[MetHy]

Shawn Swift Beta Maps Release


Beta versions of Gothic Library and Brown Water from Cryptic Passage and Duke It Out In DC respectively

Download: https://dukeworld.co...-addon-maps.zip

It first came to my attention last year that, when looking at the unreachable place at the end of Old Opera House from Cryptic Passage, that Gothic Library was meant to have a basement.

A few days ago I contacted Shawn Swift to ask him about it and a couple of other things. Not only did he reply but he also shared these files he dug up from his archives.
Then I proceeded to ask him to release these two beta maps and he gave his okay.

Quote

Shawn Swift Beta Maps Release
2020-12-11



================================================================
Title : Gothic Library
Filename : LIB264.MAP
Author : Shawn Swift
Misc. Author Info : Former Sunstorm Interactive employee. Among other things worked on Duke It Out In DC, Cryptic Passage, Duke Xtreme

Description : A beta version of Gothic Library from Blood expansion Cryptic Passage, aka CP03.map.
This is one of the last versions, if not the last version, of the map by Shawn Swift before Robert Travis took the map over and finished it in a day.

Additional Credits to : Everyone at Sunstorm Interactive
================================================================


================================================================
Title : Brown Water
Filename : Dc-Sewer.MAP
Author : Shawn Swift
Misc. Author Info : Former Sunstorm Interactive employee. Among other things worked on Duke It Out In DC, Cryptic Passage, Duke Xtreme

Description : A beta version of Brown Water from Duke Nukem 3D expansion Duke It Out In DC, aka DUKEDC7.map.
Very close to the released version.

Additional Credits to : Everyone at Sunstorm Interactive
================================================================


Interview of Shawn Swift about these two map files:


Corentin: This version of Brown Water is dated from after the release of the add-on. There are some differences, including texture work
and visibility/shading differences most notably in the starting area. Do you remember what happened there? Did you keep working on the map after release,
or is this somehow an earlier version and the texturing was dubbed down for the final version?

Shawn Swift: The file dates probably got changed at some point when copying them from drive to drive. I noticed the dates on many of the files looked incorrect.
But maybe that's just me mis-remembering when I worked on all this stuff. I definitely didn't keep working on the map after the product shipped. We immediately
began working on Duke Extreme. The differences you noticed may be due to this map being the original version before I handed it off to Robert Travis who then
tried to make one level flow naturally into the next. Or perhaps I just kept a slightly earlier version of the map all these years. Not sure!


C: Regarding Blood, for Gothic Library, there is indeed a cellar sketched in that map file but it's just a rough blockout of the layout with walls (there is
also a room at the end of the corridor on the right upstairs, and just like the cellar I always knew there was supposed to be a room there!). Do you remember if
this is your last version of the map before Robert Travis worked on it, or did you both keep working on the level together after this version?

S: Robert probably took over after that point. I think he finished the remainder of the map in a day, creating the whole of the attic on his own. I was running
behind and he was really fast. I spent a lot of time getting the room-over-room to work in the main foyer.
Fun fact: I based the appearance of the library on what I could remember of the look and layout of the Manchester, NH city library: https://goo.gl/maps/pb1vWPNcGgWSS1wUA


C: One last question but LIB264.map is dated only 19 days before the known release date of Cryptic Passage, was the schedule really this tight? [Editor note: the known
release date is 1997-06-30. However, some files on the disc are dated up to 1997-07-28]

S: Well, disclaimer aside about the file dates possibly being incorrect... Yeah, I believe the release schedules were really that tight. We had to pull an all nighter
to get Duke it out in D.C. out the door. I was up into the wee hours of the morning creating the ending cinematic and trying to get it to run in the game, before we
put it up on an FTP server for Wizardworks to grab. The Deluxepaint Animator code in the game was apparently not the best and I just had to keep tweaking the animation
slightly until it finally ran. Tony (our boss) meanwhile, was running around the office with a little blanket as a cape.


C: Again I can only encourage you to release these 2 maps, imho your beta version of Gothic Library is very interesting!

S: Well, as far as I'm concerned, you're free to release them, but I don't have a personal website any more, and I'm not on any Duke forums, so the chances of me releasing
them myself are kinda slim. If you do put them out there, let me know, I'd like to see what folks have to say about them.


