[Micky C]

It's finally here.

Parkade is large city themed pure TROR map by Paul B and myself centred around a city parkade and its surrounding building. The map uses 4 layers of TROR, allowing for the creation of several multiple story buildings. The map might not look that large, but that's because the sectors are stacked vertically rather than spread out horizontally. It's very open, with several ways to get around to the different places. The map will take 20-40 minutes depending on your skill and luck. It comes with a custom ogg and requires atomic edition.

It's designed with polymer, and uses a mix of sector based and polymer lighting. It has not been tested with the HRP, DukePlus or any other mods, so use them at your own risk. The map doesn't use that many lights, so any slowdowns would be due mainly to polymer's unoptimised state and the size and compactness of the map. If you absolutely cannot run polymer at all, then use software mode. It has the occasional visual glitches but is surprisingly stable.

The story: A suburb has gone silent after a piece of alien technology was discovered on the roof of a parkade. Your mission is to get in and find out what what this device does, and neutralize any threats you find.



That map is dedicated to Helixhorned out of gratitude for all the effort he's put into TROR, and giving eduke32 a new life. This is for you Helix!


Edit: slightly improved reviewer ready version uploaded. Personal note: 135 downloads on old version.

Download + reviews: http://www.scent-88....ade/parkade.php
http://msdn.duke4.net/hotparkade.shtml

[Micky C]

I'd like to give a huge thanks to SuperTanker, Norvak and Green who volunteered for the testing, their help has greatly contributed to the polishing of the map.

Speaking of SuperTanker, we're releasing our maps at roughly the same time as a big surprise for the community. His Cherenkov station map is a very fun and atmospheric space station level that's well worth the download. The thread can be found here: http://forums.duke4....640#entry115640

[Paul B]

Parkade.map - A Player’s Handbook
This map was started on Nov. 18th 2011 and completed by July 9th 2012.

The map begins with Duke Nukem’s plane being shot down by a nearby recon pig cop patrol that is circling around a parkade structure. The Aliens appear to be protecting a piece of alien technology located on the roof. Shortly after Duke loses control of his aircraft he quickly ejects himself just shy of the parkade entrance while watching his plane crash into a nearby building off in the distance. Damn! Those alien bastards are going to pay for blowing up his ride... again! The Parkade door in front of Duke is locked and your mission is to get in and find out what’s going on with this alien device and why it is so heavily guarded while neutralizing any immediate threats around.
Good Luck Duke!

Duke's options are: to run like Hell and explore, or enter one of two buildings: The East office complex or the South Hotel building.

1A.) East Office Complex - If Duke enters the East office first he can obtain a blue key card from the boardroom and make his way upstairs to unlock a bedroom door which will lead Duke to 1 of the 2 yellow key cards. After locating and grabbing the yellow key card found on a table on the second floor Duke can head back down to the security room located on the first floor. If Duke can find the entrance into the security room he can unlock & open the entrance into the Parkade.

Note: The East Office Complex can be played from either the ground floor/up or from the top floor/down. It just depends on the path Duke takes).

Using the Yellow keycard Duke collects from the East Office building Duke can unlock either the Skywalk passage between the East office building and the North Tower or open the Parkade maintenance room safe. While in the Parkade maintenance room, don’t forget to flip the switch to open the garage door on the roof of the parkade this will help you find the final keycard.

Note: The Parkade structure can be unlocked and opened by two documented locations in the map: By means of a secret security room in the East office building or by the West building Command Center. (It is possible to get into the parkade without unlocking the Parkade but it’s not an obvious task. The Parkade can also be played from the bottom/up or from the top/down.

Duke should probably head over to the South Hotel building to find a way to gain access to the West building before attempting to tackle the North Tower. At this point heading to the North Tower would lead to a dead end with a red key card switch and no red key.

Note: Duke can choose to play the South Hotel from the Top/Down or from the Bottom/Up.

