[Danukem]

The long awaited Imperium episode has arrived at last!

DOWNLOAD IMPERIUM

The Imperium is an 8 level adventure with level design and music by the Oostrum brothers (a.k.a Merlijn and Maarten), additional level design by William Gee, Numan and Kaiser (who also made some models for this), with CON coding and some other odds and ends by me. It uses DukePlus, including Muelsa's Supertrooper. Everything you need to play is included in the download, except of course for DUKE3D.GRP. The Imperium does work with the Polymer HRP -- there are a few glitches but it looks great that way overall. Just to be clear, though: The levels were not designed for Polymer and the HRP is completely optional. Some people will like it better without the HRP. Instructions and credits are included with the download.

I have attached some screenshots, all of them from the first 2 levels.

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[Headless_Horseman]

I'm so happy I could scream ! Thanx a lot, DT and friends !

[Micky C]

How did I miss this thread? I'll kick myself later, and play now instead!

Edit: wow, 111mb, DukePlus has gotten really chunky lately.

[E.C.S]

It's time to kick ass again! Wonderful work people, I like to see new mods everyday

[Kyanos]

This is one amazing piece of work! You Oostrum brothers rock.
Thanks to everyone who put this together for us.

[Mike Norvak]

DeeperThought, on 20 August 2011 - 05:01 PM, said:

The long awaited Imperium episode has arrived at last!

DOWNLOAD IMPERIUM

The Imperium is an 8 level adventure with level design and music by the Oostrum brothers (a.k.a Merlijn and Mrline), additional level design by William Gee, Numan and Kaiser (who also made some models for this), with CON coding and some other odds and ends by me. It uses DukePlus, including Muelsa's Supertrooper. Everything you need to play is included in the download, except of course for DUKE3D.GRP. The Imperium does work with the Polymer HRP -- there are a few glitches but it looks great that way overall. Instructions and credits are included with the download.

I have attached some screenshots, all of them from the first 2 levels.

Damn I missed this post while making some track from Reduked, fucking Reduked!!! LOL

[Plagman]

Looks like the grating texture in the flooded room has the wrong normal map. Also, it took me a ridiculously long time to realize I could climb the ladder surface in that room. The texture didn't really look like it to me :/

[Danukem]

Plagman, on 20 August 2011 - 08:24 PM, said:

Looks like the grating texture in the flooded room has the wrong normal map. Also, it took me a ridiculously long time to realize I could climb the ladder surface in that room. The texture didn't really look like it to me :/

No one used Polymer in building or testing the episode. I only noticed this morning that it ran decently with the Polymer HRP (which was not the case a few months ago). Any normal map you see is going to be whatever the HRP comes with.

There are no good ladder textures in Duke, and we never added anything ladderish, except for the vines model for outdoors. I suppose we could have found or made something, or a patient mapper could have built something out of sprites, but ladders aren't used much in the later levels anyway. It's a long story, but let's just say the development of this episode was almost DNFish with all of the stops and starts, and it's amazing that it turned out as great as it did and got released.

[Plagman]

Are you throwing in your own tiles somehow? If this metal grate texture happens to overwrite a totally different texture from the HRP, the normal map is going to be mismatched for sure unless you specifically undefine it.

[Danukem]

Plagman, on 20 August 2011 - 09:23 PM, said:

Are you throwing in your own tiles somehow? If this metal grate texture happens to overwrite a totally different texture from the HRP, the normal map is going to be mismatched for sure unless you specifically undefine it.

Oh, those sneaky guys! I had assumed that all the new tiles were in the user art range of tiles014.art. But no, there are a few (only a few) that do replace regular Duke tile numbers. I'm guessing that the one you noticed is either tile 181 or 378. That was done before the Polymer HRP existed.

[Plagman]

Maybe, yeah. It's that one:

[Merlijn]

William Gee added that texture a long time ago, I think it's the only texture that replaces an existing one though!

One question: one of the screenshots shows the underwater part from level 2 (with the floating octobrains), yet from what I can see that isn't the magnificent underwater skybox from Kaiser. It looks like the blue skybox from level 1.. Is that a polymer bug or did something go wrong with the final zip?
The skyboxes show up just fine over here and the underwater skybox adds a LOT of atmosphere to that area.

