[duke3d.exe]

I remember playing Anorak City and Happy Hangover, very nice work.

[ck3D]

You wants big city map, I makes big city map. Got a lot done today, map 6 is currently at 1750 sectors, 12375 walls and 5451 sprites. Whole city is enclosed now with nothing left to add to the streets but some detail, a few effects and cars (if resources eventually allow) ; I took a few full visibility screenshots to celebrate. That's not saying the map is done though, since it's so spread apart, said detail is actually quite a lot and most importantly, many indoor locations and interconnected paths still need to be made - still that's just a matter of doodling a few rooms here and there so all in all, I might even finish it by the end of the week, can't go too crazy with so few hundreds of walls remaining anyway.

At first sight of the scale the level was taking I was a bit worried that it might be a slap in the face as the second map in the episode and after the 'meager' first level, but now I think it'll actually be perfect, working flawlessly between that first map and the next and also introducing the player to the openness of the maps early on, making them realize real quick how we don't fuck around. Might be my favorite map for the project so far and definitely is the largest, as it's the first one fully zoomed out automap can't contain at all.

Ah yeah and the texture with the windows on the side of that central building in screen 2 is just kinda there and I keep forgetting to actually work on that one wall. I do like it, just needs some trimming to look tidier.

duke3d.exe, on 12 January 2021 - 09:08 PM, said:

I remember playing Anorak City and Happy Hangover, very nice work.

Thank you, it's always so cool to me when people mention those old maps after all these years. YouTube user November Blue just put up video playthroughs of both these levels just this week as well, coincidentally - I'll link them below for the curious, I especially appreciate that he ran those maps the way I always intended them to be played (classic mode with no visibility fog), I think he wants to tackle the third chapter of the trilogy (Bottles To The Ground) soon, too. Those levels are kinda funny to me in retrospect, they aren't bad per se but were I to rebuild them these days there's so much I would naturally do differently; talking about them with Aleks the other day, we realized Happy Hangover sort of played like a more modern shooter in how the progression is orchestrated, you just keep advancing forward through the scripted sequences pretty much the whole time. On the other hand Anorak is completely open but the progression in that one can be unfairly obscure, that's just bad design there and in general there are a few things about that one I wish I had invested a wee bit more brain juice into sorting out. I guess those maps still stand on their own feet for what they are, it's just amusing how nowadays I'd make them a whole different product.

[Seb Luca]

Just awsome ! GG !

[NNC]

I honestly think the Duke Burger theme is overplayed by now, and I'm not a fan of the first screenshot. That yellow looks eye-raping.

EDIT: I was referring to post #90.

[Sanek]

The Watchtower, on 14 January 2021 - 12:56 AM, said:

I honestly think the Duke Burger theme is overplayed by now, and I'm not a fan of the first screenshot. That yellow looks eye-raping.

EDIT: I was referring to post #90.

Dude, why do you keep giving comments if you don't even end up playing this episode in the end of the day?

Still, you feel obliged to give ck3D your opinion on map's layout and stuff. I'm not criticizing you, it's just strange to keep posting here after saying that it's not the kind of maps you play.

[ck3D]

^ Actually he's right, but he's only echoing something I was already saying:

ck3D, on 08 January 2021 - 02:57 PM, said:

one can only start so many new bathrooms and Duke Burgers before it starts feeling like the here we go again meme everytime

And it's cool, those colors are hard on the retinas on purpose, that room is a quick joke section in the map that's supposed to look off and gross and technically, it's also not a Duke Burger. I appreciate the passion and interest behind all feedback, always welcome and encouraged,

Thanks for the nice words Seb!

[NNC]

Sanek, on 14 January 2021 - 04:11 AM, said:

Dude, why do you keep giving comments if you don't even end up playing this episode in the end of the day?

Still, you feel obliged to give ck3D your opinion on map's layout and stuff. I'm not criticizing you, it's just strange to keep posting here after saying that it's not the kind of maps you play.

I'm actually interested in this and pretty sure said it in a comment somewhere.

[Merlijn]

I agree with The Watchtower on that particular screenshot, but I kinda suspected it was done like that on purpose. Nice to know that was indeed the case.
The city scapes look very sweet once again, I especially like the usage of red here.

