[ck3D]

Hello. New Duke 3D (EDuke32) map fresh out of the oven. I think I got all of the bugs. Have fun.

[LAW]

Does it have funny stuff in the .txt file?

[Aleks]

Congrats on the release! The screens so far have looked really encouraging, especially with how you handled the "gradient" shading and the clever use of assets to create something entirely new (that NNC is gonna hate ).

LAW, on 21 November 2025 - 03:54 PM, said:

Does it have funny stuff in the .txt file?

References to "Good Human Club"

[Dr.Panico]

Excellent level as always! Took me 38 minutes. Sadly, no secrets found.
It was a real feast to look at all the details and jokes/social commentary. The new enemies were creative and challenging.
The battle at KTIT's rooftop was BRUTAL. Not only I was getting shot from all angles, with limited resources; but hitting on of the sides of the boss was tough because you only got a very small margin to break through its defenses, and then finish off with a hitscan weapon.

[lllllllllllllll]

wounds from Computer War have reopened

[ck3D]

Dr.Panico, on 22 November 2025 - 09:21 AM, said:

Excellent level as always! Took me 38 minutes. Sadly, no secrets found.
It was a real feast to look at all the details and jokes/social commentary. The new enemies were creative and challenging.
The battle at KTIT's rooftop was BRUTAL. Not only I was getting shot from all angles, with limited resources; but hitting on of the sides of the boss was tough because you only got a very small margin to break through its defenses, and then finish off with a hitscan weapon.

I am happy you had fun and liked the map, thanks again for the continued commentary, it really is motivating feedback and inspiration to stick to the hobby knowing that some people relate to what I make.

I didn't realize the map was difficult (I agree it generally can be, especially on CGS and up going in blind) - and it probably wasn't this hard - until quite late in development when I suddenly thought of the trope with skill settings and somehow that turned out to impact the challenge drastically. Some of the enemies were a fun, sometimes tedious thing to set up, a lot of the process spent on this map was experimentation with certain designs. Shouldn't be hard to replicate and maybe even push further with time now that I'm starting to get it. This is my first map I think that uses High Treason's target logic (albeit for simple machines), and a trick Merlijn taught me a few weeks back to delay respawns (turns out it also can delay automatic shooters which makes them crazy flexible).

I forgot to mention that in the original post but the .txt does have some important play information, I'd say the skill settings trope thing is particularly important and will impact your entire experience of the map. My favorite go-to is CGS going for the 'home' ending. It is the only one with the 'true' Nukebutton too.

About the boss, I spent quite a bit refining it to make sure it was possible to get clean hits from every angle, and so the key is to figure out the strat of the timing and trajectory for each of the targets, in the middle of all of the action is a bit hectic but I actually really enjoy that about it (having struggled with the sequence for a bit to finally land on a fair formula eventually). Some of the targets only get one angle for a brief period of time (usually the ones on the right side), but you can use the diagonality of the roof to your advantage there. I redesigned the boss several times because right after I made it and the arena a specific way, I ran out of walls and so was limited in options for terminating the fight, but in the end I'm satisfied with how satisfying it is to beat. Another last second practical addition to the level was the giving away of the jetpack during the second Pork Chopper fight, due to wall clipping engine behavior, no matter how big I would make the invisible switch (in setups of mine like this you actually hit giant invisible switches with large hitboxes rather than the ones on player display) the lower wall would just seem to block a lot of the most distant hitscan shots. It always was possible to use the jetpack there, but you used to have to find it in a secret place (that is accessible as soon as the shop, but is out of the way and involves curiosity/backtracking) to be able to cheese the fight like that. Thanks again for playing.

Off the top of my head, list of secrets:

Spoiler

1/ on the first city block, use the parking meters to jump onto the lower ledge of the building and then make your way around it;
2/ after Duke has triggered the fight in the shop and part of the university blown up to reveal Pigcops, it is now possible to revisit the area of the first Pork Chopper fight and use the earthquake sector to get in there;
3/ crate with shrinker in the back room of shop;
4/ use the jetpack to fly up the building that is next to the 'echo chambers for rent' sign, left side of the KTIT building;
5/ you can delete the super long AI prompt by pressing the computer, and that will also result in getting the key to unlock the home ending (one joke I didn't get to put in is the viewscreen originally was supposed to show Lake Hylia from OoT getting drained by the AI);
6/ in the Construction room, there is a switch in the back (behind a tripmine on LR and up) to turn off the forcefields and be able to reach the Mapster grid.