[Editor note:] Thanks a lot to Shawn Swift for answering my questions and sharing these files!

[MetHy]

Some observations I made:


About LIB264.map aka Gothic Library:

- We can now confirm what Robert Travis did on this map: he built the library room upsairs, the library room downstairs that holds the Eye key (the placement and layout of that one already existed, but he filled it), the part of the room before that with the 2 tables, the outdoor area at the end of the level with the exit.
He also did some other modifications, for instance the connection to the office room downstairs which holds the Fire key used to be a blown up wall (I believe there would have been a crack on the wall), and RT turned that into a bookshelf that lowers after finding a hidden switch.
RT also added two locked rooms/keys corresponding to the areas he built, as well as locking the room with the Eye key with another switch.
He also finished gameplay related stuff: added more supplies, more enemies, civilians, DM and CO-OP spawn points etc it is however worth noting that quite a few enemies / supplies were already present and for the most part, they were kept the way they were. Only notable expection would be moving the Flare Gun at the start of the level inside the Library, or deleting the two cultists near the spritework upstairs, but only because that area was deleted altogether.
RT also built these windows from the final version:
 libwindow.png (185.1K)
Number of downloads: 16

In other words, for the most part what RT did was delete all planned rooms and B-routes that were unfinished, except for the room with the Eye key that he filled, and added a couple of areas of his own instead. Then, he proceeded to the finishing touches.

- 3 of the 4 secret places were already present. RT added the one upstairs with the DeathMask/Invulnerability.
This one secret place used to be a tiny bit bigger and you could move "below the staircase":
 libsecret.png (92.26K)
Number of downloads: 8

- Here is what the cellar looks like:
 LIB264_cellar.png (29.5K)
Number of downloads: 20

It would have connected to the rest of the map in at least two ways: first, the infamous staircase outdoor, which would serve as a B-entrance to the library. Secondly, the staircase indoor that connects the 1st floor to the 2nd, kept going down towards the east and reached the basement.

If you connect the floors together in mapedit, you'll notice that the basement is just as big as the first floor. Furthermore, most of the white walls of the basement match those of the first floor, I think the idea was to follow a realistic layout with load-bearing walls.
In my opinion, that basement was very ambitious in size. Just the basement alone would have almost doubled the size of the entire map. Furthermore, it looks a bit mazey. I think that, even in a parrallel universe where that basement exists in a finished state, it could only exist with a reduced size compared to what we see here.

The only existing work within the rooms is a single crate in one of the rooms, maybe a storage area was planned.

- There used to be spritework connecting the first floor to the second:
 libsprite.png (340.69K)
Number of downloads: 14

Here is what the second floor looked like with the sprite work area included:
 LIB264_upstairs.png (39.49K)
Number of downloads: 12

Again, if you connect the floors in map edit you'll notice that some of the white walls match between both floors, securing the idea of a realistic layout with load-bearing walls.

- The west library room used to connect to the entrance corridor as well as the reception (in the final version it only connects to the reception):
 libwestroom.png (250.39K)
Number of downloads: 9

____________________________________________________________


About Dc-Sewer.map aka Brown Water:

This version is very similar to the released map, but there are a few differences in texturing and lighting.
Some comparison pics (first beta, then final):
 Beta1.png (164.92K)
Number of downloads: 23
 Final1.png (139.33K)
Number of downloads: 15

 Beta2.png (255.11K)
Number of downloads: 13
 Final2.png (146.78K)
Number of downloads: 9

 Beta3.png (145.1K)
Number of downloads: 9
 Final3.png (140.54K)
Number of downloads: 7

Like stated in the interview, the file is dated after the release of the add-on but that date can't be trusted and Shawn is sure he hasn't worked on the map after the release. He is also unsure whether he's the one who made those modifications or if it was RT.

____________________________________________________________

Some more opinion from me:

- I always loved Gothic Library map, great theme, great layout and architecture. However, I always thought it was a bit short, shorter than the other maps in the episode even, and that it lacked the B-entrance and multi-path factor. On top of the staircase leading to the basement downstairs, I also always thought the corridor upstairs was meant to lead somewhere. This beta version had all that planned.
The beta layout would have made for a better Deathmatch level also.

