Danukem, on 24 December 2023 - 02:09 AM, said:
Finished it! Holy cow that was a long level, but great! I'll be honest, it was too long for me and it took me hours (I'll come back to this point). I couldn't figure out how to get to the babe in the bathroom with the partially opened door (which might be the only one I missed but I'm not sure).
Thanks for playing and your comments, really appreciate it!
Hmmm, seems the babe in the bathroom is the one that people have the most difficult time getting to. Some beta-testers did manage it and I made the way to her a bit easier. I'd post a hint, but I suppose Radar will upload a 100% video in the next few days anyway.
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The main highlight for me was the architecture of the city and the fantastic views. The other elements were fine, too, including the progression, puzzles, action, etc. I did raise my eyebrows a little at the mandatory steroids jump and I had to go back for an extra bottle after accidentally falling off the target building on the wrong side. There were lots of great little details, but the one that stands out to me right now is the use of wall-aligned sprites to show light leaking through some windows.
Thanks, I'm particularly happy about the inside of the crane (old building) and hotel lobby when it comes to the design. I've put a lot of steroids in the garage (and also in the gym, just in case) to make sure people won't get softlocked there in case they fall.
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I don't have very good locational memory so I have a tough time remembering where I saw keycard doors and other important spots. Nothing needed to complete the level was especially hidden or hard to find at all, but this didn't stop me from wandering around aimlessly for a lot of time I played. So given my limitation this level was not really to my taste -- I recognize it as a great level and had fun playing it and I enjoyed it aesthetically, but that fun and enjoyment was spread out over too long of a time.
That's completely valid point and I gotta admit I sometimes do share the same sentiment, but glad you did manage to sit through until the end! I agree it's sometimes better to have shorter levels with clearer "pause here" breaks, which also don't require as much dedication from the player regarding remembering the progression. Last night I spent like 30 minutes in ck3D's most recent level looking for the red key doors for the same reason, but yeah - in this case I wanted to make a huge and open level so that's that
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I have a couple of questions: What was the source for all of the Duke lines that aren't in the base game? I heard many that I had not heard before.
They are from DN:MP, DNF and, in some cases, DN:TTK. In the manual, I provided the link to the archive that has them. Some of the DNF lines might feel particularly exotic as they're only spoken when flirting with the ladies in "My Digs" after unlocking them in multiplayer (and I find them particularly spot on in this case for being literally the most cheesy pick-up lines possible
![:D](https://forums.duke4.net/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
).
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And a more interesting question: What is your philosophy about making changes to the game? Are there certain rules you follow about what sorts of things you change and which you leave alone? The level does include new art, sounds, and code, but it still feels 99% like normal Duke 3D.
I am glad this feels like "99% normal Duke 3D", because that's exactly the philosophy here. At first I didn't intend to add new art/code. The new art is 100% old art merged together, as tempting as it was, I didn't even add a right-angled triangle to help with shadows - they were first introduced to cull the number of sprites rendering at the same time and keep it under the limit, and then to also decrease the total number of sprites (I recon without them, the map would require about 20k sprites
![:D](https://forums.duke4.net/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
). Had to include modified user.con and defs.con to add the new sounds, so then I figured out I could also do some very slight changes in the game.con, then got the idea to tinker with overlord code a bit and add monster variants that worked well in
Der Zorn Gottes. Stuff like beachball and red flares were added very late, first one because after watching a beta video I thought it would be cool to have Duke be able to kick it around and the code is right there in Caribbean, second one to better mark the extra supplies during the final fight. Everything else, including the difficulty-based respawns and saving the babes, is done from the level editing part.
In another project, I wouldn't mind including more new art/code if it fits the purpose, of course.