[ToiletDuck64]

Here's a map based on Shifting Sand Land from Super Mario 64. It's a very TROR-heavy map, so basically all non-Polymer renderers will eat shit (unless/until the various TROR rendering bugs are fixed).
(Has anyone else had to basically re-teach themselves how to release a map, due to so much time passing between map releases?)

Attached thumbnail(s)

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Attached File(s)

•  sm64_ssl.zip (81.15K)
  Number of downloads: 345

[Nacho]

What timing! I been dabbling with the Polymer renderer for your stuff, still need to make some adjustments to get that renderer to run better for me since I get what you mean fully with how it works with your TROR usage.

[formerlyTodd]

Thank you, this looks challenging!. I've tried the latest build, plus the one that comes with DukePlus 2.501 and there are a couple of graphical glitches. Nothing that gets in the way of enjoyment though

I haven't been able to find the red keycard that opens the pyramid. To that end I've dnkroz'ed, dnstuff'ed, flown around and blown up everything I could find, but to no avail. I can see that the blue card is eventually obtained to end the level, but at the moment I'm stuck. Any thoughts? Should I put some higher power readers on and read the monitors (haha )?

[ToiletDuck64]

Vagan, on 26 January 2024 - 09:11 PM, said:

Thank you, this looks challenging!. I've tried the latest build, plus the one that comes with DukePlus 2.501 and there are a couple of graphical glitches. Nothing that gets in the way of enjoyment though

I haven't been able to find the red keycard that opens the pyramid. To that end I've dnkroz'ed, dnstuff'ed, flown around and blown up everything I could find, but to no avail. I can see that the blue card is eventually obtained to end the level, but at the moment I'm stuck. Any thoughts? Should I put some higher power readers on and read the monitors (haha )?

Spoiler

You don't use the red keycard to enter the pyramid. Instead, you stand on top of the center of each of the 4 red pillars around the pyramid; when you do this correctly, the top of the pyramid will explode, and there will be a hole you jump into to enter the pyramid. As you explore the pyramid, you'll find a red keycard that you can use to exit the pyramid.

[slacker1]

I also had some rendering issues but nothing that blocked game play except by the structure by the beginning. I had to jump to get past what seemed like an invisible wall to get in and out of the bottom section. I'm using eduke version r10345 built back in Aug 2023.. so I might just need to update.

Shifting Sand Lands was one of my favorite levels in Super Mario 64. It was fun to be able to play a version of it in Duke (a very accurate version at that). I really like how you managed to give a story to why everyone was there and what was going on. I also enjoyed how you were able to keep some original SM64 things like your spoiler above (won't say more).

Really fun play through with some times challenging battles but all nicely paced. The pistol as a sniper was my friend through a good chunk of the level.

It's been a while since I remember a map having me whip out a pen and paper to take notes in a level to progress (last one was a space station map but I don't remember what it was as it was a while ago now... there was some equation on one of the walls...). I enjoyed that part but I know some others might be turned off a bit by it. If you're one of those people that get to that wall of switches and want to give up, I just wanted to say that it's not bad and all the codes are easy enough to find. There's none hidden in secret areas or anything sinister like that.

All in all, I had a real good time playing it. It was a nice trip down memory lane even though its a new release. Thanks for sharing it.

[Mark]

I just played using the latest eduke and it was so badly glitched with disappearing sections and invisible blocking it was unplayable. This was in Polymer. Then I lplayed it with eduke from 2019 and it looked fine. Back in the summer of 2022 I posted in the bug thread about scissoring issues and they have not been addressed.

[ck3D]

Mark, on 29 January 2024 - 04:41 PM, said:

I just played using the latest eduke and it was so badly glitched with disappearing sections and invisible blocking it was unplayable. This was in Polymer. Then I lplayed it with eduke from 2019 and it looked fine. Back in the summer of 2022 I posted in the bug thread about scissoring issues and they have not been addressed.

That sounds similar to what ToiletDuck64 and Nacho recently experienced live, here (timestamped), triangular sector that looks different in current builds vs. a few years ago when designing the map for Polymer:

https://www.youtube...._NxZD4h&t=10213

I can't even run Polymer myself but still would be interesting even just out of curiosity to know what's changed that now causes this, would also allow Polymer mappers to develop workarounds.

Congrats on the new map. Again looks like some pretty fascinating work.

[Aleks]

I kinda forgot about this map and was surprised to have found it yesterday in my "maps to play" folder, but gave it a try. I was using Polymost and a fairly recent EDuke revision, there's been plenty of visual glitches especially on the outside area due to all the "triangular" TROR transitions, which also resulted in invisible blocking walls at times. Inside the pyramid it was slightly better - a lot of the stuff above you glitched when looking up from the ground floor, but then even some of the more tricky structures looked good. Since there were no moving stuff that could bug out with different sectioning of the TROR layers, I think it could be saved to be completely glitch-free even outside of Polymer. Now about the map itself, I enjoyed it a lot. The puzzle with finding the button combinations for different symbols was engaging and a nice way to showcase the explorational aspect of the map (and not using a pen/paper to draw these out because of being too lazy was a good memory exercise). The combat felt more balanced than in some of your other maps which would just throw a lot of monsters at the player right from the beginning, also an early shrinker was a huge advantage, especially with battlelords - on the other hands, the sentry drone swarm was super annoying and did kick my ass a bit, but only as much as I let it because of being too lazy (again) and cheap with ammo to deal with them in a more convenient way. I was very impressed with how "3D" everything looked here due to nice use of TROR, even despite the glitches, the platformer feel was very strong here.

Rating: 89/100