[ck3D]

Hi, here's another map for Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition called Tit-E-Bar, made over the past four days. It's a direct continuation to Koodbool, but way closer to the original Duke 3D base level format with a layout-centric theme, falling under the Old Limits and with a non-Euclidian progression inspired by Lunatic Fringe. A much shorter ride too - should take about 15 to 20 minutes on a first playthrough (unless you find the secret speedrunner clip to the exit and complete it in mere seconds). Made with Mapster32/classic but should be compatible with OG DOS Duke 3D Atomic (?) and introduces a new enemy (no new code or assets).

SP/DM/Coop/difficulty settings supported.

Hope you enjoy! Cheers.

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Attached File(s)

•  titebar.rar (80.67K)
  Number of downloads: 195

[Ninety-Six]

You seem to have a knack for levels that have alternate versions of themselves embedded within. This, Hibernal Solstice, and even Happy Hangover to an extent.


Not that I'm complaining. I love this kind of thing.

[DNSkill]

Great map! A bit compact too, so it was a bit quicker to get through than the previous speed maps for sure. I really like the helicopter design, it is super cool! I missed 1 secret, which I assume had something to do with the helicopter switches, but maybe not. I think this one would definitely play well in Dukematch, and can bet it would be quite intense. Also, I really enjoy the use of such vibrant colors in these past several maps, it is a nice aesthetic. All in all a great continuation of your previous map! I hope to see more soon.

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 07 January 2023 - 10:02 AM, said:

You seem to have a knack for levels that have alternate versions of themselves embedded within. This, Hibernal Solstice, and even Happy Hangover to an extent.


Not that I'm complaining. I love this kind of thing.

Oh, this one doesn't have that per se but actually was so close. The Lunatic Fringe inspiration here doesn't consist in the level literally repeating itself but is taken to the diagonal plane, the building you explore is essentially split in the middle and depending on which side you venture into, you're treated with two completely different top and bottom floors that physically occupy the same space and are connected to their opposite counterpart. West side of the building leads to the bathroom as bottom floor and bar as top floor, east side to the dance floor as bottom floor and brothel as top floor; bathroom is connected to the dance floor, and the bar is connected to the brothel (and then there's a central elevator). The whole set-up sandwiches the entrance lobby which itself overlaps the outside building and rooftop.

But you have no idea how spot on you are with that comment still because I definitely wanted level pattern repetition otherwise and had plans for that until the very last minute. For a bit, Duke was supposed to go back outside after traversing a portal and get to explore an alternate/otherworldly version of the street area, and then instead of that I started making plans about either a shrunk or Godzilla type of sequence in a rescaled version of the map (I had even made it, too; you'd enter it through a vent that would have turned into a miniature version of the first tunnel). And then I started having other ideas about seeing the map from a different perspective out of different windows, getting access to the distant skyline, exploiting mirrors and whatnot but eventually realized that would be too ambitious for a level of the size this was meant to be. I wanted something that would feel similar to playing, say a lost Atomic Edition kind of map and so refrained from going what I'm pretty sure would have been overboard. I'm definitely sitting on a lot of new ideas now, though.

@DNSKILL5 thanks for playing, I'm happy you liked it! Yeah compact definitely is the term, minus the minimalistic outdoor area you only explore so much this whole map is indoors. I wanted focus on decent flow from room to room (progression-wise the map sort of takes you by the hand) so that the whole romp would feel like blitzing through this building with DNA-shaped structure and constantly uncovering new grounds but also immediately going ahead. It's kind of like a Build Wipeout/F-Zero track where you get to kill shit, are bombarded with non-stop stimuli and then win by getting to touch a nipple.

Secret that you missed wasn't helicopter-related no, the switches only serve the purpose of making the helicopter go away and its attacks cease, otherwise the streets are a bit of a pain to go through with all the expander ray spam. I'm glad you liked its design, I agree I think it's pretty cute. Your secret is (spoiler) on that last roof after the red elevator and just before the exit, there's one concealed window into a room with the RPG and another jump back down into the building (you land where the grey access card panel is). You also missed the very last Build porn sequence in that playthrough by the way, since you were preoccupied with that one Commander it happened behind your back. So you might want to check that out too!