- That spritework connecting both floors was great and probably the biggest and best surprise of the beta version. The 1st and 2nd floor were connected in all 3 possible ways that don't involve teleporters: Sector over Sector with the staircase, the round Room over Room from the reception, and the spritework floor on the east. I think it was deleted by RT because in his version that spritework corridor leads nowhere. Also, the fact that enemies in Blood try to avoid walking on sprite structures like the plague doesn't help (you can notice that if you play the beta version, there are a couple of cultists up there but they'd rather turn in round on themselves than walk on the sprites, it's a common thing in Blood).
Still, even it indeed leads nowhere, I think it would have been cool to keep that structure.
Also, if you connect all floors together you should see a visual glitch on the lower floor caused by the ROR. This visual glitch is absent in the final version. While I know other games' ROR systems rather well, I am not familiar enough with Blood's to tell what causes that glitch. It is however possible that it is caused by the walls in that spritework area and that could be another reason why it was deleted.

- RT basically cut anything that wasn't in a done state, except for the library room with the Eye key downstairs that he filled, then added the library room upstairs and the outdoor exit.
His new room upstairs does not respect anymore the "realistic layout with the same load-bearing white walls on all floors" that I mentionned, as his new room goes beyond the pre-established geographical limits of the library.
I do not blame RT for those changes and cutting however: apparently RT finished the map in a single day, which, even if it is unsure that the date on the file can be trusted, goes with the idea that they were on a tight schedule and this was done close to shipping.
Frankly it's pretty amazing he did all he did in a single day.
Still, I am surprised he didn't keep some of those connections between floors (the spritework corridor specifically) as it would have supported the kind of interconnected layouts he loved to build, but ultimately choices had to be made to get the map done at the end of the day.

- I said that load-bearing walls no longer matched in the upper floor of RT's version, however I noticed a similarity between the shape of some walls between the two versions:
Beta:
 libupbeta.png (15.27K)
Number of downloads: 5
Final:
 libupfinal.png (42.16K)
Number of downloads: 7

This could just be a coincidence that means nothing. After all the size of the walls do no match, neither do their placement on the map. Furthermore, having diagonals walls of this angle is very common in Build levels.
However, it could very well mean that RT did use this room from the beta as a base to build his room, if only to heavily modify it and to move the room in the end. He did fill up the room with the Eye key downstairs after all; although that one retained its shape, size and placement.

- The fact that there were 2 mappers involved in the making of the secret places with RT building one of them, on top of the tight schedule, could explain why the total secrets count do not match the actual number of secret places in the map (total says 3 when there are 4). After all the number of secret places has to be entered manually, however none of the secrets in the beta version are tagged as secrets and the total count shows 0.

- Moving the Flare Gun inside the library at the entrance was a good idea: by doing so when doing a Pitchfork-start play of the map, you are forced to get closer to the cultists shooting at you.

- About Brown Water: the more I think about it, the more I am sure this is indeed an earlier version. The differences in lighting and how improved it is in the final version is the key here. As for the texturing, I have no doubts that Shawn could have done those changes himself, indeed if you look through his catalog you should easily be able to witness his passion for grey walls and unvarying looking ones too.

___________________________________________________________


Hope you guys enjoy this and will make your own observations as well!

Thanks again to Shawn!

[Lunick]

Was not expecting this to pop up at all. I think I like the starting area more in this Beta version of Brown Water more than the final

[jkas789]

Really cool, will be playing this soon.

Edit: Finally had time to play one of them. The library is very much a work under construction as expected. There are like 12 enemies to fight on well done (2 gargoyles at the entrance, some 6 cultists and
4 zombies if I counted correctly. Although that last zombie surprised me so it may as well have been 3 zombies and 7 cultists.) Still really interesting to see a map in progress and the thinking that went behind it.

Here are some screenshots I took of the map with some of my inane user commentary.

