[pepsodent]

Thank you for playing!

Jan Satcitananda, on 05 March 2026 - 02:58 PM, said:

Personally I'm not a fan of TROR since it tends to produce low framerates and is prone to visual bugs, maybe you can try using it less extensively.

TROR exists on this map solely for the fancy roofs on some buildings, it was built late in the production and it took a massive hit on framerate so I regret it a bit but the buildings without it would look more blocky. If only there was some development around new mapformat or something and we had those fancy skyboxes like in Ion Fury and AMC... They dont hit on performance that hard as a giant TROR sector.

Jan Satcitananda, on 05 March 2026 - 02:58 PM, said:

But my only complaint was the way the combat works; to me, it feels like if everytime you complete some objectitve a bunch of random enemies spawned in random places just to keep the player busy shooting them. I think the final boss has no clear connection to the preceding action as well.

Because thats how it is, the combat is nasty because I wasted lot of time making the map and felt bad that it can be done in few seconds, so all the respawns exist just to pad it out. Cycloid has no connection to the story but honestly I couldnt come up with anything to finish it except making whatever Duke was supposed to grow into a field of alien eggs. I was thinking of using Queen as a boss but she doesnt seem fun to fight in such open area as there is no way to hide from her attacks. I didnt test the map with her so who knows, maybe she does work fine there.

Jan Satcitananda, on 05 March 2026 - 02:58 PM, said:

The objectives took some time to figure out, but I think you've provided enough hints to the player to make it fair. However, I was expecting that the gas jerrycans have something to do with refueling the machine, and that it will activate as soon as I complete all the objectives. I didn't expect that you have to go to bed after that, but it was a nice day-to-night transition rarely seen in Duke maps. The downside is that you have to build basically two different versions of the map, so you'll run out of walls a lot sooner, and the map ends up to be pretty small. But there's still a lot to explore and see! I love all the tiny detail you put there. I think you managed to depict an American country house setting quite well using just the stock textures. And yes, there's something Redneck Rampage-ish about it.

I'm happy you liked the quest, no matter how barebones and janky it is. I wish I could make the machine activate after you complete all the steps but I'm rather limited by default effects there (once again wish we had more new things without having to dig into coding). The jerrycans were just a little buildcute and I never thought of using them in any way for the quest.

Jan Satcitananda, on 05 March 2026 - 02:58 PM, said:

The pond that teleports you to the first stage after you resurface felt like a bug and at first I thought it was unintentional. Maybe turn it into an "endless" pit in the second stage if you want the player to travel "back in time", but of course it's up to you and your artistic vision if you like it the way it turned out to be.

I like the sudden flip that happens as you leave the pond, its a bit mindfucky in a cool way. Also the 3 way teleport wouldnt work that way or the endless fall would happen every time which would get jarring, What needed a good transition was the teleport to nighttime, I wanted to make some kind of little nightmare that would wake duke up, but ran out of walls for that idea.

[ck3D]

It's funny reading some of those scrapped ideas. Sounds like the vision for the level was even closer to Rural Nightmare than I thought with the nightmare sequences and Queen nighttime ending. Queen could have worked well if the pond didn't have the teleporter trick, that's actually how I realized that was a thing, resorting to trying to fight the Cycloid the same way you (are supposed to) fight the Battlelords at the end of Fahrenheit (dipping in and out of water). I agree the Cycloid came out of the blue but I thought that was funny given the change to blue palette made sense. But I didn't bother going back to kick its ass yet, honestly Nukebutton ending inside of train would have worked well with no need for boss. Last fight with all the slimers and rest of enemies is spectacular and mechanically interesting enough to end on and then from player POV it's rewarding to finish on a satisfying note as simple as figuring out the purpose of the train. Getting RPG there felt good enough though. I actually really like that train as a barrier, shame the clipping can act up.

All those reports of TROR ruining performance for lots of people are concerning to me, a lot of my unreleased work is TROR heavy but always ran fine for me on a PC from 2009 in software. Same goes for other TROR heavy maps like WG's. elandy is someone else who has made maps I've seen extensively use TROR in Alien Armageddon which is meant to be played in Polymost and it seems like those run fine for the majority of the AA player base. So I wonder what the deal breaker is and how bad.

