[MetHy]

Brand new Shadow Warrior usermap for everyone's enjoyment !

I know this is the DN3D forum but I hope you guys will make an exception considering how close SW is and the little activity this game has... (and I did use Mapster32 a lot to make this map!)
If not feel free to move the thread someplace else.

Screenshots :










Video Trailer :


Readme file
Everything you need to know about the map

Spoiler

Shadow Warrior .MAP Authoring Template
================================================================
Title : Showdown in Suzhou
Date Finished : 25th of April 2016
Filename : suzhou.MAP
Author : MetHy aka MetHunter aka NESfag
Email Address : cocometh.dal@gmail.com
Misc. Author Info : Made a bunch of Duke Nukem 3D maps in the past.

Description : A small town built on an artificial lake and around old ruins.


Story : With his fame renewed thanks to his latest video game reboot,
Lo Wang was shooting a Tomb Raider/Shadow Warrior movie crossover in Suzhou (Chinese Venice).
Also starring Angelina Jolie, the woman got herself kidnapped by an occult branch of the Triad which may have had links with Zilla.
Brad Pitt pressed Lo Wang to go and rescue her, offering him a couple of his hard-earned *cough* Oscars in exchange.
As a debutant actor, Lo Wang jumped at the chance, grabbed his sword and rode on his tuned-up boat.


Additional Credits to : Daedolon, Robman and Steambull, for testing and/or feedback
Robman, for his help on SW mapping
icecoldduke and Hendricks266 for their help on some glitches and crash issues
Anyone keeping Shadow Warrior in any way: the people listed above, General Arcade and
Devolver Digital, the authors of mapping FAQs and tutorials,
the people working on bringing us Deadly Kiss, etc

================================================================

* Play Information *

Single Player : Yes
Cooperative 2-8 Player : Yes. Implemented but not tested.
DukeMatch 2-8 Player : No.
Difficulty Settings : Yes: Normal and Hard. Skills 0, 1 and 2 are the same, so "Tiny grasshopper", "I have no fear"
and "Who Wants some Wang" will give you Normal difficulty. Skill#3 "No Pain No Gain" for Hard.
Launching the map without manually choosing a skill setting will automatically give you Normal.
Demo Cameras : Yes, Implemented.
New Sounds : No
New Music : No
New Graphics : No
New/changed CONs : No

* Construction *

Base : New level from scratch
Build Time : Started start of July 2014, finished end of April 2016.
Editor(s) used : SWPBuild and Mapster32
Known Bugs : Using Redux you might have the screen flickering black a little when inside rooms with Sector Over Sector.
Using SWP some ambient sounds might be glitchy and heard where they shouldn't.
May Not Run With... : The minimum specs requirement of Shadow Warrior.

* Copyright / Permissions *

Authors may not use this level as a base to build additional
levels.

You MAY distribute this MAP, provided you include this file, with
no modifications. You may distribute this file in any electronic
format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file
intact.

* Where to get this map *

Shadow Warrior central : http://swcentral.weebly.com/
Hopefully on Redux Steam workshop (you may have to run the beta version to find it) if it gets back up online....

================================================================

* How to play *

- Using DOS/DOSbox (most recommended) : copy the map into your root SW folder. Run Setup.exe, select suzhou.map in "User Level Selection",
then "Save and launch Shadow Warrior".
Or if you're using the GoG version click on "Launch Settings", then go to "User Level Selection", select "suzhou.map", "save and launch SW".

- Using Redux : copy the map into Steam\SteamApps\common\Shadow Warrior Classic\gameroot\maps , then run the game and select the map in the "User Maps" sub-menu.

- Using SWP: copy the map into your SWP folder, launch SWP and in the startup window, click on "gaming" and select the map in the User Maps list.
If the startup window is turned off, you can turn it on in the game's options.


================================================================

Mapping for SW, a rant by MetHy :


Making this map was at the same time a fantastic and frustrating experience.

It is amazing how much you can do with SW, coming from DN3D, I quickly realized how much MORE you can achieve with SW's effects.
The game has a lot of awesome effects, most of which were barely used in the original game, and most of the time used in their basic form.

However, the more complex the game is, the harder it is to get into and build for. It also didn't help that I got a lot of annoying glitches and crashing issues.
This complexity is probably one of the reasons why SW's mapping never picked up and why there aren't many (good) user-maps to play for it.

But I can tell you one thing: the surface of what is possible to achieve in SW hasn't even been scratched yet.

I hope that someday, a few more people will get into SW mapping and show us how far you can go with it...
Maybe the day it gets a quality sourceport with an advanced map editor like DN3D has ... ? Coming from Mapster32, using SWPBuild felt like a leap backwards.