[Aleks]

These screenshots have such a strong GTA Vice City vibe to them with that sunset/ocean/palms combined with the type of architecture and the openness of the map. Already told you that, but the sky texture choice is wicked cool. I particularly like the white building with lots of slopes and red lights/Duke banner on it and the grey concave sloped one from the last screen, but it's cool they all keep some distinct features while still staying within the white/grey/red/orange palettes.

[Sangman]

City looks impressive

[pavigna]

This is looking incredible, but that's not important to say since everything you make is incredible! I genuinely can't wait to play this, i'm sure i'll be one of the best usermade episodes out there.

[ck3D]

Aye thanks but no, realistically I've released a lot of stuff that sucks or is unsubstantial and it's okay, that's part of mapping or any art, things you are stoked on in the moment and don't believe you could ever top become insignificant as you keep making progress and refining your approach, if anything that process itself is pretty fascinating to me. Can't wait for you to try this out too and hear your thoughts on it, not sure about it being one of the best episodes ever but the pretentious part of me sort of does hope it will fill some kind of void or something, yeah (its very own if anything). Haven't really heard of Jimmy in a bit and Aleks just taught me about Dukeres, so I'm thinking of starting tackling the new .art I want myself soon. Best of luck with your own project too which I hope is going well!

[pavigna]

ck3D, on 20 January 2021 - 04:16 AM, said:

Aye thanks but no, realistically I've released a lot of stuff that sucks or is unsubstantial and it's okay, that's part of mapping or any art, things you are stoked on in the moment and don't believe you could ever top become insignificant as you keep making progress and refining your approach, if anything that process itself is pretty fascinating to me. Can't wait for you to try this out too and hear your thoughts on it, not sure about it being one of the best episodes ever but the pretentious part of me sort of does hope it will fill some kind of void or something, yeah (its very own if anything). Haven't really heard of Jimmy in a bit and Aleks just taught me about Dukeres, so I'm thinking of starting tackling the new .art I want myself soon. Best of luck with your own project too which I hope is going well!

Ah, i get what you mean, and you're right, the next thing you make will probably always be better than the last one. As for my personal project, thank you, but i set that aside, right now i'm working on the AWOL Project, i'm the Jungle map guy. Also, yes indeed i can't wait to play this, partly because everything in the screenshots you showed looks really cool and has some sort of nostalgic atmosphere to it, and i can't quite put my finger on why. I'm really excited for it regardless.

[ck3D]

Ah thanks, yeah the 'classic' kind of vibe is another of these things I'm glad people can sense in the design, I'm definitely going for something like that here and although the gameplay and navigation is really where I want to focus that effort, I find it even cooler that you guys can already spot that just visually on the basis of screenshots. Also a lot of the visual choices (textures, colors) are influenced by the universe of Duke Nukem 1 and 2 and of course the notorious Duke 3D betas, all the while not being explicit recreations of anything, I've been picking up clues here and there and I'm glad it's successfully communicating.

Busy these days so wrapping up the map the way I envision it will drag for a bit longer than expected, meticulous indoor locations and a tight schedule can only go together so well, that being said I still think I can finish it before the end of the month - not a set goal, but would be cool. Will most likely (actually) take a small break after that, though. 1950 sectors/13500 walls. Including two WIP shots with full visibility, first one shows some perspective the type of which this particular map relies on a lot, second one is more random and of a place that still needs to undergo some more passes but serves to show a hair of indoor layout with the second sprite floor being accessible from different zones and connecting different SOS layers. The yellow on the glass makes sense from the opposite point of view, there's a bright yellow light source in your back here that you can't see from that angle, otherwise the ensemble looks fine in game (just singled out on a screenshot it may look a bit ferocious).

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 
• 

[Ninety-Six]

I like that first one a lot. The destruction scenes look convincing.

[ck3D]

Thanks, yeah if you liked all the destruction in map 5 then you will love the one in this one, it's the same basic concept of a partially collapsed city post attack, just taken one notch further again. Map 5 you can already explore a lot of the surrounding ocean and go behind and around the map all you like for some shortcuts and pretty sights but the interconnections are rather secondary in SP, whereas in this one the ocean is twice as large and works even better with the layout of the city blocks as I elaborated on the concept. Lots of collapsing buildings and explosions too, E1L2 style just on a 2021 scale.

