[ck3D]

11/12/2013 UPDATE // visibility problem fixed and added security cameras, link to the newer version here http://forums.duke4....-x/#entry175944



Review by Forge on CGS / Download
MSDN Review and Download

Duke is a bum, who has sheltered himself in an abandoned warehouse, itself located in the old industrial district of a vague french town in the countryside. It's a cold winter morning and the sound and shock of explosions in the near vicinity jolt him out of sleep. It isn't going to take long for him to realize that the entire area is under heavy attack. Being unarmed, he is critically overwhelmed. Help him make his way to the train station - his only chance of survival.

Please read the included 'read me' file (in addition to the usual authoring template) as the gameplay in this map is a lot different from more classic levels :

- No weaponry (and you are facing some of the toughest beasts in the game) ;
- No key cards, you have to collect money and use ATM's ;
- Very limited amount of health packs, all located at the same strategic spot, as well as very few inventory items ;

Said .txt file covers all the info you need more extensively.

Please play in classic 8-Bit mode only. Polymost and, as far as I know, Polymer, seem to render parallexed skies differently and thus will cause some unintended cosmetic glitches, more particularly some of the bigger sprite structures will look off in anything but 8 bbp.

Have fun with this one, hopefully.

[Gambini]

Looks neat! Gonna dust off Duke one of these days and play it.

[ck3D]

// UPDATE ANNOUNCEMENT //

I just updated the original post with an updated version of the map. I had forgotten to lock a door and add a switch to unlock it in a room nearby. The map was still fully playable with no major effect on gameplay, but the room the switch was supposed to be hidden in was empty and thus looked out of place and useless. Now the new version works the way I intended things to be !

[Paul B]

Woohoo, yet another quality map! I really like the screenshot and the interesting/unique gameplay element. Can't wait to get my hands on this one and its Megaton compatible! =) I take it back it's not Megaton compatible.

[Radar]

But why you'd play it with Megaton is beyond me.

[TerminX]

Paul B, on 05 August 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

Woohoo, yet another quality map! I really like the screenshot and the interesting/unique gameplay element. Can't wait to get my hands on this one and its Megaton compatible! =)

It says to run it with the 8-bit renderer, so no Megaton.

[Forge]

Paul B, on 05 August 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

and its Megaton compatible! =)

renderer aside, Megaton allows for maps that break the old build limits?
do not own, do not know.

[Paul B]

Forge, on 05 August 2013 - 08:39 PM, said:

renderer aside, Megaton allows for maps that break the old build limits?
do not own, do not know.

Good point Forge. I just assumed because it was done in classic it should run with Megaton. (I don't own Megaton either). I didn't think this map would exceed the map sector/wall/sprite limits but I guess it does.

Anyway, I did play the map. It's extremely difficult and I think the map still would have played very well with a rocket launcher through out. I needed God Mode to finish the map it was a bit too tough for me. I really enjoyed the layout and what the author was trying to achieve. I did run into a minor snag where a window sector squished me even with God Mode and I died cheating. Kind of embarassing. Anyway, the location of the bugged sector was on the second story near the bedroom with the swinging bookcases. It was along those windows.

Anyway, great detail and shading however some areas of the map were a bit too dark even using the 8bit classic renderer and it was totally unfair for the player to be blind and trapped in a corner with out a gun and having a new beasts rape you from behind. I also found there to be too many mini bosses. I think the creator of this map should release a demo showing us how he does it without cheating.

[Micky C]

Even if it did exceed the original wall limits, it should still work with megaton since it was based on JFDuke which also had expanded limits.

The problem is that megaton itself doesn't have the classic renderer. Then again, most people don't buy megaton for the fan made content (since half of it wouldn't work with it anyway), they buy it for the easy access to Duke and its expansions, and possibly the multiplayer.

[t800]

Just in nick of week we already got 2 fresh new user maps and long awaited DN64 mod, I really pity Dukers who are absent now. What is this, summer Duke3D modding fever?

[ck3D]

CGS review by Forge with some better screenshots can be found here : http://www.scent-88....mmed/bummed.php

Paul B, I just updated the version of the map in the original post with a new version where the window bug you reported is now fixed. Turns out I had forgotten to block the wall of the sector containing the window and not the window itself, so the player could get through with the jumping and crouching technique (I didn't manage to replicate the death you had, but bypassing the wall worked everytime).