About the map, at first I wanted it to be a middle sized classic style map, but I quickly got carried away by all the possibilities and the map ended up having around 935 sectors (which is more than 90% of the possible limit).
This being said, while I did try to come up with interesting effects and a fun map layout including RoR and SoS, what I did with the game's effects remained rather simple.

I think this is a cool map, at least I hope, but it's nothing compared to the possibilities the game offer.

Thanks again to anyone who's helped me in any way for this map.
Now I might just go through the same hell with Blood mapping...

Enjoy the map!

Download link
http://www.moddb.com...wdown-in-suzhou
Also attached with this thread.


Enjoy !

Edit: Updated the map, fixed the boss not spawning in the 2 first difficulty settings.

Attached File(s)

•  suzhou.zip (121.39K)
  Number of downloads: 158

[Jblade]

Making my way through it now - so far it's been really enjoyable! The level's relatively open ended nature plus the boat actually being useful is one of the initial cool things, I also like how you end up moving upwards as the map progress towards the upper parts of the town area (and the cliffs surrounding it as well) The map is pretty brutal at times, but that's not a bad thing since there's lots to explore and I always managed to find a health kit hiding somewhere.

It sucks you had issues with Build towards the end, but all the hassle was worth it regardless since this map is pretty damn good.

[MetHy]

Thanks for the feedback. You playing in DOSbox or sourceport? It seems that most people are playing in Redux which I feel is the least accurate of the 3 ways to play the map, but well at least it works with good framerate and widescreen support.

The map can be brutal but I think it's part of SW's nature to be brutal. I always die at some point when playing SW, whether in the original or in the add-ons, and I know them all well.

If you explore well, you should find plenty of supplies everywhere. Feel free to use the grenade and rocket launchers as soon as you have them, because you will find more ammo for them along the way, and some enemies may drop some too.

I think the main reason why I had issues with Build was because of that map corruption I could never get rid of. As soon as I built the underwater segment, the map got corrupted. Due to the drive-able boat which can be seen underwater as well, I have two GIGANTIC water sectors (overwater and underwater) which can't be cut into smaller sectors, and Build doesn't like huge sectors like that.
So I had a corrupted wall in the underwater section which I could never get rid of without deleting a huge part of the map and I'm sure that's what caused problems in the end. At that point I started saving as a new mapfile every 2 saves.

I've uploaded the map on Redux' workshop, however I can only access the workshop by going through my personal files. From there I can access the entirety of the workshop, but I just can't access the thing through the Library or anywhere else.... and yes, I'm running the beta version. Is that the case for everyone or just me? I wonder if it's a glitch or if they "closed" it intentionally due to the lack of activity.

[Jblade]

I've noticed the same thing about the Redux' workshop, I'm suspecting it might be the latter reason you stated.

I did play it on Redux - I did feel a bit bad because I knew you intended classic to be the desired style but I was in a bit of a rush and wanted to play it before heading out so I just used Redux (I forgot just how poor the renderer looks though, and the mouselook isn't stellar) I will definitely give it a replay in the proper DOS game.

Quote

The map can be brutal but I think it's part of SW's nature to be brutal. I always die at some point when playing SW, whether in the original or in the add-ons, and I know them all well.

Yeah - SW is still relatively tough even today compared to Duke which due to the better mouse support of Eduke32 feels pretty trivial in difficulty level. Blood of course trumps both of them, although that has the weird difficulty bug which messes things about a bit.

[MetHy]

I hope you played on "Who Wants Some Wang", because of a blunder the boss would only appear on that skill onwards! I just fixed it now; as well as another very minor issue. Updated the OP.

Anyway it works fine on Redux. It's just that it was built with classic renderer in mind and also in Redux, the screen may flicker to black from times to times everywhere there is SoS; and considering I used an effect to bring the underwater section right underneath its overwater counterpart, there is SoS everywhere. Counting the water, several places have 3 layers of SoS. It's a single flicker everytime and it doesn't hinder gameplay but in some rooms like the restaurant it may happen every time you cross a sector.

You also may not have perfect framerate using DOSbox in the outdoor area, unless you have it configured perfectly.

[Robman]

Every area is nice to look at, many effects are implemented and used in creative ways.
It's very clean, large and fun to play/explore. The map gave me a bit of an Indiana Jones vibe.(especially near the end)
It brings me great joy to not only see a new SW map, but one of such high quality where you can tell every little detail saw careful attention.
Thankyou for wandering into my Sw Build world and giving LoWang his due respect. Hopefully you make more in the future.