1B.) “The South Hotel” - If Duke chooses to enter the South Hotel apartments first Duke can obtain a blue keycard on the Lifeguard's Chair. The blue key card will open a ventilation system in the West Building (Command Center) via a rooftop ledge in the South West corner of the map. Or Duke can sneak over the to the East building using the South East ledge to immediately access the yellow keycard in the East Office Building.

2.) “The West Command Center” - This building was intended to be the main building used to unlock the Parkade entrance. The Command Center also provides Duke with a "yellow" keycard for access to the lower level Parkade vault where he might find a diagram that can help him unlock the hidden red key card. The West building is linear in design and will give Duke an opportunity to fight two mini bosses in the map. It is best to kill any roaming tanks before triggering the mini bosses.

3.) “The Parkade” – At ground level Duke can unlock the Parkade Maintenance room with the "Yellow" key card taken from either the West Command Center sleep quarters or from the East Office complex office table. Inside the parkade maintenance room there is a vault with a switch diagram. At this point, Duke would want to memorize the switch diagram combination so he can reveal the hidden red key on the roof of the parkade.

4) “The East Office Complex” - If Duke hasn’t already done so, Duke will have to navigate his way through the East office complex while locating any additional keycards he may have missed before leaving the East Office Complex via the second floor TROR skywalk. This will lead Duke to the North Tower so be prepared for a fight! (The Skywalk between the two buildings requires the use of a Yellow key card).

5) “The North Tower” - Provides Duke with the one and only jetpack found in the level for single player as well as the last key card switch which will reveal the detonator for the final fight. The last switch will cause the teleport on the roof of the parkade to malfunction causing an explosion followed by a city block battle on the roof tops with one pissed off boss and his helpers to contend with.

Note: Duke can take the battle to any building he prefers as he doesn’t have to fight the end boss from just the North Tower. However, staying on the North Tower would be the easiest method for finishing the map.

Good Luck Duke!

Stats & Individual Key card Breakdown
Blue Keycards: 2
Yellow Keycards: 2
Red Keycards: 1
Total Keycards: 5
Average Map Completion Time: 30-60 Minutes
Total Enemies: 220 (Come Get Some Difficulty)
Total Secrets: 8

A word of caution, any time Duke attempts to recover a key card aliens are alerted. The game play is very dynamic and I have found that changing up the routes will always make the battles fresh and you will always come across new experiences. The AI in this map never plays the same way unless you take the same route each time which would be pretty boring.

Also, while playing this map without cheating it is possible to get every gun in the game from the starting position in under 60 seconds! If you can't do it, your going the "wrong way".

Attached File(s)

•  Parkade.zip (1.96MB)
  Number of downloads: 548
•  Parkade-NoMusic.zip (358.13K)
  Number of downloads: 449

[Danukem]

This looks nice. I need to catch up on playing user maps, and I'll definitely play this one after checking out the other maps I have neglected.

I'm interested to know who did what as far as building the level.

[Micky C]

It's a bit late but I reuploaded the zip several minutes ago to fix a visual glitch in one of the tror rooms. Sprites still don't look good on tror surfaces.

As for the building of the level, it truly was a joint effort. Paul and I are roughly at the same level, so it was a great experience having complete trust in the person you're working with. There isn't a single place in the map that we both didn't touch to some degree, either small or large. It's true that some of the buildings were done predominantly by either me or Paul, but I hope it doesn't seem unfair that we don't reveal who did what for the reason mentioned above. Hopefully people will find the maps consistent and not even notice that more than one person worked on it.

[LeoD]

Maps like this are a better motivation to get a faster PC than DNF.

EDIT: I had lots of crashes while trying to play through this map with several recent EDuke32 builds, half of them when loading saved games. I you encounter similar problems try rev.2195.

[Blue Lightning]

What is the .ogg file for?

[LeoD]

Blue Lightning, on 05 January 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

What is the .ogg file for?

Music. A mid/ogg named like the user map will be played instead of dethtoll.mid.

