[quakis]

Aliens have decided to grab a beer at a modernised British pub in Lynnchester called The Flaming Shipwreck, slaughtering the local folk and causing all sorts of trouble. Being too much for the local police force, Duke has been assigned to remove their presense from the area.

Originally started as a pub section for the BeachCBP during Apr 2013. Having no motivation for mapping at the time, it was put aside indefinitely. I resumed work in Nov 2014 with a different perspective and workflow to mapping. To ensure a healthy balance of motivation and inspiration, there were various short and long breaks inbetween. Project finished 24th Aug 2015.

Not intended or designed for the HRP, keep this in mind if used.

Eduke32 Required.

Download: http://taw.duke4.net...es/flamwrck.zip

Screenshots

[Daedolon]

Woah! A quakis release after who knows how long, quite unexpected.

Downloading and playing, that's about it for this post.

Also, a highly overdue welcome back!

[MetHy]

Played as soon as I saw the post. Great map, took me 17mins, found 2 secrets.

Tons of great detailing with style.

The water fountain and the flickering light making noise reminded me of Duke Hard, except yours were better executed. Your flickering light doesn't sound weird like mine does so I wish I had thought of using that sound instead.
I wish you'd have made the water drinkable though, I thought the map lacked a bit of interactivity though there was just enough to make it feel lively.

Gameplay is tight, you have to watch for every item you can find, though enjoyable that way. I found the first few mins of the map a bit long though, due to how I was stuck with pistol only against some "middle-difficulty" enemies during those few mins.

Overall I think the map does a good job at being a good middle ground between being highly detailed, and being fun old Duke at the same time. What I mean is, it's highly detailed, though it's not too short, there is some unlinearility in the level design, some strong shading in places, invisible walls aren't too troublesome, there is a bit of interactivity etc so, the typical flaws of highly detailed maps were avoided.

Good job, I'll probably replay this one soon and try to find the 2 other secrets.

[Radar]

OMG I was not expecting this. I will play this tonight.

[brullov]

Amazing design!

[Mblackwell]

That was a kickass map. Probably some of the best detailing I've seen in a looooong time. Good design/layout too.

[Daedolon]

Mblackwell, on 24 August 2015 - 12:45 PM, said:

That was a kickass map. Probably some of the best detailing I've seen in a looooong time. Good design/layout too.

You cheat


On topic, it's a very solid map, lots of very solid spritework (lots of every-day objects done with probably double the fidelity of sprites I see normally), great intertwining locations and I really liked the Blood style progression where you get to see the upcoming areas before figuring out a way there, I don't want to give away too much. Besides some inconsistencies here and there, I really enjoyed the map, very solid layouts and crafty enemy placements all around. It kind of feels like an old-school Duke3D map with a more modern quality standard.

[zykov eddy]

A masterpiece of Duke 3D mapping, the best map of 2015 and one of the best maps in recent years. A perfect blend of fresh ideas, details & awesome gameplay.

[The Mechanic]

Mblackwell, on 24 August 2015 - 12:45 PM, said:

Probably some of the best detailing I've seen in a looooong time. Good design/layout too.

^^^ What he said ! _Very_ nice piece of mapping. Had me double checking that it really didn't have an accompanying art file.

I do however think the stingy ammo at the start will put some people off. Fortunately, after a number of attempts, one of them accidently dropped a chaingun for me so I finally got going and then really started to enjoy the map. Prior to that I was having to utilise the "left hand corner" trick so I could kick them but they couldn't fire back - which made for slow gameplay.

But like I said, once I got going I really enjoyed it. Top stuff !

TTFN,
Jon

[Paul B]

I can tell by the screenshots and from a sneak peak in mapster this was a labor of love. I'm glad to see you finished this map and released it otherwise it would have been sinful not to. The creativity, design and layout are stellar and now I'm really looking forward to testing out the game play. I already know this map will be one of my all time favorites. I couldn't help but notice in your readme.txt you said don't steal.. you don't really mean that do you? I mean is one sprite object really stealing or borrowing? Ha.ha.. =P (i'm just teasing btw).

I've said it before and i'll say it again. It's always the graphic designers and artists that make the best looking user maps.

[Micky C]

Wow, what a surprise! This'll be the first new map I'll have played in a long time (yeah, I've gotten slack lately...)

quakis, on 24 August 2015 - 10:41 AM, said:

Aliens have decided to grab a beer at a modernised British pub in Lynnchester called The Flaming Shipwreck,

I suspected this might have been from the BCBP from this sentence, before I read it in the next line. Good to hear something was done with it.

That makes 3 unique, stand-alone maps spawned out of the BCBP along with Drek's and High Treason's maps

[Jimmy]

OMG I LOVE QUAKEYFLAKES.

[Radar]

Yeah that really was the best map of the year.

[oasiz]

Damn, gotta try this later today !
Looks really nice from what I can see.

[Robman]

Yep, that was awesome. Stellar map man, I died plenty of times... the exploding wall with the flying bastard got me just when I thought I was really getting somewhere. I can tell it took along time, lots of shading and sprite detail. I'd like to wrack my brain by putting that much effort into my Sw maps but it would eat half of my life

Of all the ingenuity, for some reason the copy machine stands out to me, lol liked it.

Now to try it again and get past the exploding wall and flying bastard. Can you tell I'm not a duke guy?

So, I just beat it... had to cheat this time or I likely wouldn't have stood a chance.
Can add the styrofoam packing peanuts spilled out of the box to the favorite little details.
All of the detail and shading blew my mind, lots of effort and not to put any other maps down that I've tried but this is the best one if not right up there. Well done.

