Pretty much all pre-release stuff is just L6, more specifically E1L2 from few different angles.
I think EP3 is mostly like that for it to work well in DM and that it was made at the tail end of development by LL.
Duke3D & SW - Early/Alpha/Beta/Gold Material
#2431 Posted 24 September 2023 - 01:47 PM
#2432 Posted 26 September 2023 - 03:06 PM
MrFlibble, on 24 September 2023 - 01:30 PM, said:
Just popping in to say this. I'm not criticising the final design decisions, but I have to say that urban areas indeed have always had a great appeal to me in Duke3D, and the E3 levels mentioned above indeed do the impression of city streets rather poorly, especially when compared to pre-release screenshots and the LameDuke levels. For a certain time, I had this idea of how cool it would be to roam real-life streets in the game -- thankfully there are many user maps that do exactly that, and overall very nicely indeed.
The design of urban areas in the game as it is does not hurt gameplay or immersion, but it does feel cramped quite often, and it's very hard for me not to think (although I might very well be wrong here) that performance concerns were one of the reasons for this state of affairs. I also agree that this mostly relates to E3 levels, I have no problem with E1L1 or E1L2, although the outside areas are also quite limited in scope, they're a huge step above urban stuff from Doom II for example, almost feels like it's a next generation game here really.
The design of urban areas in the game as it is does not hurt gameplay or immersion, but it does feel cramped quite often, and it's very hard for me not to think (although I might very well be wrong here) that performance concerns were one of the reasons for this state of affairs. I also agree that this mostly relates to E3 levels, I have no problem with E1L1 or E1L2, although the outside areas are also quite limited in scope, they're a huge step above urban stuff from Doom II for example, almost feels like it's a next generation game here really.
E3's has a strength though with the coherent look, coherent texturing, visual narratives, enemy placement, and the night vision message running gag can't be found anywhere else. Well, especially the LL maps have this coherent look, Freeway uses the E3 specific tiles013.art set extensively, but it still feels more of an E1 map, closer to E1L1/L2, but that's no surprise it was made by Blum. And as we noticed many times before, it's XXX Stacy in episode 4, which feels like something that is E3-ish, it really doesn't even use Atomic art other than a few rooms (Unabomber area was a late addition, or the printing room near the start).
But with all the charm these maps have, I still wish more urban grandness was added to the game. Even E1L2 was a slight letdown after E1L1, it's for example a daylight level with night sky.
This post has been edited by The Watchtower: 26 September 2023 - 03:07 PM
#2433 Posted 16 April 2024 - 04:16 AM
10 years since this legendary thread was started. Can we celebrate this with say some early builds of Cosmo, Monster Bash, Halloween Harry and Raptor? The hype still hasn't faded out of us.
#2434 Posted 08 August 2024 - 03:22 PM
So Classic Doom got a huge update today and it contains the best addition yet, the id vault! I wish we could get the same treatment for Duke3D... Imagine all the cool development pictures and alternate sprites.
#2435 Posted 11 August 2024 - 10:46 AM
Dr_Proton, on 08 August 2024 - 03:22 PM, said:
So Classic Doom got a huge update today and it contains the best addition yet, the id vault! I wish we could get the same treatment for Duke3D... Imagine all the cool development pictures and alternate sprites.
They didn't even fix the pathetic final boss in World Tour, how can someone expect an ambitious job from Pitchfork?