[ck3D]

Just played the map again and it's possible to one cycle the boss (well two cycle, one for the defenses then one for the hitscan), I just did it quite easily although I did save in between the two phases and died a couple of times on phase 2 due to personal mistakes. I predominently play keyboard/autoaim so someone actually good at the game may be able to breeze through it.

There are a few cosmetic nitpicks I found I think I might address in a small update later but nothing that affects the level really.

[stillTodd]

I'm stuck, early on, at the Neuroscience elevator door. Does this open via a touchplate or switch?

I can get part of the way up one wall by using the Deport Asap sign (it sticks out just a tad).

I've spent enough time jumping around and pressing things that I think I've exhausted all of those possibilities.

Strangely attracted to the book burning pile, but I can't find anything there.

So I'm stumped. Please help, it plays great so far. Also tested outside of DukePlus, with the latest eduke32 (Nov 11 build) in a fresh directory, with the same results.

[ck3D]

You need to defeat the new enemies in order to progress in general. There are informers around the city to provide hints on how to fight them. In the case of this specific door, you want to defeat the first P.I.G. van to keep going.

[ck3D]

New version of the map that removes (well, replaces) the couple of explosive weapons that were available a bit too soon into the map and could be used to mess up the cosmetics of an early effect a little (slim chance but could in fact confuse the player if it happened), fixes lighting in a couple of places where it was broken, adds an easter egg somewhere in the shop. Also made the flashing sign during the second Pork Chopper fight a bit taller again like I had originally intended before lowering it when testing and forgetting to raise it back up, now it should be even more encouraged to use the jetpack for that fight and so to get around and find secrets in general.

[stillTodd]

Thanks very much, I had no idea the van was defeat-able. It was a pita dodging all the RPG fire! I need to read more carefully.

Quick update: if you use DukePlus, the BFG replacement for the Devastator will not take out the boss shielding, as it is now a hitscan weapon. So be prepared to switch it back. If you're frugal and super accurate with the RPG, it is doable - but no way I could accomplish it, haha!

In DP, I had a couple of slowdowns (mainly the defeat of the boss) even with every effect turned off that I could find. However this is easily on my end with my lame notebook. Finally I couldn't register a couple of secrets, and I think DP messed with one of the new enemies. All that said it was great having dual pistols, super useful here.

I'm using DukePlus for the enhanced 'AI' and it responds more quickly using the included eduke32, for some odd reason (could be my system limitations again). My encountered issues aside, this is yet another super awesome map from you, and many thanks.

[ck3D]

I will address the slowdowns first because I suspect there may be more to them than we realize and I wonder if it is a newly-introduced EDuke bug that would have been present in the past few months of builds. Or maybe it could be some weird original game quirk.

I also get what is more like a freeze-frame style stutter during two events in this map, the defeat of the second Pork Chopper and the one of the Lardirigible - both involve the same setup of perfectly vertical columns of C9's timed/tagged in increments of 8 where every C9 is 16 PgUps higher than the previous one, and SE31 sectors. The number of C9's is reasonable, i.e.. it doesn't come close to any of the bigger explosions mappers have set up before in history at all, instead being more similar in scale to blowing up the building in E1L2 if not smaller. The freeze frame then lag is maybe 3 seconds long.

In another map I recently made (unreleased), testers and I (so on different machines) were remarking the same thing happening in an area that also comprises the setup I just described, except on a much larger scale (4000+ sprites) and so thus far my naive conclusion had been, if my 2009 PC isn't the problem then it just must be all of the calculations. In that map with the extreme example, the freeze frame is maybe 5 to 10 seconds long (independently of machines and renderers), and then it gradually stutters back to reality. (I don't know if related but that map also has a strange bug with only certain Cyclers for now mysteriously stopping to work around that time of the progression.)

In all cases the behavior seems consistent between Polymost and classic.

It doesn't feel like the usual type of lag to me, or did it to you? It seems to be a lot more pronounced and stark than what normally is expected when the engine is simply computing the usual lots-of-stuff. On my end it is difficult to know whether the bug/behavior is recent, or if it is my recently developed technique of columns of C9's that is triggering something ancient (sometimes there really are so few of them too).