My only gripe? ... the light switches don't work

[MetHy]

I just replayed the map, found one more secret, and I noticed most of the bar you don't actually need to visit, and depending on where the player goes first, it's quite likely to happen. It's kind of a shame because the only reason is due to having put several of those same switches that open the back gate, I don't understand why putting several of them and why some so close to the entrances. Why not just one switch, put in the middle-back so the player has to visit at least more of the area ?

[FistMarine]

edit

[ck3D]

looking really cool. will give this a try as soon as possible. congrats on a (new) release !

[brullov]

Details are awesome! But this phone is my personal love

[NightFright]

Amazing what you did there, and all that with stock Duke3D textures and sounds. Not a single custom asset used and still making many props ingame look original. Respect! If this isn't a showcase map for Duke3D in 2015 and EDuke32 in general, I don't know. I loved every detail, e.g. the whiteboard where George's green pen ran dry and he had to switch to a red one. Implementing this idea alone shows how much effort went into this, but it's just one example. Others could be the creative "Polaris Outpost" mirrors, the showcase ship miniature, beautifully designed bar tables and much more. Sometimes I caught myself rather sightseeing than trying to make real progress.

Otherwise, map took me about 25min to complete (I tend to look around too much sometimes, see above). It was a bit tough, especially the beginning where you often had to fall back to pistol usage (or even worse if you weren't careful about ammo), but I guess it's meant to be like that and you have to search hard for advanced weaponry. Enemy placement was OK for me, too, even though there could have been a few less aliens on the lower difficulties maybe.

Thanks a lot for this release, and keep mapping, pal!

[Micky C]

Gave this a go yesterday. Clearly the best-looking map of the year, both in terms of architecture, and finer details. Fantastic shading as well, lots of non-90 degree walls at arbitrary angles. Some very sophisticated 3D spritework. The combat was fairly standard, not to say it was bad or anything, and progression was pretty good. I agree with others in that it would have been nice to have a weapon earlier on (I'm a big softie). Overall I preferred the gameplay in your Duke Hard map, which felt quite dynamic, and a construction site like that had never been done before IIRC, at least not well.

Still it's great to see a map like this. It feels like nobody's put effort into detail for years now. My mouth dropped open a few times at some of the ways that you creatively combined sprites to make something completely different. Then again if everyone put as much effort into detail like this we'd never get any maps out, so not that I'm complaining about the other lower-detailed maps. I think I've been a bit spoiled with my own mapping in that when I want some specific piece of art in the AMC TC, I just get James to add it for me

I hope you make another one of course! But I'd try and design it a bit more around the combat next time than what's been done here.

[MetHy]

I think you're mistaking Quakis for either Cage or Steambull

[Micky C]

Oh yeah whoops haha. Cage is that other guy who pretty much never releases maps

They had a similar style of using the duke art creatively as well. Guess I still had ''CBP" on the brain.

[TerminX]

Artem Nevinchany, on 25 August 2015 - 09:47 AM, said:

Details are awesome! But this phone is my personal love

It's amazing how clearly you can tell what OS that thing is supposed to be running.

[quakis]

Overall impressions suggest that my experiment with tight supplies early on might have been too stingy in the long run for most players. Only after that hurdle is cleared it appears players had a much better time. Having tested this a dozen times it actually became difficult to entirely notice this problem even after both my testers had similar experiences. Honestly speaking I didn't expect players to have that much trouble even after throwing in extra pistol clips and health. Oops! Gameplay has always been a weak area of mine so I took the opportunity to improve in that aspect here, including some experimentation. My intended goal was to create a tough start by not simply providing the usual linear weapon progression right away and to get more use out of the pistol beyond distant sniping. Definitely a big whoops on my behalf, but it's also valuable feedback to consider when designing gameplay in future.

Thanks for playing and providing all the feedback guys!

[The Mechanic]

quakis, on 27 August 2015 - 04:34 AM, said:

Overall impressions suggest that my experiment with tight supplies early on might have been too stingy in the long run for most players.

I guess that recon vehicle could have tipped the balance. Taking on a couple of Lizman with just a pistol isn't so bad if you can make use of surroundings such as the corner of a wall or a nearby car, but with the recon vehicle hovering around as well this wasn't really possible. Fortunately you could tell very early on that this was a superb map and that is why I persevered.

quakis, on 27 August 2015 - 04:34 AM, said:

Thanks for playing and providing all the feedback guys!

A pleasure to play the map!

TTFN,
Jon

[Mblackwell]

Part of the issue is that a recon spawns a pig so you get three tough enemies right at the start and one (the car itself) that can absorb a lot of hits.

[Daedolon]

Four? There's two enforcers.

[Gambini]

quakis, on 27 August 2015 - 04:34 AM, said:

Honestly speaking I didn't expect players to have that much trouble even after throwing in extra pistol clips and health.

I told ya!

I had the privilege to test a Release candidate of this map and had a lot of fun with it. The desing is, like many others said, brillant. You combine creative use of assets with a solid 3dr style. And the gameplay gave me a challenging fun time.

[DotK3D]

Really fun map and impressive (and creative) sprite works. Thanks you, I suppose some parts had takes a lot of time.
I find the model kit of the ship really nicely done.

Just a few remarks :
- Flickering square black sprites on pool table and a desk if I remember correctly (I don't know if it is a problem from my pc or not)
- In women toilets, look at the ceiling over the left sink, I believe there is a light problem.
- I have played it with ReaperMan voxels pack, looks good ^^.

Bye,
DotK3D