[11bush]

After a bunch of messing around, I managed to make fire that spreads.

[ck3D]

Was the fuse for some cosmic spree on map two over the last two days, it's now 1400+ sectors and IIRC about 11500 walls (and 4000+ sprites but still missing most of the detailing), in fact I realized that I was closer to finishing the main area than I thought, for the longest time it was still completely open in all fourth main cardinal directions which I thought was going to be a hassle to work with, but then the next natural additions to the level ended up encircling the layout and filling its most major gaps entirely. Now the three main tasks I have left for this map are: 1/ decoration of the few bare buildings/streets left that I'm hoping to make detailed, but hopefully not too resource-consuming, 2/ the underground network of areas I've been envisioning for this level since the start and 3/ the inside of one specific building needs a few more rooms (basically a whole floor). 5000 walls might be extremely tight, so now the challenge really comes down to using those wisely but it's going to be a fun one. Wanted to add a subway system but given the conditions, that's no longer a priority right now (although something I'd still hate to have to pass on).

I'm pretty happy that I just managed to optimize and actually turn into meaningful areas gameplay-wise segments of the map that were originally intended to just be unreachable scenery as well, expending its scale even further than expected. Also somehow managed to pull off an almost map-wide three-second explosion (with subsequent destruction effects) that uses 350+ C9's, that was pretty fun. Map 3 might be closer than I thought it'd be, but now I have to dive back into work for the day.

[Perro Seco]

ck3D, on 07 April 2020 - 02:21 AM, said:

Wanted to add a subway system but given the conditions, that's no longer a priority right now (although something I'd still hate to have to pass on).

I also hope you still can build it, I like maps that use the train effect.

ck3D, on 07 April 2020 - 02:21 AM, said:

I'm pretty happy that I just managed to optimize and actually turn into meaningful areas gameplay-wise segments of the map that were originally intended to just be unreachable scenery as well, expending its scale even further than expected.

I don't want to trigger the previous discussion again, but I think it's a great idea to make most of the areas available to the player.

[ck3D]

Perro Seco, on 07 April 2020 - 03:44 AM, said:

I also hope you still can build it, I like maps that use the train effect.

I don't want to trigger the previous discussion again, but I think it's a great idea to make most of the areas available to the player.

Ha, yeah actually I had you in mind when forced to consider scrapping the subway. 'No! One less treat for Perro Seco!'. I don't think the underground sections I have in mind will be that resource-consuming though (mostly sectors will get eaten up, but I have enough of those left and in those areas, the way I envision them, I expect wall use to be a lot less complex than in other sections of the map), so maybe the subway will be doable, just under the form of the cherry atop of the cake if I can implement it, and so far I've found other ways to speed up walking distances/covering terrain so technically at least the gameplay is safe on that side.

And yeah, no, good on you for referring back to those discussions, they were constructive, but yeah I was agreeing with that point too and tend to try and apply that logic to my current maps as much as possible or else they'd just feel incomplete with the idea of connections missing. In this case it was funny because I legitimately had in mind to build a simple background scenery without expanding the map limits, but then I realized the whole zone could be perfectly retcon'd into the gameplay area without touching anything.

[UltravoxSapphire]

This isn't really anything as of right now but i thought i'd just share it with you.
These are supposed to be storyboards for an opening scene of blood and ice. supposed to replace the nuclear symbol intro.
basically it's supposed to show what happened after duke's battle with the rigelatins (in an alternate version of duke 2's story)

(fyi, cycloidian women are supposed to have human shaped bodies with a weirdly shaped head. they have a human looking mouth with normal teeth. the cycloid emperor's mouth is a common birth defect for male cycloidians)

the nurse is supposed to look like a female firefly trooper. the doctor is a normal assault trooper with a doctor's outfit.
i'll make more of these later.

[ck3D]

From map 2, random little E1L1 secret room tribute with a view:

[Mark]

A lot cozier looking than the original.

[Sanek]

Looks like something inspired by Ion Fury to me.


Stop teasing us man.

[ck3D]

Thanks, the idea of remaking this room is directly inspired by Ion Fury now that you mention it, and the cozier take on it makes sense in the level's context. For some reason, that room was one of my favorite locations in the entire game long before I even knew other people also liked it - to this day I have it on my mind with every secret apartment thing I design.

Rest of the level has nothing to do with Ion Fury in terms of looks or settings at all, but I do admire and take notes of the mapping in that game or in the DNF mod - works that really leave me with the impression of the original engine, but pushed to new heights. In general I'm also trying to apply more FPS level design theory I've read or observed in general, and from what I've seen Ion Fury very much got all that right.