About the map now: thanks so much and happy you liked it, sorry about the struggles on your end. When I saw your original post, I was aware of your likeliness to be playing in Duke Plus, this map is vanilla enough that I don't think much might break in it due to that but while I respect both Duke Plus and the enthusiasm around it, if it's anchored into an old EDuke, then unfortunately you should expect less and less modern maps to be compatible with it in the years to come and it's not just about sprite count, etc. either, but new EDuke features that were introduced over the past couple of years which are likely to become staples for EDuke maps to function on a basic level (especially by new mappers learning things the most modern way). Not talking design-related either e.g.. TROR/sloped sprites... But things like Mustardswitches and new effector types that may become increasingly commonly bound to most basic operations/activations under the hood. Now this map doesn't use any of that, but it might become increasingly common for you in general to get stuck around maps that do not otherwise look broken at surface level in Duke Plus, but mechanically are.

[stillTodd]

Thank you for the detailed reply. I'll send more (big day today - doing lifter work on a Hemi Gen3 so very much in meatspace for the morning and afternoon) but it seems like I'm encountering the same type of slowdowns that you have noted.

And - I may have observed a cycler slowdown that is easy to reproduce. It involves a RPG explosion causing a cycled tile to briefly stutter. More on that this evening and sorry for the delay.

Same two places as you encountered for the freeze frame (major) stutter. I had to do the Brave Sir Robin to make it past the 2nd chopper defeat, and was (sadly) required to DNKROZ, DNCLIP and hide behind the winking woman outside of sector boundaries to get past the Lardirigible.

I'm beginning to think there's something specific about RPG explosions that triggers this behavior.

Anyways thanks again, more tonight when I have time to properly describe what's happening.

[ck3D]

About the specific type of stutter I am talking about, at least some of the explosions in the two maps do not even need a weapon to be fired at all, and are just caused by the timed columns of explosions going off inside of the sector going down (or up). But it is possible that the game treats C9-generated explosions very similarly to RPG shots for all I know - honestly I never really studied that part of the code.

[stillTodd]

I'm with you on that. I just tried pipe bombs and they didn't seem to trigger the glitch.

Sorry for the lack of promptness. Things are going to be a little nuts over the next two weeks as I deal with a family funeral. However, I can read C (used to program in it at an intermediate level) and have an IT background in testing, so I'll weed out the chaff and report here as I find things out.

I'll try to describe what's going on tomorrow when I'm fresh. I'll get a screenshot and a how-to on replicating the behavior. It's subtle and might not have anything to do with anything, haha!

[UltravoxSapphire]

Next time my friends and I get on call, I'll probably record a playthrough of this.




I just know I'm coming out of this with the sorest ass.

[ck3D]

Nacho/TLOD streaming the level 15 hours from now:

[stillTodd]

Ok, sorry for the delay on this end. Here's the stutter issue in more detail:

If you do whatever is required to get to the point in the screenshot, this of course triggers the 'copter. You'll be on the Neuroscience rooftop, prior to entering, meaning the 'copter is shooting RPGs at the player. Once it starts firing RPGs, each time it explodes there is a momentary stutter. That stutter starts at the instant the explosion is heard, and lasts for maybe around 100ms. Very roughly - it's short, but there.

You can see this by looking at the tile immediately to the right of the crosshair in the attached screenshot, This tile flashes quickly, and is at the top of one of the columns, in front of the force field controlled by the yellow keycard. This (very) briefly stops flashing, when a RPG explodes.

You can also notice this by moving around up there - there's a noticeable stutter in the screen refresh, at the exact moment of an RPG detonation. That might be easier to detect.

I simply DNKROZ/CLIP/STUFF and fly up there. Edit: I avoid the main sector in that area that triggers the first truck, to make things simpler.

Here's where it gets a little weirder: if the player jumps down to the yellow keycard, or jumps down to the courtyard with the fountain, this stutter goes away, until you get back up there.

Anyways, just in case it's germane, I'm rockin' a 10yo-ish Thinkpad Helix 2, which uses a fanless/heatpipe Core™ M-5Y71 CPU @ 1.20GHz on Win10/64 (I think it actually goes to 1.4Ghz) and 8Gb of ram. Big whoops, right! What might be notable is since this is a resource constrained system, the stutter is more noticeable.

I'll try defeating the 'copter there next (massively cheating of course) and seeing if there's a noticeable frame rate issue, that depends upon being on the upper level vs in the courtyard. It'll be a few days while I travel but I'll get some idea of whether being up there causes framerate issues during the end of that battle.

