[ck3D]

Hi, here is my newest offering called Hibernal Solstice, along with the maps I made for the Metropolitan Mayhem episode this is one of the quickest levels I have made, I only spent three days on it. It is a basic city map with fairly minimalistic detailing, the main idea is that even though it is based around a small block with very few amenities you get to use time machines / teleporters to visit it several times in different contexts, I hope you like it and find it fun to play. I would say that it is of easy / medium difficulty and a full playthrough should take you between 10 and 20 minutes of your time.

I attached screenshots because I know some people find it convenient to get a glimpse of what they are about to download but really the shots kind of suck because there isn't much fanciness to display, the map is all about sheer fun. I hope you will like it.

(edit - updated the file with a version that fixed a typo in the message on one of the security screens, 'hud' was obviously meant to be 'hub', makes more sense now)

Attached File(s)

•  Hibernal Solstice.zip (83.12K)
  Number of downloads: 375

[Micky C]

The time travel thing seems like a neat idea that's not done very much in Duke maps. Considering it's modest play time and (finally) easy gameplay I'll be sure to check this out.

Edit: Believe it or not I also haven't finished Metropolitan Mayhem, so I'll try that out again first.

[brullov]

Good map! It took me 15 minutes to pass it

[MetHy]

Took me 20 mins, I enjoyed it.

Revisiting the same place in different circumstances is a good idea. I even had that idea about doing a small boss fight map in a small park but with 4 versions, each in the 4 different seaons (and each if a different boss) but I never got to do that.

However I think the time travel thing could have been handled better. For example, let's say you visit the place in the present first but a door is locked. Then you go in the past, for some reasons there are explosives around that door which you blow up and which blows up the door too; now back to the present and you can go in because the door isn't there (etc just an idea). Here instead it felt rather cheap as there were very differences between each time, except for the winter one which is cool. Even the boxes and bushes outdoor were at the same places.

Otherwise it's a fun small map. Nothing extraodinary. I died once by getting crushed by the Laura Night poster inside the club house in the 3rd part of the map while trying to find a secret there. I didn't find it fun that the 4th time there is a BLord hidden behind flames that you can't see right as you open the door, and with no way to maneuver, either. You can still see the small cameras in the 2nd part (or was it the 3rd?) and also in the bedroom with the small dukeburger cardboard bag when you blow it up it obviously still spawns an atomic health twice the size of the box.

All of that is nitpicking, however the map was fun. Some cool shadding in the 2nd apartment. Gameplay could have been better.
Edit : Fighting the BLord with the freezer was cool as I was forced to take advantage of how the freeze shots bounce on walls to kill him from around the corner.

[ck3D]

yeah, the time travel thing could definitely be handled with more ambition. this map really is just a little piece i wrapped up in a few hours to justify some mindless pixelated alien slaughtering... part of me wishes i could find the time to spend months working on a long, well thought-out map again, incorporating such elements with the optimal grandeur they would deserve. now, here i am the first one willing to admit that things are purposely cheap - i built whatever i thought was fun to build, then as it got boring from a mapper's perspective i just copy-pasted the damn thing four times with some differenciating touches, built a hub and voilà, called it a map. i just go by the logic that things are better kept simple sometimes, on both ends of the process - huge, immersive maps with conceptual grandness, technical eye-candy and fantastic landscapes and environments are one thing, but sometimes functionality is the most essential and, most importantly, such projects are less psychologically draining and do not take years to complete ! i am glad you enjoyed the map still. thanks for the comments

[ck3D]

oh and about those cameras, i know that they can be seen, i think it has to do with recent eduke updates or something. i remember in my old maps i could make them almost invisible by resizing them as small as possible and making them transparent, here i did the same thing, but for some reason now it no longer works, the cameras look bigger and have no transparence in game. it is merely cosmetics though so i thought it wouldn't matter much. also, i figured that battlelord behind the fire sprites might be annoying to some (and i really didn't want to make the sprites transparent), but it is set on stayput so that it won't leave its place and you can always use the door to protect yourself from whatever he is shooting at you, that was the main idea behind that fight, then again i am not sure of what most players are going to do. and about the laura palmer poster, did you just walk through it and it crushed you or did you have to really try like using the jumping and crounching technique ? i just tried in game because it sounded like a fairly important issue, but only managed to get crushed after like two minutes of attempting the jumping and crounching technique through the different walls. maybe you got unlucky, maybe i got lucky, if too many people report it i might make a quick update with a blocked wall there...

