Hey Slacker1, thank you very much for joining and keeping the topic alive. It seems this month was quite inactive and I apologize for my absence, I had a very busy month as well. But I will still try to contribute to the topic in the last couple days remaining. I have never played the TC before and I decided earlier this week to go through Merc quickly. Finished the TC in just two days (one episode per day). As usual, I played Duke3D v1.5 on CGS difficulty (all kills and secrets, continuous with saves, keyboard only controls) in DOSBox 0.74-3.
Before I begin, let's clarify some things about the TC:
1) It appears that various mappers have contributed to the project, as you can see from the mappers' signatures when viewing the maps in Mapster.
2) Besides the Apartment levels and the Final Boss level, Suburban Slaughter is the only map without difficulty settings implemented, which means Piece of Cake, Let's Rock and Come Get Some are identical in terms of gameplay (same enemy count, same damage taken), while Damn I'm Good means respawning enemies. However, most other levels implement difficulty settings properly, even going as far as adding extra enemies and items only available for Damn I'm Good. Though I recommend playing on CGS for an overall fun experience.
3) Some secrets seem to be unreachable in Suburban Slaughter, as you will see shortly why.
4) Strippers add to kills when killed but they don't count as actual enemies from what I can tell. I'm pretty sure in original game it didn't matter if you killed strippers or not but usually they spawned extra monsters, this seems to be absent here because I did not notice a single spawned enemy upon killing the ladies.
5) Trash bags have a small chance to spawn a Large Medkit when destroyed.
6) Assault Trooper replacement possibly uses LameDuke sprites and uses the Corvus (Main Character) sounds from the video game Heretic. The constant "ha-ha" is the sound where player picks up a weapon and the death sound is...well, the player's death sound in that game (same death sound was later used as Cleric class in Hexen). Yes, the sounds get stale after a while. And now he fires a low damaging hitscan attack, though never drops ammo when killed (can still occasionally play dead though).
7) Pig Cop replacement (Rocket Guy) also uses LameDuke sprites but sounds seem to be borrowed from the Redneck Rampage's shotgun guy (at least when he notices you). As you can tell from the name, he launches rockets (same damage as a Commander's rocket) and although he no longer drops used shotgun, he still rarely drops used armor that can give 50 or 75 points, which is very helpful when you are running short on armor.
8) Enforcer replacement (Black Suit Guy) probably uses sprites from Tekwar but I'm not fully sure about that. Their attacks are a bit more damaging but they no longer drop weapon/ammo when killed.
9) Some weapons are changed/replaced (weapons 2, 4, 7 and 10).
10) Pistol is now replaced by MP5K, which you often saw in many other Duke mods/TCs (was also released separately as a mod), don't know if it does extra damage but it seems like the ammo is scarcer due to lack of ammo dropped by enemies, so use it wisely, mostly for sniping enemies from far away.
11) Chaingun is now Minigun, seems to be the result of mixing the Duke Chaingun with Doom Chaingun, plus the ammo pickup gives 75 and max ammo capacity is increased to 300.
12) Shrinker/Expander is now Electricity/Radiation Gun. As usual, press 7 twice to toggle between the fire modes. I believe sprites are from Tekwar with Duke hands added to them. The Radiation Gun seems to also have much higher ammo capacity (100 instead of 50).
13) Freezethrower is now Flamethrower. New sprite looks kinda ugly but it does damn good damage and kills enemies quickly. Max ammo capacity is also increased to 150.
14) There is a pre-installed version of Merc 2 that I should have linked in the first post:
https://www.gamers.o.../merc2/m2md.zip
Here's the review of Merc 1 Episode 1!
FATAL REALITY
Your Apartment
First map begins in a nice small apartment. The objective here is to insert the Blue Disk, look at the monitor to see the mission description (message is quite unreadable at default resolution of 320x200), collect a bunch of goodies and exit the apartment.
There is one secret you can find: Near the TV, look on the left speaker and press a switch to open a nearby compartment. Press on the shelf to reveal Minigun + ammo.
Additionally, exploring the apartment gives you more weapons, armor and jetpack. So be sure to fully explore before exiting. A nice little intro map.
Suburban Slaughter
A city map that is a little bit complex, so be sure to explore.
One thing I appreciate at these maps is that the authors made sure the player won't get softlocked, so there are Jetpacks added at various points you drop down. You should already have a Jetpack collected from the first level but the extra Jetpacks are appreciated when going to explore further.
Although difficulty settings aren't implemented in this map, the difficulty is fine here, not too hard and not too easy either. Health pickups are a bit scarce (I only spotted like three large medkits) and I haven't seen a single armor pickup but with armor from previous level, it's no problem and once you find the bathroom, you can use the toilets to recover health when needed. Most of the time I spent with around 75 health/armor, so it wasn't that big of an issue but I still occasionally retreated to the bathroom when I couldn't find a medkit to restore health.
