[dandouglas]

Putting together the exterior of my Wetherspoons (a British chain pub). The interior is going to take days, maybe weeks to build – it's a pivotal part of the map, with the player descending down through the toilets and into a sewer to progress.

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[Merlijn]

Looks fantastic dandouglas! How many levels are you aiming for?

[dandouglas]

Merlijn, on 07 December 2021 - 08:18 AM, said:

Looks fantastic dandouglas! How many levels are you aiming for?

Thanks so much! I'm aiming for 4-5 distinct locations over the course of the mod (city streets, office building, sightseeing bus getaway, train journey, countryside), however I'm using Danukem's map caching code to stitch maps together for some of these locations so I can hit the level of detail I want - I'd initially saw this project taking months, but now I'm thinking potentially years as I'm learning new Mapster tricks every week and I don't want to rush it out.

[Graphics]

To Dandouglas. Keep up the good work. Your mod is looking great.

As for me. Here's an update to the map I'm making for Jimbob's mod.

I'm not going to keep the same trees. That's for the non-modded version.

And here's a picture of some of work that still needs to get mapped.

As you can see there is still quite a bit of work left. But I'm having fun.

[Ninety-Six]

Your landscapes look like something out of a dream. I dig it.

[jimbob]

Graphics, on 09 December 2021 - 02:19 PM, said:

To Dandouglas. Keep up the good work. Your mod is looking great.

As for me. Here's an update to the map I'm making for Jimbob's mod.

I'm not going to keep the same trees. That's for the non-modded version.

And here's a picture of some of work that still needs to get mapped.

As you can see there is still quite a bit of work left. But I'm having fun.

looking great

[Graphics]

Ninety-Six, on 09 December 2021 - 03:33 PM, said:

Your landscapes look like something out of a dream. I dig it.

Thank you. It's only a rough draft based on Jimbob's request. I'm not sure if I could say anything else.

jimbob, on 10 December 2021 - 07:02 AM, said:

looking great

Thanks. We'll need to talk further on where it should go. I messaged you on Discord with some ideas.

[Ninety-Six]

Graphics, on 14 December 2021 - 02:00 AM, said:

Thank you. It's only a rough draft based on Jimbob's request. I'm not sure if I could say anything else.

I think the roughness is what gives off that dreamlike quality. It's still there in the later versions, but when you can see the raw naked landscape mostly unobstructed, it really does remind me of a lot of the dreams I've had.

[jimbob]

epic rooftopfight, die hard will be a cakewalk compared to this once im done then i have to wrap it up somehow. theres a whopping ton of TROR going on in this map, an interresting fieldtest to see where the limits are.

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[Graphics]

Here's a little something I'm working on. The rough draft was nice. But this is more dynamic.

PS: I know it's not much right now. But what I'm planning on making is going to look awesome.

[Mark]

I've been helping with another person's project since March and my work there is almost done so I have been wandering around my pile of unfinished projects trying to decide what to go back to next. I'm leaning towards the "remake" of Suburbs originally made by Diaz and abandoned long ago. I started on it almost 2 years ago and it keeps getting pushed aside while I work on other things. This is a pic of the street just outside the Dojo in the first map of Shadow Warrior. It will be a bonus map and not part of the 5 map episode. I have a habit of remaking first levels from other games. In Graveyard it was the Blood bonus map. Decay bonus map was based on Hollywood Holocaust and a bit of Kingpin. DukePlus I did a remake of Doom II first map. Suburbs will have a Shadow Warrior bonus map.

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[Micky C]

jimbob, on 17 December 2021 - 01:41 PM, said:

epic rooftopfight, die hard will be a cakewalk compared to this once im done then i have to wrap it up somehow. theres a whopping ton of TROR going on in this map, an interresting fieldtest to see where the limits are.

