[Merlijn]

Too bad Mikko got so annoyed / impatient by the boss fight, but seems he enjoyed the rest of the map at least.

[ck3D]

Merlijn, on 02 January 2026 - 04:50 AM, said:

Too bad Mikko got so annoyed / impatient by the boss fight, but seems he enjoyed the rest of the map at least.

I always fully expected the bumper sticker at least would be an implicit, instant two points off the score

[Maarten]

Finally played this map! Just wrote down some stuff..don't mind me if my English is slopy

This one is really interesting & feeling fresh and at time it really made me go "how the hell did he do this?". That's quite something for a old game like this.

The main "star" of this map is for sure the pigcop cars & choppers. I really liked the way you did introduce them and it's fun.
Design is also really cool and felt quite future but at the same time a realistic feel.
I love the way some buildings look!

I played on CGS, found 1 "red part" secret with very helpfull stuff, since I died quite often and saved a lot. The map was quite hard at times, especially with the many pigcops shooting me while I was looking where the hell they where (like on rooftops or sloped parts of a building). But still, I haven't played much Duke myself, so it's mostly me being a bit "n00bish".

The last chopper fight was a tough one, and it exactly made me stop the level for 1 day But today I got the tricks and (after alot of dying and saving) it felt really nice when I finally beat the damn thing. It's really creative and I feel like trying this map just once more (maybe this time on Let's Rock).

So no real complaints from me, except maybe a bit more enemy variation would have been good. But I also get this Pig-Cop thing was a main goal/theme.

Again: congrats on the release and you really made a stand out map which you can be proud of! Good job

[ck3D]

Thanks for playing and for the precious feedback Maarten! Means quite a bit that you enjoyed the map.

The sector enemies are various combinations of moving sectors and shootable switches (sometimes invisible) bound to target logic machines that trigger various out-of-bounds doors with autocloses that themselves set off their own activators (the latter being a trick I actually learned or re-learned not so long ago from Merlijn). I actually was curious to see if you would like those enemies since I've noticed you are starting to experiment quite a bit with automatic shooters too and so as you can see, there is a lot that is possible, and I'm already looking forward to seeing the contraptions you will make in the future yourself and the tricks you use or invent.

Target logic is a term High Treason coined, but his machines are a lot more complicated. If you want to take a look at the simple ones in my map, they are on the top left corner of 2D mode (you have to zoom out to the max). His look like this:



Parachute Pigcop is different and actually executed wrong, it uses lowering double parallax but really things should be offset the other way around, using a sinking sector with the Pigcop up in the air but standing on an invisible sprite (as opposed to tall see-through sector floor), that is why they can be buggy and clip Duke up in case he is good enough to reach them before they have come down (but that's usually not how it plays out). Honestly wouldn't have been a huge hassle to correct but I actually kind of liked it as proof of concept, albeit janky and so it stayed.

[Maarten]

Nice to see your so much into experiments!
Yeah I forgot to mention parachute pigs. Really creative way to let the enemy attack you!
Also quite funny to see we somewhat got this "overlap" of shooters - I actually added it in my map just a few months before the release. I actually got the idea after checking SE.MAP (and also wanted a special start and climax in my own map, but it took a while before finding the right "feel". The shooters really made things close to what I was looking for).
I'm not too sure if I'll epxeriment even more, because I still have the most fun time when just making locations. But hey, I always say that when starting a new map, so who knows what happens

Anyway back to your release. I'll give the map another spin soon! I feel I still need to discover some stuff I probably haven't really found out yet (even tho I played for sure 45+ minutes).

