[Fernando Marquez]

Good day everyone,

May I introduce myself as the author of FM3X, Fernando Marquez. I registered here a few days ago to prepare for the eventual release of my final chapter of my expansion pack, FM4X. Well, today is the day and I'm posting it right here in front of your screen.

Even though my pack was completed nearly a month ago, I went through several testing phases to actually make sure it will work properly and not crap out of it any moment one should be caught in a deterred surprise. Plus, I really went my way to make really sure it would live up to my promise of "it works, no bugs and quibbles", not just myself, but with close friends testing heavily.

So, today I bring you the final chapter in my long expansion pack. FM4X: The Uprising.
The final chapter includes once again 11 single player levels, plus one secret level. Additionally, three new levels for the DukeMatch bonus episode are included.

I won't delve into any backstory for the episode because frankly, I never really though one for my levels, and besides, you may already know my levels borrow inspiration from the original 3DR levels.

There are five download links, you should only choose one depending on which port you want to play.
https://mega.nz/#F!m...Y1YuBRhXNgduNUQ is a Mega.nz folder where the files are hosted.

[li]FM4X.ISO is a CD image of the expansion pack. Burn it onto a CD and load it into your DOSBox or real DOS/Win9x computer. Just like if it was released in early 2000s.[/li]
[li]FM4X-DOS is the contents of the CD image above, saving you the hassle of burning the CD in first place.[/li]
[li]FM4X-FULL contains all version of FM4X in three folders ready to copy and paste into your Duke folder. Choose the version you have and just copy to your root Duke folder. The GRP contains all assets from the expansion pack plus the original game.[/li]
[li]FM4X-GRP is exactly the same as the above folder, save for the GRP files condensed. These just contain the new data.[/li]
[li]FM4X-eDuke32 is the easy way for eDuke players. The GRP files used are from the condensed folder.[/li]

If you just want to shoot ahead and straight play the levels, just choose the eDuke32 or Full version files. Just install it in your Duke folder and play.
Basically, I only gave support for the original DOS versions and for eDuke. I think you can play my levels without issues on any other port. I didn't test any port outside the original retail DOS versions and eDuke32 (any version can run it, I guess). I also tested my levels on real hardware, such as old laptops from the 90s and on DOSBox. No performance problems and nasty glitches arose as the final version is posted nowadays.

As for the previous FM3X levels, these were corrected, reedited, made easier and fixed a few problems found after the original release of it a few years ago. I have read the comments online and have listened. However, my levels are quite non-linear so, explore! Perhaps they are a bit tricky into navigation, but exploring quite a bit shouldn't give you headaches.

To sum this all up, if you are reading this wall of text, thank you for your time and I really hope you enjoy my levels as much as I did mapping them, although it was quite a long time. Time is quite limited nowadays with a proper job and family.

And finally, for the next FM4X update, I will post two additional DukeMatch episodes during the year to finally close my Duke chapter. And who knows what projects will lie ahead of me this or next years?

Thank you very much. Enjoy!

Below a few pictures previewing "The Uprising"

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

[ViDi]

Great news, but I think the link is broken.

[Fernando Marquez]

ViDi, on 05 March 2020 - 02:36 PM, said:

Great news, but I think the link is broken.

My bad, I posted an internal link. Now it is available for everyone.

[LeoD]

Looking forward to playing it some day :-)
Btw, I think that FM4X-FULL is pretty close to piracy, since it enables players to play any user map without a owning a full DUKE3D.GRP. Owners of any type of legal DN3D copy won't need it anyway.

[Sanek]

Whoah! Orbital Oblivion and Anarchy Village is one of my favorite "expansion packs" of all time, so I'm really excited about this one. And here goes my weekend.

[Fernando Marquez]

LeoD, on 05 March 2020 - 03:34 PM, said:

Looking forward to playing it some day :-)
Btw, I think that FM4X-FULL is pretty close to piracy, since it enables players to play any user map without a owning a full DUKE3D.GRP. Owners of any type of legal DN3D copy won't need it anyway.

Well, for quite some time I gave it a though, but nowadays the game is widely available on the internet, so I don't think it will really hamper any sales to the IP owner. Still, if it is a red flag, I can drop them from the folder, and just leave the RTPatches from the ISO and DOS folders which will give the same files anyways.

[slacker1]

Cool! I'm excited to try this episode. It's been since that XMAS-97 (i think that was the name) release last year or so that I can remember a full episode coming out.

I did a quick unzip and tried to run without tinkering on eduke r7299 built on Linux and got a seg fault. Not sure why. Tomorrow or so I should have more time to figure out what's causing it. (I have shell scripts set up for running stuff so might just be my script is causing things to load weird)

[Kyanos]

LeoD, on 05 March 2020 - 03:34 PM, said:

Looking forward to playing it some day :-)
Btw, I think that FM4X-FULL is pretty close to piracy, since it enables players to play any user map without a owning a full DUKE3D.GRP. Owners of any type of legal DN3D copy won't need it anyway.

