[High Treason]

Skool Tour
This was a project I started several years ago and mostly forgotten about for a long time. I decided I may as well just complete it to the point it would play start to finish and move on.
Skool Tour is not a normal Duke 3D map. It does not feature aliens or guns. If you are here for that, then you probably want to pass on this one. Instead this map serves more as a museum piece and offers a slightly interactive tour of my old school, which no longer exists. This school was rather unusual as it had no building of its own, operating from the building of a different, long dead school that was marked for demolition, and was where you got sent if no other school would take you, or if you had a criminal record.


Installation
Open SKOOL.ZIP and then place the SKOOL directory into either your DUKE3D installation directory, or the USERADDONS subdirectory if you use the addon manager.
If you are using the addon manager, Skool Tour should now appear in the list and can be selected, but this has not been widely tested.
What should work reliably is, instead, using the old method of selecting the 'SKOOL' directory in the dropdown menu, when on EDuke32's startup dialog.

If loaded successfully, the Skool Tour logo should replace the ATOMIC tile on the main menu and likewise, Skool Tour should appear as the only episode.


Playing
Upon starting the game, by selecting the Skool Tour 'episode' and any difficulty, a cutscene will play and you will hear the tour guide talking. A progress bar will indicate how long he will speak for. You are then given control and can explore the building.You will see blue speakers on which you can press 'Use' to hear the tour guide speak. Red speakers do the same, but can be ignored if you so choose.

There are a few other small interactions, but they might annoy the tour guide, or someone else.

Progression is extremely linear. Once all the blue speakers are found (none are hidden) another area will open up.
You might get hit a few times and may also have to drive off idiots from the school next door.


Pictures



Download
Download Here - 31MB


Notes
You can enable a debug display by holding DEL for a moment, with the default controls. If something royally breaks, it might be worth doing this and taking a screenshot, as it will give me an idea of what happened where.

You can skip the currently playing line by pressing INS, with the default controls.

At the time of posting, this should be considered a late test release, but if nothing turns out to be massively broken, it probably won't see any future fixes. Things like minor timing problems and cosmetic issues will likely be here forever. I'm sorry, but I have other things that require attention at present, all of which are far more important to me.
If you host maps & reviews, perhaps hold off a week or two in case there is some major breakage I have to come back and fix, as I probably will attempt to correct any issue that, say, prevents progression, meaning it'd be best to wait rather than host a broken version.

This map was made entirely for myself. It probably isn't all that interesting to 99% of people, so feel free to ignore it.

The voices are quiet, so you might have to turn the music down to around 12% volume.

The range for glass and the Newton students is weirdly different depending on what build of EDuke you play this in. As such, it might not work as intended. I can do nothing about this and it doesn't really matter - there is no real penalty for failure in that part of the level.

It should take around 10-15 minutes if you only follow the mandatory path.



With all that said, hopefully someone gets something out of this, even if it's just looking in Build at the horrible 1960s architecture, or finding some small piece of inspiration in there. I don't expect it to be met with glowing reviews or to be remembered years from now. This also well and truly marks the end of my time with ports. I'm not done with Duke, but I will no longer be working with any of the Windows ports of the game. We shall see what the future holds as cogs are slowly turning away in the background.

[Loke]

Nice to see you still being around making maps, mate.

Cool experimental map too, always been a fan of those. All those audio files dotted around the map reminds me of the developer commentary mode from the Half-Life 2 games.

[Dr.Panico]

The concept of this map is very intriguing. Many people had made levels based on schools, including real schools they've been it; but this is the first time I've seen someone make such a highly detailed school map based on a real location with little snippets into the author's past.

I must say, if this is how your school looked like, it was pretty damn nice-looking for "the worst school of the country". It makes even some of the private schools down here in Brazil look like a joke.

I mean you guys had pool-tables, air hockey and even a bloody PS2. I was very lucky if a school had a tennis table to begin with.
Though I guess the worst schools I've been (all public) win in the toilet department. Maybe even in the violence... (atleast back when I studied there)

Still, I did find some moments rather relatable, particularly when you get to break a window yourself -- takes me right back to 5th Grade. I even had a situation where a kid tried to kill himself via glass shard (right when I was there, many years after finishing school, to get the headmistress's signature for a field study for my thesis. About public school violence no less. Talk about good timing...)

[High Treason]

Loke, on 06 July 2023 - 03:53 AM, said:

...

I'll never stop fully, but time is ever more limited to do this type of thing. I do intend to release something new and more traditionally Duke, eventually, but as always, no time.

Dr.Panico, on 06 July 2023 - 02:40 PM, said:

...

Yes, I remember many games having user levels of schools and know of a couple that existed for Duke.
I don't doubt there probably are far worse schools elsewhere. Even here I'm told it's all completely different from when I still had to attend anywhere. It helped that while the building was a wreck, the staff did their best to keep it in order when and where they could.

Glad you both enjoyed it anyway, even if only a little.

----------------


Fixed a few things, but they're so small that anyone who already played needn't re-play, because nothing is different as such, just marginally less broken like the punch timing (forgot to move timing out of display event before) and making the Newton yobs wake up and yell more coherently. There are a few rendering bugs I'm not sure annoy me enough to fix them yet.

[Vitaly]

Link doesn't work for me. Is any chance to reupload?

[slacker1]

Vitaly, on 18 May 2024 - 10:46 AM, said:

Link doesn't work for me. Is any chance to reupload?

MSDN has a copy of it: https://msdn.duke4.n...otskooltour.php

[Vitaly]

slacker1, on 18 May 2024 - 06:45 PM, said:

MSDN has a copy of it: https://msdn.duke4.n...otskooltour.php

Thanks! That is very usefull because google search gave nothing.