Great job MetHy, I'll get it posted up at SWC hopefully in the next few days.

[Sixty Four]

Made me say oh my its kinda sexy hehe the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd picture show fun and well built areas but that 4th picture that area needs more shading. Then again there are lights on the textures of the walls so it makes sense, but I just think it could of looked better if it was just light on the top floor there. Trying to add any insight here though ..gameplay was fun to and I had enough weaps. Sorry my feedback is not good right now thanks for the map a new reason to play me SW. I might give more feedback when I get a chance to play more thoroughly.

[MetHy]

Robman, on 25 April 2016 - 02:09 PM, said:

Thankyou for wandering into my Sw Build world and giving LoWang his due respect. Hopefully you make more in the future.

Thanks for the kind words! I have been dreaming about remaking some parts of Shadow Warrior (2014) in Shadow Warrior (1997), but I don't think that's going to happen. When I make another map, I think I'll either finish some of the Duke stuff I've had collecting dust for ages, or I'll try my hand at a Blood map.

Sixty Four, on 25 April 2016 - 10:27 PM, said:

that 4th picture that area needs more shading. Then again there are lights on the textures of the walls so it makes sense, but I just think it could of looked better if it was just light on the top floor there.

For that area I didn't have much choice. That area is RoR, and anything that can viewed from any side of the RoR hole (pretty much the entire screenshot and more) I had to keep simple. I couldn't do everything I wanted for RoR and had to make with what I could, sometimes a sector I would add within the field of view would just disappear when viewed from above the RoR hole, even though it was built and tagged properly. So I kept it simple: the shadows in the two 'corridors' around are limited by the end wall of the RoR view area, so those walls have two purposes. That rectangle sector in the middle that has to be present in both floors is used for the mat, the RoR hole and the hole in ceiling with a window.

I know there are other areas that could use shadows or better shading but at the end I couldn't add any more sector without risking to break anything else that used to work fine, due to the map corruption I had.

[Master O]

MetHy, on 25 April 2016 - 07:03 AM, said:

Brand new Shadow Warrior usermap for everyone's enjoyment !

Looks like a great map.

On a semi-related note, so Shadow Warrior maps can be mentioned in this particular sub forum, then? It's technically not Duke Nukem 3D.

[Lunick]

There are so few Shadow Warrior maps released these days and Mapster32 was used so I don't see why not that it can't be mentioned here. I don't mind anyway.

[Jinroh]

Oh sweet! Gonna throw this in SW! I'm always looking for more wang.

[Sixty Four]

MetHy, on 25 April 2016 - 10:37 PM, said:

For that area I didn't have much choice. That area is RoR, and anything that can viewed from any side of the RoR hole (pretty much the entire screenshot and more) I had to keep simple. I couldn't do everything I wanted for RoR and had to make with what I could, sometimes a sector I would add within the field of view would just disappear when viewed from above the RoR hole, even though it was built and tagged properly. So I kept it simple: the shadows in the two 'corridors' around are limited by the end wall of the RoR view area, so those walls have two purposes. That rectangle sector in the middle that has to be present in both floors is used for the mat, the RoR hole and the hole in ceiling with a window.

Oh I see well that's even more understandable just say RoR 64 RoR that's why. Then I will roar and understand. Joking I did not get to replay yet but I had not noticed that this was a RoR area while I played I hardly had time but I had fun.

[t800]

It is indeed rare and nice opportunity to see new map for SW nowadays.
Well, isnt that Sushi restaurant familiar from somewhere? Glad, you at last managed to materialize all that effort in this map.
So I played in SWP in 8-bit mode, on highest difficulty with final scores:
- Time over hour (well, I screwed around lot and took my time to get around )
- 2 secrets found of 5
- 309 kills out of 319
Either I sucked at finding secrets or you hid them well. BTW when I found secret repair tool box, I hoped there would be some broken turret/vehicle to use it on, so I would be rewarded for finding it.
I like how you interwined whole map with water ways, so you could give more utilization to vehicle than just one area with enemies and some barrier to blow off (as original game and most user maps usually have).
Final encounter was enjoyable with those surprise reinforcements and I see you gave player way to skip whole fight if he/she survives long enough. I am just not sure if there is any motivation to that. Maybe if you pressured player bit by trapping him/her in that area and not provide enough ammo to deal with boss?
I favor sandbox-y exploration style maps and for your first try at SW mapping, this is very solid release.
I found only 2 bugs: There is ripper stucked between paintings in "armory/gallery" room under that ladder leading from office room with PC. Also there is one coolie ghost that keeps bouncing from wall in vent connected to that cellar with flickering lights. And if you dont mind little nitpickery - I noticed lot of destructible decorative props are indestructible.
I wouldnt mind if you distributed this map with some fitting MIDI music. (And .ART file replacement for Lara sprite from shareware. )

[Robman]

@t800 There isn't really a way to set the game up to end the map when the boss is defeated so, it has to be done with timing things.
The end boss fights in the regular game are programmed to have the meter and end the map/ play a cutscene when the boss is killed.