[pepsodent]

ck3D, on 05 March 2026 - 06:30 PM, said:

All those reports of TROR ruining performance for lots of people are concerning to me, a lot of my unreleased work is TROR heavy but always ran fine for me on a PC from 2009 in software. Same goes for other TROR heavy maps like WG's. elandy is someone else who has made maps I've seen extensively use TROR in Alien Armageddon which is meant to be played in Polymost and it seems like those run fine for the majority of the AA player base. So I wonder what the deal breaker is and how bad.

From my experience with mapping and playing countless TROR heavy maps, it all depends on how big is the TRORed sector is. You can have million tiny TROR connections there and there and it will be fine, but if you have a massive sector that acts as TROR it will hit on performance.
Another interesting quirk of TROR is that lag only happens on certain layer, for example my train map stutters only when I'm running on top layer, the roofs of the train. Now looking at upper layer from the floor of the train it works fine somehow

[ck3D]

Oh OK thanks a lot, then that means all of my stuff should be really well optimized. Always seemed just to me to almost overdo it with splits and portals in a manner that respects the way traditional Build walls like to draw/work, so the same way one would treat the rendering of sectors in somewhat normal conditions and not use the transparency of the layer(s) as an excuse to conceal a lot of technical shortcuts, I feel like that's when people start getting glitches (and also lose fine control over the environment). I am sure my TROR style unnecessarily wastes a lot of resources though, that is the trade-off but also gives me some flexibility if I ever run out of walls, then I can go and simplify TROR somewhere that doesn't matter to gain walls again. (In general, overdoing wall spending in given places on purpose can be wise so that later on when it eventually comes to the point that you are running out of resources for mandatory structures, you have marked some obvious overkill, it's a form of safeguarding, simplifying is easier than cutting and usually you can just reimport the cut detail into a different map).

Pretty sure I've read before that the more bunches the slower things are supposed to get though. But from experience that only seems true when dozens and dozens of them are visible on one frame. On my old computer only starts lagging when in the 100's or something like that.

[Aleks]

pepsodent, on 06 March 2026 - 06:03 AM, said:

From my experience with mapping and playing countless TROR heavy maps, it all depends on how big is the TRORed sector is. You can have million tiny TROR connections there and there and it will be fine, but if you have a massive sector that acts as TROR it will hit on performance.
Another interesting quirk of TROR is that lag only happens on certain layer, for example my train map stutters only when I'm running on top layer, the roofs of the train. Now looking at upper layer from the floor of the train it works fine somehow

I have a completely opposite experience with TROR so far, which probably means there is no golden mean and it just depends on many factors and/or jank. Der Zorn Gottes used some massive TROR sectors (only split between the three main sides of the platform and always ran fine for me; however, with some more complex splits to account for more complex geometry in one of my newer maps, I started getting some lag on my older (2016) laptop - but at some point, even regular maps started to lag there and I couldn't figure a reason why, so I switched to a new laptop. I didn't have any viruses or stuff like that there either and the laptop itself runs fine, so I assume there might just be some intrinsic settings/bad luck that makes various stuff lag for various people in a 30-year-old game.

I played Locked and Loaded (where I reported the lags) back using the older laptop BTW, which also now that I think of it might have been the first symptoms of the laptop "getting the lag" rather than something wrong with the map!

[pepsodent]

Aleks, on 06 March 2026 - 10:52 AM, said:

I have a completely opposite experience with TROR so far, which probably means there is no golden mean and it just depends on many factors and/or jank. Der Zorn Gottes used some massive TROR sectors (only split between the three main sides of the platform and always ran fine for me; however, with some more complex splits to account for more complex geometry in one of my newer maps, I started getting some lag on my older (2016) laptop - but at some point, even regular maps started to lag there and I couldn't figure a reason why, so I switched to a new laptop. I didn't have any viruses or stuff like that there either and the laptop itself runs fine, so I assume there might just be some intrinsic settings/bad luck that makes various stuff lag for various people in a 30-year-old game.

I played Locked and Loaded (where I reported the lags) back using the older laptop BTW, which also now that I think of it might have been the first symptoms of the laptop "getting the lag" rather than something wrong with the map!

yeah to clarify on that, I wasnt talking about multiple bunches seen together. Those are always heavy on my craptop. So splitting a giant TROR sector into few small bunches wont help, it will actually most likely make the map even laggier.
Big TROR, lots of TROR seen together through multiple layers, lots of different small bunches seen together = lag.

I need to play your map, it sounds interesting from what I read about it.

[ck3D]

[lllllllllllllll]

I might be misunderstanding how TROR works so don't dwell on this post much. I've never used it

Taking a blind guess I think the reason TROR tanks performance here is too many neighboring vertical sectors + their contents getting rendered.