Also it's kind of funny because from an engineer's point of view I guess a lot of those collapsing/collapsed buildings probably don't make sense, and yet in Duke they just work so well at being suggestive enough, all you need is verticality and diagonals and boom it sells.

[Ninety-Six]

Duke has never made sense from an engineering point of view. I mean take all the city textures that clearly show windows all lined in a row but on the buildings there's nothing but wall on the other side.

[Aleks]

Ninety-Six, on 22 January 2021 - 09:36 AM, said:

Duke has never made sense from an engineering point of view. I mean take all the city textures that clearly show windows all lined in a row but on the buildings there's nothing but wall on the other side.

That's actually quite accurate... https://acidcow.com/...ls-50-pics.html

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 22 January 2021 - 09:36 AM, said:

Duke has never made sense from an engineering point of view. I mean take all the city textures that clearly show windows all lined in a row but on the buildings there's nothing but wall on the other side.

The game has its own in-universe logic with its representation of the world that really defies normal common sense, yes (although also heavily codified in itself for good gameplay purposes, e.g.. keycards, elevators, so it's not absurd and actually constructed, just differently), in fact I'd even argue this artistic stylization of common urban surroundings is a big part of what keeps some people fans of this game throughout the decades, streets that just stop in front of a grey wall or windows that function as doors or even like they're just painted on the wall are some fascinating curiosities to say the least, it's as though this game has its own language (and it's not the only one that does, really most all-time classic games have their own) and that's why I only believe in photorealism so much in user maps nowadays, the real world functions a lot better once adapted to the game's verse and not the other way around, not only are the physics different like I've said before with Duke being fast and needing space but you're also lightweight and so there is no reason why any random lamp or ATM shouldn't turn into a platform, any ledge should be just decorative and even bigger constructions like building facades and orientations should be mere props. Making fun levels is all about recognizing what's fun to do in the base game, but also what's totally not fun, and what's a waste, and then you can just play with the player's emotions with the progression that you establish (which is easy to do as you go and get a feel for your piece yourself whilst making it). That's why I'm saying it's easy to map these days, one only really needs to figure out two basic yet key features, walls (white and red) and tags (to operate the effects), and then from then on you're literally free to create whatever you'd otherwise only wish to see made for that game, it's that simple and then reading how other people interpret, appreciate and enjoy the game via their levels I find is so cool.

One particularly funny example I like is how vents work on people, Duke 3D players will recognize the object as such, and know they can (and should) get in there, as a consequence authors use them extensively to connect locations in user maps and they often play a core role, yet in real life no one will ever give ventilation shafts a second thought unless it's to fix theirs. In fact I've seen Duke 3D players jokingly post about 'tempting' real-life ventilation shafts before, so in a way it's quite fascinating how this game almost teaches people that ventilation shafts can and should be explored. Raising awareness about the real problems in this world, planting one seed at a time.

[Sanek]

World needs bigger shafts!

Imagine some mapper becomes architect in real life, throws his dilloma in a trash can and use his mapping skills to make stuff.

[Aleks]

Sanek, on 23 January 2021 - 05:29 AM, said:

World needs bigger shafts!

Imagine some mapper becomes architect in real life, throws his dilloma in a trash can and use his mapping skills to make stuff.

To be honest, mapping for Duke (and partly guys like Pascal Rouaud, who's been an architect) was one of the factors that made me study civil engineering. And it was very useful as well - Build/Mapster help to develop 3D imagination/navigation, which helped me a lot both during studies (hell I remember I used to draw some task in 3D back on my 1st year, before discovering AutoCAD, in Build - for easier understanding) and during professional career. And it goes both ways - knowing how real-life structures work also helps me when making maps, I usually try to go for realistic behaviour (e.g. explosions leaving marks in the walls according to the material that is used for the wall) and realistic structural design. For example, the steel hall in Piggish Prison with sloped sprites roof has columns and beams made with I-beams and tensioning rods where they should be mounted, as I pretty much did a sketch of that building back when I was still studying. Also the bridge in Piggish Prison was made with some realistic details like dillatations, proper cross-section seen when it blows up and reinforcement installed correctly.