If you place the map as, say map number 4 in the map list and also have the snake boss in there, the meter will show up and function. You can basically only do this if you're making a TC or whatever but shouldn't be done with just individual maps. Unless you want to include detailed and lengthy instructions to do that, but you wouldn't want to distribute a map in a such a way.

Adding extra art kind of complicates the map playing process for single maps, I mean it can be done but there is something to be said for keeping it simple with just the map file and no extra frills.
(unless you're making a tc)

[MetHy]

t800, on 28 April 2016 - 12:05 PM, said:

Well, isnt that Sushi restaurant familiar from somewhere? Glad, you at last managed to materialize all that effort in this map.

I have no idea what you're referring to with the Sushi restaurant?

Quote

BTW when I found secret repair tool box, I hoped there would be some broken turret/vehicle to use it on, so I would be rewarded for finding it.

I intentionally made it so that both the boat and the turret can be broken by enemies (and yourself if you're not careful). However only explosive weapons (rockets, grenades and sticky bombs) can arm it, but it only takes 4 rockets to break each.
So the idea is that it's unlikely that they break, but if you're REALLY not careful, they will. I've seen it happen several times while testing the map, once one of those Amazon women threw a ton of sticky bombs at the same placement which I didn't notice, and the boat broke with a single explosion.
So when that happens, and if you find that secret room, you can repair it.

Quote

Final encounter was enjoyable with those surprise reinforcements and I see you gave player way to skip whole fight if he/she survives long enough. I am just not sure if there is any motivation to that. Maybe if you pressured player bit by trapping him/her in that area and not provide enough ammo to deal with boss?

There is no way to make the map end when you kill the boss, nor there is a way to have a tag trigger when an enemy dies, so a time based end-map switch seemed the best solution.d

Quote

I found only 2 bugs: There is ripper stucked between paintings in "armory/gallery" room under that ladder leading from office room with PC. Also there is one coolie ghost that keeps bouncing from wall in vent connected to that cellar with flickering lights. And if you dont mind little nitpickery - I noticed lot of destructible decorative props are indestructible.

I can probably fix that by making the enemies unable to enter certain sectors (although that's not 100% reliable, it helps). So that's already 4 small things I probably fix since last small update, so I might just update it again. I guess I shouldn't have uploaded the map in so many places already

As for props, some are destructible, some aren't. It's just that, when I happened to test the map and use explosive weapons, the map would look terribly empty once every sprite has disappeared, so I decided to make some undestructible. The coolest places still have destructible props though, like the fight in the restaurant and its kitchen with the tons of dishes which can break...

Quote

I wouldnt mind if you distributed this map with some fitting MIDI music. (And .ART file replacement for Lara sprite from shareware. )

I'm not sure if it's possible in DOS but in both SWP and Redux you can choose your music.

Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed the map.

[t800]

MetHy, on 28 April 2016 - 10:40 PM, said:

I have no idea what you're referring to with the Sushi restaurant?

Ah, it only reminded me of those screenshots from your announcment post from "What are you working on?" thread from like 2 or 3 years ago. So I presume that is where your map building begun?

Quote

I intentionally made it so that both the boat and the turret can be broken by enemies (and yourself if you're not careful). However only explosive weapons (rockets, grenades and sticky bombs) can arm it, but it only takes 4 rockets to break each.
So the idea is that it's unlikely that they break, but if you're REALLY not careful, they will. I've seen it happen several times while testing the map, once one of those Amazon women threw a ton of sticky bombs at the same placement which I didn't notice, and the boat broke with a single explosion.
So when that happens, and if you find that secret room, you can repair it.

Then maybe I just have lot of luck, because it never happened to me. But do you think placing in map some extra broken vehicle/turret to reward secret finders would unbalance gameplay or other players would feel too disadvantaged?

Quote

I'm not sure if it's possible in DOS but in both SWP and Redux you can choose your music.

Vanilla doesnt support that, but I think it could be nice addition to spice up atmosphere bit for SWP players.

