[LeoD]

Paul B, on 20 January 2012 - 06:53 PM, said:

I am just happy that there are still die hard Duke 3D fans out there who still play the custom user maps that we post and not only play them but comment and keep the community alive because its these people who take the time to play these custom maps that's keeping the heart in the community and keeping Duke3D alive. If we didn't have people like you guys playing these maps there would be no point to making them.

So thank you for your support whether you think highly of our maps or not. At least you take the time to play them and as always it’s very much appreciated.

I guess many folks simply get their maps from MSDN or DNR. You should place a link to the corresponding Duke4 thread into the TXT file of every map to make them aware about a place to discuss it.

A player-only guy (like me) will sometimes rate a map from a different point of view than the more or less experienced mappers around here who do the majority of responses. I much like Mikko's reviews for example to know what to expect but I know when to add my grain of salt.

[Forge]

http://www.scent-88....topic,73.0.html

[Paul B]

LeoD, on 21 January 2012 - 08:27 AM, said:

I guess many folks simply get their maps from MSDN or DNR. You should place a link to the corresponding Duke4 thread into the TXT file of every map to make them aware about a place to discuss it.

Very good point and I never thought of doing that before. From this day forward I will include a direct link to the discussion thread in my txt file to where the map was initially posted for feeback purposes. =)

[rasmus thorup]

I will get my revenge Paul Bitch.

[Paul B]

rasmus thorup, on 21 January 2012 - 11:09 AM, said:

I will get my revenge Paul Bitch.

Haha! Looking forward to the sequel!

[Paul B]

As some of you might have noticed the parkade map has been updated. I also just recently discovered a new problem with the Keylock system for multi-player. I am hoping someone can help me with a bit of a strange request.

When I create a buton and assign it a palette of 1 for a switch. Does that switch only appear in Duke Death Match? What about Co-op ? If a game is played in Co-op mode does the blue palette switch appear? I hope not, unfortunately because the multi-player aspect isn't operational yet I can't test this. But if anyone knows the answer it would be much appreciated. I checked the Info suite on this topic and it just says:

"All layers become blue. The usual choice to designate certain sprites as Multiplayer-only or DukeMatch-only."

Now Co-op is multi-player and Duke Match I have no clue what mode that is. I assume death match?. So i'm not sure how the palette 1 behaves in a co-op multiplayer game. I am hoping that any Palette of 1 switch doesn't appear in multi-player Co-op can someone confirm this?

Thanks,
Paul

[High Treason]

I don't believe they do appear in co-op, because I remember trolling my friend by grabbing keycards and "hump-jumping" my way past the keycard door and laughing at him as he could hear distant explosions. In fact, I generally just exploited my way to places he couldn't get to (that I wasn't supposed to be in) and he could never catch up, we never saw a single teleporter such as the ones found in DM, so I deffinitely don't think switches appear in co-op. I know that weapons do though.

I should probably note that this was in the original game levels, but I can't see why it would behave any differently here.

[Gambini]

Thing is that only switches, items, ammo and weapons will disappear in SP if they have a pal higher than 0. Keylocks are not affected by this since you have to put a pal on them to tell what key can open them.

This is useful for instances where a door has a lock in one side only, so you put a switch with pal 1 in the other side so players in DM can open it -progression doesn´t matter in DM-. As such, i really doubt those things affect Coop too.

[Paul B]

What I have done is created an invisible switch with the same lowtag as the keylock switch and placed the invisible switch infront of the keylock switch. I gave the invisible switch a palette of 1. This way it only triggers the invisible switch in Death match so that Duke doesn't require a blue keycard to activate the blue keylock switch since there are multiple Blue Keylocks in the map. Duke only gets one blue keycard in death match mode. So far it works as it is suppose to but I was unable to test what happens in Co-op mode. But I think if you're right High Treason and if so then it should be ok. Thanks for your guys's input!

I'm definitely learning a lot of new tricks.

[MetHy]

I played this for about half an hour and gave up without completing the map.

