[Maarten]

Aleks, on 11 January 2026 - 06:22 AM, said:

I have played on a different laptop this time and the map - especially the underground city part - seemed MUCH brighter, to the point of me wondering at first if you have bulk-brightened the whole thing, but then realising it's just my settings

Good to know about this!
I didn't realize a different monitor could make things quite different. Also good to know you had even more fun this time around!

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This time I've spent some extra time looking for secrets, some of them felt quite obvious in retrospect (especially the extra brightness in the city helped with the ones located there), the most difficult one was probably the pipebombs/large medkit one

Heh, I thought it was the most easy one But yeah, it just still had to be really sneaky as well.

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My favourite part of the map was probably the final octabrain battle on the winding suspended bridges, this part plays so cool also with the rockets shooting from every direction and mostly helping than being annoying

Actually, when making that climax, it really had me thinking "hmm... should I really do this? Isn't this asking too much trouble??". I'm really happy to see you and the other beta testers didn't complain about it and actually some people even love the climax.
Sometimes the "wildest things" could work the best I guess

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Wudrichem 98, Weissensee 95 and this one 97. I've talked a bit on Discord with NNC about them and I'm gonna die on the hill of defending Wudrichem. (........) This is a feeling I've often had back in 96ish when playing user maps, of course they were not as large (but also I was quite smaller...) that I've always enjoyed, trying to grasp the layout that feels just sprawling at first and taming it under your control, both meticulously clearing it of enemies and also seeing more and more familiar locations as you get accustomed.

Awesome to read this! Also big thanks for the high scores.

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I only checked the out of border stuff, because those random octabrains and commanders at the start appeared, so technically they count. I realized there were more. I still think you should delete them in an updated version.

I appreciate your honesty and with the vision what's that best way to release it. But by now it's already on streams, sites and here. It doesn't bother me too much to re-release it.
But I'll fix it when the day will come that the episode will be finished (which by now I can say it isn't a weird idea anymore - still, "real live stuff" and inspiration has to make it possible too hehe ).

[Šneček]

I haven't been able to finish the level since Christmas because I was always stuck in one place by the door to a yellow card that I didn't have and couldn't find anywhere. Today I watched a video on youtube (↓129) and finally understood the reason - in my version of the map, some sprites have a "different position" than they should have (↓130) - I downloaded the map on December 22nd. But today I also managed to somehow finally jump to the other side despite the strange tiles... Otherwise, I really like the map and the whole series, of course...

EDIT AFTER 45 MINUTES: Looks like I can´t really get through THIS (↓132) without cheats...

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[ck3D]

Šneček, on 14 January 2026 - 07:31 AM, said:

I haven't been able to finish the level since Christmas because I was always stuck in one place by the door to a yellow card that I didn't have and couldn't find anywhere. Today I watched a video on youtube (↓129) and finally understood the reason - in my version of the map, some sprites have a "different position" than they should have (↓130) - I downloaded the map on December 22nd. But today I also managed to somehow finally jump to the other side despite the strange tiles... Otherwise, I really like the map and the whole series, of course...

EDIT AFTER 45 MINUTES: Looks like I can´t really get through THIS (↓132) without cheats...

Looks like you are using a build of EDuke so old it doesn't support sloped sprites. Most maps made in the past few years are going to get wrecked in it.

[Šneček]

ck3D, on 14 January 2026 - 08:16 AM, said:

Looks like you are using a build of EDuke so old it doesn't support sloped sprites. Most maps made in the past few years are going to get wrecked in it.

that's possible, I'm using version 20180412-6834 - I don't want to replace such an archival piece with a new one...

[Merlijn]

Yeah I can confirm that older Eduke versions will do that to sloped sprites, I had the same when we were working on OGBB2 until I started using a newer Eduke.
In my case, I also didn't want to replace the old version so I just made a new directory. Now I have both.

PS. my upcoming map also uses sloped sprites, just to give y'all a heads up

[ck3D]

Šneček, on 14 January 2026 - 08:23 AM, said:

that's possible, I'm using version 20180412-6834 - I don't want to replace such an archival piece with a new one...

I keep some old EDuke/Mapster versions around too (although I haven't had to launch any in a while; used to be useful back when the port was under heavier W.I.P.), but to play any maps released 2020 onwards I would recommend you install a new folder with the most recent EDuke. Otherwise you are bound to get into more and more of frustrating situations like this where you only realize halfway through it that one is not working properly and can't be completed. You're also missing out on rotated textures, which might ruin the intended aesthetics on lots of walls, but sloped sprites are crucial to have working as that is something levels can rely on for progression. The port is better than ever now too, so all you're doing by not updating is clinging to jank, I promise.

[NNC]

In addition, why the map is so bright there? The whole cable car area should be set under dark stormy clouds.

[Šneček]

I finally got through the hardest part (so far) with DNHYPER and long jumps, ´cause I couldn't find any steroids or jetpacks anywhere in the entire time I was playing... and I didn't want to use any cheats that would add weapons or items that I don't already have and would make playing much easier... Maybe I'll eventually manage to finish this somehow without having to look for new versions of eduke

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[pepsodent]

NNC, on 15 January 2026 - 05:35 AM, said:

In addition, why the map is so bright there? The whole cable car area should be set under dark stormy clouds.

maybe the storm havent reached it yet at that point in time, forming up as you progress through the map and then finally reach surface again

[ck3D]

Šneček, on 15 January 2026 - 07:11 AM, said:

I finally got through the hardest part (so far) with DNHYPER and long jumps, ´cause I couldn't find any steroids or jetpacks anywhere in the entire time I was playing... and I didn't want to use any cheats that would add weapons or items that I don't already have and would make playing much easier... Maybe I'll eventually manage to finish this somehow without having to look for new versions of eduke

So I thought you were just a confused player but no you are an absolute warrior, are you not?

