[ck3D]

Been slowly but surely progressing on gameplay on level 4 and working on more side stuff, I'm converting new sounds as I'm posting this. Only 3/4 of the progression is in and yet it already has 40+ secret places and 720+ enemies, probably the biggest map I've been working on thus far. Average test playthrough going around and testing every possible trigger as the author takes two hours. What's cool is I think it's ideally positioned in the set to deliver just the right amount of tedium before the next level, which is a lot lighter and completely different in every way I can imagine, so I don't think this one will exactly overstay its welcome but players will most likely appreciate it for what it is. I can't wait to try 'speedrunning' a more complete version because I'm sure it's traversable in just a few minutes when one knows exactly what they're doing.

I want to update the ModDB page soon too, been a while, I did clean it up and refresh the project description on there already though. Timidly suggested the possibility of a summer/fall release, most likely with no new .art, but that may come later as an update, been thinking a bit.

Also got level 3 beta tested by Aleks and it seems like all of its inherent clipping issues that were worrying me are gone in new eDukes now, really relieved there. We did catch one Fat Commander seem to pop up out of nowhere in his video which in fact was pretty funny, but over 90+ minutes of footage and extreme movement as the player he never clipped layers once ever.

[ck3D]

Took a while but level 4 is now traversable and currently being playtested by Aleks, I have quite the number of tiny little fixes to make regarding monster/sprite placement here and there but so far I'm pretty reassured by what I'm seeing a first-time player go through. Took him 45 minutes to make it to the blue key lock all the while never getting lost on the way, constantly making progress and even naturally taking what I imagined would be perceived as alternate paths, but seemed to make more sense for him. All cool beans. Level currently has 72 secret places (some of which trigger special encounters; I hope that's good player etiquette?) and Aleks' footage has inspired me to mark a couple of new ones here and there the next time I get to map.

Reason why this map in particular took a while is it's clearly the largest and most open in the whole set, so all the dimensions to consider for general balance and levels of scanning all the possibilities in terms of situation was tedious and a bit exhausting. Also the last few weeks have been a haze in terms of Real Life Thangs and I haven't been feeling like sitting behind a computer mapping all that much, but the motivation and passion are intact and we getting there. The next few levels should be more straightforward and thus a lot quicker to finalize too.

On the 'side' I've also been working further on the manual and adding more sounds, including some ambient sounds from that recent Critical Mass leak that refuse to work, I naively guess because they're not mono and so I need to convert them again.

[Radar]

ck3D, on 30 April 2022 - 12:29 AM, said:

Level currently has 72 secret places

That is probably a record.

[Aleks]

Radar, on 30 April 2022 - 09:19 AM, said:

That is probably a record.

Can't wait to see you making a 100% kills and secrets YouTube video of that one I'm 48 minutes in with my testing session yesterday and still didn't get too far, I'm gaining terrain slower than the Russian army in Ukraine. But it's a fun experience, the combat seems fair and the balance is quite impressive so far considering the scale of the map. Hopefully I will finish my test playthrough tonight.

[Merlijn]

Sounds like one of the biggest Duke maps ever! 72 secrets is kinda nuts, although I expect most of them aren't super hard to find and more a means to reward exploration.
Good luck, I've seen some of these maps in their early stage and am exited to see their final form.

Quote

Level currently has 72 secret places (some of which trigger special encounters; I hope that's good player etiquette?)

I don't see anything wrong with that, the original game has plenty of enemies hidden in secret areas (for example the Star Trek secret in E2L3).

[Aleks]

ck3D, on 30 April 2022 - 12:29 AM, said:

Level currently has 72 secret places (some of which trigger special encounters; I hope that's good player etiquette?) and Aleks' footage has inspired me to mark a couple of new ones here and there the next time I get to map.

Yeah agree with Merlijn, there's nothing wrong with that, just the only thing I'd say is to make sure the potential pros of visiting a secret outweight the cons. Another thing would be that the new encounters aren't too far from the secret itself (e.g. no respawns at the other side of the map) and second would be no dickish stuff like two new beasts in a cramped secret room. I'm certain you don't do that, but just since this topic has surfaced, I thought it would be a good idea to dig a little further into this "etiquette", as e.g. Last Reaction and Water Bases or Chimera had a lot of secrets that were more suffering than rewards similar to the examples I've mentioned (the most annoying one, in fact, was a dark small room with 2 newbeasts respawning behind you blocking your way out and usually taking more health than the atomic inside the secret would reward).

[Sanek]

If this episode won't be the greatest thing since the coming of Jesus Christ, we'll gonna riot.