Anyway, MRCK was probably also referring to me with the tempting ventillation shafts IRL There are so many "Dukish" areas around really, I remember as a kid walking around with my older sister who showed me Duke in the first place and recognizing areas that look just like out of Duke. Also I don't think the scale is really off in Duke, if we take 8192 Z-units as 1 metre, then most doors in original game would be 2 metres high, same if 512 XY-units are one metre, most doors would be 1 metre wide, which is reasonable. The thing is, both IRL and in-game areas can be cramped or spacious and the second option is always better (last week I was super pissed off doing grocery at a market with super-tight aisles, large-ass carts and a fuckload of people crowding around, which is quite similar to cramped maps in Duke). Most of the time, the realistic scale is OK, just that not all types of areas are suitable as Duke is fast as hell, so no point doing tiny mazes. Never really thought much about Duke's weight and platforming though, that's an interesting aspect with how the windowsills or little hanging sprites would bear his load with ease. Also - did anyone genuinely ever encountered a Doom door opening either to the ceiling or floor IRL? Imagine how impractical that would be!

Sorry for digressing much from the subject in your thread, MRCK, hope you don't mind!

[ck3D]

No feel free to use the thread, space is the place as they say and not even in an off-topic manner, too. About overscaling in general it's a fine line, the original game did things just right keeping everything of reasonable proportions but giving most every room a 'square ratio' with verticality as well as the most appropriate, functional layout for every successive situation (ideally), and then there's the 1996-style of oversizing which mostly looks off or abstract but really often plays well when you think about it, in a flavor that sort of reminds me of Doom or Quake as opposed to say, Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 where your movement and navigation are a lot more guided and even the firefights often happen in narrow hallways. Personal basic logic is you're given those crazy physics to work with, like you're walking on the moon - might as well make full use of that dynamism instead of staying grounded for no real reason but realism in a surreal game.

Idea of a real-life Doom door is funny, I can imagine someone building one and then crushing the upper floor of the building first trying it. If they can even try it without a real-life use button and don't just stay stuck there. Sound EDOOR10.voc not found!

[ck3D]

I'm mostly posting because YouTube user November Blue finally posted the last part of his playthrough of the Happy Hangover trilogy and I had posted the first two videos in this thread before, so I feel like tying all that up with the last one:



Watching this was a bit of a trip and felt like the map belonged to a completely different lifetime of mine. I wonder how many people ever got the extent and depth of the Pascal/Taivo joke(s) in that map, there's a lot I had forgotten about myself and now I almost feel like I was kind of an asshole in retrospect! Video shows some small sprite clipping bugs here and there I guess due to the combo of how I used to build things with modern eDuke32 or the renderer; in general it's pretty crazy to me because again this is nothing like the kind of map I'm currently building, and there are a lot of habits I completely dropped such as the omnipresent trimming around doorways, windows and stuff. There's one particularly funny Newbeast save that's an amazing representation of the deplorable AI in this game, and also that Queen sucked. I was also very surprised how easily they disposed of the Overlords which were supposed to be a reoccurring wall in this level, punctuating the backtracking to the keys; instead they just faced them head on and fully utilized the design of the terrain. Also no idea to this day why I ever seemed to catch that bug of writing quotes and references on every other wall for zero reason. One thing I do like still (I'm actually surprised I was already doing stuff like this at the time) was the coherence of the Pigcops always spawning from the LARD station throughout the progression (and I guess it's especially funny that the biggest spawn of them is when you break into 'Taivo's house', more particularly in the room he's remaking to mimic that one room in Roch 8). Anyhow thanks for putting up with the egoistical rant, this level is just a pretty rare one to see played and hear from so for me the video was interesting and cool to see - if only for the 'acceuil' typo on that one desk when it should be 'accueil', this one is going to haunt me forever now that I've noticed it.

About this episode I've been working a lot lately and not really finding the time to map but I did get some significant progress on map 6 earlier. I basically only need to add rather minor detail and one bigger area to be done and that's something I might even be able to get to do this weekend. Also threw in some satisfying explosions and timed destructible buildings with different parts that collapse out of sync at different speeds, so simple (barely a deviation from the original effect, you just enter different values) and yet, visually, it enhances the basic effect so much. Map is going to offer quite the ridiculous amount of exploration, rooftop action and hopefully cool sceneries.