I don't think the map itself is difficult but it certainly makes for quite a rush and it definitely is the type of map where you have to save / reload often, because the monsters behave differently everytime and the layout seems to favor their ability to wander everywhere more or less randomly until they spot you and come at you again from where you expected them less to be. Basically it forces you to make no tactical mistakes while playing and to be quick on your toes, because you will suffer the consequences from every single error. I think that approach would make for a good change but consequently I reckon it would be quite hard to beat without saving / reloading a few times, I know some players make a point of never using the save / reload option because they consider it cheating if you don't beat a map straight off the bat and accept to pay the price for your mistakes, but if anything that will provide those players with a good challenge as well.

Out of curiosity, where did you ever get trapped in the corner you were talking about ? That didn't happen to me, ever - the key is to constantly be on the run and avoid walls as much as possible (the map itself should be open enough for things to be somewhat fair), and use the terrain to your advantage (duck behind the cars and bushes, hide behind the buses, jump around and over the ledges or onto the roofs), also the steroids definitely come in handy. Getting stuck in a corner and getting raped by newbeasts should not happen unless you made a tactical mistake (and granted, a lot of things can go terribly wrong for the player in this map if they are not always paying attention).

[MetHy]

Just completed this. The timer said 33mins but considering I died a lot it's probably closer to 40-45mins, but quite a few of those minutes were spent drinking water from Dukeburger's toilets (funny how drinking water from fast food toilets would probably be a very bad idea IRL...), even though I finished the map with almost a full medipack left.
I also found both armor.

The kill count at the end showed 23/29. I killed everything I could, and the reason for that is that, in theory the concept of this map is great, but in practice there is probably too many Cycloids rockets for my taste. Avoiding enemies and being smart against their AI is great, especially for us experienced Dukers: it's a gameplay type that assumes that the players can survive because he knows enemies behaviour perfectly and can exploit them easily (and we do).
However the big problem was all those Cycloid rockets, especially in the main street, considering there is SEVERAL Cycloids throwing tons of rockets at you at the same time, and that those rockets have quite a big randomness in the directions they're going (even more so the farther you are from them), there is no way you can see and avoid all the rockets coming from opposite directions at you.
The result is going around quickly while crossing your fingers that bad luck won't shove a rocket up your ass, as well as random deaths out of nowhere that you can't avoid no matter how skilled you are at the game.
The consequence? Save-scumming, being pissed-off each time you randomly die, and having to re-do parts of the gameplay again and again...

IMO the map should have had one Cycloid less.

So, to try to balance this out, and also because I like the challenge, and because I still wanted to be able to go around exploring and enjoying the good looking scenery, and considering the Cycloids can't be killed, I decided to kill every other monster instead including Battlelords.

The Newbeasts are the easiest to kill with the Mighty Foot: you can kick 1 to 3 times their face, then step back a little bit, and repeat the process until the die. You can use the same technique against Commanders but it's a lot harder so I made sure that the Commanders killed each others, or that the Newbeasts shrank them; or that the Blords killed them; and then finished the remaining Newbeasts by foot.
For the Battlelod I used my knowledge of their AI and of the game to kill them easily :






and that settled it.

When I read in the .txt that Steroids and Medipacks were stacked in one place I thought it'd be a problem but when you think about it it's a very intelligent decision.

I really liked the map overall though, I liked how you had to crawl/jump/sneak your way everywhere. Graphics and atmosphere were good too and there is even some cool and funny stuffs thrown in as usual (like the trains shown as being "late" in the trainstation, including one going to the town I live in lol !).
I just think it would have played better with one less Cycloid.

Edit : a couple of afterthoughts :
- with con editing you could make it so that Duke actually picks up the money from the ground and use the "give money to stripper" animation to use the money on the machine(s) near the door. You could even make it so that the money shows up in the HUD instead of the card; and you could even have that money be an amount that can increase (so that you can pick up all the money at once if you feel like it, but then again backtracking is the whole idea of the map so it might ruin the gameplay you had in mind) and to use on a single machine.
- Eventually getting a strong weapon at the very end of the map felt incredibly satisfying. I wish there was even more ammo given so that the player could go back (if he wanted to) to kill every alien that pissed him off for half an hour.

[RichardStorm]

Very nice map and concept, it took me about 45 min to be completed... i've always ran and jumped around, no attempt to kill enemies with kicks... anyway i think is too dark in some areas...

// edit: in fact i swiched to polymost to get the minimal brightness to see in some dark places

[Paul B]

ck3D, on 06 August 2013 - 04:04 AM, said:

CGS review by Forge with some better screenshots can be found here : http://www.scent-88....mmed/bummed.php
Out of curiosity, where did you ever get trapped in the corner you were talking about ?