[Jblade]

Gonna repost what I posted at scent-88:

I also had to play on classic since Polymer is unplayable, but it didn't stop me enjoying the map (I ignored glitches since I knew it wasn't your fault)

Great stuff! TROR wasn't used just as a gimmick here since there are several parts which make good solid use of it - the gameplay was also fun and I liked that you gave the freezer as the gun with the most ammo (at least I found so!) and you didn't find the shotgun/chaingun until a bit further into the map. I did get lost a few times since obviously the 3D nature of the level made it harder to navigate than normal, but no worse than other maps for older Duke.

Also I forgot to mention there but there's a slight bug with the pool of water - you need to make the TROR transition between it blockable and place SE7s like a normal water sector if you want it to work like normal water. If you don't than even though the player can 'submerge' they won't be able to surface properly and the palette effect onscreen won't work

[Paul B]

Hi James,

Thanks for your comments! They are very much appreciated, especially your tip with the pool water. However, I think we plan on leaving the pool as more of a water hole then having duke have a spring board action when surfacing. I realize this is not how the game initially was intended to use the water but I prefer this method for this particular situation.

[Jblade]

That's fair enough I didn't know if it was intentional or not, or if you guys didn't know about water and TROR so I thought I'd let you know in anycase. Nice work in general, I hope you make more maps as well as Micky!

[Mike Norvak]

Paul B, on 05 January 2012 - 02:11 PM, said:

Hi James,

Thanks for your comments! They are very much appreciated, especially your tip with the pool water. However, I think we plan on leaving the pool as more of a water hole then having duke have a spring board action when surfacing. I realize this is not how the game initially was intended to use the water but I prefer this method for this particular situation.

Yeah, I was going to point that out during my betatest, but then I realized that it was done this way for a specific reason I think, you haven't enough walls to subdivide pool's bottom to the same number of sectors as the surface because the pillar shadows.

BTW. I could list this map as one of my favourites from the last years, it has that special Duke3D original style on it imo, but now is real 3D!! Haven't played the latest version yet, I'll play it tonight.

[Micky C]

Thanks Norvak, I'm really glad you liked it. Heh, it should've been called "Parkade 3D".

I'm contemplating doing some really minor texture and shade fixes. It's absolutely nothing to wait for or redownload the map for, but I'm just pointing it out in case any reviewers were about to upload it.

[Blue Lightning]

Well I cant play it. When it is loading, it freezes screen and the duke song is stuck on one note. What's worse I cannot get back to desktop, I have to do a hard reboot And this is in 8 bit mode!

I do have an old HRP and Eduke, but all my other mods work just fine.

Xp 32
ATi 1950 XTX

[Micky C]

Just in case you don't already, use the latest eduke32, there's a slight chance your current one is from before TROR was introduced.

Also, people should use the latest eduke32 anyway since it fixes the savegame crash. http://dukeworld.duk.../20120105-2236/

[CruX]

Just got through with this. I hate to inject some negativity (especially after everybody else has been pretty positive) but this was really difficult for me to play. First and foremost, I went ahead and used polymer, though my computer has noticeable trouble chugging it out. Maybe some of the problems I had were some of my own fault for doing this, but you'd designed the map for polymer, so I figured I should experience it the way you intended; unfortunately this meant having quite a few instances of lag slowing me down or outright locking up the computer.

To offer some praise, the central hub area of the map is very well designed. The parkade looks great (inside and out. Kudos to whoever did that) and the muli-layered areas that surrounded it were pretty cool. I also liked that car that was tucked off in the alleyway. TROR was used pretty well for this map (despite the bugs, but that wasn't your fault) and as James noted, it wasn't gimmicky at all. Unfortunately when you enter the other buildings, level design suffers significantly...

Spoiler

There are several areas like this in the map that I don't get. What was the point of this?

You did a pretty good job with the trimwork in this shot, but the texturing leaves a lot to be desired. The bricks are stretched out way too much, and the tiled ceiling isn't panned correctly, even though it looks like it could be fixed pretty easily.

What's the story with the outlined texture here? Was this an accident or was it deliberate? Either way it clashes terribly with the walls on either side of it, and there are several more areas in the map that are like this...

