[vanshnookenraggen]

Hello all!

I've been playing Duke 3D since it came out (I'm old!) and have been making maps off and on for years. I got back into things with the release of the World Tour, as well as the incredible Legacy Edition mod. That, along with seeing how far voxels have progressed in the community, got me thinking about updating some old maps so they look better with the new technology. One of the cool things the Legacy Edition did with Duke was to incorporate a lot of cut content. This immediately made me think of the two lost levels from the master himself, The Levelord: Sweeney and Sewer.

Playing the originals after so many years of video game level advancement made me disappointed, and made me realize why they had been cut. But I also realized that they still had some good bones in them. So as a challenge, I set about seeing if I could fix their issues, along with updating them for eDuke.

Sweeney: The Sewage Company

This map was the harder of the two to figure out. The map has a very "open world" design, which means the player can beat it in multiple ways. While a fun idea, once you know the fastest way to beat it, it makes the rest of the map pointless. The map suffers from throwing too many enemies at the player at once, rather than the waves of spawn that the final game utilizes. Lastly, and this is more of a nitpick, but the map uses a relatively small number of textures.

The changes I've made take advantage of eDuke, including adding lighting effects and adding more details (yay higher frame rates!).







Here's a link to a few more.

Sewer: The Sewers Below

Like Sweeney, this map had an open world play style which made it very easy to beat very quickly, as well as just throwing lots of enemies at the player. This map has seen more changes to it, though the core of the map is the same. While much has been done to create more structured routes through the level, you can still beat it in about a minute if you know how. More detail has been added as well. Both maps suffered from the early design principle of having Duke blow everything up as he walked by. Here, the areas of destruction have more focus, and trap the player in a more "fun" and creative way.







https://imgur.com/8a15cst

Link to the gallery.


Lastly, as inspired by the Legacy Edition, I wondered how these maps would have looked if they had been included in the original release. Looking at the notes from the .99 Beta, Sweeney would have come after the Bank level, followed by Sewers, which would have led to the Subway level.

The final levels of Episode 3 are arranged differently than what was in the beta build. I initially tried to have the player go from Sweeney to Sewer as two secret levels, but the way Duke 3D is hard coded makes this buggy. I instead decided to spread them out within the episode so that the player has more options for secret levels as they play through.

The .ZIP file includes two updated maps from Episode 3 that are only needed if you want to add Sweeney and Sewer into the game as secret levels.

Bank Roll

When you go to get the blue key, look down:
https://imgur.com/1eUSA1R

Use the steroids to fast jump across to the sign:
https://imgur.com/RhZ6r5Y

https://imgur.com/B7JE1um

Rabid Transit

When you go to get the red key, you'll see a part of the wall that has a slightly different texture.
https://imgur.com/gAQwEIc

Go back down the steps, and into the secret room with the babes. Hit this hidden switch here, then go back up the stairs:
https://imgur.com/K8fatuj

The part of the wall can now be opened, leading to the exit to Sewer:
https://imgur.com/MP8oId9


To incorporate both "Sewage Company" and "The Sewers Below" into Episode 3 copy the following code into your GAME.CON file:

Under Levels, add the following code at the end of the 3rd episode group (line 413):

definelevelname 2 11 sweeney_v2.map 04:40 02:59 SEWAGE COMPANY
definelevelname 2 12 sewers_v2.map 05:15 01:09 THE SEWERS BELOW

For music, copy the following code over the entire music list for Episode 3 (line 456)

music 3 inhiding.ogg FATCMDR.ogg NAMES.ogg subway.ogg invader.ogg gotham.ogg
        233c.ogg lordofla.ogg urban.ogg spook.ogg whomp.ogg layers.ogg stalker.ogg

To be clear, the maps work perfectly fine on their own. You only need the extra levels and code if you want to play them through the episode.

Attached File(s)

•  sweeney-sewer_remix.zip (160.96K)
  Number of downloads: 99

[jkas789]

This looks very interesting mate! Thanks for the hard work. I recently discovered this maps and I'm interested to see the changes you implemented in game.

[Paul B]

Welcome to the Forums,

You can find your newly published maps here: https://www.dukemaps...y-sewers-remix/

I haven't a lot of time to play or review these maps but I can tell a lot of talent went into making these maps. Maybe one day i'll find a reviewer to help me post reviews on these awesome maps!

Thanks for sharing!