I did not like it at all. The map is a confusing mess. Everything is connected to each other with no real sense or thought put into it. I found myself wandering around wondering where to go next all the time, sometimes reaching areas I had already visited thinking I was making some progress, other times reaching areas I felt I wasn't supposed to go yet.

Design is very uneven with some interesting places but also a lot of places had texturing and architecture which were too simple. Most of the times it felt like some city map from 1997 with an added TROR "bonus".

Speaking of which, it was buggy (giving weird visual glitches, and I'm using eduke32 latest snapshot; although I was playing in 8-bit maybe those glitches don't appear in other modes) and even though sometimes it looked good, especially outdoor when being able to see several building floors at once, I felt that there was just way too much of it. Why using TROR for things such as beds, lights hanging from the ceiling, etc, when those would look just as good, without being buggy, made out of sprites? It felt like when making this map you were just playing with your new toy for the sake of it. (Not to mention that saving yourself the trouble to make small things out of TROR and making them out of sprites might have helped for performance)

Gameplay didn't help either, especially at the start of the map where you can go everywhere yet there is only enough ammo&health in one place. The rest of the time enemies felt like they were randomly put there for the sake of being there. To me they were more of an annoyance in my desperate search for the next place to go rather than being fun.

I also had to turn off the song after listening to it once.

[Helixhorned]

MetHy, on 29 February 2012 - 03:59 AM, said:

Speaking of which, it was buggy (giving weird visual glitches, and I'm using eduke32 latest snapshot; although I was playing in 8-bit maybe those glitches don't appear in other modes) and even though sometimes it looked good, especially outdoor when being able to see several building floors at once, I felt that there was just way too much of it. Why using TROR for things such as beds, lights hanging from the ceiling, etc, when those would look just as good, without being buggy, made out of sprites? It felt like when making this map you were just playing with your new toy for the sake of it. (Not to mention that saving yourself the trouble to make small things out of TROR and making them out of sprites might have helped for performance)

Just one thing to note: 8-bit TROR support will always be imperfect and require the geometry to adhere to certain constraints (bunches are convex, etc.). Polymost support is bad enough to be labeled "unsupported". This leaves Polymer as the only viable candidate for this particular map.

I agree about the small-scale design thing! Stuff like tables is really best done the old-fashioned way.

[Paul B]

Hi MetHy,

I realize you are not too happy about my comments towards your map you recently released. If you want to bash the stuff I created at least find problems with RCPD.map & RunningScared.map. Parkade map was built by myself and Micky and you are insulting us both by slamming this map. This map was dedicated to Helixhorned to show him various combinations that can be used with TROR. A feature that he created and while we were at it we decided to add some game play. By creating Parkade.map it gave us the opportunity to stress test the Mapster and Eduke Engine finding new emerging bugs with TROR and reporting them only to improve the editor and game experience.

While you raise some very good points I know what you are trying to do and I would appreciate it if you directed your snarky remarks to me directly.

Or you can just take away all my reputation points that works too.

Thank you

[Forge]

That's being a little paranoid Paul

He really didn't say anything that wasn't mentioned before.

If MetHy wanted to be vindictive he could have easily found a release thread for one of my maps and heaped on the negative comments. I'm the one who ruined his thread and also criticized the gameplay of his map.

[Paul B]

One of the problems we ran into while making the parkade map was because of the freedom to run around we found it quite difficult to find a solution to placing the keycards in the right places. The keycards were definitely an after thought and placing them in such a way that would be practical was a difficult task. Because we designed the map first and in the later stages discussed keycard placement it was an awkward and complicated after thought. I'm sure if more planning were to have went into the map before we started building it we would have stood a better chance of stream lining the key card process.

There is no doubt this map is definitely a random keycard hunt and what frustrates me about the map is sometimes i'll collect one red keycard and then make it over to the other building with the other red keycard while I still have a red keycard I haven't used yet. Since you can't carry 2 red keycards at the same time you are forced to leave a keycard behind until you unlock the parkade maintenance room door and that drives me nuts.

