[MetHy]

Helixhorned, on 10 September 2014 - 07:47 AM, said:

fail to find one weapon (such as the first underwater shotgun) and you can be forced to confront your enemies with the mighty boot later on! I

I've replayed the first 3 episodes of Duke3D on CGS by doing a pistol start on every map, and this is actually the kind of things that happens a lot in the original maps too. In some maps, you even need to find secrets to get by (at least on CGS, should be fine on Let's Rock)

Quote

Another problem I found is that you're not really forced to battle the BLords -- some way I managed to snatch the red keycard and find my way to the exit even if I wanted to fight them in the Matrix-inspired area. I simply thought that I would be able to return later, but since I already posessed the card...

Conrad said that was intentional though, because he wasn't satisfied with the fight. I thought it was an interesting idea.

[MetHy]

I've uploaded the map on Megaton but for some reasons it's REALLY fucking glitchy. Like super mega "wtf is even going on" kind of glitchy... Whole sectors flicker in pitch black and I even got teleported some place else while playing near the start...

Is it just me or does everyone get that?

EDIT : Bullerbuller7 left a comment there saying he knows what the problem is so you might want to check that out.
Also, I tried to play the map in DOS Duke to see if the glitch was there too and it doesn't even launch (even after renaming it to a filename with less than 8 characters). It seems that you didn't go over the limit exactly because you wanted the map to be playable in vanilla, well, people need to learn that this isn't the only prerequisite to make a vanilla map and that if you want to make one, test it in vanilla (and preferably not only when it's done as you wouldn't know where the issues would come from).
EDuke32 can do things you would never guess (the map is EDuke32 only at the moment).

So, that's if you care about making your map compatible with Megaton and/or vanilla (considering your map has exactly 1024 sectors, I assume you do).

[alias conrad coldwood]

MetHy, on 15 September 2014 - 06:25 AM, said:

Also, I tried to play the map in DOS Duke to see if the glitch was there too and it doesn't even launch

Wow. Alright. White flag, I give up, should probably have done everything using the Build editor...

[MetHy]

Nah, you can use Mapster for vanilla, you just need to test it often. So should I delete the map from the workshop ? I say it's worth the effort to try to at least fix it for Megaton.

[alias conrad coldwood]

Remove it. I don't have time for that.

[MetHy]

I've set the map to 'hidden' so only me (and admins) can see it. Considering you don't have Megaton and I really like the map, I might try to see what's wrong with it if you're okay with that, but I can't promess anything. I'd at least try what bullerbuller7 suggested.

[alias conrad coldwood]

MetHy, on 15 September 2014 - 09:28 AM, said:

I've set the map to 'hidden' so only me (and admins) can see it. Considering you don't have Megaton and I really like the map, I might try to see what's wrong with it if you're okay with that, but I can't promess anything. I'd at least try what bullerbuller7 suggested.

I'm super salty because of Mapster32 right now ^^
If you ever manage to do it, go ahead, but don't feel like you have to.
And thank you very much for uploading the maps to Megaton (I can't remember if I said it so, so...) thank you, I appreciate.

[Micky C]

I don't think mapster32 is the problem. If anything, mapster32 would have checks, restrictions and other features designed to increase the stability of a map. I.e you'd be more likely to end up with a corrupted map or otherwise screwing it up in Build.

Like MetHy said the issue was probably testing it in eduke32 which similarly has additional stability features.

[alias conrad coldwood]

Micky C, on 15 September 2014 - 02:55 PM, said:

I don't think mapster32 is the problem.

In a way, I disagree: Mapster32 says all of the *original maps* (which should be the standard for vanilla) are heavily corrupted; the same way Needle Time returns two major errors (it was designed with the JonoF port I think) and works fine. Insurance Overload on the other hand returns no error at all and doesn't work in vanilla Duke. If I were to design a map in Build, I would have noticed something was wrong (while Mapster says it's fine). I get the idea behind enforcing stability (which is good) but to quote someone we both know: "this really pisses me off!"

EDIT: Just uploaded the latest revision, fixes all the compatibility issues I've found in vanilla Duke. See you in ten years I guess.

[MetHy]

Well fuck me. I just spent half an hour fixing the map and making sure it works in Megaton, and now I see you edited your post and did that before me...

Bullerbuller7 was right, the main issue was that there was 3 untagged sector effectors in the map, so I deleted those.