Edit: No DukePlus whatsoever, and this is a very recent eduke32 build. I also copied the DukePlus eduke32.exe to a fresh directory and tested the same scenario, and the stutter happens with that one too.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

Attached File(s)

•  eduke32.log (3.14K)
  Number of downloads: 18

[stillTodd]

We may be looking at two completely different issues, but again maybe not

[ck3D]

Thanks for the detailed report. That the lag disappears once sectors are out of view would indicate it's rendering that is causing it, but those specific bits of map you pointed out just so happen to be nothing special (as in it really is rudimentary structure; the park having quite a lot of walls is the only slight inconvenience I can think of) and so perhaps that's just explosion behavior in general that's been acting strange. I also do not get that lag playing in classic mode/the software renderer on my PC from 2009.

In the instances I've mentioned (both in this map and my unreleased one) which is either a different issue or the same issue exacerbated, the lag is so bad you'd think EDuke downright crashed but then it resumes, almost instantly in this map but it takes much longer in the map with 4000+ stacked C9's like I've said. No idea if the SE31's the sectors contain would have anything to do with it, but I suspect so and that it would be lots of calculations computing the new z of so many animated (and animating) actors on every tic for a while, although in that specific case rendering the explosions or not does not seem to affect the performance. Hmm.

Either way, posting an update of the level (hopefully the final one) that is just because your screenshot made me aware of a few forgotten wall textures I couldn't really see before in lower res and now couldn't stand knowing they were in.

[stillTodd]

Thanks, man! Typically I crash in DukePlus due to the out of sprites issue, in more complex and large maps, and where explosions are involved. In this case, I only saw one OOS and that was in the final battle - and one time only.

When the final boss is defeated, my comp takes a long while to catch up, and I expect it to crash but it eventually recovers. I'll play around with classic vs Polymost too and see if I can make some sense out of all of this (will be awhile before I can get started though).

One clue I'll be following is that (in WARTHUGZ) if the player jetpacks so they are close to that yellow flashing sprite, and looking down at it, they are now in the lower sector, but at roughly the same Z as the upper level. No stutter observed. So it seems like this happens depending upon what sector the player is currently in, rather than height or visibility to the projectile shooter/actor.

It will be a good exercise to look at the engine code & see if I can (re)figure out how to run a debugger, set breakpoints and so forth. Been literally decades.

[ck3D]

This new version fixes an issue where (on CGS only) the first tripmine trap could make for unfair mandatory damage since I had removed pipebombs from that section of the map in an earlier update.

[ck3D]

Sorry for the multiple posts, I often wish the editing options for posts on this forum were more lenient too. Here is what really should be the final version of the map, it fixes a minor rotating sector bug in the back of the shop I should have fixed last time but stupidly forgot.

Attached File(s)

•  WARTHUGZ.rar (152.65K)
  Number of downloads: 29

[Paul B]

ck3D, on 04 December 2025 - 04:36 PM, said:

Sorry for the multiple posts, I often wish the editing options for posts on this forum were more lenient too. Here is what really should be the final version of the map, it fixes a minor rotating sector bug in the back of the shop I should have fixed last time but stupidly forgot.

I dunno what you eat for breakfast, but this is another kickass map. One of the best and most difficult battles I've ever been up against in a Duke map. Well done!

W.A.R.T.H.U.G.Z

[ck3D]

Thanks for playing and hosting, again. Happy you enjoyed. I hope your website develops, unfortunately I have too little spare time right now to contribute with reviews but if you ever read a bit of a post of mine on here that resembles review text you would use then please feel free to use it. There are 'real' reviews I've written over the years for many maps on here or for Puritan's website you also may re-use if you want and can find them.

Breakfast usually is just black coffee unless I have something like bananas, but recently I had a mouse around at home and couldn't keep fruit around. I tend to just sip on black coffee throughout the day then eat just one meal a day in the evenings (but a big one) unless it is a time of intense physical activity in which case I'll do two. I know it wasn't a serious question but I thought it would be funny to answer it.

The various endings (really they are quite cheap):

Spoiler

In the last room:

- Brown Nukebutton will take you to Faces of Death, the idea being that now you have to go through Faces of Death to really complete the level;

- "RESET" Nukebutton will take you to E1L1, the idea being that now you have to go through all of E1 to really complete the level;

- Phone will spawn an Overlord alongside some more Pigcop minions back out on the rooftop;

- Use the red key you may or may not have found in the "print department" of the building to spawn the real Nukebutton all the way back in the room where you started and repopulate the map entirely. That is the "go back home" ending and my favorite one.

