[Youri87]

Hi

Is there a Duke Nukem 3D mod where each episode is made continuously? In a sense that there is no loading screen, and eventually corridors between the end of one level and the beginning of the next had to be created.

A fan started it for Doom:

https://www.moddb.co...compile-project

Thanks you!

[oasiz]

Not technically possible as the engine has hard sector/sprite/wall limits, not to mention that the effect tags would overlap.

One could however develop Ion Fury -like transitions that load the areas as separate maps to give the illusion of seamless progression, along with linking end/start together in a sensible way.

[NNC]

Not really, but I always thought some levels were born to be merged.

Hollywood Holocaust and Red Light District (with RLD's cut opening area of course)

Incubator and Warp Factor

Fusion Station and Occupied Territory (well, maybe)

Tiberius Station and Lunar Reactor (and maybe even Dark Side)

Raw Meat, Bank Roll, Flood Zone and LA Rumble (all of them are quite small)

Movie Set, Rabid Transit, Fahrenheit, Hotel Hell (like above)

Episode 4 and 5 levels are not made to be merged into another.

[Mark]

Decay did that map transition thing too. Maybe programmed by the same guy that did it in Ion Fury.

[Youri87]

Mark, on 07 March 2020 - 06:48 AM, said:

Decay did that map transition thing too. Maybe programmed by the same guy that did it in Ion Fury.

So, it already exists?

[Mark]

Not all maps condensed into one big map.

Like Ion Fury, Decay uses code to go from one map to the next without any of the normal screens in between. I was going to do it for HHR to connect Hollywood Holocaust to Red Light District. I added the elevator at the end of HH. But when I realized that Red Light District wasn't going to be finished on time I removed it and made a whole new ending for HH.

[oasiz]

The Watchtower, on 07 March 2020 - 06:47 AM, said:

Not really, but I always thought some levels were born to be merged.

Hollywood Holocaust and Red Light District (with RLD's cut opening area of course)

Incubator and Warp Factor

Fusion Station and Occupied Territory (well, maybe)

Tiberius Station and Lunar Reactor (and maybe even Dark Side)

Raw Meat, Bank Roll, Flood Zone and LA Rumble (all of them are quite small)

Movie Set, Rabid Transit, Fahrenheit, Hotel Hell (like above)

Episode 4 and 5 levels are not made to be merged into another.

Some truth to it but it's more of a coincidence and just a mark of good design / polish. I would say that it extends to EP4, where EP5 disregarded this completely.
EP1 was a bit more thought out, being shareware and all (3DR had a HUGE focus on shareware being the showcase). This lead to EP2 / EP3 being rushed to completion.

E1L1 and E1L2 were one map at an earlier point, where the exploding building is and street ends, the cinema begins. The street layout is still almost identical to lameduke's L6.
I don't think the cut intro area in L2 really works in this context as you'd have geographical overlap, it's a nice area but I don't think it helps in this example.
And L1 layout being different to LD ? It did have an intro bit as well but keeping that would have resulted in identical zig-zag street layout for E1L1 and E1L2, not to mention that it was a bit less memorable intro vs. to falling down immediately to action.
But I would say that this is probably the only set that kind of was designed as such.

Many EP2 maps have a lot of architectural similarities, the continuation was kind of natural but the progression itself was retrofitted.
Warp factor went through multiple radical changes and used to exist stand-alone, the one seen in the 1995 autodemo video is one iteration of it.

Tiberius/Lunar/DS are all AHB maps, early space maps had a ton inter-exchanged content across. But to be fair, all of these maps end and start in the same red room so the order doesn't matter as much. In early LD maps you saw maps end in red rooms so the origin for this is clear. This was used in other maps too, but here it's consistent design. Probably a leftover concept that fit this context (last maps are moon maps). That 1995 video (first map) and game show have a map that has striking similarities to tiberius, LD's doughnut space ship also has the overlapping staircase set piece (not to mention map objective) that is almost identical to the one seen in lunar reactor. While I can't say for sure, it's kinda clear that most of space maps were designed rather stand-alone. I think "It's impossible" and "critical mass" had some history as space maps at one point from what I remember.