Then I got issues with the 3 toilets doors. They would drag other sectors with them when opening due to the way they were made (as a rule of thumb never connect your door to other walls and never put 2 vertices in the same spot), I was able to fix the 2 first doors but I couldn't do anything about the third one as doing anything with it would corrupt the map and do random shit with sectors around that even "corruptcheck tryfix" couldn't quickly resolve.... so I deleted the door effect, turned the toilet into a broken toilet, and put an "out of door sign" on the door. So that's my 'fix', there is probably a way to fix it altogether and have the door work but that would take more time and I couldn't be arsed sorry.

Then I noticed that the moving curtains in the office with the blue key acted glitchy when using the switch (and it would remain glitchy even after the opening is completely done which is ugly). You must have noticed that too if you fixed any problem in vanilla because that's a vanilla behaviour (also happened when I tested the map in DOS). So what I did is get rid of the curtain-opening effect and of the switch, too, since that can't work in vanilla/megaton.

Then I quickly tested the map in DOS too and now it works as well.

So here it is joined, and I've updated it on Megaton too.
It is a bit inferior to the EDuke32 version (can't break or even open the curtain + one less working toilet door) but at least it works in any version of Duke.

But now tell me if you want your fixed version in there instead.

Edit : yours still has the working curtain, but it also has all 3 working toilet doors; and at least it's yours... so i'll change it

Attached File(s)

•  _EDFBureau.rar (75.73K)
  Number of downloads: 140

[alias conrad coldwood]

MetHy, on 16 September 2014 - 08:33 AM, said:

as a rule of thumb never connect your door to other walls and never put 2 vertices in the same spot)

_SE.MAP, room 11 (first column, second row), that's how 3D Realms build doors. The true problem is the misplaced sector effector (it's right on the shared vertex), that's why it's glitching out. Oddly it doesn't cause problems in EDuke. Because Build doesn't use floating point (and it can't be a precision issue), my guess it that Build thinks the sprite is located in the neighbour sector, while EDuke think it's in the door sector... I might be wrong.

MetHy, on 16 September 2014 - 08:33 AM, said:

Then I noticed that the moving curtains in the office with the blue key acted glitchy

alias conrad coldwood, on 05 September 2014 - 08:51 AM, said:

@MetHy: There's only one thing included in the CON file: it's the shades from the meeting room (so you can break them and you can also use the light switch nearby to reveal the view to the hallway).

Proper workaround: Give'em a hi-tag. So the engine will flag them as "active": they will move along properly and you won't need the CON file anymore.

MetHy, on 16 September 2014 - 08:33 AM, said:

But now tell me if you want your fixed version in there instead.

Do what you will. I have genuinely no interest in this map, I just wanted to design one, release it and that's it. I drifted away from my initial plan (release, over and out). Really, do what you want.

[MetHy]

alias conrad coldwood, on 16 September 2014 - 11:19 AM, said:

_SE.MAP, room 11 (first column, second row), that's how 3D Realms build doors. The true problem is the misplaced sector effector (it's right on the shared vertex), that's why it's glitching out. Oddly it doesn't cause problems in EDuke. Because Build doesn't use floating point (and it can't be a precision issue), my guess it that Build thinks the sprite is located in the neighbour sector, while EDuke think it's in the door sector... I might be wrong.

About the sprite, that's what I thought at first, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me. After all, wouldn't it work only if the other sector would be tagged as a swing door?

For buildings doors that way, I'm not 100% sure about linking the door to an adjacent wall (it does work in some cases but I doubt it's recommended and people usually avoid to do that. I think it can easily cause issues if you decide to join or delete sectors).
However it is a Build rule to never put 2 vertices in the same physical space, because it's very likely to corrupt your map. I usually put swing doors or SoS sectors as close as possible with the grid unlocked (the space between both points would be "1"), like this the difference isn't noticeable to the player and it avoids any potential issue.
Original game maps aren't very good examples because a LOT of them are corrupted, they just didn't know it; I wouldn't be surprised if they got tons of glitches and had no idea what caused them. Though now we do know what can cause corruption so it's better to avoid it...

Anyway, the map is great and I was only doing this because I really liked it and had your consent and you don't have Megaton, so I was just trying to help.
But I'll take your fixed version, and try what you said for the curtain sprites, and upload that on the Workshop. Your map after all so it makes sense.