[MetHy]

I didn't realize you had to be connected to the forum to see/download picture attachments even when they're included to a post, so here are my previous screenshots in the order I gave them:

https://imgur.com/a/hCsy817

jkas789, on 12 November 2020 - 06:04 PM, said:

Really cool, will be playing this soon.

Edit: Finally had time to play one of them. The library is very much a work under construction as expected. There are like 12 enemies to fight on well done (2 gargoyles at the entrance, some 6 cultists and
4 zombies if I counted correctly. Although that last zombie surprised me so it may as well have been 3 zombies and 7 cultists.) Still really interesting to see a map in progress and the thinking that went behind it.

Here are some screenshots I took of the map with some of my inane user commentary.

You shouldn't need any jump boots. You need to overlap and connect all 3 floors together in mapedit first if you want to "play" the level. These days in mapster32 there are ways to hide one floor or the other when you build sector over sector, but at the time there wasn't, so building each floor disconnected from each others and only connecting them for playtesting was a norm then (and it still is for many people).
Here is a version of the map where I connected the floors together.

Attached File(s)

•  LIB264LI.rar (36.63K)
  Number of downloads: 5

[jkas789]

MetHy, on 13 November 2020 - 12:17 AM, said:

You shouldn't need any jump boots. You need to overlap and connect all 3 floors together in mapedit first if you want to "play" the level. These days in mapster32 there are ways to hide one floor or the other when you build sector over sector, but at the time there wasn't, so building each floor disconnected from each others and only connecting them for playtesting was a norm then (and it still is for many people).
Here is a version of the map where I connected the floors together.

Ah thanks for clarifying that. I pretty much went in blind without expecting opening it up in mapster. I was gonna play the final map later to compare it on my own.

Also In regards to the photos I believe they are visible? I added the screenshots for people who maybe didn't have time to see the map immediately and I linked them like that because I didn't want to spam the thread with needless photos.

Thanks for the gem of game dev conservation you managed to grab mate!

[MetHy]

Just to be clear, if you overlap the 3 floors correctly, the connections make themselves so you shouldn't need to build anything. All I did in that map file I shared 2 posts above was move the bottom and upper floors.
The connection between the outdoor staircase and the basement (connection A in this picture) doesn't actually exist, but it's clear that it was intended.

Edit: reposting this here from another thread
Looking at the sector numbers to try and guess how RT worked and in what order he built things:

Quote

[...] it's not a bulletproof method as sector numbers can vary even during development. When old sectors are deleted, it will change the sectnum of all the sectors after that. Another example would be, let's say an area is made of 2 sectors, sector number 10 and 11, then near the end of dev some work is done on that area and the two sectors are joined, the sector number would now one of the last sector numbers, like 400+.

Still, I believe these can give valuable clues and we can also look at sprite numbers.

[...]

Now, just to show how misleading this method can be, we can compare the sectnums in Gothic Library beta vs final: there are about 480sectors in the final version, only 20 more sectors compared to the beta yet we do know for sure that RT filled the west ibrary room and added 2 areas as well (the 2nd floor west library room and the exit). The reason is because a lot of sectors were deleted.

We can however infer that if most sectnums in an area are in a certain range, that range is a hint as to when the area was built.
If sectnums vary a lot within a same area, it can also consolidate our idea of what happened to that area.

For Gothic Library looking at the sectnums from those RT areas do tell us that this method can be trusted to some extent:
- the 1st floor library room shows only sectnums around 310-330 range
- the the 2nd floor library room shows only sectnums around 360
- the outdoor area shows only sectnums from around 380 onwards, to the last existing sectnums being the unreachable area past the EOL copy pasted from the next level.

In other words RT would have filled the 1st floor library first to get himself accomodated with the map, then made the 2nd floor library, then the exit. He actually built things in the same order the player goes through.

Now if we look at an area that Shawn Swift built and that Robert Travis modified: the entrance corridor and the 1st floor west library. Sectnums of adjacent sectors can vary a lot, for instance the corridor floor would be sectnum 80 and the window next to it that we know RT built 293, and some similar cases in the library room where the doorway was deleted and where the blown up wall was turned into a bookshelf. Again, this method can be trusted to some extent.

