[jimbob]

that looks cool :)

[Maarten]

@ck#D: Thanks! Also thanks for the suggestion, never saw or played Reginukem. I might be looking, but I think I'm happy with the tractor :)
@Aleks: Thanks! Hehe IC where you're coming from when mention Shaky Grounds..part 2 had same ground texture etc. IC you've quite some inspiration as well! Nice :)
@Sanek: haha well..this tractor just came into my mind.. It wasn't even planned haha. I love creating "weird" stuff to keep things fresh for myself :)
@Jimbob & Loke: going really well I see! Everyone seems to be inspired by making special stuff!
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Meanwhile, have mapped a lot previous week. Lots of sprites for a effect & finished a lot of the gameplay. About 3100 walls left, it's save to say the map is 85% done since the main thing that has to be done is polishing locations and finishing design. Also, this time around I'm experimenting a little more with shadows (something I barely do). No promise on release date yet ;)

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[quakis]

I love the lighting Maarten.

[ck3D]

That's my favorite screenshot you've posted so far Maarten, very atmospheric, shadows are looking great. Really cool to see you do more of these and I hope you keep it up, you might find yourself realizing how addictive the process is sooner than you think! (Just one observation in case you wouldn't have caught it yet, but the textures above the upper right corner of the door are misaligned between the lit and dark parts. Tile on the dark and bright segments of that destroyed panel on the ground slightly is as well).

[Maarten]

Thanks for the replies! Good to see you're still around as well, Quakis!
ck3D: thanks, I will fix it! I actually made this part just a hour ago haha.

Also, like as always, I'm going to write/record music for this project. Thinking about less electronic, more piano this time around..maybe a bit like E1L4 but more powerfull :) Oh well, I always end up louder anyway :P

[Aleks]

Cool stuff, Maarten! Looks like the early 2000s trends for more details are slowly coming back https://forums.duke4.net/public/style_emoticons/default/whistling.gif Also I giggled a little at MRCK's comment, because I've noticed the same 2 discrepancies on your screenshot with slight misalignments and they also turned my OCD a little bit :P

And yeah, I've been having quite a steady progress lately, despite hardly finding as much time to map as I'd like. In fact, the main outline of the map is completed and just few areas need some extra detailing. My biggest concern right now is dealing with the resources, as I've got like 240 walls left now and I'm at like 14,6k sprites for some reason - honestly I've no idea how this number got so crazy, but it's the point where I should be careful with it and can't go crazy with spriteworks anymore. I must admit here that a few weeks ago, I've added like 1500 sprites to the map during a single day :o

Here's a little screenshot of a gantry I made a few weeks ago - it can be operated, i.e. can move forward and lift/lower.

[Maarten]

 Aleks, on 03 March 2021 - 03:54 PM, said:

Cool stuff, Maarten! Looks like the early 2000s trends for more details are slowly coming back
week5_01.png

That's a interesting thing you say. Maybe it is, but my style for most part got a lot more "clean" & less busy compared to Another Big Base Attacked. AAP1 outside location was getting framerate problems on older machines, so I was kind of forced to not use a lot of details. The inside locations (and my map Spacetronic) has same kind of style as this shot (at least to me haha). Still, I do take your comment as a compliment btw :)

Nice screenshot btw! And wow...sounds promising about the use of sprites (hope it's not a corrupt thing haha).

[ck3D]

 Maarten, on 03 March 2021 - 01:09 PM, said:

@ck#D: Thanks! Also thanks for the suggestion, never saw or played Reginukem. I might be looking, but I think I'm happy with the tractor :)

Just noticed this - FYI Reginukem isn't a mod, they're a Brazilian mapper from the mid 2000's who really had a knack for unique vehicles in their city maps, here are some screenshots off MSDN and Arrovfnukem that aren't representative of their best work but sort of show the style I mean. Occasionally they sort of look like they were put together using LEGO blocks, but every once in a while there are particularly smart ideas and some instances that look really cool. Their levels can be a bit hard to track down because there are quite a lot of them and yet not the same ones are reviewed from website to website or so it seems and so you have to look a bit all over the place to find them all.