Also I would like to add that polymer and the HRP are purely OPTIONAL, the episode also looks great without them (and probably runs a bit smoother as well - the levels are huge).

Anyway, have fun playing people! It's a small miracle that this has actually been released!

[Plagman]

Polymer only supports one skybox per map currently, so if the level you're talking about has several parallaxed ceilings with different tiles across the map, only the one that has the lower sector number will be used across the whole map.

[Merlijn]

Yes, it uses 2 different skyboxes in the same map... So that's the problem then. Level 3 also has 2 different skyboxes, so.. that's a bit of a bummer.

Like I said, the episode also works fine without polymer though.

[Plagman]

Yes indeed; sorry for raping your map :/ I'm planning on fixing this if that's any consolation.

[zykov eddy]

F*cking Hell!

Downloading!

[Merlijn]

Plagman, on 21 August 2011 - 01:06 AM, said:

I'm planning on fixing this if that's any consolation.

That's at least a relief.
For now, I would advice people to play at least those 2 levels (level 2 and 3) without polymer.. As I said, the episode works fine either way so it's up to the player.

[zykov eddy]

Just watched the cutscene. Nice work, guys! I like the voice of narrator. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of sounds in the cutscene. It would be nice to add some fire sounds & explosions.

[Merlijn]

Thanks! I'm the narrator.
There is a soundtrack, but I kept it very subtle on purpose (at one part, for instance, you can hear a scream and vague explosion sounds in the distance.. and later on you can hear a creepy violin softly playing in the background).

[rasmus thorup]

It's a really great episode. DT remember to stop the duke screaming if he falls and land in the sprite water

[Merlijn]

Thanks, glad you like it!

BTW, here are some additional screenshots from the later levels :



(please note that my pc is unable to run polymer)

[Micky C]

I just finished the episode, and it's amazing work. Highly detailed and very inspirational. I also enjoyed the soundtrack and some of the horror elements. Edit: I played with polymer and the HRP. It looked fantastic and was completely playable, with almost no noticeable bugs.

On a related note, playing this episode reminded me how detrimental the 'bleeding enemy' dukeplus feature is. It's so easy to mistake an enemy as dead one second, only to see them back on their feet the next. They play out their entire death animation and are lying on the ground, and just as you're about to move on, they're up and shooting at you. If that's the price I have to pay for bleeding damage, I'd rather they didn't bleed. Just a bit of friendly criticism on the current implementation of that. Hopefully it can be improved a bit.

Also, the water rising effect (I think it was in the first level) was amazing! Engulfing new sectors as the water rose! That's great work, well done to everyone involved with that. After the level geometry, cutscenes and spritework (which blows TROR out of the water), this is what I was impressed with the most. I'm sure it would remind a few mac players around here of the Marathon trilogy from the early 1990's.

Once again, thank you to everyone who worked on this episode over the course of its development. That was the most fun I had playing a first person shooter in years, since I first played the original levels of Duke 3D. And once again, very inspiring stuff.

[Merlijn]

Wow, you've already finished it? That's quite fast!
Thanks for your comments. The effect with the raising water has been made by William Gee, and it's a very cool effect indeed (I especially love how the water engulves one of the sloped hills, it looks so cool).

Quote

I played with polymer and the HRP. It looked fantastic and was completely playable, with almost no noticeable bugs.

And that's great to hear!

[zykov eddy]

Just "played" through this, and I'm gonna be honest - I didn't liked it. Here's a couple of reasons of that:

1.I don't like big maps with lots of action. I hate sensless killing. The levels are huge and awesome, I would never make such a buty in my life, but the gameplay was just boring to me. I liked the beginning, but eventually I just started cheating to get through the big levels.

2.I'm tired of DukePlus features. It was cool when DukePlus was released first time, I liked the awesome step sounds, jumping system, effects, new projectiles, but now it's just annoying to me. Hearing the same sounds & seeing the same stuff is painful.

This is the same reasons as I didn't like WG Realms 2. You guys did a big job - the levels are beautiful, the use of new features are great, but I expected something like Red series, not this. Please sorry me.