On your first map (I think) with the flood level below an upper concrete room with a big crater hole opening in the center it does not lag because it is isolated from most of the map by walls.
On the train map you lag up top because you see all the upper sectors (which renders the insides of the traincars below). You don't lag below because the cars are split and you do not directly see the sky above the traincars except at hatches.
On this map there are certain spots you must face certain directions to tank your fps. It might be getting too many of the sky sectors in view causing it (each of the 3 buildings rendering their insides) and the remainder rendering everything outdoors because everything is touching the same one or a few TROR sectors.
The gains of splitting such a TROR sector would not be in reducing the area of the sector but the shape so as to touch sectors most likely to be seen together and avoid those that aren't or sectors that absolutely get seen at the same time and those that don't.

Taking a 2nd blind guess if you truly have a TROR sector above all of the map I don't think it was necessary to have. The building roofs could be islands and the open sky merely needs the ceiling raised to not clip them from view.

[ck3D]

I was too curious and just took a quick look at the TROR in this map. The map indeed uses very few bunches and huge sectors, including for the background sceneries; the bunches seem to correspond to whole bits of map too, or at least something seemed off when I tried what I had recommended earlier - lowering the sky above the train - and witnessed the ceiling of randomly distributed areas along the edge of the street come down with it (so indeed my trick would have been impossible with this design), in the sense that that isn't how I would have made it. So yeah it is basically one big bunch per region, and all comprise detailed sectors (wall count). I thought it was interesting/cool how the roof of the train indeed didn't align with a TROR layer by the way, which to me would have seemed logical to make but no it really is its own specific height and then a sophisticated gap on top.

May be completely wrong but from what I've followed I understand TROR works in terms of rendering passes per visible bunch (which is sector(s) associated with a specific portal ID # in the map; different sectors can share or not share bunch), the more bunches you can see at once the more passes but the number of walls per bunch probably matters (I would imagine more so than area size), not to mention every loaded sector also loads sprites etc. In the case of this map, it has few bunches but most of them are visible at once from certain angles with little obstruction and each one of them potentially can draw tons of walls, balance looks a bit off in that sense. I know elandy makes TROR that is a bit similar (and mostly works in Polymost, does weird things in classic). WG is closer to my style with splits and lots of bunches, I think for the same surface area this map has I probably would have used at least 4x the amount, but I'm not even sure that would have changed much given the openness. But maybe it wouldn't be so many sectors having to load and compute at once with the map broken up like that (since more bunches would comprise it and so less of them visible and calling sectors per screen).

I only know so much about the internals, really just map, but I like to observe and guess. Would be funny if it were something as silly as windowed vs. full screen mode causing it. Again the level didn't even lag one bit for me.

[pepsodent]

another update to the map, fixes some issues TLOD had while playing. Also added a little hint near the generator:

[pepsodent]

MSDN review:
https://msdn.duke4.net/hoteieidoh.php

[Paul B]

Alrighty, I finally had about 40 minutes to sit down and play this map. I found all but two secrets, and I thought I was being pretty thorough.

This isn’t meant to be a full review, but personally I really enjoyed the map—there were so many great qualities. I played the level on my 5-year-old work laptop with a GTX 1660 Ti. I thought I was using the latest build of Eduke32, but it turns out it was r10564 (2024-03-16). I played using Polymost and experienced zero frame rate issues—it was smooth as silk at 1600×900 resolution.

I really liked how the author presented the level and then, once you got comfortable with the environment, changed up the perspective to provide a different experience.

The only thing that stood out to me is that if I were designing the level, anything destroyed in the first mode (like sprites, etc.) probably wouldn’t appear again in the second mode. It felt a bit strange seeing things that I had already destroyed. If you want to elaborate on that design choice, I’d actually be interested in hearing your perspective.

Otherwise, the end fight was probably the most enjoyable fight I’ve ever played. It was challenging without feeling impossible, kept you on your toes, and the arena was large enough to give you some breathing room.

In my opinion, the size of the map was perfect—it really proves you don’t need a massive map to make something fun and entertaining. There’s a lot to appreciate here, and your mapping style really appeals to me.

Great job!

[pepsodent]

Thank you for playing!