EP3 was mostly solo LL, many DM maps repurposed as SP maps, likely due to tight deadlines.

But yes, many levels have very intentional continuity bits. Even EP4 has a ton of them.
Throughout, a lot of the continuity and level orders weren't designed as such, they were retrofitted.

[High Treason]

Not entirely on topic, but as I'm between things;

Quote

Many EP2 maps have a lot of architectural similarities, the continuation was kind of natural but the progression itself was retrofitted.

It was, indeed.
Occupied Territory's entire starting area is 'new' compared to the rest of the level, the area with the sloped opening windows is the first 'old' part of the level you set foot in, though the starting area may have come from some other level for all we know, given other areas of the level also got cut out, moved and pasted around the game. Battlelord used to live in this level, it wasn't always in Episode 2. What is peculiar in this case is that whilst the starting area was almost certainly added later than the rest of the level, it doesn't actually seem to connect to Fusion Station in any obvious way, likely further evidence that it (as well as other level ordering) was still being altered very late in development. Rather curiously the alien capsule at the end of the moving walkways, which were textured differently in the past, both lines up with the Overlord's room and appears in the story picture that appears after defeating him, it probably predates his existence. The sky is oriented 'wrong' in the picture though.
Dark Side's starting area is also radically different from how it was at one time, but we don't know what the old starting area looks like, only that it wasn't the same and seemingly connected to the rest of the level via a fourth train.

[NNC]

oasiz, on 07 March 2020 - 08:52 AM, said:

Some truth to it but it's more of a coincidence and just a mark of good design / polish. I would say that it extends to EP4, where EP5 disregarded this completely.
EP1 was a bit more thought out, being shareware and all (3DR had a HUGE focus on shareware being the showcase). This lead to EP2 / EP3 being rushed to completion.

E1L1 and E1L2 were one map at an earlier point, where the exploding building is and street ends, the cinema begins. The street layout is still almost identical to lameduke's L6.
I don't think the cut intro area in L2 really works in this context as you'd have geographical overlap, it's a nice area but I don't think it helps in this example.
And L1 layout being different to LD ? It did have an intro bit as well but keeping that would have resulted in identical zig-zag street layout for E1L1 and E1L2, not to mention that it was a bit less memorable intro vs. to falling down immediately to action.
But I would say that this is probably the only set that kind of was designed as such.

Many EP2 maps have a lot of architectural similarities, the continuation was kind of natural but the progression itself was retrofitted.
Warp factor went through multiple radical changes and used to exist stand-alone, the one seen in the 1995 autodemo video is one iteration of it.

Tiberius/Lunar/DS are all AHB maps, early space maps had a ton inter-exchanged content across. But to be fair, all of these maps end and start in the same red room so the order doesn't matter as much. In early LD maps you saw maps end in red rooms so the origin for this is clear. This was used in other maps too, but here it's consistent design. Probably a leftover concept that fit this context (last maps are moon maps). That 1995 video (first map) and game show have a map that has striking similarities to tiberius, LD's doughnut space ship also has the overlapping staircase set piece (not to mention map objective) that is almost identical to the one seen in lunar reactor. While I can't say for sure, it's kinda clear that most of space maps were designed rather stand-alone. I think "It's impossible" and "critical mass" had some history as space maps at one point from what I remember.

EP3 was mostly solo LL, many DM maps repurposed as SP maps, likely due to tight deadlines.

But yes, many levels have very intentional continuity bits. Even EP4 has a ton of them.
Throughout, a lot of the continuity and level orders weren't designed as such, they were retrofitted.