Once you've actually played the map several times through and you know where the keys and locks are located playing the map in an order that makes sense to you is ultimately what makes the map fun. This map is all about finding a system that is efficient and works for Duke. We were both very surprised when we had the beta testers test this map not one person commented on the crappy keycard system. So we assumed that maybe it wasn't really much of a problem afterall. But it takes playing the map many times before you develope a system resulting in a more enjoyable experience.

But you're right I can see this being frustrating only playing the map once. We tried to make this map have a lot of re-play value and probably went a bit over board with the replay value and lost the focus of actually progressing through the map.

Forge really its okay.. I'm currently designing a new map specifically for Methy and Mikko. This new map will hopefully destroy their game play, put an end to their blitz creek time trials on maps because "they are" the best Duke players on the internet and this map will cause them a lot of grief to the point they go insane trying to finish it without dying and to make matters worse one linear path will have no enemies and i am sure they still will die and the other linear route... well it will be action packed but they will still die. So prepare to die in my map. If you're are too good for the AI then we'll see how well you tackle the AI in combination with puzzles, trama and psyche games.

By the end of this map I will probably go mental but it will be all worth it in the end knowing i'll make a map neither Methy or Mikko can finish. Or have I already achieved that with Parkade? Muhahaha

[Gambini]

Hell man! Utilize the time you´re spending writting excuses in working on your next map and you won´t have to hear these complaints anymore.

[Paul B]

Gambini, on 29 February 2012 - 07:05 PM, said:

Hell man! Utilize the time you´re spending writting excuses in working on your next map and you won´t have to hear these complaints anymore.

Oh these complaints only fuel the mapping rage. =)

[Danukem]

It doesn't take any skill to make a map that is frustratingly difficult.

[Micky C]

MetHy, on 29 February 2012 - 03:59 AM, said:

I played this for about half an hour and gave up without completing the map.

I did not like it at all. The map is a confusing mess. Everything is connected to each other with no real sense or thought put into it. I found myself wandering around wondering where to go next all the time, sometimes reaching areas I had already visited thinking I was making some progress, other times reaching areas I felt I wasn't supposed to go yet.

Design is very uneven with some interesting places but also a lot of places had texturing and architecture which were too simple. Most of the times it felt like some city map from 1997 with an added TROR "bonus".

Speaking of which, it was buggy (giving weird visual glitches, and I'm using eduke32 latest snapshot; although I was playing in 8-bit maybe those glitches don't appear in other modes) and even though sometimes it looked good, especially outdoor when being able to see several building floors at once, I felt that there was just way too much of it. Why using TROR for things such as beds, lights hanging from the ceiling, etc, when those would look just as good, without being buggy, made out of sprites? It felt like when making this map you were just playing with your new toy for the sake of it. (Not to mention that saving yourself the trouble to make small things out of TROR and making them out of sprites might have helped for performance)

Gameplay didn't help either, especially at the start of the map where you can go everywhere yet there is only enough ammo&health in one place. The rest of the time enemies felt like they were randomly put there for the sake of being there. To me they were more of an annoyance in my desperate search for the next place to go rather than being fun.

I also had to turn off the song after listening to it once.

Thanks for your comments. I don't feel insulted that you decided to quit, this is definitely near the top of the very open maps list and I can see why people might find it frustrating. You're also kind of right about the playing around with TROR. A lot of it was vital to the map and couldn't really work the same without it, but there was also a fair amount of it resulting from 'hmm what if I tried building this with TROR'. In hindsight a lot of that could have and should have been made from sprites, it certainly would have freed up more walls for use in other areas. My only defence is that I found making some things with TROR easier than making with sprites (that's probably just me), and that they're easier to edit after they've been made.

If nothing else, all the use of TROR can be used as an example to other mappers who wish to build similar effects, or perhaps expand upon them, which coincidentally was one of the primary goals of the TROR CBP (which this sort of is.) My previous maps are no where near this open, and any future maps I do will be less open as well (and the TROR will be toned down to only where it is needed) so I hope you and others will enjoy them.

ninja edit: It could be author's advantage but I don't think the map is unfairly difficult on piece of cake, although it was the original one-size-fits-all difficulty and meant to be challenging. However the higher up difficulties are certainly meant to be damn hard and are more catered towards the super expert players.

