[Aleks]

Mark, on 29 December 2021 - 12:42 PM, said:

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?

There's no TROR, as it would be quite hectic to implement at such a scale, in terms of performance, how tedious it would be to work with and most importantly, the number of extra walls it would consume. However, I'm planning there to be about 8 accessible locations, we'll see how it turns out. So far about 2 are complete while 3rd one is about halfway done. I'm aiming more at immersive design on the outside and a feeling that the world is much larger than just the claustrophobic player area.

[ck3D]

Mike Norvak, on 29 December 2021 - 01:23 PM, said:

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

Thank you, it's one of my favorite locations in the map too which shouldn't make sense because it's also so, so simple, you'll see.

Taking a short break right now, but I've started throwing the last area together. Just realized I'm using the same wall sprite on the second screen as Aleks did for his (neat) ladder.

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[Ninety-Six]

These screens remind me a lot of Poison Heart with some Siebenopolis thrown in.

[ck3D]

Well that whole area just got done changed up a bit, so we'll see if those feelings persist! I can see the Siebenpolis comparison (minus the pal 7 of course), the last time I tried converting that map to normal palette it indeed looked a lot like this - it was built with a similar level of carefree focus, this is smaller than Siebenpolis though and a lot more theme-centric. In comparison, Siebenpolis was more open world, this is more old school à la AMC Pleaser/Wide Awake!.

Funny how I've developed a love/hate relationship of sorts with Poison Heart. I like that that map is out the exact way it is but, at the same time, there are so many elements that I find messy and confusing about it looking back.

I'm finalizing the new map by the way - adding the finale, missing ambient sounds and maybe throwing in a few secret places. 3500 walls in three days - experience reminds me of working on Meatball Sub Makin'/Metropolitan Mayhem. Should be out before New Year's.

[Reaper_Man]

I've been learning a tool called Material Maker, which is essentially a free / open source version Substance Designer. For those unaware, Substance Designer is essentially the industry standard software for making textures. Both programs use node input/outputs to create chains of effects and filters that you use to create your materials.

I decided to recreate one of Duke3D's more recognizeable textures as an exercise and I'm pretty satisfied with the result. I made a clean version as well; both textures should tile without issue. If I do more Duke3D remakes I'll create a separate thread.





Consider these cc0 / free to use if anyone wants them.

[Reaper_Man]

Okay I lied, a couple more remakes before I make a thread. I'll be working on AWOL textures for a while so probably won't revisit the E1L1 tileset for a bit.

I had to write a shader for the building texture to make the correct patterns, which isn't exactly offset properly here, and I could fix but I'm ready to be done with this one. Also I know this texture should be 128x64 but tbh I didn't feel like getting in to non-square textures and making sure they tile properly.

The asphalt one was tough because it's easy to go overboard with cracks and texture where the original one is a lot more "flat" than you'd think. I wanted the overall detail to be subtle but still have the prominent crack in the center like the original tile, even though I think it tiles better without it being so prominent, so I made a version like that too.







Again consider these CC0 / free to use for anyone who wants them (although the asphalt ones may show up in AWOL!)

[jimbob]

nothing particular, still working hard on the WW2 mod, but i had an idea that i have no specific use for at the moment so i thought why not share it.

TROR lighthouse, its possible and easy to do. im sure that with some polishing this could be put to good use. its just a three layer TROR with transparent masked walls and floors/ceilings and a simple SE0 and SE1 but it looks pretty neat

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[Mark]

I've returned to jumping back and forth between projects. This week has been my pirate adventure project. Its a mix of medium and low res textures until I get around to replacing the low res. It will be 3 short maps when finished. The screenshots were lightened a little to make sure they didn't turn out too dark on some people's screens.

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[ck3D]

Cool stuff Mark, moody as usual - I'm getting Blood vibes from some of those shots, personally. And that parrot looks adorable.

jimbob's lighthouse is also really sick, love seeing experiments like that. Probably doable without TROR using parallaxed sky tricks too although maybe not as good-looking.