[vanshnookenraggen]

Paul B, on 26 September 2024 - 08:24 AM, said:

Welcome to the Forums,

You can find your newly published maps here: https://www.dukemaps...y-sewers-remix/

I haven't a lot of time to play or review these maps but I can tell a lot of talent went into making these maps. Maybe one day i'll find a reviewer to help me post reviews on these awesome maps!

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks!

[NNC]

I'm ambivalent with this (especially since I also toyed with them a few good years ago, and even consulted with oasiz about my changes). First, it's a great idea to remix these maps, as they are not really finished, the gameplay is kinda broken with the disproportionate monster count (octabrains in sweeney, pigcops in sewer), the easy to break sequences (falling into the sewers), and the graphic and sound glitches, but well, I wouldn't have touched their aesthetic concept. I think conceptually they are some of Levelord's greatest works, and it's a shame he didn't finish them for the final release.

From what we got originally, the maps only used tiles000-012.art files, so the typical episode 3 vibes are missing as most of episode 3's own textures are found in tiles013.art. And well, episode 4 is also a different story. I wouldn't have included them for this level. The maps has a pig cop tank, so it's naturally not episode 3 stuff.

But in reality, I think, despite the enforcers in the levels, I feel these two mostly belong to episode 1. Not sure where, as larger numbers of octabrains are mandatory, and it would be weird between Red Light District and Death Row, but I still think, they belong to there.

I felt the maps are more usermappy with this remix, while the originals felt more canonic, despite their issues. Also I missed some bugfixes, like adding the missing sounds. Nice job overall though.

[NNC]

A bit of addendum:

When I toyed with the levels in Build, I noticed that the seemingly more broken Sweeney is much easier to fix than the seemingly more stable (and more impressive looking) Sewer. Just block the backyard (like you did) to avoid the breaking sequence, fix the 3 SOS bugs (one is created by sector shifting at the end of the alien door) the other two are at the left and right points of the main corridor (the right one is at the same place where the sector shifting happens), also the alien door itself with removing the autoclose, a bit reworking on the underwater texturing, fix the street ambient sounds (wow that was really annoying) and the rotating blue key platform door, add a few more missing sounds, and reduce the number of the octabrains (or change to something else), maybe consider replacing some explosion triggers, and the level is perfect.

Sewer on the other hand had a lot more headache. The sprawling streets can be played in various ways, giving a proper rythm is highly challenging, avoid the sewer falls and not giving the player a grand confusion is incredibly hard, and the map has many many small errors, like floating hydrants, transluscent windows where you can shoot through, fires, waterdrops, ammo, whatever with weird block flags or put over the roof, missing sounds galore especially in the sewer section. Remaking all of these are a nightmare. There are also some unused explosives that can destroy the manhole, I guess it should be used around the rotating platforms down.

I hope one day Levelord fine tunes them, but I guess, given his reluctance, it won't happen in this life.

[ck3D]

NNC, on 28 September 2024 - 12:36 PM, said:

A bit of addendum:

When I toyed with the levels in Build, I noticed that the seemingly more broken Sweeney is much easier to fix than the seemingly more stable (and more impressive looking) Sewer. Just block the backyard (like you did) to avoid the breaking sequence, fix the 3 SOS bugs (one is created by sector shifting at the end of the alien door) the other two are at the left and right points of the main corridor (the right one is at the same place where the sector shifting happens), also the alien door itself with removing the autoclose, a bit reworking on the underwater texturing, fix the street ambient sounds (wow that was really annoying) and the rotating blue key platform door, add a few more missing sounds, and reduce the number of the octabrains (or change to something else), maybe consider replacing some explosion triggers, and the level is perfect.

Sewer on the other hand had a lot more headache. The sprawling streets can be played in various ways, giving a proper rythm is highly challenging, avoid the sewer falls and not giving the player a grand confusion is incredibly hard, and the map has many many small errors, like floating hydrants, transluscent windows where you can shoot through, fires, waterdrops, ammo, whatever with weird block flags or put over the roof, missing sounds galore especially in the sewer section. Remaking all of these are a nightmare. There are also some unused explosives that can destroy the manhole, I guess it should be used around the rotating platforms down.

I hope one day Levelord fine tunes them, but I guess, given his reluctance, it won't happen in this life.

It sounds like most of what you find to be tedious tasks to accomplish manually (and you would be right) could be near automated with the help of Mapster32 scripting. I need to learn it myself at some point, but you could earn new superpowers from this and conduct some of the edits you have in mind in just a few keypresses:



The video is by oasiz.