[Mike Norvak]

@ Paul B. : I downvoted your last post, (in case you're wondering) mainly because the same reason Gambini pointed out.
I really hate when someone post: "In my next map I'm gonna include two doors; behind the first one is a battlelord waiting for you, on the other door there'll be a keycard", etc. etc... "this map is gonna be extremely funny, hard, non-linear, etc, there will be really cool puzzles"... and comments like that. Maybe that's OK for people that hasn't realeased anything and only post ideas, but c'man you're not that kind of guy, aren't you? your previous map RCPD Finale was great, I don't know why you argue as if you weren't good at mapping...

This is not a fucking competition man!

About Parkade, maybe I failed as betatester, I did point some stuff out, but I hadn't the dedication to indicate things like those TROR lamps and tables that could be made out of sprites, in part because I didn't know if there was a way to revert those tror rooms into normal ones, and other stuff I didn't mention... sorry for that.

[Micky C]

Lamps? Hold on now, it was only one hanging tror lamp, and there was a freezer on top of it. The map wasn't that excessive

[Mike Norvak]

Micky C, on 29 February 2012 - 09:13 PM, said:

Lamps? Hold on now, it was only one hanging tror lamp, and there was a freezer on top of it. The map wasn't that excessive

Haha you see I wasn't that good at betatesting I don't even remember how many lamps there were

EDIT: Anyway you still can put a freezer on the top of a spritework-based lamp

[MetHy]

Paul B, on 29 February 2012 - 08:05 AM, said:

Hi MetHy,

I realize you are not too happy about my comments towards your map you recently released. If you want to bash the stuff I created at least find problems with RCPD.map & RunningScared.map. Parkade map was built by myself and Micky and you are insulting us both by slamming this map. This map was dedicated to Helixhorned to show him various combinations that can be used with TROR. A feature that he created and while we were at it we decided to add some game play. By creating Parkade.map it gave us the opportunity to stress test the Mapster and Eduke Engine finding new emerging bugs with TROR and reporting them only to improve the editor and game experience.

While you raise some very good points I know what you are trying to do and I would appreciate it if you directed your snarky remarks to me directly.

Or you can just take away all my reputation points that works too.

Thank you

Neither did I remember your supposedly bashing comments, nor did I even know you worked on this map (Micky C made the thread and I assumed he made it alone, I didn't bother reading anything about the map before playing it)

[Paul B]

MetHy, on 29 February 2012 - 03:59 AM, said:

I played this for about half an hour and gave up without completing the map.

I did not like it at all. The map is a confusing mess. Everything is connected to each other with no real sense or thought put into it. I found myself wandering around wondering where to go next all the time, sometimes reaching areas I had already visited thinking I was making some progress, other times reaching areas I felt I wasn't supposed to go yet. Gameplay didn't help either, especially at the start of the map where you can go everywhere yet there is only enough ammo&health in one place. The rest of the time enemies felt like they were randomly put there for the sake of being there. To me they were more of an annoyance in my desperate search for the next place to go rather than being fun.

Hi Methy, your post has inspired me to re-visit this map. I completely agree with your comments and I am going to revise this map based on your comments to make it more streamlined, logical, and fair. When we created the navigation system it took us a while to implement because there were so many different routes that it was easy to skip portions of the map. We needed to ensure Duke would have to visit each area before completing the map while making it as open as possible and this was a real challenge.

Now that I've had an opportunity to play through the map many, many, many times I've found that I could make improvements to the game play and key card system without compromising the fun experience. I am also removing the Phase 1 and Phase 2 switches for the end battle because it was too confusing and not well implemented. I am hoping after I make these changes and upload the new version you can give this map another shot because the end of the map is rather fun and it has a lot of potential it's just some things weren't given enough focus in the development process. Because of the complexity of the map this isn't something that can be rushed and it takes me a while to get it right.

I'll post back when I have more to show.