Paul B, on 08 March 2026 - 08:50 PM, said:

The only thing that stood out to me is that if I were designing the level, anything destroyed in the first mode (like sprites, etc.) probably wouldn’t appear again in the second mode. It felt a bit strange seeing things that I had already destroyed. If you want to elaborate on that design choice, I’d actually be interested in hearing your perspective.

There are a few destructible sprites like the cabin at the entrance to IMF facility and the guardrails around the road in the same place. They share exact same hittags between both copies of the map so if you destroyed something during the day it will be gone nighttime and vise versa. But all other sprites that can be destroyed dont do same thing for multiple reasons. First, not everything can be linked together to be connected between areas, I could remove those during nighttime but it would be a little weird if you didnt touch something during the day yet it's now gone during the night. Second, I was just lazy there tbh. Third, I kept trashcans and barrels intact to have more items in them for much harder fight during nighttime, the drops in them are different so maybe someone at the store and facility put new ones while you are sleeping

[Merlijn]

About the lag: my laptop is super old. Over 10 years actually, I'm surprised it's still working as well as it does haha. So don't worry about that ancient thing not running the map properly

I just watched TLOD's stream, so at least I could experience the map by watching him play it. Great stuff, I especially love the night version! I didn't expect the blue pal would work that well to sell the night-time setting. But it works very well, and the use of lightning in the industrial area makes it stand out even better. Gameplay looks well balanced too, expander is great to use against those fields of eggs.

Also, interesting comment from Mikko about your use of the new features vs. CK, Maarten and me. It's the new guy starting out with all these new features vs. the old dogs trying to learn new tricks
Kidding of course, but your usage of TROR, sloped sprites etc looks very natural.

[ck3D]

I think it also has to do with some of the limits we impose on ourselves by sticking to classic mode/software renderer, there are quite a lot of sloped sprite (or general sprite) clipping tricks that only look good in Polymost and as a result they contribute to a look that is fresher than most of the aesthetics that have existed since 1996 (think closer to Ion Fury style than D3D), pepso sort of mixes Duke 3D tone (via the texture picks) with Ion Fury method (via the Polymost techniques, sloped sprites cutting through walls etc.). It is interesting to see, as long as the author is aware that those methods are Polymost only and they embrace it. Otherwise it can kind of stink when they develop a Polymost-oriented style without realizing that it isn't completely viable in classic and they only find out after the fact and it matters to them, which I've seen happen and frustrate a couple of people before. But so far pepso's maps play well in classic if you're willing to pardon the occasional visual oddity, they aren't all over the place.

FWTW I hope the lag doesn't discourage you (Mrline) from getting into TROR; lighter applications of the feature most likely wouldn't be a problem on your laptop (and I could see you prefer working with it in small touches anyway, knowing your style).

Sprites not being 1:1 between 'parallel' sections always is the other side of the coin of this specific design choice, oftentimes it can be alleviated if as many sprites as possible are destructible and bound together via hitag like you said but usually can't have all. I had to deal with a similar conundrum a while back in the first level of BR where you have a view out of a window onto a 'parallel' plaza below but when you jump down it is silent teleporter to actual street (SOS). A tree in one of the planters used to be visible from there and I had to swap it out with fire in both 'worlds' ultimately because players were getting so confused and even assuming the tree may be a platform or puzzle since it kept changing depending on version and state.

[zykov eddy]

The mapping in this is simply immaculate. So many crazy details and creative use of game resources. Took me a while to actually go to bed to progress, and the ending being a regular Cycloid fight is a dud, but aside than that, a wonderful piece of work. Congratulations on another great release!

[slacker1]

Dr.Panico, on 02 March 2026 - 08:44 AM, said:

Just got done playing it.
Oooooooh boy, this was a tough one. Dumbass me didn't notice the manual over the kitchen table, so I got lost for a while. Outside of that, this level bombards you with enemies and you don't always have the right weapons by your side; forcing you to scramble and hope you can find some gear (or how to get to it, like with the Freezethrower). The last section in particular was a warzone.

But, overall, good map. Pretty original and the visual design is very well done - though the details can sometimes get in the way of the combat.

I've experienced some glitches playing it: I got a Pigcop stuck under the basement stairs, got myself stuck inside a telephone, and I manage to travel back in time by just submerging into a little pond.

I did the same thing at first. I completely missed the instructions at first on the kitchen table.

I also accidentally did some time traveling using that sewage pit at night time. I don't know if it's intentional but it was sort of cool to be able to go back and look for things I might have missed.

I had another interesting glitch as well...