I didn't put much thought into this one, only answered the OP's question where can I see the merger possible. Mostly in map-pairs or map-clusters where there is a strong continuity and aesthetics are similar in both maps. But yeah, it wouldn't really work anywhere in the game unless heavy modifications, cuts and whatever to the merged segments. Geographical overlapping would be a huge issue alone, but for example in the case of the E3 map-mergers, the themes would be very different in each level. It wouldn't make sense to have a Flood Zone style segment and an LA rumble style one in the very same map as it would result some totally isolated areas with no real connection to each other. Even in the cases where the theme differences are less evident (ie. Tiberius Station and Lunar Reactor), there are some subtle changes that would kill the merger, like different visual narratives, texturing and else.

An L6 style merger can work though, it would mean we drop some areas from one level (ie. the street in one of E1L1 and E1L2), and only keep the different segments, like adding the bar, the sewer and the destroyed building into the southern part of E1L1 (southern means where the hydrant is), and the other stuff like the bookstore, the parking garage and the room above into the western part (with the "innocent" sign). That would make a pretty awesome city level that is still within the reasonable map size. I hope one day Blum will recreate L6 just for fun or showing us the original concept.

Another nice merger would be the mix of LA Rumble and Rabid Transit. I always felt that the urban grandness of LA Rumble would be more complete if the starting area is replaced by a metro station, while Rabid Transit clearly failed because it lacked a perspective of an overground segment. I can even see the other train station somewhere where the chick is found, that would give some nice interconnected perspective.

With that said, I'm still baffled how they dropped Sewer from the final game. While the level is not finished, has some small bugs, misses some sounds, tags, etc, and monster placement is not adjusted to the final game concept, it has probably the best city layout in the game (not to mention the very sophisticated and polished architecture and shading), very closely related to Derelict's layered concept, it's easily my favourite map from Levelord. He tried to remake the map for World Tour in the shape of Tour de Nukem, but no, it wasn't even close. Too bad that George was so afraid of framerate drops, he cut too many great things from the game, like this level or the original L6 concpet. Sometimes I felt a smaller number of maps with more stuff in them would have been better. I also miss the 4th train from Dark Side, especially it has an indicator in the middle area.

[NNC]

High Treason, on 08 March 2020 - 05:10 AM, said:

Not entirely on topic, but as I'm between things;

[/size][/font][/color]

It was, indeed.
Occupied Territory's entire starting area is 'new' compared to the rest of the level, the area with the sloped opening windows is the first 'old' part of the level you set foot in, though the starting area may have come from some other level for all we know, given other areas of the level also got cut out, moved and pasted around the game. Battlelord used to live in this level, it wasn't always in Episode 2. What is peculiar in this case is that whilst the starting area was almost certainly added later than the rest of the level, it doesn't actually seem to connect to Fusion Station in any obvious way, likely further evidence that it (as well as other level ordering) was still being altered very late in development. Rather curiously the alien capsule at the end of the moving walkways, which were textured differently in the past, both lines up with the Overlord's room and appears in the story picture that appears after defeating him, it probably predates his existence. The sky is oriented 'wrong' in the picture though.
Dark Side's starting area is also radically different from how it was at one time, but we don't know what the old starting area looks like, only that it wasn't the same and seemingly connected to the rest of the level via a fourth train.

Yeah, Occuppied.... would have been more interesting as a boss level for E1. Even in it's final form, it feels like a boss level and the end of an episode, while Tiberius... feels like a start of a brand new episode. The connection to Fusion Station is evident though, it's a teleport from the ending of that map.

[OpenMaw]

We're talking about something basically like this, right?

[Youri87]

OpenMaw, on 10 March 2020 - 04:39 PM, said:

We're talking about something basically like this, right?

yes this is it

If the engine prevents it, is it possible that an improved engine would allow such a large map?

[Ninety-Six]

A bit late but seeing as this was necro'd, why not:

The Watchtower, on 07 March 2020 - 06:47 AM, said:

Episode 4 and 5 levels are not made to be merged into another.

Not entirely 100% true, at least in the case of E4. While a good few levels stand isolated from each other, there are two proper clusters of levels with proper links:

E4L2, L3, and L4 transition into each other. You can see the building that blows up at the start of Shop-N-Bag on the final security screen of Duke Burger, and L3 ends with Duke following some kind of sewage pipe out to the entrance of Babe Land (for some reason. But the continuity is there all the same).