I believe the problem was because the window wasn't blockable and I think the blockable window sprite somehow pushed me into invalid player space and pressing a key on the keyboard restarted the level so I couldn't enable clipping. Anyway, by the sounds of it I think you probably fixed the problem.

Regardless the map is a work of art and I enjoyed playing it. It will have a lot of replay value for me.

[ck3D]

MetHy, on 06 August 2013 - 05:39 AM, said:

Edit : a couple of afterthoughts :
- with con editing you could make it so that Duke actually picks up the money from the ground and use the "give money to stripper" animation to use the money on the machine(s) near the door. You could even make it so that the money shows up in the HUD instead of the card; and you could even have that money be an amount that can increase (so that you can pick up all the money at once if you feel like it, but then again backtracking is the whole idea of the map so it might ruin the gameplay you had in mind) and to use on a single machine.
- Eventually getting a strong weapon at the very end of the map felt incredibly satisfying. I wish there was even more ammo given so that the player could go back (if he wanted to) to kill every alien that pissed him off for half an hour.

- thing is I like to make maps, not mods, I don't really like .con editing when it is not necessary, from a straight mapper's perspective I always find it more satisfying to supply the player with nothing but a raw .map file and possibly manage to surprise them with what you managed to come up with without having to resort to 'external' hacks. Although, I admire the extra possibilities .con editing has to offer, ie. I particularly like how you can give monsters new properties and attacks by just changing their pal values and such, opens a lot of doors. But I also think there's a lot more to do with the basic, original monsters than what's been done so far with them. Even little tweaks like the Cycloids in this map could be enhanced, ie. by making their ships move around the map using the subway effect, or adding cannons to them and combining them with the shooter effect... The options are endless. I guess I will only start tackling .con editing more seriously once I am running out of ideas for maps in raw format... For instance the effect you describe would already be perfectly doable with no .con hacks (except for the hud thing). Granted, though, it would be more complex to implement, but I think it's half the fun already.

- I actually considered that option, I thought it would be pretty enjoyable, but I figured it wasn't necessary (and it would fuck up the progression if I ever made a sequel to this map or included it in an episode, which is a possibility I always try to have in mind). After all the player is not even forced to use up all the devastator ammo (if any at all) on the last two battlelords. They can always lure them back outside with the other monsters and strafe around them all for a slugfest.

anyway I like that you went out of your way and killed the enemies, it is pretty interesting to see how everyone reacts differently confronted to that bunch of aliens. My intention was that the player should spend his time fleeing and running around, which is what most people do but some others like Forge or yourself still entertain themselves trying to find ways to fight back with the mighty boot, I didn't expect the gameplay to have that much potential in terms of freedom and variety. I tried to come up with something fairly unlinear (hence the same 6 blue cards, I could have given them different colors so Duke would have been able to pick several of them at the same time but I didn't want to on purpose, just like in the Roch maps or what I did a few years back with the red keys hidden in the swamp in Bottles to the Ground). The fact that you managed to kill them all without cheating also shows that the level is entirely beatable even when you attack it in a way that is a lot harder than how things are supposed to be.

About the complaints of darkness I made this map on a laptop with a fairly bright screen, I guess this might be an explanation ? I was thinking of brightening up some areas or at least increase the visibility by a good amount at some point, but I eventually didn't because I realized that would ruin the look and feel of those more desolated areas.

[Mikko]

Pretty cool map with a twist. Took me 16 minutes, about half of the enemies were dead when I finished the map.

Had problems with brightness as well. The train platform was so dark that I had to wait for the Battlelords to start shooting before I could see them.

[ck3D]

the (relative) darkness on the platform is deliberate, i made the battlelords respawn far away from the player on purpose, i thought a long-distance battle would make for a nice change and there are plenty of obstacles there behind which you can hide while waiting for them to get closer to you ! at some point i actually thought of also supplying the player with a pair of night vision googles for that scene, but changed my mind when i realized it would defeat the point, not to mention that as you said you get to see them from distance whenever they are firing their guns, they don't oppose much resistance anyway

[ck3D]

MSDN review : http://msdn.duke4.net/hotbummedout.php

[Merlijn]

Finished it, I thought this was a very good map! I managed to finish it without cheating. For me the hardest part was to locate all the cash stashes though (the last one was really hard to find, even in normal circumstances. Let alone with tons of rockets being fired at you ).

I kinda agree with Methy on the cycloids, maybe one cycloid less would have been better. On the other hand it forced you to be constantly on the move or to find shelter somewhere. I guess that's what you were going for. The idea to have one central location for all the health was really clever. It was also good to have few 'save spots', which allowed me to catch my breath and to plan the next move.