Don't feel bad about it, myself I only learnt a couple of months ago that to make a vanilla map, it's FAR from being as simple as 'not going over the old limit'. People tend to think that it's as simple as 'not using any EDuke32-only feature', but it's not, since EDuke32 has its shares of improvements and behaviours which are slightly different from the original game, either intentionally or not.
People tend to forget that in vanilla, you can't floor-align every kind of sprites, that you can't put a texture with transparency behind a transparent mask wall (or else the 'transparent' part of the texture behind the mask wall will appear pink rather than black), that you can't put non active sprites on subway trains or other moving sectors, and that some effects behave slightly different depending on how you use them, and that the more you combine different effects together and use them in non-intended ways, the more likely it is that it won't behave the same in vanilla.
The problem is that nobody fully really knows the difference and that you can only learn it the hard way.
It would be a good idea to start documentation on the matter though, the problem is that I doubt anyone knowledge-able around here will care enough for non-Eduke32 compatibility.

In my case it was too late to come back and change the map when I found out some things didn't behave the same, but in yours it was still easily possible, so it's no big deal really.

Hope you make another map soon. They're everything I want to see in a DN3D map, they could almost belong in a Sunstorm Interactive add-on, and that's the biggest compliment I could ever give as far as a Build map is concerned.

[alias conrad coldwood]

These are not two different vertices located at the same place; it is a shared vertex. If you can share the same vertex several times to create a light ray or share two vertices to create a bookshelf, I don't understand why it would be a problem...

MetHy, on 16 September 2014 - 11:49 AM, said:

About the sprite, that's what I thought at first, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me. After all, wouldn't it work only if the other sector would be tagged as a swing door?

Create a door, (lotag 23 in the sector, add the sector effector in one corner, close to the limits of your sector) now, move one of the vertex of your door to make sure the sector effector is no longer INSIDE the limits of the door sector (so you move the vertices, NOT the sprite). Since the sprite didn't move, it is not updated and still thinks it's located within the door sector. Both are still somehow linked and it screws up the door opening, I'm not sure but I think the sprite coordinates AND the sprite position within sectors is stored in the map file (I know the original engine has a lookup table for where each sprite was last located, I have the feeling that list is not updated on map load).

EDIT: Door glitch trick.

Attached File(s)

•  DoorTrick.rar (642bytes)
  Number of downloads: 154

[MetHy]

When I was talking about the 2 vertices at the same physical spot I meant the ones at the top of the door, not the ones at the botoom.

[MetHy]

I have updated the map a final time, I've scrapped my version, took yours, and gave the curtains a hi-tag just like you said. Tested and works perfectly now.

The only difference is that I had to rename it to the original name "_EDFBureau" instead of "_EDFBuro", because I had already uploaded the map a first time using that name and that can't be changed unless I delete and re-upload it. I doubt people who download the map on the Workshop will use it in DOS anyway but if they do, they should know about the character limit.

[MetHy]

I have replayed the map in the latest version, under DOS. I appreciate the vanilla compatibility.
However, even though I uploaded that version on Megaton, only now I noticed you changed the placement of one security gate which completely changes the progression of the first part of the map. I understand why you did that, now there is more freedom and more non-linearility, but personally I think it was better in the first version : I think it used to have the perfect amount of non-linearility and exploration in the previous version, there was a better sense of progression and it was less confusing, as it was more clear to know where to go and more clear what opening the gate did.
Plus, there was the fact that opening the gates opened up a small non mandatory room the player hadn't been in yet and it also freed the pigcops which was pretty cool too, while now you can go there and kill the pigs before opening the gates.

Just my opinion

[MetHy]

4 posts in a row holy shit, sorry to be such a burden... Anyway, I've kept replaying the map again and again. I can't seem to get tired of it. I must have played the map 15 times already (played it every way possible, in EDuke32, in Megaton, in DOS, in xDuke).

About the change of placement of one of the gate, I'd like to come back on what I said in the previous post, well sort of, I still think that the first version was better for a first playthrough, but the new gate placement gives much greater replay value to the map since one can go through the map the other way, so I like it that way. I can't really tell which is better anymore.