[Aleks]

My city map was put on hold for some time - I've been showing some screens here that had nothing to do with it without much comment, but it's about a time to announce my new episode!

The Conundrum is 6 short levels strongly based around puzzles (and Build jank being put to some good and original use). The aesthethics are kept at a minimum (or a minimum my OCD would allow for), setting for a restricted palette of beiges and grays, strong contrast shadows and no extra decorations to distract the player - pretty much every sprite here has some function or hints at something. Each map is based around a different theme/kind of effects to make it interesting. Some of the maps can be finished in about 1 minutes, the longest one takes about 10 - but it's all about figuring out what to do and then executing it, so the whole thing will probably take about 2-3 hours. There are also 3 difficulty settings, but they're not varying on the number of enemies mostly (the combat is also kept at a minimum here), but about either giving you more hints/walkthroughs or making some puzzles easier/more difficult.

I've just set up a ModDB page for it, check it out for some screenshots: The Conundrum on ModDB

Scheduled release date is on 16th January 2022 - this Sunday.

[jimbob]

decided to push this lighthouse thing a bit, see where the limitations are, and there appear to be few. the sectors can overlap without problem meaning you can build complex stuff on the floor, and have the light go over it without any aditional glitching ( there is the obvious glitch when you make the TROR sector with a island in it though ) so here's a quick video of a small coastal road map i threw together to showcase it



im realling digging those pirate maps looks like fun

[quakis]

@Jimbob

I'm uncertain right now how exactly to do it with maskwalls, but if it's possible, you could try giving that lighthouse beam a single coloured (1 sided?) texure while using an additive transparency palette/blending, it might elevate the effect you're going for. Consider experimenting with it.

Here's a really quick and rought test using sprites to showcase what I'm talking about. Left side, regular palette swap. Right side, additive blending.

[dandouglas]

After a break over Xmas I'm back working on my mod. Duke is going to nuke a crypto mining farm - all of the components are individually destructible.

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[Jblade]

dandouglas, on 12 January 2022 - 04:16 AM, said:

After a break over Xmas I'm back working on my mod. Duke is going to nuke a crypto mining farm - all of the components are individually destructible.

I know they're not even in London but you gotta try and sneak in an underground tube that's just full of burning tesla cars.

[dandouglas]

Recreated Marble Arch as part of my mod

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[Micky C]

Made out of sectors and sprites? Impressive stuff!

[dandouglas]

Cheers! Yep, it's not too complex - the textures are doing most of the work.

Micky C, on 14 January 2022 - 01:51 AM, said:

Made out of sectors and sprites? Impressive stuff!

[dandouglas]

Really pleased with how this effect turned out – Nigel Farage gets milkshaked:

[Ninety-Six]

how did you do that?!

[Danukem]

It looks like with some sophisticated sprites effects and nice animations. On the ground, for example, I'm pretty sure the big puddle is an animated floor aligned sprite that is already there and it becomes visible when triggered by the explosion.

[dandouglas]

Danukem, on 25 January 2022 - 03:19 AM, said:

It looks like with some sophisticated sprites effects and nice animations. On the ground, for example, I'm pretty sure the big puddle is an animated floor aligned sprite that is already there and it becomes visible when triggered by the explosion.

Yep, it's mostly sprites that switch from blank/static tiles to animated ones when triggered by a hit, with some invisible collapsible sprites "shielding" areas so only an explosive triggers the sprites underneath. There's huge blank areas around most of the sprites so their hitboxes are much larger than they look in-game, to ensure the whole effect triggers together. It's cool because you can blow small holes in the tanker with any weapon, but only an explosive will trigger the biggest hole and soaking. The animated puddle on the floor is actually a texture, with the sector dropped very slightly lower than the rest of the road, overlayed with a transparent red-paletted plain white sprite to get the colour right, and then covered with collapsible floor-aligned road texture sprites. The whole thing is janky as hell and took a lot of trial-and-error to put together, with one caveat being that the Devastator rockets don't trigger the effect properly as their explosive radius is too small - I think my workaround for this will simply be not to let the player get this weapon until after this early part of the mod! I know I could adjust the radius via CON but I don't want to mess with the weapons too much for now.