To Robman:
Interesting trivia.
So if I understand this thing correctly - if you place any non-mini boss in map slots 4, 11 and 20 it will give them health meter and end level cutscene trigger, otherwise they work as ordinary mooks, right? Or does it have to be that specific boss coresponding to boss from original game? Like Sumo for 11, Zilla for 20, etc.? And if you place boss in map slot 4, it will trigger cutscene before its death and in slot 5 it will trigger sector movement (like revealing level end switch in original game)?
I see that there is unfortunately lot of hard coded stuff like this in SW. User moddability propably didnt hold too much of priority during development.

[MetHy]

Quote

But do you think placing in map some extra broken vehicle/turret to reward secret finders would unbalance gameplay or other players would feel too disadvantaged?

Well, there isn't really a need for another boat/turret in the map, except perhaps for co-op play but that's the minority (if 2 people get to play it in co-op i'd be glad... ).
The only way I can think of adding another turret would be in the turret section where there is already one, except put it in a different angle and have it be more powerful or cover the player more, which would make it worth it to use the toolbox on. Not a bad idea but it's too late now.

So I was just fucking around in the map to see if I could reproduce the couple of small issues reported to me and check for others while I'm at it... I don't think I'll upldate it unless people start coming in with more glitches though.

Also it's totally possible to beat the map without ever using the boat or the turret, but it's hard, especially at the start of the map.

Also I just thought of a crazy use of the atomic rocket launcher bomb hidden in one of the secret places

Spoiler

Get the bomb. Reach the turret section, step in so enemies start spawning and leave through the apartment. Let all the enemies spawn near the turret and throw the bomb from a safe distance on the balcony/terrace; everyone near the turret will die in one blow while you get to watch!

What did you guys think of the turret section anyway? It wasn't really easy to make it fair: with hitscan enemies, the player pretty much HAS to take a little damage which seems unfair, and projectile enemies can destroy the turret too quickly.
Shadow Warrior '97 had turrets but their use was limited, there was no "use turret against waves of enemies" sequence in the game. That's actually an inspiration from Shadow Warrior 2013.

[Robman]

t800, on 29 April 2016 - 04:34 AM, said:

To Robman:
Interesting trivia.
So if I understand this thing correctly - if you place any non-mini boss in map slots 4, 11 and 20 it will give them health meter and end level cutscene trigger, otherwise they work as ordinary mooks, right? Or does it have to be that specific boss coresponding to boss from original game? Like Sumo for 11, Zilla for 20, etc.? And if you place boss in map slot 4, it will trigger cutscene before its death and in slot 5 it will trigger sector movement (like revealing level end switch in original game)?
I see that there is unfortunately lot of hard coded stuff like this in SW. User moddability propably didnt hold too much of priority during development.

I can't remember at the moment if it was strictly boss type specific.
The cutscenes are tailored towards the specific bosses though so..
It might not even go to the cutscene.. it does bring the meter up though, I remember that much. lol

[Sixty Four]

Releasing a SW map is on the bucket list its something I can't miss so its cool to see a Duke mapper to do it

[Steambull]

Oh, nice that you got it done! Don't have Shadow Warrior and I'm not aware of the best way to play it these days, but Imma put this on my desktop so I'll remember to find out and install it soon. Looks interesting based on the trailer!

[MetHy]

If you ask me the best way to play the game is still through DOSbox, although SWP is decent and may give you a better framerate more easily (without having to fiddle with DOSbox configs).

Maybe try to find the GoG version which is already mostly set up by default.

[Steambull]

I was stuck at the red key for so long, thinking Duke logic so I didn't try 'open' on the grid... Completed it without killing the damsel. It's great how you first interact with all those high areas from the ground and eventually make your way there through interesting indoor locations. Trimming and shadows were solid, but the most impressive thing was how professional the layout was.

The shooting gallery was fantastic, using the AI's tendency to walk <--> and actually making the waves feel balanced as a mini game. The waterfall puzzle was a bit frustrating, but I understand the distances had to be somewhat long so that you actually need all the blocks.

Overlooking a few too stretched textures and a couple of bugs I found this to be your most refined mapping work so far.

I attached pics of two visual bugs. The other one may have been unavoidable (the ladder sprite visible through the wall from some angles), and maybe the fish thing is a known bug in the game or something, I really don't know SW.

Attached File(s)

•  swp0010.jpg (170.98K)
  Number of downloads: 92
•  swp0008.jpg (164.22K)
  Number of downloads: 90

[MetHy]

Damn, I thought I got both these "glitches" sorted. Fish is because I made it hang on a seperate sprite, which is destructible. Ladder clips through the small sector in front of it because you can technically see a part of the ladder sector, so the game thinks you're supposed to see it all.