Sadly, I died once when I fell down the elevator shaft and randomly got squished due a stupid glitch. But wait, that's not the only annoying thing that happened. There are also two unreachable secrets in this map as well, as you will see below.
Secrets:
1) On the streets, fly with the Jetpack inside one of the windows to collect Electricity/Radiation Gun, 3x Radiation Ammo and Atomic Health.
2) On the subway, look for a hidden switch on a Cola Machine. Unfortunately, kicking/pressing the switch does nothing. It was supposed to reveal a nearby compartment but the door lacks the "Ceiling Door" tag, therefore the window doesn't open and secret is impossible to get without noclip. Secret would have contained: Portable Medkit, Armor, Shotgun and RPG.
3) At the end of the level, inside the Duke's Apartment, there is the same secret as the previous level but this time it contains nothing. Unfortunately, entering the room causes the level to end, so this empty secret is impossible to reach by any means.
Therefore, the maximum amount of secrets you can get in this map is 1/3. At least all 81 kills are possible to get.
Overall, this map was average but also quite disappointing due to not being able to access two secrets. I have a hard time to believe this wasn't noticed during testing. I can overlook "copy-pasting" the apartment and forgetting to remove the secret tag but why not make sure that subway secret also works properly? Oh and I think the apartment should have been enterable anyway.
As a fun fact, after using the final teleporter (point of no return), you can choose to exit the map by entering the apartment or by exiting the building. Both will lead you to the next level.
Compound of Death
This map definitely feels like Duke Zone at times and quite average, nothing special but also has some painful moments, like the maze filled with lava where even tapping the jump button won't help much, since you are walking on liquid surfaces which still drains your boots/health occasionally but nonetheless, it is essential to your survival, otherwise the lava will drain your boots/health quickly if you are walking on it.
On the bright side, you can find a few hidden goodies inside the lava, including ammo, armor, boots, health, etc. And using the Jetpack can also help to navigate the area but I recommend conserving the fuel just in case. Be sure to also find two secret areas inside the lava maze, though one of them just teleports you to the mapper's signature (no reward and quite pointless secret, it only helps you get 100% completion).
There is a point of no return when you take down an elevator near beginning, as there is an invisible wall which prevents backtracking...at least until the last parts of the map, so once you find the crack, you can return to the starting area and go back and collect armor and other stuff, as you may have wondered why you are given THREE armor pickups early on the map that you will not need right away.
Either way I appreciate you get the option to backtrack, especially with the help of Jetpack which can help you return to earlier areas after you dropped down the conveyor belt room. I'm also not sure what's with the progression, it ends with a Nuke Button and then you're suddenly inside the Apartment. As Slacker1 said, I suspect it's because there are multiple level designers involved. And looking up in Mapster, it seems to confirm that due to different signatures in some levels, while others have no signature at all.
Secrets:
1) At the beginning, in the large area with cacti, fly with the Jetpack on that opening and on your way down, you will find Atomic Health, Armor, Steroids, 3x Small Medkit and a bunch of enemies. The secret can also be reached later in the map by blowing up a crack and lets you backtrack to the beginning.
2) At the beginning, go behind the building to find a RPG sitting on a pedestal.
3) Inside the lava maze, there is a path that eventually leads to a room filled with barrels, Atomic Health, as well as Electricity Gun and 5x Radiation Gun Ammo.
4) Inside the lava maze, there is an unmarked wall you can open. It contains a teleporter that leads you to a small empty F-shaped room. There is no reward upon finding this secret.
5) Towards the end of the level, you will reach a large area filled with water and a moving boat. Go to the corner and fly with the Jetpack to find an Atomic Health.
In the end, the level was meh. Not as bad as I thought but still nothing groundbreaking.
Your Apartment
Back to your apartment. Restock on supplies and move on to the next mission.
The secret is same as before but this time it contains a couple more goodies: Minigun with ammo (same as before) and Electricity Gun with ammo.
Drug Bust
Level filename is DRUGRAID.MAP, so the map may have been meant to be called Drug Raid at some point during the development.
Although the map works fine in plain Duke3D v1.5 in DOSBox 0.74-3, the weird thing is that loading the map in Mapster32 seems to crash the program. I have absolutely no idea WHY this even happens but the map seems to be corrupted and Mapster re-saves it as DRUGRAID_crash.map, so when I look up this modified map, it seems like the walls are dark and stuff randomly re-arranged in the map, it was difficult to look up the last two secrets (I only found one by myself, which was the one in the bathroom). And even then, Mapster can still crash when looking at the re-saved map.