Spoiler

https://msdn.duke4.net/hotreclaim2.jpg

https://www.arrovfnukem.com/assets/images/maps/crane-chase-reginukem-1.png

https://www.arrovfnukem.com/assets/images/maps/crane-chase-reginukem-5.png

[Merlijn]

Again a lot of really cool stuff in this thread! I guess that's the only silver lining of these lockdowns.

Here's a few more shots of SG4, progress is going nice and steady (I'll never be as fast as ck3d though ;) ).

1. Some more sector based shading, this is a storage room for instruments and equipment in The Kompleks.
2. The underground slime river from a different angle
3. What's behind that corner??

[ck3D]

^ Looking stellar, especially screen 2 with that incredibly credible use of sloped sectors for environmental design and debris, playing with the perspectives is also a thing I really liked about your stylistic direction in SG3 (of course not even bringing up the settings for the last fight in that map), it's cool seeing you develop that approach even for what could be regarded as detail. Shading and color tones everywhere are exquisite, first screen is funny to me because it's very similar to one room in Happy Hangover which has the exact same perspective with the layout, light source and type of texturing (the basement with IIRC a washing machine, just before you reach the party).

And about speed don't worry about it, I'm paying the price for devoting so much time to mapping a few months back right now with tons of work to deal with that's slowly been picking up, haha. Duke PC has been off for too long which sucks because I have maps to work on, check out, play and beta test.

[Merlijn]

^thanks! Yeah, there's a lot of verticality and slopes in this map, as the player has to travel deeper and deeper underground. I think (hope) it will be a quite unique and immersive experience once it's finished. And funny you mention those similarities, it wasn't my intention but I noticed it as well once the room was done. Must have happened subconsciously haha.

[Aleks]

Great shots, Merlijn! Love the atmosphere and texture choices there, the shadows on 1st screen look wonderful (and resource hungry :( ), but my favourite one is the slime river once again, love how it's turning to be.

27 walls short of the limit here, so now it's just mostly "cutting is shipping". Not much had to be cut really, but I did reduce some details here and there to have enough walls for everything. There's still some areas and rooms that need some polishing, like aligning textures and adding shadows. Hopefully I'll get it ready for testing next week. Here's a little screen with some play with lights and shadows:

[Ninety-Six]

[ROOM]

I have no idea why I find that funny. Looks good, though.

[11bush]

I started messing around with a way over powered shotgun.

[Merlijn]

Aleks, on 11 March 2021 - 05:44 AM, said:

Great shots, Merlijn! Love the atmosphere and texture choices there, the shadows on 1st screen look wonderful (and resource hungry :( ), but my favourite one is the slime river once again, love how it's turning to be.

27 walls short of the limit here, so now it's just mostly "cutting is shipping". Not much had to be cut really, but I did reduce some details here and there to have enough walls for everything. There's still some areas and rooms that need some polishing, like aligning textures and adding shadows. Hopefully I'll get it ready for testing next week. Here's a little screen with some play with lights and shadows:

Thanks Aleks! The shadows aren't that resource hungry, they're basically 3 or 4 layers of triangle shaped sectors. It doesn't eat that much walls.
The Kompleks and everything surrounding the slime river are 100% done now and I still got about 6000 walls left. Should be more than enough for the final areas.

Great to hear you're almost done with your map, shot looks good as always! And looks like it's going to be less 'cramped' than your previous maps. :)

[jimbob]

what have i been working on? nazis! going to be loads of fun blasting them to bits :)

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[jimbob]

working on the bossfight map, if thats done i need to finish the chateau, make one more map and episode 1 is done.

im considering expending my team to work on episode 2, 3 and more, its beginning to become too much for just one guy :P

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[Aleks]

Well, I guess at this point there isn't really much that can be added to the map in terms of new areas or details (see the resources used :P), so just posting a 2D mode screen showing the plan view of the whole thing. Only the combat is left to add and adjusting it perfectly will take me some time, but the map can be completed in its current form without any bugs or showstoppers (unless my beta-testers will come up with something I didn't think of). It feels super satisfying to finally see the whole thing click together, considering how precise some sequencing is in here (e.g. triggering something on one end of the map that will have an effect on something else on the other end, over some time period and given some other conditions are also fulfilled...)!