[Helixhorned]

ck3D, on 06 December 2013 - 08:01 AM, said:

oh and about those cameras, i know that they can be seen, i think it has to do with recent eduke updates or something. i remember in my old maps i could make them almost invisible by resizing them as small as possible and making them transparent, here i did the same thing, but for some reason now it no longer works, the cameras look bigger and have no transparence in game.

- Vanilla Duke3D reset the cstat of CAMERA1..CAMERA5 sprites unconditionally to 0 when USER.CON has CAMERASDESTRUCTABLE set to NO (such as with default CONs) and made them blockable+hittable otherwise:

                if(camerashitable) sp->cstat = 257;
                else sp->cstat = 0;

- r3216 made bit 32768 be preserved, but didn't change the fact that all other bits are cleared:

            sp->cstat &= 32768;
            if (g_damageCameras) sp->cstat |= 257;

So, no, cameras never honored any bits sets from the map, except the invisbility bit since r3216. Curiously, a lot of maps set various cstat bits such as 64 (one-sided) or 16 (wall-aligned) nevertheless.

[Merlijn]

I've played it. It's a cool little level, but a tad below your standards IMO. Repeating the same location 4 times felt a bit cheap, even with the differences. The concept of time travel got lost a bit, because the location was exactly the same each time. Even the burning building didn't change (shouldn't there be a point in time where the building is still intact?).

Also, some indoor locations featured a lot of oversized props. I don't mean the rooms themselves, but stuff like pool tables, doors, bar stools etc. It felt a bit odd, like Duke was shrunk to half his size or something. XD

Having said that, it's still a fun level. The street area has a nice layout, which makes for some good battles with aliens. I especially liked the battle in the Christmas setting, having to outsmart the battlelords and tanks without any explosive weapons was challenging and fun.

[ck3D]

well yeah, definitely not my biggest or most ambitious level. i am really just throwing it out there as 'something to play'. i also agree with your criticism, with the exception of the 'oversized' sections maybe, i don't think they are any more oversized than what felt right in the original levels - granted, the scale in those was quite big as well, but in my opinion this type of design makes for better gameplay, giving you more freedom of movement and making roaming around places more fun, in my opinion of course. as long as it doesn't feel like a beginnerish map from 1996 with poor texturing and lacking lighting it is still ok to me. thanks for taking the time to play it and i am glad you enjoyed the gameplay !

Helixhorned, on 06 December 2013 - 10:43 AM, said:

- Vanilla Duke3D reset the cstat of CAMERA1..CAMERA5 sprites unconditionally to 0 when USER.CON has CAMERASDESTRUCTABLE set to NO (such as with default CONs) and made them blockable+hittable otherwise:

                if(camerashitable) sp->cstat = 257;
                else sp->cstat = 0;

- r3216 made bit 32768 be preserved, but didn't change the fact that all other bits are cleared:

            sp->cstat &= 32768;
            if (g_damageCameras) sp->cstat |= 257;

So, no, cameras never honored any bits sets from the map, except the invisbility bit since r3216. Curiously, a lot of maps set various cstat bits such as 64 (one-sided) or 16 (wall-aligned) nevertheless.

sorry for not being knowledgeable about coding and eduke32 history to be able to keep up with this kind of stuff, and thanks for the clarification. i am still, however, pretty certain that i have made and also seen semi-transparent / semi-invisible cameras before in user maps (going as far back as the roch series, i haven't played any of these maps in ages so i don't know if they are a valid example but Pascal would use 'secret' cameras extensively), independently from eduke32. if you say that it is impossible then i am most likely mistaken, but at least now is the first time that i ever see anyone report being able to see supposedly hidden cameras in a duke map like that (including in mine, and i have always made them the same way), so i assumed that there had to be some kind of novelty in the coding somewhere.

[Forge]

Merlijn, on 06 December 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

Repeating the same location 4 times felt a bit cheap, even with the differences. The concept of time travel got lost a bit, because the location was exactly the same each time. Even the burning building didn't change (shouldn't there be a point in time where the building is still intact?).

Also, some indoor locations featured a lot of oversized props. I don't mean the rooms themselves, but stuff like pool tables, doors, bar stools etc. It felt a bit odd, like Duke was shrunk to half his size or something. XD

I mention the same things in the review i submitted to CGS (even the perpetual burning fire) along with missing the opportunity to expand the puzzles across the different timelines.