[ck3D]

Aleks, on 01 May 2022 - 06:59 AM, said:

Yeah agree with Merlijn, there's nothing wrong with that, just the only thing I'd say is to make sure the potential pros of visiting a secret outweight the cons. Another thing would be that the new encounters aren't too far from the secret itself (e.g. no respawns at the other side of the map) and second would be no dickish stuff like two new beasts in a cramped secret room. I'm certain you don't do that, but just since this topic has surfaced, I thought it would be a good idea to dig a little further into this "etiquette", as e.g. Last Reaction and Water Bases or Chimera had a lot of secrets that were more suffering than rewards similar to the examples I've mentioned (the most annoying one, in fact, was a dark small room with 2 newbeasts respawning behind you blocking your way out and usually taking more health than the atomic inside the secret would reward).

Yeah no I agree, that's just bad design whether intentional or not, secrets are supposed to equal reward (that's why I try and pair them up with fancy sights or tactical advantage so much), not to be a negative, that sounds like either laziness from the author who gave up halfway through on their project or an experimental form of audiovisual cruelty, such an experience is literally counter-intuitive. I was mostly wondering from a completionist's perspective but what people have been saying is reassuring, it honestly eluded me to which extent the base game had its fair share of 'secret' respawns. But I should have figured if someone is going to 100% the level (good luck on this one) then they would be going for all secrets anyway.

@ Sanek I can at the very least promise that it may be the best thing since the last time you stubbed your pinky toe walking into a table in pitch darkness and sober. I'm not trying to make the best episode ever, just mine, but also desire it to be somewhat accessible and hope others will appreciate it. It's in no way going to be uncriticizable; for instance just the existence of a two-hour map in there I already know will be the breaking point for some players just per se and regardless of how diverse and progressive I've tried making it feel, yet still it's an intended part of my picture and I wouldn't change a thing.

[Aleks]

So I've just finished testing level 4 of Blast Radius...


Before you say anything - I apparently skipped a whole long part of the map with 2 keycards

[ck3D]

Haha, and I just realized I haven't seriously set the par and '3DRealms' times for that map yet, so right now looks especially funny. I suspect at least the actual '3DRealms' time might not turn out to be too far off that one, actually. Wide range of options in terms of gameplay approach.

[Merlijn]

Holy shit those stats Over 1000 enemies in a map is also pretty rare I think?

[Aleks]

Merlijn, on 03 May 2022 - 07:00 AM, said:

Holy shit those stats Over 1000 enemies in a map is also pretty rare I think?

Well, if you think that was a lot of enemies, then check this one out!

It's the same map, I decided to backtrack a bit and explore an entire part which I have skipped along with 2 keycards, which proved to be quite tricky. BTW, although there's some slimers and organtics which are both low-tier enemies, I'd assume that about 400-500 enemies here easily would be commanders or minibosses.

Probably some of the remaining 26 secrets would trigger a bunch of additional encounters too.

[slacker1]

Holy crap! Is that 4 1/2 hours on a single level!? That's crazy. I don't even think the old Billy Boy maps took me that long. This is awesome. I can't wait to give this mod a try.

[ck3D]

slacker1, on 18 May 2022 - 10:11 PM, said:

Holy crap! Is that 4 1/2 hours on a single level!? That's crazy. I don't even think the old Billy Boy maps took me that long. This is awesome. I can't wait to give this mod a try.

Billy Boy was a huge inspiration the whole time I've been working on this (not the only one either, but his approach to scale definitely impacted me big time a few years back after I revisited his work). This particular level I reckon you could choose to spend four hours in without running of possible things to do and places to explore, but also to finish in four minutes knowing where the exit is and coming in well equipped.

Both my professional and personal life have been taking off a bit since my last update in here and I've been too focused on other things to get any significant progress on this, but stalling right now actually is good for quality purposes because I need to digest the sum of little issues Aleks has been reporting here and there in the first third of the map set, and would rather take my time to think things through rather than rush things at random with barely a direction. Plus summer time has come early and the last thing I want to be doing right now is sit down at a screen when it's not for work.

But I'm still fully on this whenever the flow is right again. It's only smaller size maps for the most part that really need gameplay still at this point, so should be reasonably quick to implement (a few weeks should suffice), and then I also want to slightly fix some design elements in a couple of the levels but we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Realistically may not come out this summer given the slowdown, but fall is practically certain at this point.

[ck3D]

The other day I had some down time and thus started populating map 5 (all the way to the first key so far) and coded in two 'new' monster variants, so yeah. Not on a hiatus, just s l o w but still gradually getting there.

[ck3D]

Level 5 is complete and has been sent to Aleks for beta testing. Takes me 45 mins on average to do everything, pretty happy about this one too, probably one of my favorite maps I've made.

[ck3D]

Got a lot done today, added an intro sequence, missing sounds and big chunk of gameplay to level 6 (map is a bit smaller than I remembered and with most of the encounters set up by design, so should be quick to populate); also coded in one new monster (and fixed some stuff here and there in .con), and added to the manual.