Thanks Methy,

P.S Hopefully if you do play the map a second time when I'm finished with it, I would recommend that you use the latest EDUKE build as I've noticed performance gains in the FPS department as well as using the Polymer renderer when playing.

TROR wasn't really designed for any other renderer other than Polymer where the map functions best.

Thank you,
Paul

[Mikko]

I don't understand why you're willing to start reworking on a map you've released months ago. Rather use the criticism (good and bad) you've received to make your next map better. Just close the book on this map so it'll be out of your system.

[Danukem]

Mikko_Sandt, on 13 March 2012 - 10:04 AM, said:

I don't understand why you're willing to start reworking on a map you've released months ago. Rather use the criticism (good and bad) you've received to make your next map better. Just close the book on this map so it'll be out of your system.

The changes he is talking about sound like they won't take very long, and could improve the gameplay a lot. Starting a new map is a lot more work. Plus I'm sure it bothers him to know that there are fixable flaws in the last thing he released. It doesn't seem hard to understand at all.

[Paul B]

Mikko_Sandt, on 13 March 2012 - 10:04 AM, said:

I don't understand why you're willing to start reworking on a map you've released months ago. Rather use the criticism (good and bad) you've received to make your next map better. Just close the book on this map so it'll be out of your system.

Mikko, like one person mentioned on an earlier post somewhere on these forums. A Duke Nukem map is like a piece of art as it shows off the mappers creativity and style. When I release something, I like to release something that I can be proud of, which is a fun map with replay value. Gameplay is really important to me and there were things about this map that really could have been done differently. At the time I just couldn't figure out how to fix them. It took me a while to sit back and take a break then tackle it again with fresh eyes.

I've had this opportunity and the changes while small and quick make the game play better and more focused.

I am more for quality then quantity and while I am working on another map at the moment that map has come to a standstill until certain mapster features can be fixed. In the meantime, I plan on polishing this map so that I end up with a better end result much like what happened with RCPD. It took me a long time before I could finally say: “It is what it is” and lay that map to rest.

I'll be honest with you, I can't just sit down and make something I am happy with. I have to tear it up try and try again before I can say: “This is the map I want people to play”. Mapping does not come naturally to me and I have to really work hard at it. I can't visualize these things beforehand, like some can and it is only after I make something that things seem to slowly unfold mostly through trial and error.

[rasmus thorup]

If you weren't satisfied with your map, then why did you release it when it is your "piece of art". I would not release a map i am not satisfied with myself, and it sounds like you wouldn't either. So to me it sounds like you found out that you are not satisfied with the map after you released it and got other peoples opinions.
But i need to ask you, do you map for yourself, or for us?

[Danukem]

rasmus thorup, on 13 March 2012 - 03:37 PM, said:

If you weren't satisfied with your map, then why did you release it when it is your "piece of art".

He already answered this in his last few posts. At the time he released it he didn't know how to improve it further. After getting a break from it and getting feedback, he realized how it could be improved and was inspired to work on it again.

Also keep in mind that it was a tech demo of TROR as well, so he and Micky probably wanted to release it quickly while TROR was still new.

[Micky C]

Not necessarily while it was new, TROR had been out for a fairly long time by that stage, and it certainly wasn't the first TROR map released (that was Loke's Retaliation map iirc), but at the time of its release me and Supertanker were trying to make the release of our maps coincide as a special surprise for the community at the start of the year.

I don't think it was released too early. Much of the feedback we received that led to reworking the map is the sort that could only have come from releasing it to a large audience whereby we could get a large range of views from people with different perspectives, opinions and mapping experience.

Having said that, I myself have more or less moved on from the map for quite a while now and will only have very minor if any involvement in 'recent' and future updates. If anyone replays the map and thinks "wow this cool thing wasn't here before" then Paul most likely deserves the credit for it.

[Gambini]

I hope nobody utilizes events from my past to shut me up. But the only thing that would be acceptable for a map´s update is bugfixing/general cleanup.

This about changing a map after almost every negative critism is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. It´s like a movie director standing in the exit door of a cinema listening to what people gossip, then going to modify the movie to please that people. And, of course repeating the procedule about every time the movie is being saw again.