[Merlijn]

I finally had some time to play a Duke map and I was curious about this one after seeing a tiny bit in the TLOD stream. So I went ahead and played it

Overall I quite enjoyed the experience! Design-wise it's fun to see all the uses of rotated textures. I'm currently also experimenting with this feature and I see you made some similar choises.
It really adds an extra dimension for us mappers. Design was nice and clean, as we've come to expect from you. I also appreciated the prominent usage of functioning light switches and some rooms in the KTIT were really creative.

Gameplay-wise, I like how this map creates its own internal logic. Whenever an informant shows up, you know he's about to tell you about a new variety of pig cops. Speaking of which, all of those were nicely realized and very creative. The pigcop van was probably my favorite, the way you can "shoot" the drivers is really fun and satisfying. Lots of fun wordplay as well (pork chopper got a good chuckle out of me ). Also quite a bit of social commentary, most of which aligns with my own views but may rub some people the wrong way. I guess they can simply ignore the custom messages. Fun cameo from the cybertruck too haha.

I played on CGS and had no trouble for most of the map. It helped that I found the secret jetpack as soon as it became available. I have to say though that the final battle presents quite the difficulty spike. It's very hard due to the precision involved and the constant barrage of attacks coming from the unkillable shooters, I think I would like the fight a bit more if there was a way to disable the shooters. But then again that might make the battle too easy. Overall I wouldn't call it unfair or anything, just a pretty hard challenge that forces you to keep moving and make optimal use of the opportunities you get to take down the boss. In any case I really appreciate the creativity!

Now I still need to check out Computer War..

[ck3D]

Happy you enjoyed it. I guess the boss is more of a difficulty spike than I thought then, like I've said before the first time I tested it I did think it was really hard, but then I started making adjustments and simplifying it and eventually upon test replays it became trivial, also because gameplay-wise I was getting better at it. I guess in a way that is something I can be satisfied with - I made an in-map boss that has an actual learning curve the player can figure out, and isn't just Zaxtor-hard - but most people will only play the map just once and thus never get to get used to it. There is one out of the four weak spots that is trickier to get than the rest, the way to reach it is to use the diagonal of the rooftop where it is exposed for the longest window of time (essentially starting from the flashing green light), at the expense of coming close to shooters. The presence of said shooters makes the player want to avoid going over there in general, when they should be brave and do it at least once and just not stay idle for too long there. With good timing it should be possible to fire Devastator and then immediately shotgun and get both layers of the weak spot (each weak spot?) in one cycle/round.

Rotating textures felt like cheating for a while when it first came around but is so convenient for trimming, in addition to doubling the texture set just like that.

Bumper sticker on the car actually exists in real life, I've seen images of it going around, it justified making the car altogether.

Yeah the last shooters are mean, the arena has a lot of cover from all angles but I did pick the placements and projectiles to make sure one always keeps running nonetheless, as you said. Thinking about it, it's a funny case of how being less on point with execution (i.e.. not being so precisely mean at all) potentially could simplify a sequence, by introducing jank. But here I wanted 'only momentarily safe' spots, with more and more new elements and events gradually adding to the fight. But it should be possible and is a great idea to add an option to temporarily disable shooters in possible future boss fights of that type.

Computer War 2024 is less frustrating I would say. I can't really shake off the feeling that that one, Battlelord Trauma Care Center and now W.A.R.T.H.U.G.Z. form an unofficial trilogy of sorts, but I think it's because it's three maps (almost) in a row where I experimented with a lot of the same things. Especially the former and the latter feel like they share common fiber also due to the lore, and not just the amount of tricks.

[Merlijn]

I think it also comes down to play style - I tend to play a bit more methodical, create perimeters and use that as a place to fall back to. Obviously that doesn't work with this boss fight, where you have to keep moving to avoid the barrage of projectiles. So I had to adapt a bit. I wouldn't say it ever gets to the point of being as brutal as a Zaxtor boss, luckily.

Also, forgot to mention this, but in classic mode the buttons are sometimes clipping through the protective coolant sprites so it wasn't immediately clear that I first needed to blow them up. That's a bit on me though, as the instructions were clear enough. Just took a bit longer to connect the dots.

[ck3D]

MSDN link: https://msdn.duke4.net/hotwarthugz.php

[Maarten]

Looks really promising! Going to play it very soon!
Also, congrats on the MSDN review