Speedran level 5 a couple of times to try and set the par and '3DRealms' times, the first time around I got a 12:49 then the second time a 12:11, I'm curious if it's possible to go sub 10. This one is particularly fun to try and rush through like that because there's no way you're not dead meat in twenty seconds if you even try and ignore absolutely all the enemies, so you actually have to think routing (e.g.. to the weapons) and strats.

I'm withholding from posting any more screenshots till it's step 2 time in PR, but that's soon.

[ck3D]

Level 5 beta test report by Aleks is in and the map is basically clean, I'm stoked. Level 6 gameplay is pretty much in too, should only take a session or two to finalize and so that one too I'll probably be sending to Aleks by this weekend. I'm really finding holes in my schedule to map these days, but how despite that it's only been taking a few days to prepare an individual map lately is reassuring and making me realize I may actually get this done and out sometime sooner than later. Yesterday I did manage to get a full day of Mapster in, so generally busy but very much in the zone again.

Level 6 also plays well so far (to me) with all my plans and designs for the encounters successfully working out, and even better visuals and action than originally expected. So recently it's only been good surprises!

Also got a 10:49 in level 5, really trying to beat sub 10. (edit - now a 7:17!)

[Aleks]

The 5th level is significantly different than the previous ones I've played so far, more linear/straightforward and probably the most Blum of the levels so far. Due to that it also had the best balancing and most intuitive progression I guess. Still took me about 50 minutes.

[ck3D]

Level 6 is complete and has been sent to Aleks for beta testing over the weekend. I'm kind of tempted to keep going with the flow and jump into level 7 right away now but still need to manage all my side work. Either way that's about an extra hour of gameplay, probably one hour and a half to two hours to a first timer. Had a fun little gameplay gimmick for this one and I think it's working out. Basically the first half of the episode is traversable now.

[ck3D]

- Coded in two new monster variants;
- Coded in two new projectiles (my first time ever doing this, dead easy thanks to eDuke32), very happy I can do this now, unlocks so many possibilities for more monster variants;
- Cleaned up, fixed leftover bugs, added sounds and then 15 minutes of gameplay in and to level 7 (that's about one quarter or fifth of it);
- Cleaned up a bunch of inoffensive but ugly .con warning messages at launch that had been evading me for a bit;
- Worked on the soundtrack and manual.

So much for sloth mode I guess. Cool!

[Aleks]

Tested the 6th level and recorded my gameplay for ck3D last night, gotta say I've had a blast playing it! Design-wise it's probably my favourite map from Blast Radius so far, once again feeling quite adventurous and efficiently connecting two different themes in a realistic and believable way. Combat was a bit on the difficult side, the map was very open, and some places still require balancing/polishing, but the level also had some of the coolest/most memorable battles so far. I also hope ck3D will apply one of my suggestions regarding the progression, which should make it even more interesting. Also, the "new" Duke quotes borrowed from other games are particularly fitting in this one, almost like they were tailored especially for some of the situations Duke encounters here.

[ck3D]

I appreciate that, also I have no idea how well aware you are that I do pick up on every bit of criticism or point you observe but literally none of them have been falling on deaf ears in case you're wondering, I'm keeping track of it all and while some core gameplay ideas firmly dictated the core design of it all that I can only tweak so much now, every objection you can make helps me identify the existing issues and refine the whole idea, even when in the end I'm not completely switching visions. What's very cool is so far most every map has generally been clean and so once this gameplay pass is over, now with everything set up all problems thus far will be really quick and easy to fix. I will also be involving The Watchtower at that stage of the testing.

Level 7 is almost ready for beta testing too, just need to add monsters to one specific section and then a few respawns and sounds, probably will do that tonight. Actually not so much work left to do on the mapping front anymore right now because a lot of the later maps in the pack already are in part populated with (some) monsters and gameplay and are technically traversable with all effects in place, just empty in bits. It's still a bit too early to claim being sure and I'm going to have a relatively busy next few weeks, but it's looking like my original summer 2022 prediction for a release wasn't far off at all, although it might (or might not) be late summer.

[ck3D]

- Level 7 is complete and was sent to Aleks for beta testing, should be worth around an extra hour of gameplay;

- Coded in a new miniboss variant;

- Worked on the manual (and fell asleep mid paragraph).

I'm really happy with how I managed to 'salvage' level 7, being one of the first maps I made for this I was fearing it would look a bit dated and a tad off in the midst of the pack but now after some simple cosmetic changes and a few fixes here and there it's earned its own distinct identity and feels completely satisfying again (which I didn't really expect it could). Looking forward to moving ahead, maybe catch a short breather first and focus on life stuff for a few days.

[ck3D]

ck3D, on 15 June 2022 - 07:29 PM, said:

Looking forward to moving ahead, maybe catch a short breather first and focus on life stuff for a few days.