[brullov]

Good job ck, love that background buildings

[Sanek]

The only thing I don't like is the title. "Blast Radius" sounds so generic and boring, almost like a space-themed episode of some kind. Something like "Anarchy Rising" would be much more fitting!

[ck3D]

brullov, on 10 April 2020 - 10:38 AM, said:

Good job ck, love that background buildings

Thanks - similar constructions serve as backdrop in both maps so far and complement the sceneries a lot. Always loved that style in beta screenshots and whatnot. As far as the ones in this shot are concerned, there's some funny shenanigans going on in-game with those buildings too, bunch of jokes and detail that I kept out of view here.

Sanek - so far that's obviously a working title, but I might end up keeping it, I just realized there was some PlayStation game with that name already too, whole thing is probably going to be done in at least a year or two anyway - who knows what might happen by then. Also, I think right now I would love to make a space map.

[Sanek]

ck3D, on 10 April 2020 - 02:01 PM, said:

Sanek - so far that's obviously a working title, but I might end up keeping it, I just realized there was some PlayStation game with that name already too, whole thing is probably going to be done in at least a year or two anyway - who knows what might happen by then. Also, I think right now I would love to make a space map.

Allright. It'll be very cool to have a space map from you - it seems like you avoid making any like a plague or something. If you'll ever make one, it should be called "fish out of water".

[ck3D]

"Protozoid Slimer Breaks Out Of Shell"

[Merlijn]

Great to see you making so much progress CK3D! The screenshots look really nice.
Fun thing is, I also made a tribute to that same room in my latest AA map. So you're not the only one who really likes that room haha.
Although I have to say yours looks a lot better.

I'm also making solid progress with my map, it's currently at 1026 sectors so it broke the old limits (for some reason, I still consider that to be a milestone).
Currently playing around with red lightning and heavy contrasts, which is a lot of fun. Pretty proud of this room:

[ck3D]

Thanks, Merlijn! Which map is it that you made in that new AA installment? I've only seen reviews and videos so far - the whole piece looks so coherent it's hard for me to distinguish different people's styles in the mapping.

Looking forward to your map as well as Maarten's. Loving the 2005 AMC vibe hitting this thread for the past few weeks. Shot looks really moody, could see the scenery in a Red map (literally, too)!

[Merlijn]

Thanks! I made the final map in the new AA episode, Illegal alien. But I don't think any of the streamers actually found that secret room yet haha.

[oasiz]

Some cool stuff here

FYI, Shadow warrior also had the red room in E1L1

[Mark]

I also had fun with the E1L1 secret room. On the far end is a girl cooking body parts for the liztroopers.
In the ceiling is the front of Duke's ship from the crash sequence at the level start.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[ck3D]

Love that style of visual storytelling! Ship remains are a nice touch.

You added a girl, I added a second martini - could it be the current lockdown that's making people subconsciously yearn for company?

Currently at 12121 walls (...) with the three quarters of the outdoor area done. Resources really are getting tighter but hopefully I can still cram all my things in, if I have to prioritize one aspect that'll be the gameplay over the detailing but I kinda want the quality of both the atmosphere and the action to be on equal footing.

[Mark]

There have been a few times I reached the 16,000 wall limit and had to look over the map and decide what I could delete to make room for the "neat new thing" I wanted to map.

[Kyanos]

I've been working on a small dm map. Very shy of the wall limit, inspired by iod style head to head maps.

[Dukebot]

It seems that everyone loves that secret from E1L1, I remember loving that secret on Duke Nukem 64, but never thought about doing a tribute. All of them look really nice!

Mark, on 11 April 2020 - 06:19 AM, said:

There have been a few times I reached the 16,000 wall limit and had to look over the map and decide what I could delete to make room for the "neat new thing" I wanted to map.

Yeah, soon I will have to start doing that. I am on 14500+ walls and I've already identifiyed some areas where I will simplify the geometry. Thinking about doing columns octagonal or hexagonal since circular shapes are the ones that most consume in wall speaking.

Here's some progress!

[ck3D]

Looking great, I'm really liking how you're giving each region (they look too large to be called zones at this point) of your map different atmospheres and 'color codes', also your shadows look so much better now. Maybe that staircase should also cast some, if you end up finding yourself with walls left (ha!), that's just nitpicking though, most players probably won't even realize its absence.