Anyway I know it sounds like I'm giving mad praise that goes beyond reason for this map, but I honestly believe it's one of the best usermap I've ever played, maybe even the best. The thing is, I personally believe very very few usermaps are as good as the original game, in terms of layout, pacing and gameplay, the original game will never get old because everything flows almost perfectly. Most usermaps are very far from that and some have zero replay value (the thing, most user-mappers don't even try that and have other goals instead, which by itself isn't right or wrong, it's just different, and less what I like).
This map however does it, layout, gameplay and pacing (all 3 go together) are excellent and on par with the original game. It is "classic-style" beyond just having classic-style visuals to an extant that is unmatched in usermaps, and since I love the style of the original game more than anything it seems logical that I love this map.

I know I also gave mad praise to ACB Studio, another classic style map that came out some months ago, I replayed it recently and it is a great map, but in comparison, gameplay and flow are far from being as good as this map.

In short: great fucking job.

I wanted to record a video playthrough of the map but something is wrong with the program I'm using, I'll try to figure it out.... BTW the only complain I have is that the demo camera placement could be better, there are only two and they don't give the most interesting angles; then again that's like the biggest nitpick ever and I'm sure you didn't even think anyone would try to record a demo so at least you bothered to include the cameras, not many mappers do (I did put demo cameras in the Lobby and Parking maps of Duke Hard but I don't believe anyone's used them)

In other news the map is reaching 150downloads on Megaton's workshop, so it was worth making it compatible.

[MetHy]

Hey look it's me talking to myself again!

Anyway here is the video of me playing the map, sorry the quality is pretty average but I had some trouble figuring out what was wrong with my video program I don't feel like redoing it. I'll try to go for better quality in my next videos.
I've added the video to the workshop page of the map.



Edit : and here your 2 other maps, Back Alley and Needle Time . I plan to add more usermap playthroughs to that channel.

BTW it's a real shame about CGS's 'no update' policy, because it shares the old version of the map (the EDuke32 only one with the old gate and item placement and less secrets etc), even though the new one is much better. Plus the review doesn't correspond to the final version of the map since it says the beginning is linear, which it is not anymore...

[Paul B]

Well played Methy, you made it look easy, with ammo to spare. The latest changes to the map definitely balance the ammo / enemy ratio a bit more. The only thing I don't like about the map is the ability to bypass the 2 mini bosses. That is such a cool scene it would be a shame to miss it. Which is why one of the Mini bosses should start closer to the rear exit vent forcing Duke to lure him out of that back corner. Anyway for the amount of work you've done to the map it looks like you're the new owner ! haha

[MetHy]

Not trying to steal the map, I just like it a lot; besides I've started making videos for other maps that I like a lot (I've just done FBSP002&3). I hope the gameplay video demonstrates what I meant with the flow of the gameplay.

[Forge]

MetHy, on 05 October 2014 - 07:21 AM, said:

BTW it's a real shame about CGS's 'no update' policy, because........

and there's ways around it if you feel it's that important. Label it v.3 or something and submit an updated review.

i encourage it and there's nothing stopping you from doing it

[Mark]

MetHy, not only did I marvel at your playing skills, but I had a good chuckle when in Needle Time in the middle of all the action you decided to kick an office chair for no reason.

[MetHy]

Office chairs are Duke's worst nightmare

Seriously though, I never liked those office chair sprites. They're ugly and take too much space, blocks the player. It was probably a subconscious thing.

[ck3D]

finally got to play this. fun little romp through a solid-looking map. it's good to see more from you, i loved back alley and needle time back in the day.

good job on the new textures : they fit just right in in terms of looks along with all the old art, a remarkable feat in duke 3D due to the fairly specific visual style the original tiles all share.

didn't have a problem as far as how it's impossible to shoot the baddies through the gates, when i first tried and i realized hitscan was on it confused me for like two seconds, then i merely came to the conclusion that i just wasn't supposed to be able to do it, most likely for gameplay progression purposes (it would kind of suck to be able to kill all the enemies before even entering the areas behind the gates, especially seeing as they are quite numerous and the gameplay itself is rather linear with not that many respawns).

just like back alley and needle time, the map looked good and played well. very solid layout and the theme execution was as proper as it gets, my only tiny little complaint would be that a lot of places looked a bit too similar to my liking and the rooms and hallways started to feel repetitive after a while, but that also might be due to how generic the 'office' theme has become in duke 3D, every other map has offices and they are all made the same way using the same essential tileset. not that it is much of a problem though because if anything, that only makes your map pure duke 3D, true to the look of the original levels and certain traditions conveyed by other good user maps

thank you for your time working on this, i had some fun