And then E4L7 (XXX-Stacy) ends in a garage-type exit that is bizarre (and after seeing similar red room exits at the end of both Sewers and Sweeny's I can't help but wonder if that was a placeholder exit that wasn't completely cleaned up. Nonetheless E4L8 starts in such a room all the same). You see Derelict off the coast after blowing up the nuclear reactor, and while it's not clear it looks like The Queen is supposed to lead on from that alien shaft at the end of Derelict. Given how aquatic the level is I've always thought it was an underwater cave the ship was tethered to. That one is a bit stretchier I'll admit, but the L7-L9 link is undeniable at the very least.

I dunno how feasible fusing those levels together is (I'm assuming not very) but.

[NNC]

Ninety-Six, on 04 December 2020 - 02:40 AM, said:

A bit late but seeing as this was necro'd, why not:



Not entirely 100% true, at least in the case of E4. While a good few levels stand isolated from each other, there are two proper clusters of levels with proper links:

E4L2, L3, and L4 transition into each other. You can see the building that blows up at the start of Shop-N-Bag on the final security screen of Duke Burger, and L3 ends with Duke following some kind of sewage pipe out to the entrance of Babe Land (for some reason. But the continuity is there all the same).

And then E4L7 (XXX-Stacy) ends in a garage-type exit that is bizarre (and after seeing similar red room exits at the end of both Sewers and Sweeny's I can't help but wonder if that was a placeholder exit that wasn't completely cleaned up. Nonetheless E4L8 starts in such a room all the same). You see Derelict off the coast after blowing up the nuclear reactor, and while it's not clear it looks like The Queen is supposed to lead on from that alien shaft at the end of Derelict. Given how aquatic the level is I've always thought it was an underwater cave the ship was tethered to. That one is a bit stretchier I'll admit, but the L7-L9 link is undeniable at the very least.

I dunno how feasible fusing those levels together is (I'm assuming not very) but.

I think the continuity in episode 4 is an afterthought, and it's pretty evident with the cheap shot in the end of Duke Burger. Actually the only levels which I can see a merger feasible are Duke Burger and Going Postal. Those use a very similar architecture, more or less similar in size as well, and even the "dog" theme is found in both maps.

The other connectable levels are the 3 Randy maps. Not in the same map, but I remember changing the user.con once and created a 3 level miniseries of them, and they work well together as a nice story of the alien queen.

[ck3D]

Youri87, on 04 December 2020 - 02:00 AM, said:

If the engine prevents it, is it possible that an improved engine would allow such a large map?

Not sure what exactly you mean by an improved engine, but I'll try to explain. All the limits when it comes to map size that can technically be pushed within the confines the original game have already been 'enhanced' and pushed to their maximum by most modern ports (eDuke32 being the most popular) for a while now, in the end the resources have been doubled to quadrupled but that's still not enough to accommodate the full game or make infinite levels, and that will forever remain a cap due to how the game is written to begin with, and how the .map format works. Also, effects as simple as doors, wall cracks, lights or explosions (not just each effect type; literally each individual instance of the effect in the game) are defined by numbers ('tags') linked together by values that would interfere to the point of broken if you just assembled all the base game levels, because from one level to the next those values are being re-used/recycled all over the place and so, one would have to reset every one of them properly - and even then you'd run out of possible unique values halfway through the maps. Some general game effects such as subways and Recon Patrol Vehicles are also incompatible and would malfunction in one same map.

So to assemble all the levels into one, you'd basically need to reinvent the whole game and engine.

The closest thing I can think of that tried to do something similar to what you're describing is the user map Duke's Nightmare, but that's a very shit troll map with broken transitions and final bosses every square centimeter. You'd be better off playing user levels or mods that actually make great use of the enhanced limits the modern ports allow, if you're looking for a 'longer' Duke experience than the base game levels (some user maps out there can easily take up to several hours on your first playthrough, and were designed with coherence in mind), or if you have a vision of something you'd like to see, you could learn how to map (with the modern tools and documentation, it's really easy) and make it yourself because why not.