This one isn't a design flaw so much as it is an idle observation, but this has got to be one of the most parochial swimming pools I've ever seen.

Typically you should only give a floor tile a non-zero pallet if there's red klaxons going on or something else of that nature that would logically bathe the area in the selected color. This looks like it was chosen just to have a blue bedspread, and unfortunately that turns the player's hud weapons and the enemies blue whenever they're over this bed (ie, it looks weird and kills immersion).

Why are the wooden walls here stretched out so much? I suggest that you flip the texture on the ceiling around (so the boards will run width-wise) and then shrink the walls so they'll be the same width as the ceiling. This'll help make it look like an actual door frame instead of...I don't know what...

This just looks like a really nasty design oversight. Either block the risen area I'm standing on off, or change the design of the area behind that fence so you won't have this huge gap of parallaxed space.

When you place a newbeast in a map, be sure to scale him down to 40 by 40 (how he appears in-game). Newbeasts are useractors and thus they don't scale instantly upon being loaded like the other enemies do, unless their behavior is altered in the CON files. That being considered, when I originally ran into this guy, he sat there for a second or two at that ginormous size before magically shrinking down and then attacking.

There's also several areas that are brightly lit despite there being virtually no lighting fixtures, though I didn't think to screencap any of that.

Unfortunately the gameplay for this map tends to drag it down quite a bit as well. Like I said, the central hub area looks great, but I couldn't appreciate any of that when I started the map, because I pretty much got dropped right in the middle of a fire-fight and had to spend the first minute or two running frantically around, trying not to get the shit blown out of me. Since this map is nonlinear, you have no idea where you should go during this initial period of extreme vulnerability, and there's really only one cache of weapons near the starting point, and there's no indication that you should head into that building. In fact, you're really persuaded not to approach it all, since you have to blow a giant hole in the door to get in, and even then you still have to fight your way through a lot of enemies before you get to the right room. What I did (after getting killed a few times) was head towards the fire truck on the other side of the parkade, cap the pigcop inside the back, and grab the freezethrower that was stashed there. Unfortunately even with that plan, I still had only about 25 HP left by the time it was all said and done. Even though I don't like giving the player a shotgun right off the bat, it would help immensely when dealing with all those pigcops on the streets.

Another big problem is the fat commanders. They. Spawn. EVERYWHERE. And typically you have no idea that this has happened till it's too late and one of them's bitch-slapped you with several rockets. They often get hung on the bridges that lead into the parkade, and just shoot you from behind those, so all you'll see is a rocket flying towards you and no clue where it came from. This, combined with the level's generally confusing layout (there several ways to get into the parkade and most of them are completely unnecessary) makes the map's gameplay more aggravating than anything else, and I nearly quit more than once. Overall, Parkade was a good concept with a few very well-designed areas, but there are numerous points of poor execution (both in terms of design and gameplay) that are spoiling the entire thing. Hope this isn't being too harsh, but it's just how the entire thing struck me.

[Micky C]

Some of those texture things kinda make me want to do yet another polish. We could have used you as a bet tester

Based on what you have said, I can only assume that you're playing on come get some (it's the only difficulty that has enemies on the street at the start, and I didn't bother with damn I'm good). It was intended to be a real challenge and only meant to be played after you've finished the map on an easier setting. Paul tried to warn you, but I probably should have made this more clear.

Still, I appreciate your honesty, I'm just glad at least some people like the map, which helps make the effort worth it. There have been maps released which many people have considered masterpieces, which I've absolutely hated and could not bring myself to finish. But thankyou for your comments, I was surprised that there hadn't been much in the way of negative criticism so far, and I'll take your points into account for future maps, and hopefully so will Paul

[Blue Lightning]

I guess my old Eduke wont support it. I would have to upgrade to a newer Eduke

[Paul B]