All the stretched lights etc. actually are great composition tools in addition to looking fancy, I use them to guide the player around a lot (everything always is a vertical, horizontal or diagonal), this map probably is one where that's especially prominent with all the lit up doorways and bright lines in the dark. Also from your video I realized I forgot a Cycler somewhere on a shelf in the bar, oops! Cheers!

[stillTodd]

Not a lot to add that hasn't been said already, but the gameplay was a lot of fun!

I'm still looking for the secret speedrunner clip. Never would have found the helicopter puzzle until it was mentioned earlier. Awesome stuff.

[ck3D]

Vagan, on 07 January 2023 - 06:58 PM, said:

Not a lot to add that hasn't been said already, but the gameplay was a lot of fun!

I'm still looking for the secret speedrunner clip. Never would have found the helicopter puzzle until it was mentioned earlier. Awesome stuff.

Thanks a lot, happy you enjoyed it!

Speedrunner clip - DNSKILL actually almost got it by accident when they were just casually hugging one particular wall outside. Well it would have taken more than just hugging said wall to work, but really only so much (it's stupidly reproducible, too). 'Crouch jumping' against the right spot somewhere will instantly zip you up the roof of the building, which is where the exit is. There's essentially only one spot where you can do that and so I'm sure you'll find it. Stoked you liked the chopper!

[Merlijn]

Wow, another nice map! Not much to add, I also loved the helicopter and the fact that you can actually disable it. That was a nice idea.
I had to save my game inside the building, because sometimes I suddenly got warped to another floor and I wanted to play the way it was intended (at least for the first time).
The bar had lots of nice visual touches (loved the roomba!) and also at least 1 room that probably should come with an epilepsy warning.

Gameplay was solid again, with a similar build-up in weaponry (not giving the shotgun and the chaingun to the player straight away does make the first half more interesting).
Also liked that you had to be careful inside the bar, because there's a lot of babes around and accidentally killing any of them will always trigger extra respawns.

The ending was nice as well,

Spoiler

the building being launched into space was hilarious

If you plan on making this an episode, are you going to allow continuous play? Because keeping your weapons from the previous map would remove a lot of challenge and strategy.

[ck3D]

Merlijn, on 08 January 2023 - 03:14 AM, said:

Wow, another nice map! Not much to add, I also loved the helicopter and the fact that you can actually disable it. That was a nice idea.
I had to save my game inside the building, because sometimes I suddenly got warped to another floor and I wanted to play the way it was intended (at least for the first time).
The bar had lots of nice visual touches (loved the roomba!) and also at least 1 room that probably should come with an epilepsy warning.

Gameplay was solid again, with a similar build-up in weaponry (not giving the shotgun and the chaingun to the player straight away does make the first half more interesting).
Also liked that you had to be careful inside the bar, because there's a lot of babes around and accidentally killing any of them will always trigger extra respawns.

The ending was nice as well,

Spoiler

the building being launched into space was hilarious

If you plan on making this an episode, are you going to allow continuous play? Because keeping your weapons from the previous map would remove a lot of challenge and strategy.

Thanks for playing and the feedback Merlijn, cool to hear you too appreciated what also are my favorite moments and aspects. Yeah, it's Roomba night at the bar, you know. For a bit that Roomba actually used to kill the player (subway style) which was hilarious and felt Billy Boyish, but then I figured moving turret amidst the babes would be a more interesting 'threat' and mini-game over all. And yes every babe getting caught in the crossfire or explosions will spawn two Pigcops, this especially is costly in some of the most enclosed spaces which is where they are most numerous. The Pigcops will usually spawn at different room entrances too, and some will even wait outside and around the corner. That's a mechanic I rediscovered a while back working on Red Light Rumble - great to spice up otherwise mundane environments and situations, forcing the player to think and act quick or else pay the price. The last Commander spawning in the lobby can be especially mean with its rockets from across the room whilst hidden in the shadows, while your attention either is focused on the bunch of Pigcops, the Roomba or the otherwise very garish and obscenely colorful room (map uses color a lot in general but this one felt like pulling on the troll's sleeve I gotta admit).