Anyway, the level is indeed inspired by The Abyss and it's not too difficult to make your way to the level, with two small exceptions. I had more trouble looking for that last enemy, could have sworn I had found the two missing enemies and when I saved in front of exit, I saw one enemy missing again, probably that damn haha guy played dead again and I didn't notice. Ended up backtracking and finally found him after 10 minutes or so of searching.
There are two points that can get you easily stuck and I found the solutions mentioned in the Addon Compilation's readme_hints.txt file (only in the Pre-Release 4.00 version of the compilation).
1) The first point is that there is a hint that tells you to blow up some TREES in order to access the Blue Disk. Slacker1 mentioned trying to blow up the motorcycle but that's not the intended solution and it's too bad he had to NOCLIP through the map, as it wasn't bugged at all. Seriously, you just blow up the trees with Pipebombs or Devastator or whatever and collect the blue key, no cheating required.
2) The second point is that later in the map, there is a SEVEN SWITCH puzzle! I got stuck here trying to solve the puzzle and looked up that hint file, the correct solution is to press four switches (2, 3, 6 and 7), this will unlock reactor room, which eventually leads to the exit.
Secrets:
1) At the beginning, after making through the sewers, use the jetpack and fly on the right side. You will arrive in a small cavern containing a few enemies, as well as Atomic Health and Shotgun. Now go through a fake wall and continue walking until you find a room filled with many goodies, including another Jetpack and weapons/ammo.
2) In front of the IMF Drug Facility, go to the corner in your right and go through a fake wall to find a Jetpack and 2x boxes of Pipebombs.
3) Inside the bathroom, look for a really tiny switch. Press/Shoot it to open a nearby compartment containing Portable Medkit and a box of Pipebombs.
Oh and at the end, Duke gets captured. If playing continuously, it is absolutely recommended to finish with 200 health, since next level starts you weaponless and it is quite tough to survive no matter what. Health is the only thing that transfers in this case, so you don't need to be resourceful with everything else because you end up losing everything anyway.
Overall, the level was average towards okay.
The Rock
Duke has to escape from prison and make his way to the end of the first episode. This won't be an easy task, since he starts weaponless.
There is a slight confusing progression (again I had to look up that hints file to see how to find the Blue Disk, which you had to Jetpack inside a vent) but also the level has significant lack of health/armor.
Even if I started the level with 200 health, I was down to 70 something by the time I got to the jail parts and while I did manage to get one lucky 75 armor drop, I still suffered at later parts of the map. Now, there are TWO Atomic Healths, one Portable Medkit and one Armor you can find in the map but outside of these, there aren't ANY other health pickups, at least until the very last room which contains many toilets that can be used to refill the health.
I'm not ashamed to admit I died plenty of times and I save-scummed with low health to get past the level because I saved those health pickups for the supposed boss fight at the end but this also made me start using the Flamethrower which kills enemies in like 2-3 hits. I was running short on ammo for the first three weapons, so I decided to use the bigger weapons and Flamethrower seemed the best pick.
Anyway, once you fly to a bathroom, you will find plenty of toilets to refill the health and expect a boss fight, right? Well, you kill a few Rocket Guys, refill your health, insert the Yellow Card near the Nuke Button to blow up the boss off-screen and then the episode ends. That's it, you don't have to do anything else. But hey, at least you get a new ending screen (no actual cutscene, just modified E1 screen), so props for that, I guess. Oh and there are no secrets to find.
Overall, I disliked this level due to scarcity of health and mediocre design. If I had known there is no proper boss (the Battlelord dies off-screen from the explosions generated where he is located in a box), I would have used the Medkit and the Atomic Health much earlier, so then I wouldn't have struggled with health that much.
Even though I had started with 200 health and got that used armor, I can't imagine how the level would have played with just 100 health and not getting an "early" armor from one of the Rocket Guys. Really could have used a few Large Medkits placed in some places because there were parts I couldn't avoid the damage and from what I noticed, the guys in black suits do slightly more damage than an Enforcer, plus some places had enemies ambushing you around corners and it was difficult to minimize the damage.
Although this doesn't affect 100% completion, there are two unreachable pickups: a box of pipebombs (near three shootable switches) and minigun ammo (located on a shelf, impossible to jump on top of it). Though ammo isn't that much of an issue if you use the bigger guns but I just felt like noting these mapping errors.
In the end, the first episode of MERC turned out a bit on the mediocre side, with some good parts, some annoying parts and a miserable final level. Hopefully the second episode is better.
For some reason the attachments/screenshots are not showing up. Probably because as of lately, there seems to be an error often showing up when making a post.
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