We know the limits 😉

[Fox]

Mark, on 19 December 2021 - 12:54 PM, said:

I've been helping with another person's project since March and my work there is almost done so I have been wandering around my pile of unfinished projects trying to decide what to go back to next. I'm leaning towards the "remake" of Suburbs originally made by Diaz and abandoned long ago. I started on it almost 2 years ago and it keeps getting pushed aside while I work on other things. This is a pic of the street just outside the Dojo in the first map of Shadow Warrior. It will be a bonus map and not part of the 5 map episode. I have a habit of remaking first levels from other games. In Graveyard it was the Blood bonus map. Decay bonus map was based on Hollywood Holocaust and a bit of Kingpin. DukePlus I did a remake of Doom II first map. Suburbs will have a Shadow Warrior bonus map.

[Graphics]

I'm working hard on this map landscape terrain map. I added cliff edges going around the tiny river with a part the player can clime up it. I'm also working on a small lake in the middle of the those cliffs. I might do a bride later and a house. I'm not sure, this all take careful planning. Here's a picture.

By the way. I'm open too ideas. I like making ideas happen. It also helps me think of things I might not have thought about.

[Aleks]

Haven't posted anything in a while here. Got back to working on the city map recently and created most of the essential areas for this little garage and some of the rooftops around it. The whole thing is still very WIP, so the outside shots still contain some placeholder stuff, especially further in the distance.

[ck3D]

@Aleks I've told you before but I want to make it public for what that's worth that I really, really appreciate the deceiving sobriety in those shots - lots of fine detail and yet no clutter, so perfect emphasis on the simple elements that are there, looking like a lot of space to roam around too (also on the z axis). Very much into where you're going with this map. Nice choice of creamy colors as well, I'm getting a funny vibe of classic style meets the strengths of Roch type of design (wah wah I know, the two most rinsed elements of comparison in Duke history). Your consideration for lighting and shading is always appreciated, too.

@Graphics nice and creative terrain work as usual. Since you're asking for ideas - spontaneously, the first thing that comes to mind here seeing this set-up is would be to clone it x 4 (at least it seems like the resources would allow for 3 more copies) then flip and assemble the copies to make a symmetrical, twice bigger square; that would result in a big canyon map with one tall, central mountain that perhaps shouldn't be climbable at map start and that should be the player's objective. Looking at the current layout, that might require a couple of changes being made to the path of the river, so that it's coherent with the idea. And then, one of the most brillant and yet underrated features of Build is the ability to alter terrain heights in real time by triggering in-game events, so perhaps the gameplay gimmick could be something akin to, the first quarter of the map the player starts in is way below the level of the other ones, making it look and feel enclosed by cliffs. But as soon as some progression is made, the next quarter of the map lowers down - or the current one rises up, same difference - to match heights and so now that part too is accessible to explore. Rinse and repeat for every following quarter of the map, which is convenient since the game features three keycards and so you could 'unlock' each segment with just as many. Once the last one is reached, the whole map will be level and maybe the top of the mountain could become accessible, rewarding the player with a view. Of course that would look majorly unrealistic in most (seemingly) nature-themed maps but yours seem to have futuristic elements to it already and so it may be possible to mix the whole deal with some mechanical textures and make it look like the scenery is actually some kind of artificial recreation of natural settings. That river you already have going on could be a central feature too - you could make it the map's whole mission to reconnect its broken flow, maybe onwards to a power source of some kind.

[Mark]

ck3d, the only guy I know that could go over his minutes on an unlimited cell phone plan.

Sorry, buddy. When I see those long posts I have to poke fun at it.

[ck3D]

What do you mean, they have unlimited cell phone pl-

[Mike Norvak]

Aleks, on 25 December 2021 - 09:55 AM, said:

Haven't posted anything in a while here. Got back to working on the city map recently and created most of the essential areas for this little garage and some of the rooftops around it. The whole thing is still very WIP, so the outside shots still contain some placeholder stuff, especially further in the distance.
duke0081.png duke0082.png

Wooow

[ck3D]

I feel like actually releasing something for once and so I just started a new map for 1.3d/DOS due to not having full focus right now but still wanting to fuck off. Three hours in, I'm at around 600 walls and the stage where the player fetches the blue keycard.

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[Aleks]

Thanks guys. That roof is probably some of the most complex spritework I've done so far, after I finish with the interiors, I'll still have to manually change sectnums of some sprites so they "belong" to the main sector and are rendered correctly under all perspectives.