Epilepsy warnings are no joke, honest, by now I assume everyone who plays Duke 3D by default expects flashing lights, but it's tempting to specify whenever a specific map does go in a bit more hardcore than usual. Blast Radius will probably feature one, one of the final boss sequences in particular (as it is now at least) is straight up kaleidoscopic.

If this turns into an episode my plan is to make absolutely zero plan, that's something I've learned (or had confirmed) working on Blast Radius, the more rigidly one plans ahead or settles for a particular direction, the more they pigeonhole themselves out of creative choices and it's a lot that risks dying just right there if no one is careful. By choosing one form to embrace, you also disqualify yourself from all other possibilities of form and can end up on some boring rails, so that really is a pretty responsible choice to make. So whatever it is that turns or never turns into Dada Nukem eventually, I want to think absolutely nothing about but the present best choices that come to me in the moment. If that means saying fuck it to continuous play and removing the player's weapons upon map start, then I'd probably do that - wouldn't be the first project to play such a card anyway (e.g.. Duke Hard).

[stillTodd]

I still can't upvote, so saying +1 here to the above

Being careful to not kill babes (or trying to steer enemies away from killing them) was also one of my fave gameplay mechanics.

[ck3D]

MSDN review just went up, thank you Mikko! https://msdn.duke4.net/hottitebar.php (now watch that URL skyrocket in Google hits)

[ck3D]

Anyone has any idea what might cause the switches on the chopper to break/being carried around by a subway sector with funky offsets as opposed to staying in place, like can be observed in this video at 2:32? Playthrough has more issues with things not rendering properly I know is on the renderer choice, but this one gets me. Also wonder if the video finishes abruptly because for some reason the floor-aligned switch didn't work (I think Merlijn may have mentioned something like that to me before back when testing Poison Heart which used to have one, but I can't remember specifics):



(12:10 for the funny building take off, which at least did work here albeit with minor glitches)

[Ninety-Six]

I don't know if it's the same thing but I've seen decals get carried away by other moving sectors like water currents and conveyor belts

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 05 March 2023 - 07:11 AM, said:

I don't know if it's the same thing but I've seen decals get carried away by other moving sectors like water currents and conveyor belts

Yeah that can happen, rotating sectors too will almost always end up offsetting all sprites they carry (even when one respects sprite placement to the pixel, in the base code that usually means it'll take longer but still happen, so you don't want that in say an hour plus long map), but subway sectors work differently as in they're supposed to keep owning the sprites within and not designed to push them out of bounds, so a more adequate comparison maybe would be with e.g.. elevators where the sector is basically a big container and doesn't just let spites buffer through. I know EDuke32 added fixes to elevator-mounted sprite behavior eons ago (to reduce their shaking upon activation of the elevator most notably), this looks a bit similar to that just pre-fixes, seeing such behavior in DOS Build wouldn't surprise me but in any modern port is a bit funny/weird. Might be due to how thin the parent subway sector is in my case? No idea. The faster the subway is going the more it should be bound to cause comparable issues but in this case it's actually pretty slow. More and more of the tricks and direction I've been experimenting with as of late seem to break more and more easily depending on how one is willing to run the game; renderer stuff I can understand getting in the way of parallaxed sky abuse but I'm not certain I should be expecting issues with things as basic as switches on subway trains seeing how that's a base game effect. Or I guess maybe I should!

I can't run anything but classic to check but perhaps that's a Polymer discrepancy, I don't know. This player in particular has tons of shit breaking on their playthrough, again all the 'negative' sky tricks I guess make sense (should they, though?) but here they have that, the chopper breaking, texture alignment breaking and even all mirrors the second they disable autoaim, plus, apparently, the floor-aligned switch; looks almost as though they were playing a badly converted map that originally would have been built around a completely different base game.