I've done a bit of research on this topic.
Answer, it is absolutely not piracy... unless you've received and ignored a c&d. At worst this is possibly at risk of recieving a c&d from the current ip holders.

[Perro Seco]

Me encanta. I remember how much I enjoyed your previous three episodes, and this one looks great too, especially the Valdeez 2 and the emergency room screenshots, which remind me of Blood. I'll play this when I have time, and in DOSBox, of course.

[NightFright]

Geez, this had totally slipped my attention. Incredible that after 20 years this is finally finished (well, sort of, considering there are still two Dukematch episodes coming)! Congrats and well done! Need to check out the new maps as soon as possible. This arrived just in time to test the new SF2 synth for EDuke32/Rednukem. Hopefully the ep.4 secret level won't be as hard to find as in the third episode...

Anyway, I hope we haven't seen the last of you after this. Maybe your next project is a bit smaller in scale, but similar in quality and released a bit faster.

PS: Seems to pay off somewhat that I am still holding back with the Addon Compilation release since otherwise this significant update wouldn't have made the cut.

[Fernando Marquez]

NightFright, on 19 March 2020 - 12:09 AM, said:

Geez, this had totally slipped my attention. Incredible that after 20 years this is finally finished (well, sort of, considering there are still two Dukematch episodes coming)! Congrats and well done! Need to check out the new maps as soon as possible. This arrived just in time to test the new SF2 synth for EDuke32/Rednukem. Hopefully the ep.4 secret level won't be as hard to find as in the third episode...

Anyway, I hope we haven't seen the last of you after this. Maybe your next project is a bit smaller in scale, but similar in quality and released a bit faster.

PS: Seems to pay off somewhat that I am still holding back with the Addon Compilation release since otherwise this significant update wouldn't have made the cut.

The main campaign is fully complete. Absolutely, there will be no more single player levels for it.

And no, this will not be the last of me. In fact, I have several projects in my head for Duke, as well as for Shadow Warrior and Blood. Ion Fury is even a possibility in the future, so no. I will not be leaving the community. As for the scale, I will definitely tell you it won't be smaller, perhaps it will be even bigger, but not that much. But as for time, that is something surely I can't promise since having a family and a full-time job sucks my free time by a wide margin.

PS. I will give you a hint regarding the secret level access: you can find it near the last area of Pipe Dreams... oops, spoiler alert.

[NightFright]

Superb news! And thanks for the hint regarding the secret level. I will try hard to avoid looking it up in Mapster32. The one in ep.3 really required sophisticated rocket science to figure it out.

[NightFright]

Since I am only playing this now:

Is there a special trick to crawl into the duct underneath the table in the start room of FM4X10 (boss map)? Maybe I am not seeing something really obvious, but it's impossible to crawl under that table, and apparently there is no way to move it or leave the room in any other way.

I am attaching the map below so everyone can check.

[Fernando Marquez]

NightFright, on 02 September 2020 - 11:06 PM, said:

Since I am only playing this now:

Is there a special trick to crawl into the duct underneath the table in the start room of FM4X10 (boss map)? Maybe I am not seeing something really obvious, but it's impossible to crawl under that table, and apparently there is no way to move it or leave the room in any other way.

I am attaching the map below so everyone can check.

There is no such trick in crawling into the duct, you just duck and hop in. I tried several times my map in the Atomic 1.4 and 1.5 MS-DOS versions and even on eDuke32-OldMP and it works everytime. What port are you using? Which is the exact problem you are having?

[Danukem]

Sounds like it could be a leftover issue resulting from all the clipping changes to EDuke32 in 2019. Most of the issues were fixed but this could be an edge case.

[NightFright]

Actually I was using the most recent EDuke32 build, r9253 (x64). I already suspected a port-related problem and tried a build from like one year ago which also didn't work. Apparently something the coding team might want to take a look at.

If it helps: After some testing, I found that the last build working was r7395. With r7432 or later you won't be able to crawl underneath that table, regardless whether you shoot that duct grill before or not.

[The Battlelord]

NightFright, on 03 September 2020 - 10:01 PM, said:

you won't be able to crawl underneath that table, regardless whether you shoot that duct grill before or not.

Out of curiosity i had a quick go, actually is not that easy, but it is possible with the latest version; the player needs to do a jump and crouch on landing at the right moment and the right distance from the table (a similar jump to the old glitchy one that allowed the player to enter places when shrunk only) just don't jump after Duke landed.