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[ck3D]

Haha holy shit, you must have spent a Hollywood Holocaust worth of walls on that puddle.

[Ninety-Six]

The insane amount of work towards an interaction never before seen in Duke before (to my knowledge), among others...

Dude, this keeps shaping to look more and more like an official expansion.

[Aleks]

dandouglas, on 25 January 2022 - 06:10 AM, said:

Yep, it's mostly sprites that switch from blank/static tiles to animated ones when triggered by a hit, with some invisible collapsible sprites "shielding" areas so only an explosive triggers the sprites underneath. There's huge blank areas around most of the sprites so their hitboxes are much larger than they look in-game, to ensure the whole effect triggers together. It's cool because you can blow small holes in the tanker with any weapon, but only an explosive will trigger the biggest hole and soaking. The animated puddle on the floor is actually a texture, with the sector dropped very slightly lower than the rest of the road, overlayed with a transparent red-paletted plain white sprite to get the colour right, and then covered with collapsible floor-aligned road texture sprites. The whole thing is janky as hell and took a lot of trial-and-error to put together, with one caveat being that the Devastator rockets don't trigger the effect properly as their explosive radius is too small - I think my workaround for this will simply be not to let the player get this weapon until after this early part of the mod! I know I could adjust the radius via CON but I don't want to mess with the weapons too much for now.

Hmmm, not sure if this is EDuke feature/version dependent thing, but at least in the current releases, if you blow up a hi-tagged sprite, all of the sprites with the same hi-tag will also collapse. Seems on the screen that you do use this, so not sure why only some would trigger with devastator/smaller hitboxes.

BTW, the amount of walls used for that is insane indeed, triggers my OCD an makes me feel like damn Scrooge when I overthink adding an extra 6 walled sector for something

[Mark]

It not just the execution of the ideas that impresses me. Its the creativity behind the ideas.

[Danukem]

Aleks, on 25 January 2022 - 10:40 AM, said:

BTW, the amount of walls used for that is insane indeed, triggers my OCD an makes me feel like damn Scrooge when I overthink adding an extra 6 walled sector for something

Yep, I had assumed it was a high definition sprite for that very reason -- when I looked at the smoothness on the curves on it, I didn't think it was possible to make it with sectors.

[dandouglas]

Aleks, on 25 January 2022 - 10:40 AM, said:

BTW, the amount of walls used for that is insane indeed, triggers my OCD an makes me feel like damn Scrooge when I overthink adding an extra 6 walled sector for something

Haha, yeah it's 183 walls in total - i'm not so worried about hitting limits as i'm using Danukem's hub map code to piece my maps together (thanks so much for that, it's making this mod possible!)

Here's another update with a big effect I've been working on - the reference might be completely alien unless you're heavily invested in the absurdity of UK politics lol

https://youtu.be/gzcv_0_SVCg

[Mark]

I've always been a fan of lots of detail for interiors as long as it doesn't hamper movement. But in this particular scene I thought simple looked cool. There is only character interaction here, no fighting so it doesn't feel cramped. Just a cozy little hangout for thugs where law abiding citizens can buy a pistol or play the pinball machine.

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[Mark]

Shame on me but I'm back to juggling 2 projects at once. Here is a WIP of one of the enemies. I have to do a better reposing of the model for the sprite shots and clean up edges but this is basically what it will look like. I'm making the sprites from a model made by TeaMonster for the abandoned Duke Spookem mod. I added the hat, sword and green glow. Its using modified Drone code.

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[Ninety-Six]

Even years later, flakes of Spookem keep showing up.