[NerdKoopa]

ATTENTION! DEMO AND SCREENSHOTS UPDATED. The demo has now new textures, more details and complete test chambers 00, 01, 02, 03 and 04.

Narbacular Shrink is my latest big project. It's a single player level for Duke Nukem 3D that plays a homage to Portal and its upcoming sequel.
The premise it this: Duke wakes up in a cell in a research facility invaded by the aliens. He is then forced to solve a series of puzzling test chambers with the Shrinker. Duke of course isn't very happy about this new situation, but he has no choise but to play along until he finds a way out of the facility.
Why is it called Narbacular Shrink? Well, it's because Narbacular Drop was the student project that eventually became Portal.
This thread comes with an early demo version of the level. It contains test chambers 00, 01, 02, 03 and 04 (and the level's first secret). 00 introduces you to the concept of shrinking and reflective surfaces. In 01 you get your hands on the Shinker and more gameplay elements are brought up. 02 puts all your new knowledge to test and it's the first "proper" test chamber. The final level will hopefully have 10 chambers (it's still not going to be too long though).
The demo level and the screenshots look like crap, but for good reasons. Here's three of them:
1. It's still in early alpha.
2. The chambers are SUPPOSED to look dull. They're made out of reconfigurable modules, tiles and blocks. Again, like in Portal, you can see the modular nature of the chambers once you get "behind the scenes".
3. My goal is that this level can also be played on the unmodified original Duke 3D running on DOSbox.
I hope this clears many things up. Have fun testing the demo!

Attached File(s)

•  SHRINKDEMO.zip (19.6K)
  Number of downloads: 390

[Micky C]

the levels look interesting I recently played portal, and although this is obviously quite different, I'd love to give it a go in the near future and hopefully provide some positive feedback

[zykov eddy]

Great idea.

[Mblackwell]

Neat idea. I'll check it out after work today.

[Simon_Croes]

It was really awesome, and gave me that typical portal feeling. Keep it up man!

[Geoffrey]

Looks interesting, I'll give it a whirl this weekend! I had some similar shrinker-based puzzles in my DukeVR minimod ( http://msdn.duke4.net/revdukevr.shtml ), maybe you can use some of the stuff I did there (though, most of them are tripbomb-related).

[Spiker]

Pretty cool although everything is a bit too obvious so far.

[Micky C]

Yep, had a play through. For anyone considering testing this out, give it a go; it's really quick.

The one thing that was a bit underwhelming, yet hard to fix, is the whole 'behind the scenes' atmosphere. What I mean is that in portal, at first everything just seems like a standard experiment, everything's all so good and pristine, nothing's wrong. Then suddenly you find one of those areas, and that subtle creepy music plays and you're like holy crap something is not right. This awesome feeling is lost considering that we already know Duke is a prisoner and so forth.

But that shouldn't be an issue since the gameplay would make up for it of course you could still add yet another twist to that behind the scenes subplot to really liven it up, if you haven't planned on doing so already.

[NerdKoopa]

Everything is going smoothly so far. Chamber 02 is somewhat completed and the first part on chamber 03 is working.

[Lunick]

man I love portal, keep making maps

[Loke]

I definitely like what I've played so far. I'm also a fan of Portal so it was definitely a neat experience playing something inspired by a game 11 years younger.

Although it's at an early phase I'd put some more work into the behind-the-scenes areas. As of right now they look a bit empty.

[NerdKoopa]

Attention all the ones who have played the demo! I'm asking you to express your opinion on this subject:
Which one of the following art styles looks nicer and fits the "Portal test chamber" theme better?


The visual style of Narbacular Shrink is depending on you!

In another news, the level is making progress. When making test chamber 04, I though "Hey... What if you DIDN'T want to get shrunk?" After some testing, I came up with the following scenario: The player has to travel across a room and avoid automatic shrinkbeam shooters. If you get shrunk, you will fall through the chamber's steel grating floor and end up in an acid pit below. It's based on a little glitch I found. When small, you will always fall through floor-aligned sprites. Even if they're blocked.

[Mister Sinister]

As for me - the second one is better
Anyway,i like your idea.

[NerdKoopa]

Ahoy! The demo has been updated with new textures, more details and two new test chambers! Also, the screenshots have been updated too. Check the first post for more info!

[Spiker]

NerdKoopa, on Jul 5 2010, 02:28 PM, said:

Ahoy! The demo has been updated with new textures, more details and two new test chambers! Also, the screenshots have been updated too. Check the first post for more info!

I'd rather play this once when it's done and not every time when you add a chamber. As far as the apprearance goes, it's entirely up to you what it would look like.

[Mister Sinister]

Hey,NerdKoopa,at this location:

Quote

we can just jump over acid.Is it right?

[NerdKoopa]

Mister Sinister, on Jul 5 2010, 05:58 PM, said:

Hey,NerdKoopa,at this location:

we can just jump over acid.Is it right?

Nope, you can't. The pit is too wide.

[Micky C]

Damn, I'm too late... I was going to say I prefer the first theme better as while the second one's walls are more portal-ish, the floor and ceiling tiles are a bit grimy so the grimy walls of the first one match better. But hey those screenshots all look good anyway, keep it up.

[Mblackwell]

Just played this. I liked it in theory. The problem was there's no way to determine what direction your shots are going to bounce, so it was quite frustrating in that regard.

[BrOiler1985]

I really enjoyed your demo, that was fun! Keep up the good work! It inspired me to do a map like this but with heavy use of polymer and the hrp. But I dont know if I will finish it, because im lazy ^^

[BrOiler1985]

Hey guys!

I just decided to upload my version of the portal-style-shrinker-map. I dont want to finish it because Im to lazy for it. It really requires polymer. Do what you want with it and have fun!

http://www.diesoifer.de/Portalmap.map