[duke3d.exe]

I think 3drealms somehow hit a jackpot of combination of the textures and sprites they used/created coupled with the color palette and build engine were you can create very convincing "real-life" scenarios with a limited set of assets. For instance Tekwar tried to create also realistic cities but it just looks odd. After Duke3d there wasn't a fps game with cool city maps until many years later. Now it looks dated but still looks good from a retro perspective, while again something like Tekwar looks off.

[Ninety-Six]

Part of the problem is that TekWar didn't take full advantage of what the engine could do. I'm not sure if that's because the engine was not complete at the time, but nonetheless.

Granted I'd say the full potential wasn't realized until Shadow Warrior or Blood, but Duke got it most of the way there and was what both owed themselves to. 3DR mastered the engine and were super eager to show off what they could now accomplish over their contemporaries, including the true 3D games coming out at the same time.

[ck3D]

There's definitely something to be said about the quality of Duke 3D's art, though; every base tile is always quite the conceptual piece of its own when you really look at it, and even supposed representations of real-life elements actually look very abstract (especially when taken out of context), so the artists didn't really go for a photorealistic take on the aesthetics to begin with and instead did something more comic book-ish (of course technical restrictions from the era helped); but they were very coherent in their direction and in the end, when you see it all assembled and articulated around shapes, it just works as its own universe instead of feeling like an attempt at an interactive movie. That's exactly what new .art breaks when it's not well-crafted or -curated and thus clashes with everything else the game so far had succeeded at establishing (and why the best user sprites are the one that 'blend in' with the original style). Honestly, the art direction was already that good as early as the LameDuke assets in my opinion; in comparison, by using photos for textures and whatnot for modern games nowadays, a lot of that classic artistry might have gotten lost (and maybe new types have emerged instead, I guess). Manipulating textures for this game really feels like making a collage of someone else's hand-drawn materials. I was explaining how it all worked to a friend of mine recently who's way more into video games and recent tech than I am and I thought it was remarkable and funny how quickly he made a comparison to pointillism; sounds about right to me as we're at a point where people now literally consider and exploit every single pixel from every single tile in their designs. But in many ways, I think making good Duke 3D maps has a lot to do with recognizing that very particular abstract aspect of it, as that seems to highlight the idea that in the end credibility only matters so much, your assets are really just supposed to be camouflage for fun action and it's totally OK to use a light sector as a secret elevator or some bullshit the original designers probably came up with first anyway.

About Tekwar, I never played it, I've watched a couple of videos though and honestly the potential doesn't look bad at all, art isn't as sharp as Duke 3D's but cute for what it is. But one thing you have to keep in mind is, making 'full use of the engine' like you're calling it now really is more like making use of Mapster32 and most especially the extra resources JonoF port originally brought to the table; maps of that scale and with such complex looks wouldn't be possible with the original Build.exe. In fact, one could look at pre-limit raise/1024 sector maps 'from the past' as a completely different craft than modern maps in many ways. For instance, going around an early Roch map these days (since they were expansive for the time) I find really puts things into perspective: in those it's quite obvious Pascal was already putting thought into making long and large levels, but had to make do with a much more restricted scale and so had to plan things accordingly for his idea to work; now the absence of those restrictions give you a lot more leeway, and it's possible to build giant whatevers that put the scale of Roch maps to shame all you want, but it's also easier to lose focus and make fancy environments that don't play well. Here, on the big maps I'm kind of experimenting with how I can make (occasionally) large cities that feel sandbox style and just use all the scale I can get to maximize the experience, all the while still having the layouts actually function, so that the final piece all feels like the original Duke 3D just cranked up to a different level hopefully, and one that enhances the fun instead of getting in the way.

[Ninety-Six]

ck3D, on 31 January 2021 - 07:03 AM, said:

But one thing you have to keep in mind is, making 'full use of the engine' like you're calling it now really is more like making use of Mapster32 and most especially the extra resources JonoF port originally brought to the table; maps of that scale and with such complex looks wouldn't be possible with the original Build.exe.