It was fun, but there was so much more that could have been done with the concept. Even simple texturing and trimming to change the building exteriors from brick and wood in one phase to modern steel and stone then to futuristic plastic & steel would have greatly improved the feeling of time hopping.

ck3D, on 06 December 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

i also agree with your criticism, with the exception of the 'oversized' sections maybe, i don't think they are any more oversized than what felt right in the original levels - granted, the scale in those was quite big as well, but in my opinion this type of design makes for better gameplay, giving you more freedom of movement and making roaming around places more fun, in my opinion of course

there's several things oversized in the bar. the women are just as tall if not taller than Duke and from the player's perspective it feels like a little kid peeking over the bar counter or the edge of the pool table. The cash register towers over the player - even jumping up on the bar Duke is barely peeking over the price display.

[LeoD]

Nice one. Coincidentally I had played TimeCop just the other day. Not each release needs to be the very height of mapping to give me some fun.

[Merlijn]

Quote

with the exception of the 'oversized' sections maybe, i don't think they are any more oversized than what felt right in the original levels - granted, the scale in those was quite big as well, but in my opinion this type of design makes for better gameplay, giving you more freedom of movement and making roaming around places more fun, in my opinion of course

Of course there's nothing wrong with having slightly oversized rooms. Duke moves quite fast, so big rooms are always a plus when there's a lot of action. But the props inside the room (cash registers, pool tables etc) should still have a slightly realistic size compared to the actors. The stuff Forge mentioned weirded me out a bit.

Also forgot to mention that I really liked the inclusion of the jetpack btw, works really well with the layout! This map would have been perfect for a DM match I think.

[Forge]

Merlijn, on 06 December 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

This map would have been perfect for a DM match I think.

this

[ck3D]

i have to admit that dukematch is something that crossed my mind quite a few times while making this map but are people still playing dukematch these days ? i really don't follow what's up with the new technologies, i think i read somewhere that it might no longer even be supported ? i can always go back and edit the map with extra starting points and pal 1 weaponry if people want to give it a try

[Micky C]

Eduke32's new multiplayer has been stuck half finished for years now (although it "should" be done eventually). Steam's Megaton version is in beta for multiplayer and your map should work for that assuming there's no new features like TROR in there.

Btw although it didn't take full advantage of the time travelling idea at least it leaves room for another mapper to expand upon it in a new map.

[ck3D]

yeah, some people seem to have a pretty extreme idea of time travel, i really didn't think of expanding the concept to anything more than visiting the same day several hours apart. or maybe i did, but i am the first one to admit that in this map the concept really is an excuse for not doing that much and i kind of slacked on it, then again if i hadn't slacked on it it probably wouldn't have seen the light of the day ! at least it's here for people to play and i don't mind if it's not my 'best' work - i am not trying to prove anything (even more so that whenever i release a map i have actually spent a while on, not many people even care about it so at this point i am like, why bother), just throwing simple levels out there, which i think more people should be doing.

http://www.scent-88....hiber/hiber.php CGS review by Forge with fair criticism and some cool screenshots

[MetHy]

The map would need a lot of tweaking to be good in Deathmatch. As it is now you can just remain camping near a teleport exit fully stocked with RPG, Medipack, steroids, armor, 200hp and jetpack. It would need adding more jetpacks/steroids/medipacks, more than just one entrance by timeline (several teleporters in a same timeline, all NOT leading to the same other timeline would be perfect), getting rid of the hub altogether, and add connections from indoor area to indoor area or they'll end up completely useless or deathtraps nobody would want to go in.

[Helixhorned]

ck3D, on 06 December 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

sorry for not being knowledgeable about coding and eduke32 history to be able to keep up with this kind of stuff, and thanks for the clarification. i am still, however, pretty certain that i have made and also seen semi-transparent / semi-invisible cameras before in user maps (going as far back as the roch series, i haven't played any of these maps in ages so i don't know if they are a valid example but Pascal would use 'secret' cameras extensively), independently from eduke32.

No need to be sorry -- I didn't knew either until I consulted the Duke3D source and the history of EDuke32's source. I guess since people were playing with lower resolutions back then, that the cameras were not actually translucent never got much attention?

In any case, the right way to hide cameras now is to really make them invisible (cstat bit 32768, Mapster32: [']+[I]).

[Daedolon]

Oh you can make stuff invisible in Mapster32? I'm assuming that's for 2D.

Useful info I never knew. Probably because cstat isn't in the F8 menu.