Spoiler

BTW, thanks, Merlijn! Well, there's still some more tiny areas, as you can see on the screenshot, but most of the combat will be limited to the wider areas ;)

[jimbob]

that looks really cool :) large map with a lot of diversity it seems, im finishing up my chateau map, still have plenty of resources left so i might add some areas, lighting and some neat effects
might aswell post a few build screencaps

Spoiler

[Mister Sinister]

I finally made some progress. God damn it, that map set was supposed to be one in June!

[mike_s]

TerminX, on 14 June 2009 - 04:36 PM, said:

Hey guys, forum is looking a bit dead today so I thought I'd start some sort of a dialog here... what are you guys working on right now? Maps, mods, editing art tiles, coding something in a CON file, working on a Duke related site, whatever--what are you doing? Myself, I'm making some minor changes to the Dukeworld layout, fixing some bugs in the php that spits out the directory indexes, et cetera. Might work on EDuke32 later depending on what I feel like doing. I think there are some bugs in Mapster32 that need to be taken care of sometime soon.

I'm replacing COMMIT.EXE

In other words, I'm going to make Duke Nukem 3D for DOS playable on the internet for as many operating systems as possible without modifying the game itself.

I pulled this off in the far past for Windows systems with using winsock library interrupt functions in DOS but I knew that would die quick so now I'm gonna make my own internet library for Duke Nukem.

This means people who use DOSBOX and linux to play duke nukem will benefit because I have that setup now and I can access websites in DOSBOX with little work on the linux end, and those who use Windows ME or earlier will also benefit because DOS is already included in those os'es. As for Windows 7/8/10, It may be possible if special priviledges or linux emulation is used. I don't use new windows so I'm not 100% sure.

I might even have to take it one step further and make a multi-player DOS chat client too. then I would replace yang and friends.

If I could pull this all off, then you gamers won't need so much storage for backup purposes. Just enough storage for the duke nukem game itself plus DOS packet drivers for your network card. Put that all on a bootable media with a DOS image, then you will have an ultra-fast duke nukem experience (unless of course your computer is some old 386, but even then, it might be a tad faster than some games today).

[jimbob]

sounds awesome, multiplayer lacking in eduke32 is a bummer and hopefully this sets things in motion :)

[edit]
no context, just gore

[mike_s]

jimbob, on 16 April 2021 - 03:08 PM, said:

sounds awesome, multiplayer lacking in eduke32 is a bummer and hopefully this sets things in motion :)

It can.

Excuse my technical-ness for those who are not technically inclined, but I need to explain something.

Tech rant....

Like other duke nukem setups, my code will use the UDP/IP protocol to help with speed.

I dug into source code of commit, and I estimate the normal packet size for Duke Nukem is 2 KB (2048 bytes). For some connections, this is considered a large packet and I read IP fragmentation can be a bad thing. In fact, for just about any connection, this is bad unless you are lucky to have an ethernet card that supports jumbo frames.

This means if someone by chance is (still) on a dial-up connection or uses a standard ethernet connection, then data has to be divided into smaller chunks to be passed over the network. This might be the reason why people complained about lags during gameplay in the past because maybe all the pieces aren't sent as one.

For reference, dial-up maximum data size per send is 548 bytes, and maximum size of ethernet per send is roughly 1420 bytes. For jumbo frames, its well over 8000 bytes.

Now that I said that, and since I can't expect everyone to try to upgrade their hardware to support jumbo frames, I will have to also introduce fragmentation somehow just to allow all data to be sent.

...End of Tech rant

Having said all that, I could implement a game client that would be run completely in DOS. I can enable mouse support in the client. Fortunately for DOSBOX users, the mouse driver is pre-loaded when the DOS session is started, but for those who want to use the client with a mouse from real DOS will need to load a mouse driver (which can be found on many DOS boot disks).

A text-based (yang-replacement) client with colour will be very easy to implement.
One with graphics will take much more work.

Anyway I'll keep working at the commit replacement while dealing with my other obligations. Hopefully I'll come with a testable product in May.

Also, if anyone wants to dedicate their server (preferably a linux one) for the client then that would be awesome because like other chat clients, it will need to connect somewhere to register who is in what lobby and when someone new joins, etc.

Other alternative would be gut-wrenching because it will involve a player's computer constantly scanning every IP address in the universe to see what players are active on the network at any given time.