[Pinchy]

Description

A combat focused Duke Nukem 3D level with a hydro station theme in my sandbox style

Featuring a new midi "Down the Drain" by James "Jimmy" Paddock

Download

Hydrostation Delta Beta 1.2

Setup

Development, Testing and Playing: EDuke32
Midi Driver: Windows MME. Options > Sound Setup > Device Configuration > Midi Driver: Windows MME

Notes

Beta 1.2 for testing purposes

I set it up in an episode structure in case I decide to add more maps later. New Game > Electric City

Gallery

Spoiler

[Danukem]

Haven't played it yet, but it looks very promising and huge. I'm a little confused though. Is this a beta version or the official release version? It says [RELEASE] in the thread title, but it says it's "Beta version for testing" in thread description.

[Pinchy]

Danukem, on 30 December 2024 - 12:29 AM, said:

Is this a beta version or the official release version?

I'll leave up it for a while to get feedback then move to version 1. It's had one round already so I don't imagine much will change

[William Gee]

I passed the map, here is my stream of the level. https://www.youtube....ive/hNz3E04-wsQ
Design is quite good, took me an hour and a half to pass, Gameplay did seem quite mindless, I killed 788 enemies, just seemed like there were always too many enemies until I had killed them all, or found better weapons to deal with them, or enough health to stay alive.
The overall design and puzzle in the map is good though, very nice spriteworks everywhere too and looks great.

Thanks for the map.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[stillTodd]

This looks like a workout! A good one though. I'll give it a shot in DukePlus and report back.

[ck3D]

I was fortunate enough to test this map last week - really good one as long as one is interested in and prepared for a 'slaughtermap' kind of challenge (personally I wasn't ready for that when going in, but a battery of deaths I got just around the start sufficed to warm me up to the challenge). The design is quite unique and interesting with extensive use of sprite floors, and a cool one of rotating sectors with turrets on them. In many ways it felt like a DooM map (both in terms of execution and regarding layout), which isn't a bad thing per se and here within Duke 3D art/enemy A.I. felt quite fresh. I only really had trouble around the section with the offices, but that one still felt fair (thanks to functional consideration for cover) in spite of the mean enemy count/placement and intense reliance on RESPAWNs. In general the environments look nice/interesting and the copious amount of nooks and crannies really help make it work. It reminded me a little of Dukebot's Lost World map except not as open and instead more segmented. Pretty hardcore map but totally worth playing if one can take on, and/or adjust to the relative difficulty (in total I must have died dozens of times; a few times at the start while wrapping my head around the concept and then a lot more later on in the aforementioned offices). Pinchy's style is clean and quite distinct in spite of how I thought the design felt like DooM, the exact formula is unique and makes for quite the original blend.

[Pinchy]

Thanks for the kind words everyone

Sandbox design has the side effect of letting you set off quite a chunk of the map at once. Especially here where there are not many locks holding a player back. I did try to separate each set of enemies into areas that would allow for a more reserved and careful approach, but line of sight can trip things by accident and set off a chain reaction accelerated by the fact I put guards near most resources so you have to push in to get firepower. I didn't intend it to be slaughtery, each encounter was thought out, but I can see it could get near that with so many choices of how to play it baiting in large groups to one spot. The large groups of fodder enemies are a nod to a personal preference in Doom where I like to include small hordes of the weak zombie enemies to crush through with rockets

My interest in Build was brought ahead by the fact that I regularly watch a friend live stream FPS games on Friday and sometimes Tuesday. It was my introduction to AMC Squad, many Duke 3D custom maps and some obscure Build Engine games. I feel like I hit the mark with what he was after as he deconstructed this map with immense ease and joy, only dying once when rounding a corner fast not expecting to eat the fire of a Battlelord and two Pig Tanks point blank crushing through 160 health instantly in a tiny space

I set a life goal of learning to build maps for all the classic engines. Half Life is likely next followed by Unreal, but I did have an Ion Fury map planned. That one is going to be a learning experience of it's own as it has a unique style using strong colour and fun unique tech setups

If you go to the About Me section of my profile I have links there to my complete works of Doom and Quake maps. I've progressed from Doom > Quake > Build with some professional work in Unreal Engine 4 then the upgrade to 5 after overlapping it

This level took my personal record for development time on a single map by nearly double anything previous. There was some additional learning but I didn't expect it to keep eating time all the way in to December, but it seems it was worth it

I know it's not much time, but I'm planning on signing this map off as released before the new year comes in with a post on x, which is where I post all my map releases https://x.com/PinchySkree

[ck3D]

FWTW I do not necessarily associate 'slaughtermap' with 'mindless' (mindless maps are just mindless and so not good enough IMO to qualify as a style), it's pretty clear in this map how most every encounter is articulate. It's just raw numbers and also selection, that only really applies mostly to the offices (although I wouldn't change a thing there) where it feels like almost all types of monsters are present at once, from Battlelord to Newbeast to Pigcop to Enforcer to turrets etc. when Duke 3D in general tends to be a lot more reserved with thematics and only employ a couple - or trio - of monster variants per segment, but still involves most types by looking at levels as kaleidoscopes of successive segments. It's present in this map with certain types being more prominent in specific parts (e.g.. the caves) but compared to traditional shows a tad less restraint. My favorite encounter I think remains the huge wave of Liztroops that floods into the glass tunnel over the restaurant.

Talking labels, I didn't feel like the map was sandbox style personally - seemed mostly hallway-driven that look cool and successfully vehicle the player to some bigger locations that themselves now I could see qualifying as mini sandboxes. But my definition of sandbox design would be, if one actually could get around the whole of the building (and perhaps even on top of it) without necessarily relying on the inner network of hallways and all of the spaces would be externally connected. Merely discussing semantics though since I like the partially open, but mostly enclosed approach you went for here (and it arguably may be wiser than full-blown open).

[stillTodd]

Probably the way DukePlus activates and/or speeds up non-visible monsters is too aggressive in this particular version of the map.

I'm used to dnkroz'ing at the beginning of the maps where this happens, until I can find enough weapons and the chaos dies down

I would suggest more respawns spread out, if you're game for that. Looks great, regardless!