Spoiler

I also managed to get the cycloid emperor stuck in the sky some how. I ran away to grab some more ammo and came back and he was up in the clouds. I couldn't hit him even with rockets.



Shocked the shit out of me when I walked under him and he dropped right on top of me and knocked with a rocket down to 5 health! LOL

I really enjoyed this map! I liked to-do list of the first half and thought the nighttime battle was good too. Ammo and everything was nicely placed but it did seem a bit heavy on the health side. I don't think I even used the portable medkit once.

Nice work!

[pepsodent]

slacker1, on 10 March 2026 - 11:22 AM, said:

I did the same thing at first. I completely missed the instructions at first on the kitchen table.

I also accidentally did some time traveling using that sewage pit at night time. I don't know if it's intentional but it was sort of cool to be able to go back and look for things I might have missed.

I had another interesting glitch as well...

Spoiler

I also managed to get the cycloid emperor stuck in the sky some how. I ran away to grab some more ammo and came back and he was up in the clouds. I couldn't hit him even with rockets.



Shocked the shit out of me when I walked under him and he dropped right on top of me and knocked with a rocket down to 5 health! LOL

I really enjoyed this map! I liked to-do list of the first half and thought the nighttime battle was good too. Ammo and everything was nicely placed but it did seem a bit heavy on the health side. I don't think I even used the portable medkit once.

Nice work!

Lmaoing at the Cycloid flying in the air, I dont even know how that could happen. Thank you for playing, and yes the time traveling pond is intended way of backtracking for secrets or ammo.

[ck3D]

Do bosses even go to sleep after a while, I forgot? This kind of sounds like that might have happened while the Cycloid was hugging a blocked sprite (the lamp post?), and then once you woke it up again it got clipped up the TROR, and since the sectors up there aren't lotag 3 it couldn't navigate to fall back down. Or something.

Also on that screenshot there is a duplicate of the Nuclear Waste Disposal Unit sign that appears to be a mistake seeing as it's not there in the daytime version.

[pepsodent]

I was laughing at the flying Cycloid so hard I didnt even notice the sprite. Its been the most annoying thing in mapster, where the grid size in 2D mode also affects placement of sprites in 3D mode. And sometimes it doesnt place anything so you have to second guess it if there's a sprite but in some other area because of grid size/Z axis jank or if it werent placed at all!

I updated the file on moddb once again with it removed now.

[ck3D]

pepsodent, on 10 March 2026 - 01:30 PM, said:

Its been the most annoying thing in mapster, where the grid size in 2D mode also affects placement of sprites in 3D mode. And sometimes it doesnt place anything so you have to second guess it if there's a sprite but in some other area because of grid size/Z axis jank or if it werent placed at all!

Not if you have grid lock off turned off which you can also just do in 3D mode with L before placing your sprites, that also has the advantage of setting the sprite at the correct Z (e.g.. on slopes), there is no way I could do without it. In moments like you described next, where I know something (anything) happened because I hit accidentally some key but blind so I don't know precisely what, I just automatically Undo before starting to overthink it (sometimes takes several Undos until an observable revision to be sure if I've lost count of my operations).

[lllllllllllllll]

slacker1, on 10 March 2026 - 11:22 AM, said:

I had another interesting glitch as well...

Spoiler

I also managed to get the cycloid emperor stuck in the sky some how. I ran away to grab some more ammo and came back and he was up in the clouds. I couldn't hit him even with rockets.



Shocked the shit out of me when I walked under him and he dropped right on top of me and knocked with a rocket down to 5 health! LOL

IT IS OUR DESTINY TO TAKE YOUR PLANET NUKEM! IT WAS PREDICTED IN THE STARS
*nnnnnnnrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh ERGHN**

[Merlijn]

Cycloid should have listened to more System of a Down XD

Don't you ever get stuck in the sky!!

[ck3D]

Ha, AnalogKid83 on YouTube sounds like they just discovered MSDN via your level (but I think I had left them a recommendation in a comment a long time ago; they probably never cared to check the website or assumed it was an interested plug). Channel is going to look a lot different from now on, so far was mostly Steam levels and shovelware. Anyway here is their video:

[ck3D]

Another video I found:

[Telee]

Are these guys (AnalogKid83 and joe-ilya) part of the community / Discord? Love to see Duke content being shown off. Devon has done most of the heavy lifting.

[pepsodent]

ck3D, on 07 April 2026 - 08:09 AM, said:

Another video I found:

thanks for sharing these!