[ToiletDuck64]

I'm not exactly an expert on this so I don't know if this is even possible, but...if you could make two-way transitions between maps that create a "savestate" of how the map was when you left it (so it would be kindasorta like a regular SE7 teleportation trick, except that the teleporter destination would be in another map entirely), then that would allow us to circumvent the static limits and make bigger levels by splitting them across multiple MAP files. (I've never played Ion Fury or whatever, so I don't know what that's like; I assume all the existing solutions for map transitions have at least a loading screen of some sort.)

Also, regarding the limits of the MAP format...
- I think maybe we need to do something to extend the limits again, since maps keep encroaching upon them left and right, regardless of whether or not they use TROR. (I'm sure that increasing the limits will result in maps encroaching upon those limits, but still...)
- The TROR feature already overrides existing data values (including wall lotags as well as a few other things) which, in my opinion, throws up a red flag about the suitability of the MAP format as things stand now.
- Is it really not possible to extend any of the limits any further? For instance, LEBuild doubles the wall limit to 32768 (or at least seems to); how does that work?

[ck3D]

^ The first thing you describe already exists within eDuke32, for instance DukePlus and its hub made a use of it.

Personally, for projects I want to have maximum compatibility with the base game itself and not have to rely on the player using a particular port, I stick to an earlier version of Mapster32 ran in classic mode that predates the recent implementation of sloped sprites, texture rotation, etc. as otherwise the base game detects the .map format using some of those new features as invalid, and something looking right using one renderer might look off in another (so I play it safe with the default option).

Pretty sure I've read multiple times that the 32767 walls in LEBuild is just for show in the editor and not the actual limit, you actually still can't go past the 16300 something.

[Fox]

If you want the levels connected, you would have to drastically re-design them. The maps are not connected in a way that is physically possible.

For example, supposedly Hotel Hell ends in an "elevator" that would take to the Stadium... but does it looks like there's an stadium on top of the hotel?

[NNC]

Fox, on 12 March 2021 - 02:27 PM, said:

If you want the levels connected, you would have to drastically re-design them. The maps are not connected in a way that is physically possible.

For example, supposedly Hotel Hell ends in an "elevator" that would take to the Stadium... but does it looks like there's an stadium on top of the hotel?

Meanwhile the same area leads to Fahrenheit. In fact Stadium could have been accessed from Fahrenheit, Hotel Hell is just a dead end.

And talking about Hotel Hell, it's quite clear the weird progression of the map clearly implies it was heavily modified/cut. I mean the map became a complete mess after you reach the first floor.

[Aleks]

The Watchtower, on 12 March 2021 - 02:52 PM, said:

Meanwhile the same area leads to Fahrenheit. In fact Stadium could have been accessed from Fahrenheit, Hotel Hell is just a dead end.

And talking about Hotel Hell, it's quite clear the weird progression of the map clearly implies it was heavily modified/cut. I mean the map became a complete mess after you reach the first floor.

I've always thought the natural progression from Hotel Hell would be to Freeway, and it was also easier for me as a kid to find the "secret" exit rather than the one leading to Stadium. That being said, I don't think there's anything wrong about it. Also, the exit from Freeway seems to be a more likely connection to the Stadium.

[Ninety-Six]

Aleks, on 12 March 2021 - 03:32 PM, said:

Also, the exit from Freeway seems to be a more likely connection to the Stadium.

The only catch is that Hotel Hell ends in a shaft that looks a lot like the one you start Stadium in (and for that matter, Farenheit ends in that same shaft but you start HH back outside that shaft, somehow). Otherwise the big building in Freeway looks more like a building that could fit a stadium.

Spoiler

Also Hotel Hell is my favorite 3DR-made level.

I've actually always been curious to see how the critical paths of the different levels line up. That is, cutting out all extra areas, including the ones that only have keys, and only keeping open what would be necessary to go from the start of the level to the end of the level in a straight shot to sort of get a feel for exactly how much distance is traversed in an episode.