[Aleks]

Finally played this, might be the most politically engaged DN3D map over its 30 years history - and a great one, I think I enjoyed all the satire as much as the gameplay itself. I also like to see you coming back to more MRCKish design style, as this one seems to emphasise detail a lot more than huge scale (and same can be said about MSBTCC). The sector enemies work pretty well - especially vans (coolest "death sequence") and helicopters. I barely noticed the paratroopigs before they landed (I think I've only seen one falling down) and it seems parts of their costume blocked some hitscan, which was more problematic for them than for me. The dirigible "boss" had some genuinely cool features (blowing off the armors before being able to hit the switches) which were nicely executed, but the spam from the turrets kinda turned this fight into a trial and error. Also one of the plates was particularly difficult to blow off as it seemed the thing never stopped in a convenient position, which would have worked better if the pattern of projectiles would be predictable enough not to consume all the attention. I appreciate how clearly indicated were all of these "new enemies" though, which I think worked much better than the "boss" in MSBTCC. The regular gameplay was fun here as well - apparently, tons of pig cops actually can do some damage, but it's also a lot of fun to blow them with explosives, and the tanks were nicely distributed. General level geometry also worked well with this combat I think. The end itself felt kinda meh - the "intended ending" should really be the only one, as the Overlord just gets stuck on the door he can't enter and can/has to be cheesed. BTW, going back to HH doesn't take you through the whole of LA Meltdown, it just goes back to title screen after completing it (not sure it's something I've ever done before, but decided to spend the 3 minutes this time and see how it plays with all the fancy weapons).

Design looked cool, though I have to nitpick on some ceilings catching weird shadows from dynamic lighting (the fridge in the first apartment for example) and the news text on TV at the very beginning going backwards (conveyors should have been "right to left"), but that's probably it. I liked how you could afford to spend more walls on rounded stuff and complimented it with gradient shading. Some clever details like the piles of voting polls and money bills alongside voting calculators and money-to-newspaper printer which genuinely reminded me of stuff from Pink Floyd's "The Wall". All the "jokes" (not that funny when you look at the real world counterparts TBH) were clever and worked really well, but I liked how they never really took the spotlight from the main thing. Spent around an hour altogether in the map, it took me a while to find all the secrets (the one in the KTIT building in particular). BTW, out of all the stuff, I'm not sure I understood what the Mapping Center referenced, unless it really was just a Build meta joke!

[ck3D]

Thanks for playing and for the feedback. Am glad you liked the rounded shapes, you will keep seeing them they are part of the style now. About going back to older style, I guess chronologically would be correct that detail looks like a throwback to earlier in my timeline but in reality is just one to back when I was just starting out and all I could make was detail instead of assembling proper levels and then distributing it within. Yeah, so it's been established the boss is tough alright. Like I was posting earlier, it gets easier upon replays (and you eventually do find an angle for all the spots) which I like but comes with the trade off of feeling unfair at first, it's a bit like a Cuphead boss, I reckon the bullet hell is a bit much, that is too bad as I tend to like this kind of gameplay (maybe in wise doses) and here I thought would feel fresh after so much hitscan action, but maybe it is the opposite effect and Duke comes in all the less prepared. I agree the Overlord sucks and is stupid (but that just makes sense in this map) and you are right, the game must in fact do that (reboot to title after E1L1) and I had forgotten but ah well.

The mapping center just is what it is, of course the namesake itself is a reference to Alejandro's/AMC but it controls the 'matrix' of the Pigcop shaped room with bold colors from just before; using the computer you rig the reality of it for a white wall inside of the Mapster grid version of that room (that you can enter as a secret, and overlaps it with SOS) to turn red, consequently that clears Duke's access to the card in the 'real'/projected room.

[Aleks]

ck3D, on 26 February 2026 - 06:06 PM, said:

The mapping center just is what it is, of course the namesake itself is a reference to Alejandro's/AMC but it controls the 'matrix' of the Pigcop shaped room with bold colors from just before; using the computer you rig the reality of it for a white wall inside of the Mapster grid version of that room (that you can enter as a secret, and overlaps it with SOS) to turn red, consequently that clears Duke's access to the card in the 'real'/projected room.

Ahhh so that room was a pigcop-shaped room! I had no idea about that (just checked in game and yeah it does - face of a pig cop actually), I thought it was just a server room and was wondering about how it would connect with the Build 2D mode stuff, but now makes a lot more sense (and so do the "pixelated" shapes and weird colours)!

W.r.t the boss monster, it was "easier to kill" and better signposted than the one in MSBTCC, but the bullet hell made the fight a lot more frustrating. I think the main problem was the difficulty with actually seeing what comes from which direction/where.