[Šneček]

Yeah, yesterday I fought to the end and achieved victory without any further cheating

[NNC]

pepsodent, on 15 January 2026 - 12:40 PM, said:

maybe the storm havent reached it yet at that point in time, forming up as you progress through the map and then finally reach surface again

lolwut?

[pepsodent]

NNC, on 17 January 2026 - 02:37 AM, said:

lolwut?

you asked why is the area so bright if there's supposed to be storm outside, I tried to answer it with my broken english. What I mean is that AAP3 is direct continuation of AAP2 and that one had bright yet cloudy weather and it wouldn't look nice if it were to abruptly change when duke presses nuke button. So the way I see it, you start with normal weather, progress through the map and only after your shenanigans underground does the weather change into a storm, hence why its still bright in the cable car area that you were wondering about

[Merlijn]

The skycar section should already have a darker sky compared to the beginning. I remember a very old Eduke version that didn't support multiple skyboxes, so that might be the case here.

[NNC]

pepsodent, on 17 January 2026 - 04:07 AM, said:

you asked why is the area so bright if there's supposed to be storm outside, I tried to answer it with my broken english. What I mean is that AAP3 is direct continuation of AAP2 and that one had bright yet cloudy weather and it wouldn't look nice if it were to abruptly change when duke presses nuke button. So the way I see it, you start with normal weather, progress through the map and only after your shenanigans underground does the weather change into a storm, hence why its still bright in the cable car area that you were wondering about

I think Merlijn got it right. That place should be darker imho than in your screens, although not as dark as the last hidden city. It certainly looked totally different to what I saw in my own playthrough.

[ck3D]

Merlijn, on 17 January 2026 - 08:34 AM, said:

The skycar section should already have a darker sky compared to the beginning. I remember a very old Eduke version that didn't support multiple skyboxes, so that might be the case here.

I don't think EDuke ever did that, it's a base game thing to allow for any parallaxed sky texture pick (now actual external skybox files maybe do not work the same), but you may be thinking about how the L.A. and moon skies are texture sets which means the map will recognize when the first tile of each set is applied somewhere and project the other tiles accordingly. Now introducing another parallaxed sky on top somewhere in the same map breaks that system and messes up all of the skies, but that always was Duke 3D behavior and no EDuke dev stint I don't think.

In this case I think it's just most of you have forgotten about it but that's how old EDukes used to look for a couple of years in the 2010's, much sharper and more saturated, I also suspect the player might have bumped the lighting up a few notches in the game settings here but maybe not. Such a look can be observed as apparent on many MSDN screenshots in reviews that were contemporary to that era. The various changes to the shade table throughout the years in general had the consequence of ushering their own epochs of user levels that were tailored in and to the equipment of the time. Thankfully EDuke seems to have found the sweet spot now which probably won't budge, and is close enough to DOS look, so there is consistency in the present it feels like. Just a couple of years in the 2010's sort of got to shit end of the stick.

[Merlijn]

No, I vividly remember Eduke having trouble rendering multiple skyboxes in a single map. But I should have been more specific, this was an issue with Polymer. I remember it because 1 of our maps in the Imperium episode had the wrong skybox due to this limitation (funnily enough, it was Maartens Underground map, which bears some thematic resemblance with this map ). As you remembered correctly, this was in the early 2010's.

To steer a bit back to topic: I like how each map in this trilogy has its own feel and style to it, so everyone will have a different favorite. As for Woudrichem War, IIRC the primary drive for this map was recreating Woudrichem in mapster (which is our birth place). So this largely dictated the progression and gameplay, and may be the reason why some of the progression feels counterintuitive. On the flip side, I like how these maps require some out of the box thinking and don't do much in the way of hand holding. And the first map is no exception.

[ck3D]

Oh I suspected as such about Imperium being your reference actually, but wasn't that using what now seems like an old-school boxy image projection trick compared to how people can make skyboxes now (or already were doing early on in AMC TC with sector projections), relying on external files and whatnot, because I can only suspect that system was borked or later optimized since to me it seemed to disappear or maybe it's still there but seeing as I am a classic only guy I don't see it. Polymer in itself handles skies completely differently compared to classic/Polymost by the way, mainly the rendering order is different and skies do not always get drawn first which breaks most invisiwall/maskwall tricks you normally get (and can be a mapper's staple) in the other two modes. Anyway, that was why I was specifying different skies the classic parallaxed ceiling way (and the way this map does it), I don't think that ever broke.

I didn't realize Woudrichem was based on your birthplace (I always remembered it was 'here-you-go-weird'), that adds a lot of personality to the map and series all of a sudden (but it already could be felt in the designs in and of themselves that they share some kind of essence; specific towns or landscapes that the author invests a lot of their own story into).

[Merlijn]

Yeah now that you mention it, those skyboxes were made by Kaiser and I think that was the way they were made (they wouldn't work in classic either).

Here-you-go-weird is the place we grew up in, but both of us were born in Woudrichem. Our grandma still lived there, so we have a lot of childhood memories tied to Woudrichem.
We also have fond memories of summer holidays at the Weissensee, so yeah these maps have a personal touch to them. Needless to say, there are no memories of a strange underground city..