The window sectnum being 293 also tells us that it's one of the first things RT added, thus we can offer he probably did the cutting and patching work first, deciding on his layout before building any room. That makes sense.

Edit 2: Small correction:

Quote

- 3 of the 4 secret places were already present. RT added the one upstairs with the DeathMask/Invulnerability.

This is incorrect, the secret place itself already existed in the beta, but it was empty.

Edit 3:

Another difference I forgot to mention, but these two torches were deleted in the final version:


This is most likely a mistake, indeed the sectors those troches are in have light flicker. This flicker is still present in the final version despite the torches being gone.

[ck3D]

MetHy, on 13 November 2020 - 12:17 AM, said:

These days in mapster32 there are ways to hide one floor or the other when you build sector over sector, but at the time there wasn't, so building each floor disconnected from each others and only connecting them for playtesting was a norm then (and it still is for many people).

lol, really? I still do it the old way myself, maybe because I mostly map using a build from eons past so I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to a lot of modern features. I've only built my floors in a disconnected manner once though (recently too), SOS used to confuse the hell out of me before I figured out the patterns but along time I've developed a grasp on the ideal order to follow whilst making things in such 'settings' as well as my own little tricks, to be able to work on several layers with as little interference as possible. Being able to straight up hide a floor sounds super convenient though, or are you talking about isometric view (which I've never used)?

I really appreciate you going out of your way to not just ask the guy about the maps (DC was always my favorite official add-on) but also get the files and even interview him, which you pulled off well, coming from someone whose a lot of the living consists in interviewing people (not that that should make a difference), you're definitely the right person for such tasks and I wish this type of communication and initiative happened in the community more often.

[MetHy]

ck3D, on 14 November 2020 - 04:58 AM, said:

lol, really? I still do it the old way myself, maybe because I mostly map using a build from eons past so I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to a lot of modern features. I've only built my floors in a disconnected manner once though (recently too), SOS used to confuse the hell out of me before I figured out the patterns but along time I've developed a grasp on the ideal order to follow whilst making things in such 'settings' as well as my own little tricks, to be able to work on several layers with as little interference as possible. Being able to straight up hide a floor sounds super convenient though, or are you talking about isometric view (which I've never used)?

Yes, with Mapster32 there are two ways to hide floors.
The first way only works with TROR. As soon as you have a TROR bunch in your map, you can press CTRL+Q (CTRL+A for us cavemen with AZERTY keyboards) and from that moment onwards only the TROR floor the player (err, mapper) position is in will show in 2D mode and can be worked on (the rest will be greyed out). The mapper arrow position factort however makes this system a bit untrustworthy since player/mapper position tends to teleport a lot on its own between floors/SOS areas in the editor.
Press CTRL+Q again to disable.

The 2nd solution isn't an automatic feature, thus it involves a bit more work, but it works for everything, even with have no TROR: select a sector (or several) and press CTRL+R, all the sectors that aren't in the Z range of that selected sector will be greyed out; this is based on the selected sector's floor Z and ceiling Z.
Selecting only the sectors you want in an SOS area however can be a pain (although the isometric view you mentionned can help with that), plus depending on the situation you may not even ONE lone sector which has at the same time the lowest floorZ and the highest ceiling Z corresponding to the entire floor. This is why, what I do is build helper sectors on the side with the corresponding Z values of each floor, and whenever I want floor 2 greyed out I select helper sector 1 and press CTRL+R on it.
For example:
lowest floor Z on floor 1 is 0, highest ceiling Z on that same floor is -32768: I build a helper sector with those values, select it and press CTRL+R, the other floor will be greyed out.

Press CTRL+R again to disable.

I know a lot of people still build their SOS (and even TROR) areas seperately and only connect them for playtesting. I've done that in the past and found it to be more of a pain than it's worth: first, you have to make sure your other floors have a properly relative placement on the grid so that floor/ceiling textures won't get misaligned during the move. Secondly, any playtestion means potentially reconnecting several floors and remaking several TROR bunches, and making sure the move was successful and no white wall remained where the connections are supposed to be. For a map with a lot of SOS/TROR, that can take a bit of time that you'd have to repeat every time you test the map. This is why these days I just use CTRL+R with the helper sectors.