[NightFright]

You are right, a jump-crouch at the right spot is actually still possible with latest build. Anyway, you shouldn't need to do acrobatic exercises like that. Fact is it used to be a lot easier before, and tbh, when it doesn't work right away the way you expect, you tend to believe you are doing something wrong and start looking for ways to move the table, press hidden switches, detonate pipebombs etc. That's what I did at least when I played the map for the first time.

Btw, Duke also tends to jump onto the table automatically while he is just blocked by it in pre-7432 builds. It's probably a convenient feature, but I am not sure if it's desirable to deviate from vanilla behavior like that.

[The Battlelord]

hehe i can't blame you, these old games are so specials that a player can find out new things just looking at simple details, even nowdays.


After years of gameplay, i've realized only recently that the chaingun can shots even faster if the player click everytime at the right speed

[Lightning_Hunter]

NightFright, on 03 September 2020 - 10:01 PM, said:

Actually I was using the most recent EDuke32 build, r9253 (x64). I already suspected a port-related problem and tried a build from like one year ago which also didn't work. Apparently something the coding team might want to take a look at.

If it helps: After some testing, I found that the last build working was r7395. With r7432 or later you won't be able to crawl underneath that table, regardless whether you shoot that duct grill before or not.

I actually always use r7395 while playing Duke3d, because it has texture filtering among other options that were removed in r7432 and all subsequent builds (and looks incredibly ugly without it, imo). I also found that r7395 is the most stable build in general. The only issue is the explosion sprite glitch and the occasional deafening sound bug that I believe happens in rooms with reverb (an ear-piercing reverberation sound randomly starts that won't stop until I mess with stuff in the sound menu). Anyway, I will be playing through this entire pack in the coming weeks/month here and post my thoughts when I am done! 8)

[Fernando Marquez]

Danukem, on 03 September 2020 - 06:38 PM, said:

Sounds like it could be a leftover issue resulting from all the clipping changes to EDuke32 in 2019. Most of the issues were fixed but this could be an edge case.

And that's why I don't map for eDuke, even though I used both the original BUILD editor and Mapster for my FMX campaign.
I just test my maps for MS-DOS versions. eDuke is such a constant evolving state machine, I can't trust it to have any maps running correctly on any moment in time. Don't misinterpret, I'm a huge fan of eDuke (specifically the OldMP branch) just as for the original DOS versions.

[NightFright]

I need to check how this is doing in Rednukem (which is supposed to be vanilla-like).

[NNC]

I asked it in another thread, I ask it here as well: how to make the shrinker puzzle work in Boiler Cliff (E3M3)? You need the destroy a tree, okay, got it, but the ray doesn't want to come through the first window, and the other windows are just as small. Jetpack is there to save the day, but it's not the normal way to get the red keycard.

EDIT: the current Eduke snapshot has a bug.

[Fernando Marquez]

The Watchtower, on 17 October 2020 - 12:46 PM, said:

I asked it in another thread, I ask it here as well: how to make the shrinker puzzle work in Boiler Cliff (E3M3)? You need the destroy a tree, okay, got it, but the ray doesn't want to come through the first window, and the other windows are just as small. Jetpack is there to save the day, but it's not the normal way to get the red keycard.

EDIT: the current Eduke snapshot has a bug.

Just as you cross the lava stream before the shaft leading to the outside area where the breakable logs are, there is an alien shooter to your left which is inactive. Circle the shooter, turn around the corner past it and the floor will crumble to reveal a small hole. Get outside and break the logs. Head back to the small hole and wait for the ray to shrink you. Head quickly inside the small passage so you can reach a hidden room with a switch which will raise a platform to the right of the exit shaft. If you already know it, my bad. Just being helpful here.

It works in DOS, I've tried it a million dozen times and has never ever failed. I can't say the same for eDuke, but the one time I tested it with friends online, it worked with no issues.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

[NNC]

Fernando Marquez, on 17 October 2020 - 08:43 PM, said:

Just as you cross the lava stream before the shaft leading to the outside area where the breakable logs are, there is an alien shooter to your left which is inactive. Circle the shooter, turn around the corner past it and the floor will crumble to reveal a small hole. Get outside and break the logs. Head back to the small hole and wait for the ray to shrink you. Head quickly inside the small passage so you can reach a hidden room with a switch which will raise a platform to the right of the exit shaft. If you already know it, my bad. Just being helpful here.

It works in DOS, I've tried it a million dozen times and has never ever failed. I can't say the same for eDuke, but the one time I tested it with friends online, it worked with no issues.

Yes, I know it. The problem is that with the latest EDuke, the shrinker is blocked at the first window.

I only played the first 3 levels of the episode, and loved the 2nd and 3rd level at most. The 1st suffered from ammo shortage early on, also some backtracking issues. The 2nd level had one switch, and after that, a switch combination hidden from the player, I was wandering aimlessly for both before I found out the locations, but other than that, it was a great map. The third map was amazing, but this shrinker thing blocked me for too long, because of EDuke. I already reported the issue in a separate thread.