Nah, when I said "full use of the engine" I meant "full use" as within the vanilla commercial parameters c. the mid-late nineties. So Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Blood. All three squeezed about as much as they could possibly get out of the engine at the time, and TekWar looks more dated than even Doom at times (arguably even moreso since one thing that can't be blamed on an in-process engine is the abundance of flat lighting).

[ck3D]

Ah I get you, where I missed what you meant the first time around is in reality Duke 3D didn't technically make full use of the engine in base game form per se, as I'm certain you know a lot of stuff that was originally in there got cut for frame rate concerns and even the level design style had to be 'toned down' from LameDuke-styled cityscapes (which are a major inspiration here) to mostly street sections that merely looked like corridors with a parallaxed sky in comparison. Opening up some of the original levels in the editor too, you can see a lot of them used a surprisingly low amount of resources, always far below the maximum count, so in that sense the base levels were to an extent basic; so they did make full use of the engine in one way, you're right, in that their layout was articulated around both the possibilities at the time and the fun factor, but never of the resources and thus of the full potential of the game which is also interesting (but - again - owes a lot to what they cut back in the end, I'm sure).

I just never really looked into Tekwar enough to be able to compare, from my recollection though the city segments also followed a strict 'outdoor corridor' style, which coincidentally is exactly what I'm trying to break a bit here. I just have no idea what the engine allowed and didn't allow at that point, quite naively I'm not even sure that game had/used sector over sector which I think is the key feature that differentiates Build from the other FPS engines of the time. (And also a case of something the base game levels did make full use of)

Honestly it's pretty funny, just the other day working on map 6 I briefly opened E1L2 to quickly copy paste a GSPEED sprite with a certain value in my cache, I hadn't seen a base game map in the editor in a while and the contrast really hit me not just in terms of scale but also of verticality and openness (when in my recollection E1L2 really wasn't that bad at all in those regards), 2D mode was absurd as well as it looked like I could have fitted 40 E1L2's over the size of map 6, but I think it's working with the map and not against it so far, somehow. I'm just about to wrap it up I think, so I'll probably post the final screenshots for that one a bit later.

[ck3D]

For those wondering about an update on the progress on map 6, it's at 2162 sectors, 15449 walls and 7828 sprites right now, I didn't get to map all that much this past week but a lot of the time I spent off I spent mapping 'mentally', so in the end whenever I'd touch the editor things would just flow out (in between random naps). For some reason I thought adding a pretty large underwater segment to a map that's already at that stage sounded like a good idea and so far it seems to work and complement the rest of the gameplay quite well, so now I'm going for that. Once I'm finished with that section (and a handful of other areas that still need some quick polishing and sector-based detail), I'll mostly be done and able to move onto the next map. Posting new screenshots is tempting already but this is a particularly hard level to showcase without spoiling the good stuff, so I'm saving that effort for the closure post on this one. As it stands now anyway, it is the third biggest map of the set in terms of file size, but I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually became the second largest if not the largest.

[ck3D]

I'm only a session or two away from finishing map 6, besides some minor sprite and sector detail it's essentially all in there now, so the layout isn't going to change much and I can show a bit more (with full 240 visibility):

01/ Trying to show the scale of the terrain you'll be able to harvest to GET SOME eventually, this is the only shot where I'm using the jetpack by the way, all the other 'aerial' shots are accessible; also, area with the piers on the left is one of the main ones still requiring a tiny bit of work, right now it's empty-ish but I'll turn it into something;
02/ Pedestrian version of the same angle, just showing a bit less of the level;
03/ and 04/ Where you makes le ka-boom;
05/ 06/ 07/ 08/ Some street scenes I felt like going all Pokémon Snap on all the while desperately trying to keep my favorite stuff out of every shot;
09/ This area is still new and bound to change a lot so you'll only play it in that form 25 years from now when the betas finally leak, in the meantime you'll have to be stuck with a polished version of it that to this day doesn't exist yet. Jokes aside, I'm curious if can anyone figure out what I did there, as that structure on the left should ring a bell to those of you who are familiar with my past user maps.
10/ Early automap, because not much of it should undergo visible change by the time I completely wrap the map up; fully zoomed-out screen can't contain it, so what I'm really looking forward to posting when the level is done is how it looks like in the editor instead; the scale it covers with that surrounding grid of ocean (you'll see eventually) looks quite funny or so I find.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•