@ck3D, did you just turn into C3P0? Going with that classic style always reminded me of his maps, even the last of his maps released few years ago (Shocking Twist) nailed that style quite well. Nice idea with using the "space" texture for the building facade (although as for the protruding balconies, I'd probably add a small sprite on top of the window, as it's awkwardly cut and looks like the roof slab would have no thickness - but maybe it's just my ramblings after working a lot with that particular texture for the building next to the garage ). And that little lightbulb is just cute, love it

[Ninety-Six]

Huh. For some reason I always thought that light beam sprite was a 1.4/Atomic asset.

I swear every release of a ck map shows me a texture (or origin of a texture, in this case) I didn't know was in the game's data.

[quakis]

Aleks, on 27 December 2021 - 08:01 AM, said:

@ck3D, did you just turn into C3P0?

I'm getting Billy Boy vibes from those shots, personally. There's a certain detached from reality feeling going on, something I love about that style.

[ck3D]

Wow those are some nice comparisons, thanks. I have already gone lengths about what I appreciate in both C3P0's and Billy Boy's respective styles before, so won't again, but Shocking Twist coming up in particular is striking because it's definitely been on my mind for a bit (really it's also one of the best classic-styled levels to come out over the past few years, so in a way it's a tough one to avoid remembering). I want something as 'elementary' as Shocking Twist for this and while the looks are Billy Boyish with barely any trimming and the textures just thrown in there, the scale is a lot more meager so I guess the similarity stops at function over detail (Blast Radius will have that kind of large maps, though).

But indeed both are obvious influences, this time though for some reason the image I'm following is something akin to Levelord's lost maps (don't know why but Sewer is stuck in my head). I'm also throwing nods to the occasional LameDuke aesthetics or a handful of 1996 maps most people don't remember, e.g.. Bob2: Moon Subway. Or even stuff I've seen from the Total Meltdown PSX episode (which I've never directly played), e.g.. Trackside Tragedy.

I put some more hours into the map and am somewhere in the 1600 walls now. Basically half way done, finalizing the section where the player gets the red key card. If anyone remembers my older level Wide Awake! then expect something similar dropping soon, before the end of the year would be sweet. I intend this to be a speed map and I'm not just talking its makings - I'm trying to optimize it for potential speed running in addition to being a fun basic level.

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[ck3D]

Yeah, now that he's been mentioned, we're probably pseudo-Billyboying a bit harder. Map is about 75% complete.

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[Ninety-Six]

"Commanders"

Is that yet another texture I didn't know existed?

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 28 December 2021 - 09:25 PM, said:

"Commanders"

Is that yet another texture I didn't know existed?

Good catch - but nah, that's just one quick wall split, in this case 'Command (Center)' meets '(Office)ers'. I love reusing those signs pretending they are a font, which is possible because they cover most letters in the alphabet and the ones that are not in there you can easily tweak in - black background is convenient for 'pixel art' using small black sprites. This is the most basic way to do it but now Blast Radius does that stuff a lot and takes it a bit further. The intent is to make the original style shine beyond most fixed form. A similar kind of abuse on the first screenshot may or may not catch your attention as well if you're into that sort of thing.

[Aleks]

@ck3D: There's definitely plenty of Billy Boy stuff going on right now, as well as some general 90's vibe which I cannot pinpoint to a single author/map, but it is quite distinct.

Few more screens from me, showing more of the streets as well as one shop interior that I'm not sure I've ever showed around here, despite being built quite a while ago. It's still very WIP, which is especially noticable on some textures being placeholders or not having the correct shade value (also shadows are missing from the street, this will be added towards the end as I need to establish the general urbanscape of the whole town before going into specifics). Currently at about 7000 walls and 6500 sprites.

[Mark]

Its always great to see something other than all buildings the same basic shape and height. Do many of those in the pics have playable space inside? TROR?

[Mike Norvak]

Damn guys! These shots give me a huge urge to make a map again! I wish we could use mapster on the phone (and that it wouldn't be impossible to use without a keyboard lol)

I especially love the car dumpster ck3D, could we go grittier than that? I'm in doubt...