Hi EmericaSkater,

Thanks for your feedback, I agree with what you have pointed out but there are some things that are left intentionally. The swimming pool room was left that way for something different and it uses way less walls. It's not a main feature of the map but it is intended to make the room a bit more challenging to navigate by not falling into the pool. As everyone knows if someone runs through a pool they don't exactly spring out of it immediately, especially in the deep end. Your spoiler screenshot post of the sprite with the 3D Credits... I posted that there because I was intending it to be a drink instruction menu. But since there aren't any sprites like that and from a distance it looks like a menu, I kept it giving credit where credit is due. The door screenshot in the upper appartment building was also done intentionally. It was to indicate to the player that the wall was an "outside" wall so duke would know which door would take him back to the hallway after he entered the building. However maybe because the appartment is small enough it is not required to do this. So i'm debating on whether that should be changed or not. I agree the blue bed should not have a palette of 1 but I do like the blue bed spread and something should probably be done about this as it doesn't fit properly.

Thanks for your sharp eye I'm sure you'll be seeing a few minor update changes over the next day or two as more things are brought to our attention.

I'm sorry to hear your computer doesn't allow for you to play the map properly. Micky has done a wonderful job optimizing the map as much as possible so that it can be playable for most. He has made significant improvements to the map since the maps early stages. However, it is a taxing map because of its size and having a big open area with lots of different details does take its toll on the frame rate. We hope that when future improvements have been made to Eduke our map will run faster and offer more features down the road. These features are already inplace and are just presently waiting for the improvements to be made to the engine for a better user experience.

[Paul B]

Due to some obvious texture mistakes and texture alignment problems that have been brought to our attention since the release we are currently revisiting the map to make some necessary corrections. Thanks for your patience and understanding while we make these final touch-ups. This is not my fault! Just kidding!

[Arwu]

After moved to new apartment I still not have internet connection here. Im cannot wait to download some of the forum maps. For now only small files are ok to download on my phone, even 1mb file is is pain to download <lol>. But thats good, I will play this map some time later, for that time map should be really finished ... I cant wait to test it out

[Mikko]

Since you have requested a review, I will write one. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have due to performance issues but there's gotta be a compromise. So, would you guys prefer a scoreless review ("No rating") or a score based on the buggy Classic mode with no Polymer lighting? Polymer is not an option as I have to face the floor half the time to get a decent fps.

[Paul B]

Since your computer can't play the map as it is intended to be played a scoreless review would be best as it is only fair. Maybe next year Santa will bring you a graphics card. But just hold off for now as we are still making changes. I'm a bit frustrated because the map was definitely released too soon to the public before finalizing some minor but obvious details, texture problems, design concerns and now we are paying for it.

[Mikko]

Paul B, on 07 January 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

Maybe next year Santa will bring you a graphics card.

Lol, I have an excellent graphics card. It's Polymer that's poorly optimized.

[Supertanker]

I have an nVidia 8800GTS that can play most games maxed out at 1280x1024. It's not the graphics card that's an issue, I believe; it's CPU. Either way, eDuke32 is poorly optimized. It seems that it uses only one core for everything--on a dual-core CPU that's annoying, to say the least. So on my dual-core AMD 3800+ x2 (2.0GHz core, a bit old) it's only using one core and probably is performing not as well as the 2.6GHz P4 would be behind me....

[Micky C]

@SuperTanker, how do you think those with quad cores feel?

Paul B, on 07 January 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

I'm a bit frustrated because the map was definitely released too soon to the public before finalizing some minor but obvious details, texture problems, design concerns and now we are paying for it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The majority of issues that have been uncovered since are things that would go unnoticed by most non-mappers, especially in such as action oriented map as this, at least I haven't seen any non mappers jump up and point out any bad textures. It's not uncommon for maps and TCs to be updated after release, even Gambini's It Lives is at v1.05. I still stand by that it was as good a time to release as any; it's not like I was fully aware of the texture misalignments and chose not to fix them in favour of rushing it out the door. It's a large map with an ambitiously widescale use of TROR, a lot of issues were fixed in beta testing but we were never going to catch everything.

Mikko_Sandt, on 07 January 2012 - 07:15 AM, said:

Since you have requested a review, I will write one. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have due to performance issues but there's gotta be a compromise. So, would you guys prefer a scoreless review ("No rating") or a score based on the buggy Classic mode with no Polymer lighting? Polymer is not an option as I have to face the floor half the time to get a decent fps.