Fake news, been on this non stop this since the last post (and even started a new speed map last night during mappening on Discord),

- fixed 50+ ambient sounds I had lazily tried importing a while back and weren't working, a handful of them I realized still require some editing because they only loop so properly but in general those are going to add a lot of atmosphere to all the maps, so I'm stoked; been working on the sound aspect in general, importing and experimenting with all kinds of stuff;

- heavily beta tested level 6 before Aleks could even do it, so I'm going to send him an updated version to review instead, but at this point I think that one is essentially in its final state already, takes me about 70 minutes following the intended path, 400 monsters;

- went in on level 7, heavily edited it and implemented roughly 20 minutes of gameplay already, that one always was completely traversable anyway so it's really all about adding monsters and items, this one requires special care though since I'm reworking the design of entire sections as I go in order to retro fit some lore, but that's quick, I just need the energy and a PC that doesn't overheat every 30 minutes in the middle of this 40°c heat wave;

- cleaned up/added a shit ton of code (to my humble standards, I'm still learning but at least I'm learning);

- worked on the manual and visual assets, which made me count and realize we already are at over 30 monster variants.

Also realized a few base game bugs/quirks I wasn't aware of when testing and working on code regarding frozen boss behavior - mini Battlelords and Cycloids are programmed to thaw back to pal 21 regardless of their palette value of origin after they've been frozen, which I guess explains the obsession with pal 21 on mini Battlelords in the base game (but still doesn't really explain why not pal 3 which is indiscernible from default pal, while 21 has a few subtle differences). On the other hand, the Overlord (funnily enough technically 'boss 3' remember) is literally programmed to just never thaw out of frozen state - it will just stay there forever stuck until hit by something - now I wonder if intentional because reptilian and cold-blooded, programmer laziness but we'll call it optimization or something. Got all of them babies fixed up now, but I was really confused about the Overlord base situation, it's funny. Doesn't that one commercial screenshot of pre-1.3d feature that enemy being fought with the freezethrower as well? Unless my memory sucks that bad, then coincidence?

I still want to hold back on screenshots for a little bit because plans but here's the Cycoid Emperor to munch on, it was drawn to Earth on a quest to study and hopefully better understand the intriguingly devastating power of Suicidal Tendencies live concerts, consequently dropped the L from its name and attained enlightenment so hard he's unlocked explosive qi energy (in addition to shooting gamma rays).

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[Aleks]

ck3D, on 19 June 2022 - 01:54 AM, said:

- heavily beta tested level 6 before Aleks could even do it, so I'm going to send him an updated version to review instead, but at this point I think that one is essentially in its final state already, takes me about 70 minutes following the intended path, 400 monsters;

- went in on level 7, heavily edited it and implemented roughly 20 minutes of gameplay already, that one always was completely traversable anyway so it's really all about adding monsters and items, this one requires special care though since I'm reworking the design of entire sections as I go in order to retro fit some lore, but that's quick, I just need the energy and a PC that doesn't overheat every 30 minutes in the middle of this 40°c heat wave;

You're working so fast you got it a bit mixed up here, but I already received level 7 and now you're working on level 8

[ck3D]

Ah yeah, right, thanks!

[ck3D]

This month has been slow in terms of progress, first due to those speed maps I released and then I've generally been busy with life stuff or enjoying other things, but there's been some, mostly progress on level 8. Since I've redesigned parts, it's turned from something I was seriously considering scrapping to an experience I actually like now, so I'm taking my time and not rushing ironing the flaws out, or overseeing the possibilities in terms of progression and encounters (the level is full of pretty cool set-ups and at this point the panel of monsters to pick from is pretty enormous, so I'm trying to consider the best options everywhere). After that one is out of the way, progress on the last final maps should be a lot faster. I won't even be able to access my PC for most of next month so we're only casually cruising towards that point but still, getting there (only about one keycard section worth of gameplay left to add).

[Dynamo128]

I was out of town for about a month as well, it's natural for things to slow down somewhat during the summer, looking forward to when the pace will pick up again

[ck3D]

Thanks for the moral support, the good news is it actually kind of is already, for the past couple of days I've been back and gently adding more gameplay to level 8, in small but hopefully smart bits. My motivation to wrap all of this up by the end of the year is still intact and strong. However quite frankly, I'm going through some particularly tough times work-wise these days and can't afford the leisure to fuck around in Mapster much, but the more I'm away from the editor the more my vision for the project (from the overall lore to each specific monster encounter) refines itself, and so whenever I get to fire it up I get stuff done. I have my level for Project A.W.O.L. that I need to finish up over the next few days too, so I'll be gravitating around .map files anyway... Would be cool if the aforementioned level 8 were ready for beta testing by the weekend. I'm leaving on another work trip in September again, but that shouldn't jeopardize much if anything at all. We're on that kind of pace right now. Thanks for tuning in!