[Lightning_Hunter]

I finally got around to playing this full size map pack and thought I would drop a short review here. I will be talking about the whole pack (FM1X through FM4X). I'll start by saying this pack was definitely worth playing, and I am glad Fernando put in the effort! There are very few full size packs around - especially when they are done entirely by one mapper. The other examples I can think of are mostly garbage.

Episode 1: This episode was short, but fun. It might not be as unique as Hollywood Holocaust in vanilla Duke3d, but it is worth playing at least once. If it weren't for other episodes in this list, FMXX would be a "once and done" kind of pack for me. If I had to pick my favorite levels in this short episode, it would be "Lonely Street" and "The Lava Reef".

Episode 2: I might be alone in this opinion, but this was my favorite episode in the pack, and the main reason I felt compelled to complete this entire pack. It is also the reason I will likely play this pack a second time in the future. I am a sucker for space maps, and this space episode is about as good as it gets. It is a step up from the original Duke3d episode 2, and that is also a favorite of mine. I should probably mention that I played this episode on "Come Get Some" with Duke Plus and AI enhancement - and I also did a pistol start in every map - otherwise it would have been too easy for me. As for my favorite moments in this episode, I really enjoyed "Lunar Crossroads" and the secret level - "Asteroid Stronghold". Every map kept me engaged, however.

Episode 3: This episode started out at a difficulty about 200% harder than Episode 2, so I immediately turned off Duke Plus AI enhancement. I still did pistol starts in every level and played on "Come Get Some", however. It was tough at times to find the ammo I needed at the start of each level, but that is something I actually enjoy (call me crazy if you want). I rather enjoyed "Boiler Cliff" and the "University" secret level. The episode did start to drag around "Ghost House", however. There were quite a few areas that were too cramped for my liking. By the time I reached Knock-Out factory, I was ready to be done with episode 3 and move on. This episode is certainly not bad; I just didn't like it as much as episode 2.

Episode 4: As a whole, episode 4 is the most fine-tuned and best looking of the bunch. "Fun Fair", "Sanatorium", and "Temple Manor" were all top-notch in terms of gameplay and visuals. I also enjoyed "Mountain Pass" - the starting level. The secret level "ULTRAPOWER!" was epic in size, although I did find myself getting lost a few times. The middle of this pack dragged out a bit from "Pipe Dreams" to "Castle on the Winds" due to the cramped nature and monotonous themes - but they were still decent. My only gripe about this episode begins at the end of Temple Manor when you get into the Alien theme. The gameplay comes to a screeching halt at this point, and some very annoying puzzles take over. Maybe I'm just not a fan of puzzles like I used to be, but I just didn't find this appealing at all. The very last level, "Birth Cradle" was loaded with obnoxious puzzles. I wanted to enjoy the level since I'm fond of the alien theme, but the author committed a huge "no-no" and copied half of the whole level and pasted it on the other side. I don't think anyone enjoys fighting all the same monsters and completing all the same puzzles twice in a row - especially when one of the puzzles is a six-button switch combination. At the very least, the monsters and traps should have been changed around with the mirrored side. The Queen fight was at least interesting - although nothing unique when compared to the final level of Duke3d's "The Birth".

In conclusion, this episode was definitely worth playing. Thanks to the great moments mixed in here and there and the fantastic episode 2, I would not be opposed to playing this again in the future. I'm sure everyone out there will find enjoyment in this episode for one reason or another (and not necessarily the same reasons I did). Thanks Fernando for a fun experience!

[NightFright]

FM5X when? Considering how tricky some of the ep.4 maps have been already, a fifth episode might reach rocket-science dimensions...

[NightFright]

Update:
Looks as if some of the maps in ep.3 broke with more recent EDuke32 snapshots. Most of the issues are related to Shrinker behavior. Apparently all other episodes are fully playable. If I look at NNC's post from Oct 2020, these issues seem to exist for a while now. Thought I'd list them here in detail, hoping the build(s) which broke everything can be identified to apply fixes.

"Boiler Cliff"
> Shrinker device won't work as intended any more. After blowing up the tree trunk outside near the cliff, the beam doesn't get redirected since it hits the wall without entering the hole. Therefore, the beam never ends up in front of the hole where you need to be to get shrunk. Effectively, it's a showstopper.

"Loopy Shelter"
> Wall crack in first forest area does not open the tree, therefore creating another showstopper
> Shrinker device has the same issue as in Boiler Cliff, i.e. fails to pass through a hole

"Ghost House"
> Unable to dive into any of the 1/2/3 holes inside the pool after using red keycard

"Knock-Out Factory"
> Shrinker puzzle broken, blast won't reach holes to blow the C-9 triggers