It definitely would have been interesting to get a rating, I'm rather split on the matter. Seeing as it was a collaborative map, and none of the other CBP's on your site have ratings, and that you'll be reviewing it from the perspective of a glitchy renderer missing a bit of shading (although there's only one large room in the map which has a complete absence of sector shading, but it's darkish so you can just imagine the lights are off), I'm with Paul in that it would be best not to give one. Although if you send me an approximate rating via PM just to satisfy my curiosity of how it stands up against my previous map, that'd be appreciated.

[Paul B]

Mikko_Sandt, on 07 January 2012 - 10:34 AM, said:

Lol, I have an excellent graphics card. It's Polymer that's poorly optimized.

Well...if Polymer is what is poorly optimized then I guess you can't dock our rating based on the way the game performs on your computer. Obviously the game will improve as things are optimized. Consider this map ahead of its time =)

[Danukem]

Paul B, on 07 January 2012 - 11:46 PM, said:

Well...if Polymer is what is poorly optimized then I guess you can't dock our rating based on the way the game performs on your computer. As obviously the game will improve as things are optimized to run better. Consider this map ahead of its time =)

The problem is that Polymer only maps have been "ahead of their time" for a couple of years now. I can understand why a reviewer would rate based on how a map actually plays instead of how it will play at some future unspecified date.

[NY00123]

Alright, I've completed the map on "Come Get Some" difficulty as of yesterday. (Although, technically, it'd be the midnight of the current 24-hours span locally...)

***WARNING: SPOILERS ARE COMING!***

Great uses of TROR! From the native multi-story constructions, to the bed () and even a couple of windows with the sloped "ceilings" a bit below them.
As for a few minor things I like (have I mentioned spoiler warnings?), there are these one-way mirrors on the yellow card locked doors, the Apple computer () and one hidden message or two. I've got lost a bit for once, at least, but eventually found the way to continue.

*Spoilers warning again!*: 6 secrets out of 8 have been found; Although, for the one with the Atomic Health in the vents (to be accessed with a jetpack), looks like one needs a lot of luck in order to be able to enter it. I refer to the secret in the building with the bed to explode.

On the recently discussed sub-topic, I could see there's what to improve in the renderer, when it comes to performance. What's strange (or not?) is that even by going down from the resolution of 1920x1080 to, say, 640x480, there isn't a lot of improvement in the performance everywhere; Or so I feel, at least. It's still better than no Polymer at all, though!

Thanks for experimenting with TROR!

[Paul B]

Micky C, on 07 January 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

Although if you send me an approximate rating via PM just to satisfy my curiosity of how it stands up against my previous map, that'd be appreciated.

We've played enough Duke Nukem maps to know what constitutes a great map, thanks to the original 3D Realms Mappers. Most people when they build a custom map they create them from an architectural design stand point and completely forget what makes Duke Nukem so much fun to play. While maps might look nice with all the proper trimming and texturing the fun factor and the game play just isn't there, making them forgettable with no replay value.

I would like to thanks Micky for working closely with me on this map and for his clever implementation and vision of TROR. Which I believe makes this map one of a kind by demonstrating all different possibilities that can be achieved by using the latest version of the Mapster build engine and not compromising the fun of running around and blowing things up.

We've left this map intentionally open to give the player the freedom he deserves while exploring the city block. If a player does not succeed in one direction there are always multiple avenues to go to achieve the same goal. As a result this makes the map some what confusing and possibly frustrating to figure out at first but once understood, the player can then choose whatever route suits his fancy next time to complete the map in half a dozen different ways.

This map is definitely a key card hunt and I realize this style may not appeal to some people. I realize the frame rate while playing this map is not exactly stellar and I hope in the future as things progress we will only benefit from future updates made to the game engine.

The final revision of this map is almost complete and we will be submitting it publicly again very soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

For those who have played it I hope you have had as much fun playing it as we did making it. Thanks everyone!