The soundtrack, new weapons, the story - I liked it a lot, but I couldn't stand the gameplay.

[Spiker]

zykov eddy, on 21 August 2011 - 06:01 AM, said:

Just "played" through this, and I'm gonna be honest - I didn't liked it. Here's a couple of reasons of that:

1.I don't like big maps with a lots of action. I hate sensless killing. The levels are huge and awesome, I would never make such a buty in my life, but the gameplay was just boring to me. I liked the beginning, but eventually I just started cheating to get through the big levels.

2.I'm tired of DukePlus features. It was cool when DukePlus was released first time, I liked the awesome step sounds, jumping system, effects, new projectiles, but now it's just annoying to me. Hearing the same sounds & seeing the same stuff is painful.

This is the same reasons as I didn't like WG Realms 2. You guys did a big job - the levels are beautiful, the use of new features are great, but I expected something like Red series, not this. Please sorry me.

The soundtrack, new weapons, the story - I liked it a lot, but I couldn't stand the gameplay.

I agree with your points. It's was pretty boring and the levels didn't appeal to me at all. I could add a lot more to it why it's not too good but I don't want to start a flame war and be attacked by a horde of biased fanatics. I was expecting much more from it but despite the time and effort put into making this episode it's a fail. The music was great though. My score is 4/10 (below average). That's just my opinion. If you enjoyed it lucky you but for me it's a disappointment.

[Loke]

Played until map 4 but decided to take a break. I absolutely love the conceptual grandness and not only that but also how you guys managed to keep the level of detailing so good despite the huge size of the maps. That's quite an achievement. I sorta agree with Eddy though regarding the gameplay, it's probably the weakest point of the mod. Still, I'm enjoying it. The prelude cutscene was amazing to watch.

[Jblade]

finished it a few minutes ago, reposting my thoughts from AMC:

Spoiler

Good work all around! I really loved how the ending level was on X62-2, and you could see various parts of the original throughout the level. The ending was a bit disapointing though since I was expecting a cool ending cutscene and not just the standard E2 end sequence, but it's not a huge problem.

I think my favourite level was the EDF cruiser under attack since it really felt like the fighting was going on whilst you were there. I didn't find any bit spooky really but it was still great fun.

My only criticism really is a few battles seemed to be a bit unfair; that and my computer slows down alot due to the smoke and gore effects so I couldn't beat them legitimately. That's not really your fault though! All in all it was a great bit of work from all of you guys, I'll be replaying it some time in the future (y)

[Merlijn]

I can't believe some people find the gameplay boring.. Oh well, whatever floats your boat I guess. I think there's a great balance between big action sequences and more atmospheric parts. Even though it's more action packed then for instance the red series (speaking of which: I think the EDF levels are very much like red5).

And although the first levels have huge areas, the spacelevels take place in more confined areas. Just don't rush through the maps, try to immerse yourself and feel the atmopshere of these levels.

[Headless_Horseman]

For some reasons the dowload link doesn't work anymore. Could you fix it ?

[Danukem]

Headless_Horseman, on 21 August 2011 - 07:48 AM, said:

For some reasons the dowload link doesn't work anymore. Could you fix it ?

Keep trying. It works for me.

@zykov eddy and Spiker: Obviously we disagree, but what I wanted to say was that this project was started a long time ago, and most of it was made years ago when DukePlus was new and nobody was tired of it yet. So in terms of code based effects, it suffers a bit from the long development time and the fact that some people are just tired of that mod. But the level design is very solid, top notch good old-fashioned Duke 3D. I can't help but think that if these maps were released individually as vanilla Duke maps and I were not associated with them in any way, that you guys would like them better.

@Micky C: What's happening there is that the monster is going into its stun animation. But in the HRP, the death animation begins with the stun tile, so the monster falls down like it is dying. With 8-bit art, you can see clearly that it is still alive. There's not much I can do about it, and at any rate I thought it looked cool to have monsters getting knocked down by hard shots and then getting back up so it didn't concern me. Also I should add that the stun feature is not something you would normally encounter in DukePlus. The player can only acquire the stun ability by picking up a special upgrade item which doesn't appear in any maps (except for one in Imperium and one well hidden in DNE).