube views of video playthroughs kind of compete with download counters these days. It's as though the engine is so antiquated now (and I don't mean that any pejoratively, 'old' if you will), everything new pertaining to it will also function as a cultural curiosity in addition to playable content.

[Ninety-Six]

I had no idea the Skycity series was that old. I only discovered them a few years ago and found them "modern" enough to feel like they couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 at the absolute oldest.

[Aleks]

@Maarten, great to hear you're working on another map!
@Telee, I especially dig the first screenshot from the airplane interior, it looks so massive! And thinking of how much walls were used there already gives me a headache. Love the use of shapes and textures on the chair, also cool idea how the seatbelts and armrests were created.

I've finally decided on a title of my new map and created a ModDB page for it to directly post updates. I'm planning weekly progress updates with some screens, since it's pretty close to completion already. Posting 2 new not too revealing screenshots here as well, these are relatively new areas, which were created during the last 2-3 weeks (2nd screen is something I've created today in fact).

[Telee]

Sanek, on 20 January 2021 - 08:21 AM, said:

Telee....I remember you from a long time ago, you were a velociraptor...
The WIP shots of yours looks very good, so welcome back!

Thanks! Yes, that was me, from back when I was in high school probably lol.

Love the design on those light fixtures Aleks. Those other screens on ModDB look great as well. How did you pull off that reflective floor?

[Aleks]

Telee, on 20 January 2021 - 04:47 PM, said:

Love the design on those light fixtures Aleks. Those other screens on ModDB look great as well. How did you pull off that reflective floor?

Thanks! The reflective floor is just made with semi-transparent sprites on the "floor surface" and manually recreating the entire reversed room upside down below the level of these sprites (also using bottom-swap on all wall textures so they can be correctly mirrored). It's one of the first rooms I created in the map, it was done back in 2008 or so actually

[Sanek]

Oh yes, I remember the days when this "effect" was considered super-cool and edgy!
I believe it appeared in Nuclear Winter for the first time.

[Telee]

Ah, that's pretty simple actually. I'd imagine you can only use stayput enemies anywhere near that hall though, since if they walked over it they wouldn't reflect and would kinda ruin the effect.

Funny that Nuclear Winter used it since the level design in that expansion wasn't great, that's pretty innovative.

[Micky C]

Aleks, on 21 January 2021 - 03:57 AM, said:

Thanks! The reflective floor is just made with semi-transparent sprites on the "floor surface" and manually recreating the entire reversed room upside down below the level of these sprites (also using bottom-swap on all wall textures so they can be correctly mirrored). It's one of the first rooms I created in the map, it was done back in 2008 or so actually

There’s a mapster script that automatically turns sectors upside down. You can then join it to the original with TROR for the reflection effect.

[ck3D]

Micky C, on 22 January 2021 - 02:17 AM, said:

There’s a mapster script that automatically turns sectors upside down.

I suspected that but it's cool to hear a confirmation as sooner or later I'm going to tackle doing something like this on a rather big scale. Not that inverting values 'manually' especially sounds bad to me though given what I have in mind after all. I'm guessing that script only inverts sectors and not the height coordinates of spritework? If everything reacted to the mirroring, that would be the ultimate way.

Aleks looking forward to your map as you know, loving the mini in-game universe.

[jimbob]

working on my mod, progress is slow but steady. have the first episode mapped out roughly, going to do artwork for the germans soon ( damn pandemic )
heres a few WIP shots.

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[Aleks]

I've updated the Submachine page on ModDB with some new screenshots if anyone's interested. Hit the 14k walls mark yesterday, started working on a new area after spending most of my mapping time last week on quite complex sequence (I'm quite satisfied how it worked out in the end, especially considering I had quite limited mapping time too). Posting screens of "Klingon door" that I made some days ago, seeing these in one of Star Trek Next Generation episodes made me instantly want to build it in Duke. No TROR or custom textures are involved, just pure good old Build (well, Mapster with texture rotation actually).

[Mike Norvak]

Aleks, on 27 January 2021 - 03:27 AM, said:

I've updated the Submachine page on ModDB with some new screenshots if anyone's interested. Hit the 14k walls mark yesterday, started working on a new area after spending most of my mapping time last week on quite complex sequence (I'm quite satisfied how it worked out in the end, especially considering I had quite limited mapping time too). Posting screens of "Klingon door" that I made some days ago, seeing these in one of Star Trek Next Generation episodes made me instantly want to build it in Duke. No TROR or custom textures are involved, just pure good old Build (well, Mapster with texture rotation actually).

Klingon_door.png

Probably I'm missing something but how this can possibly be made just with regular sectors? really impressive!

[Aleks]

Mike Norvak, on 27 January 2021 - 04:02 PM, said:

Probably I'm missing something but how this can possibly be made just with regular sectors? really impressive!

Thanks! The part of the door that's above the ground is made from masked wall between invisible parallaxed ceiling and floor, which are inside another sector with parallaxed ceiling and floor to be invisible. Then the floor and ceiling is covered with a sprite, so the parallaxed stuff can't be seen. Also the "inner" masked walls had to be made pal 4, to create the impression that the "teeth" is full inside (if it wasn't a moving slide door sector that cannot transport sprites, the floor/ceiling could be also masked with sloped sprites), as the "negative" masked wall sector is hollow inside.