[Dukebot]

ck3D, on 12 April 2020 - 01:18 PM, said:

Looking great, I'm really liking how you're giving each region (they look too large to be called zones at this point) of your map different atmospheres and 'color codes', also your shadows look so much better now. Maybe that staircase should also cast some, if you end up finding yourself with walls left (ha!), that's just nitpicking though, most players probably won't even realize its absence.

Thanks for your comment! Yeah, following your shadow advice I've been applying into all things that clearly cast shadow. I've obviated the small terrain elevation because there's simply too much of them and I won't have walls for all of that. But besides that I've been putting shadows almost everywhere I could! Yeah, stair shadow is wall consuming, maybe I'll do a simplifyed stair shadow version.

As for "colour codes" I love to mix multiple environments inside the same map so it don't look all the same and gets repetitive. I also did this on my old map Europe, but I did it in a bad way, were transitions from one environment to other where too forced and didn't feel natural. This time, I've added variation but I'm trying that this things fit the environment in a natural way and not seem to be putted there by force.

[Sanek]

ck3D said earlier that he often makes the bare layout of the map right from the start. I wonder how much of you people is making maps like that? Is there any "benefits" in comparison to the regular stage-by-stage method?

[Ninety-Six]

I never realized how popular that one lone secret room was...

Merlijn, on 10 April 2020 - 11:13 PM, said:

Pretty proud of this room:

Man, that looks so gorgeous. It's amazing what can be done with one single color when combined with strong shadowing.

Super looking forward to when this releases.

[oasiz]

Sanek, on 13 April 2020 - 10:14 AM, said:

ck3D said earlier that he often makes the bare layout of the map right from the start. I wonder how much of you people is making maps like that? Is there any "benefits" in comparison to the regular stage-by-stage method?

I tend to do both.

My go-to tool is to use mspaint and a 256x256 "bitmap" where I just doodle areas.

Powerslave map (first map from rtr)


Attached also is the start for zone3 in fury, I went a bit further than this but you can kind of see the start of the lobby area.
Also is attached a hypotetical Doom map I did back in 2015 or so.

I started level design by doodling things on grid paper before I knew how to use any tool (or even had access to!).
To answer the question, I do a bit of both. I find it very easy to visualize a whole map in "3D" inside my head and travel around.

While I did the first floor of zone3 this way, I sketched the rest of the floors in mapster way back in 2015 and worked on from there.
Final product is quite changed visually and I can't help myself when it comes to adding more and more interconnections.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[brullov]

I've tried several times to do a blockout first and always had no success. I love to go slowly from beginning to the end, part by part. Get inspiration from what is done and move further.

[ck3D]

Sanek, on 13 April 2020 - 10:14 AM, said:

ck3D said earlier that he often makes the bare layout of the map right from the start. I wonder how much of you people is making maps like that? Is there any "benefits" in comparison to the regular stage-by-stage method?

That's not exactly true, I've only done it for a whole map once as an experiment and that was Siebenpolis. Sometimes I just like the idea of a Duke 3D level being essentially three-dimensional terrain that's fun to jump around and explore the raw intricacies of in the first place, just in a certain camouflage and then make use of the Build sector effects to manipulate said environment around the gameplay (i.e.. when you realize a specific sector connecting two places would be perfect for this or that trick in a player's progression, etc.), as opposed to improvising the design of successions of rooms without even just elements of a bigger picture for context. If anything though, that map demonstrated the limitations of such an approach to me in that working from the outside in won't just magically make for the lack of a specific idea or theme for it to support - in the case of Siebenpolis the map turned out to be so large it wasn't really functional as a city level anymore, because all the indoors areas were so disconnected and spread apart - if anything, out of the same terrain I should have made a canyon map. Working on that map was really a formative experience though and taught me a whole new scope to consider and study level layouts under.

Nowadays I'll still occasionally do it for map sections (i.e.. big outdoor plazas, large building interiors) where it just makes sense to design a coherent architecture and layout first to then fill in as opposed to just improvising little decorative rooms with no form and barely any vital function. The more monumental the construction, the further back the mapper's hindsight should be set in my opinion. A factory and a small apartment should probably be approached differently, for instance (the small apartment being an individual unit, the factory representing one hopefully cohesive and interconnected ensemble of similar-sized units). I'm guessing that type of big scale approach is probably the best way to design space levels and hi-tech bases too.

I think what I meant to say is it's not necessarily a bad thing to build stage by stage, but it's probably better to start doing it once you know exactly what it is you're drawing as in, when you have a structured and detailed vision of bigger chunks of the map (if not the whole thing), for them to have actual style and not just feel like little spontaneous bits that were just hand knit together eventually.