Design is top notch all the way through. I love signs of destruction and abandonment in maps and you pulled it off very well. Those big cranes in the background were a very nice addition.

Overall: the map felt very balanced and it's obvious a lot of thought went into the gameplay. Recommended!

[ck3D]

gotcha on the last stash of cash, it is true that it's slightly harder to find than the rest, which might be problematic in such action-packed settings, to be fair i think in a normal map the explosions and sounds would make for enough of a hint, but seeing as one is pretty much surrounded by explosions at all times in this level i can definitely see how the effects can go unnoticed. i actually totally forgot to add video cameras to this level (i wanted at least one viewscreen near the power switch to display the effect, and a few others in safe areas from which one could spot the location of the monsters wandering about as well as admire the level scenery, especially from cameras placed on the moving train outside the playable area, but was so rushed to release the level it completely slipped my mind at the end). right now it might have no deep impact on the gameplay, but it would have fixed the difficulty you encountered in your progression for sure. the one thing that makes me not feel that bad about it is the fact that one can see whether or not the vent is unlocked from pretty much anywhere in the lower street, provided that they pay enough attention, which i know can be hard due to how hectic simple survival can get in this level. the single wiring connecting both buildings should also help give it away, but i am aware it might be looked as purely cosmetic decoration until the player makes the connection.

thank you for taking the time to play this map and post your thoughts, i always appreciate to read about people's invididual experiences with my maps, they usually play them in so many ways i would not have considered by myself !

[ck3D]

shamelessly allowing myself to bump this just in case some people might have missed it, or forgot to share their thoughts.

on a side note i also wanted to vent that i am very happy about the amount of new maps that have been released lately, the past couple of weeks have been the highlight of 2013 as far as duke 3D mapping goes with not only heaps of new material to play but also a lot of alternative gameplay ideas, i like that !

[Helixhorned]

I played this for a while a couple of days ago, and was pretty impressed. My first thoughts were "man, these are some stunning classic visuals", so it's good to know the '96 renderer is still going strong . The gameplay is likewise very refreshing. At first, I tried the bunny jump approach, but that wasn't so effective. So it's more about hiding and sneaking behind enemies, it seems. Hopefully I'll manage to finish this one day, since there seems to be much to explore in this map (I got to finding one key).

[ck3D]

late reply from me, but thanks, man, I am glad you gave it a shot. hopefully you get to finish it one of these days !

[ck3D]

everyone complaining about the visibility in this map made me want to check it out on another computer than the laptop i used to make it, and indeed, on this other computer it looks way too dark, which i guess is how some of you got to experience it and i thought it kinda sucked. so, even though i still don't know which one of those monitors i am using is the most representative of how the map truely looks to the majority / to the average player, i took some time to make an updated version, in which i increased the visibility to the maximum, i also added some extra security cameras so that you can check out the eye-candy out of the level boundaries from the viewscreen in the train station once you reach it, here is the updated archive which includes both the updated file and the darker, pre-update version (i thought i would keep it around for the folks who prefer the darker mood better)

for those of you who thought it was too dark, let me know what you think and which version you prefer, if the feedback is positive i might take the time to do the same thing with some of my older maps like anorak city for which i can recall visibility was also brought up as problematic a while back.

(maybe map reviewers should replace the older version of the archive with this one on their respective web sites as well if they feel like it)

Attached File(s)

•  Bummed Out ! Anarchy City X 12112013.rar (275.53K)
  Number of downloads: 356

[Seb Luca]

My god ... what a hell! You feel like a little candy in an obese poeple convention! Such a suspended death!

Bravo for the fine work on architecture ; I recognize your particular way of using steam to make flames ; congratulations for the attention to detail (stairs, pallets, cars, building interiors, ...).

I have tried many times but could not successfully use more than two cards without dying, having used half of the medikits previously. Suffice to say that I would have to train ...

[ck3D]

Thanks for the feedback, yes the map is tough (especially the pre-update version with reduced visibility and hints) and I can think of many ways I could have fine-tuned the gameplay to make the progression a bit better nowadays that didn't really occur to me back then. For instance I have a pretty strong gripe at how the keycards are basically semi-invisible with that money sprite hack thing. But hey, you thought Poison Heart was hell, so I thought I'd give you this! It's definitely a test for the player's skills.

Random, but here's a couple of buildings that inspired the design of some of the locations in this map.

[Seb Luca]

The concept has been well thought out. It is true that this hell is even more terrifying!
It is true that the buildings are very similar, the first in a very obvious way. GG !