[Merlijn]

That's really impressive Aleks.
I remember Alejandro's military madness having a similar effect for a 3d swing door, but this is taking it to another level.

[ck3D]

I could never bother to try and figure out those parallax sky tricks myself, so I'll always love them when I see them when put to such original use. Nice one for sure!

@jimbob style is really sweet, especially in screens 3 and 4. Screen 1 has a root sprite that appears to be floating in mid air, just reporting in case you didn't catch that.

[jimbob]

ck3D, on 28 January 2021 - 08:36 AM, said:

I could never bother to try and figure out those parallax sky tricks myself, so I'll always love them when I see them when put to such original use. Nice one for sure!

@jimbob style is really sweet, especially in screens 3 and 4. Screen 1 has a root sprite that appears to be floating in mid air, just reporting in case you didn't catch that.

thanks, yeah, i noticed it and fixed it already

[Aleks]

Merlijn, on 28 January 2021 - 08:25 AM, said:

That's really impressive Aleks.
I remember Alejandro's military madness having a similar effect for a 3d swing door, but this is taking it to another level.

Thanks! Yeah, Alejandro also did the same trick in HydroStation (which was earlier than MM IIRC) - although looking back at it, doesn't seem like the best way, as instead of regular swing doors, the "floating" swing door could have been created with ST30 and SE0/SE1 which moves sprites and a spritework (and this way, it could be "closed" from top and bottom instead of relying on blackness). Slide doors unfortunately don't move sprites, and 2-way trains require some minimal distance (~4096 units) to work properly.

[Maarten]

Nice to see so much activity in here and also seeing some old faces back as well!
@ Aleks: that door trick looks amazing

Meanwhile, inspiration keeps coming to me. I think it's save to say at least 50% is finished. I actually made the whole "basic gameplay locations". The map will have more nature as well this time around
Don't wanna show too much yet, but here is a WIP shot of a cave section:

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[jimbob]

fleshing out some of the maps, adding secrets, places to discover, foreshadowing and adding lame puns.

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[UltravoxSapphire]

So, I got sucked into Doom modding for a few months and I basically abandoned Blood and Ice.

Now, I am trying this again -- another fucking awful BETA IS BETTA mod that'll never get anywhere.

This new mod of mine is called Duke Nukem 3D:Metal Future. Metal Future was DN1's working title according to Wikipedia. Please take this bit of info with a grain of salt, as Joe Siegler says that DN1's original title was Heavy Metal, and didn't mention anything about the Metal Future name.

We, Duke4 users know how these mods go -- reusin' Cage's shit*, maybe using some of the official asset pieces that were posted in Duke4's Discord, zero effort, some beta-esque (non-official) assets taken from wherever without proper credit (trust me, I know. Yeah I'm fucking looking at you Timmyboy1980.), barely anything unique, the list goes on.

But for this project, I'm trying my best to do things...erm, right. Instead of trying to make some unappealing garbage, I'm trying to make something that looks "decent", has interesting and unique ideas, has some story slapped on that the players will probably ignore, etc.


This mod is set in an alternate reality Los Angeles in the year 1998, where Earth is unified under one government with the City of Angels as the capital (as gross as that may sound).

Somewhere in darkest corner of the Milky Way, the queen of an unknown hostile race is having her troops construct a DNA bomb that will eradicate all life on Earth, while leaving
all of the planet's buildings intact -- allowing them to come in and build a new colony.

However, they have already suffered a major setback -- when the alien army's high officials (Suran Korando, Ignatius Baranar, Carnon Hendor, and Mileena Sanura) heard about this plan, they immediately rushed over to Earth's capital building, the Central Office. There, they told the president every, single, thing they heard about the project. The president (Darnell Geraldson) responded by calling the only man who could stop the plan in its tracks...Duke Nukem.

This story is not...that great. It's something.

Development's been going since November 2020, and I'm not sure how it's going to end...it'll probably fail yet again because I'm a lazy twat.

Here are some shots you'll probably hate:












*Okay I'll admit this: I'm using Cage's assets, just because they look cool.

[ck3D]

^ There's really not much to hate about those shots, I recognize some classic areas from LameDuke and beta screens, some others I'm not sure might be your original creation but in the end it all looks really clean (a lot cleaner than Blood And Ice if you allow me) and fun to explore with good use of the available space, that and the Duke Nukem 1 reference kind of sells it for me, honestly (I'm big into the idea of reusing Duke 1 and 2 lore myself, I also grew up with those games). I'm curious now, did you learn anything from Doom modding that you're applying here? Only asking because there's a lot to learn from Doom mapping and here it looks like you did. Besides that, theme has been tried over and over but to my knowledge, no 'clean', playable and fun beta mod was ever released I don't think (including Blood And Ice, haha), at least I'll be keeping an eye out for it.

Don't call yourself a lazy twat in advance, too - making a mod by yourself (even though you're partly reusing assets here, I know) is hard enough on yourself as a person that you don't need to do that. So far it's looking all good and thus it's pretty obvious to me that you can totally do it (unless at some point you yourself choose to give up, which would be fine too). Just keep it up, and maybe remember to respect your own workflow by doing things as you feel like doing them, never before - that's typically how one starts feeling imaginary pressure and burning out for, in reality, no reason.