[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 12 December 2020 - 07:53 PM, said:

That makes three completely different mods in a row now where I've run into impossible scenarios. I'm batting a thousand here.

Aleks has announced that he should be dropping his new mod in a day or so, I'd make sure you're saving some of your precious energy for that one (if you've got some left), it's quite epic and underwent rather thorough testing to make sure the gameplay flows as well as possible given the nature of the maps so hopefully, that will save your week. Thinking of it because it's essentially what you describe looking for technically, although not a full on TC, it does have some new .art though.

I have fond memories of the aforementioned Death Drive episode and also of Slaughterfest but then again I like big fights (although I can understand why some find them boring, fast action always keeps me on my toes). I think I remember Death Drive did lose me somewhere around the end though, IIRC there was a canyon map so open it was impossible for me to resist the urge of running about and jumping everywhere which of course didn't miss to trigger the hundreds of angry bellends from out of this world present on the scene. Ended up saving in a terrible spot and moment when I was just about to get killed from behind, and having to resort to DNKROZ like five minutes away from the ending, but besides that it was a pretty cool experience, I'd definitely hit again.

[Ninety-Six]

I'm a fan of big fights myself. Even in Duke combat I think there is a place for slaughtermap-type levels as long as the arena is designed well enough to accommodate it (such as with Lost World). Sinister's works are all on my to-do list, but I'm waiting to take them on (and some others) until probably after I'm done with Demon Throne which I've started up again after a very lengthy beta test burned me out a little.

DT is kind of my "A" game at the moment. I'm looking for a somewhat less tense "B" game to fall back on when DT inevitably gets too heated. While I'm not averse to challenging gameplay, maps and levelsets that are beyond a shadow of a doubt in the "hardcore" category are something I want to give my full "A Game" attention to instead of the B Game which is a bit more laidback. Again there's no issue with the B Game being challenging but the superhard ones are definitely more A Game territory.


I'm not sure if literally any of that made sense.

[Arzca]

AlexCity 1: Bank Heist: https://msdn.duke4.net/hotalexcity.php (MSDN)

I did manage to beat the level even I struggled quite a lot inside the bank. At first, I though I got a softlock at the nightclub area where I couldn't find a hidden switch that would open the Arcade area across the street, so I kept wandering around the map for 10 minutes until I discovered that the hidden switch was located behind a speaker inside the nightclub. I had literally been looking at the switch a few times, but somehow I didn't notice it. I remembered that the player has to "detonate" the door leading inside the Bank by using a box with a hidden Red Access Switch in it. The effects was pretty cool, although someone else might not have been able to figure out the puzzle, which is a must to complete the level, I just happened to remember it from the good ol' days.

Another cool effect was the invisible "missile launcher thing", that keeps shooting rockets at you constantly after you've been inside the nightclub. This kind of limits your movement outside, or at the very least, pay attention when moving around the main street. In general, I'd say the map was way bigger than I remembered, and it was well connected too. There is a sewer area with some clearwater stuff that's connected to the street area. In general, it wasn't too hard to find your way around, because most of the gameplay takes places inside the buildings on the main street, so getting lost certainly wasn't an issue.

The issues started to pile up a bit inside the bank, at least for me. I got softlocked twice. The first one took place after I accidentally triggered a Tripmine that you're supposed to avoid in order to get the Yellow access card. I did survive the explosion, but as a result, the ceiling of the room collapsed, and I was not longer able to obtain the Access card that would open up the door leading to the vault. The other softlock took place around the same area, where I happened to use the previously mentioned Yellow access card. As I used the access card, the door of leading inside the vault opened "in my face", and thanks to EDuke32', the door closed instantly because of the recent swing door behaviour change. The vault door is a one-time activator swing door, so I had to restart.

The vault itself was a big shocker, as I didn't remember the boss fight at all. I died here a few times, until I came up the idea of using Steroids to jump to safety to a nearby pile of boxes in the same room, which is the only way to deal with the boss, but you have only seconds to make up your mind because of how little space you have to deal with the boss, and to make matters worse, the vault door closes behind you, so you cannot escape.

Even I died and got a few softlocks, I didn't get frustrated at any point, and I had a genuine interest to beat the level without saving, and I did. It was a bit rocky road partially due to design, even so, I had a plenty of fun playing this, because there is a good set weapons laying around. I found 2/3 secrets along to way as well. There might have been a Devastator somewhere, but I found it. There's still a beatiful map behind a few hickups.

And some mid-level saves can always be used as a safety net if needed.

[Ninety-Six]

yeah the door change has definitely given rise to...quite a few problems like that...

[FistMarine]

Arzca, on 10 December 2020 - 01:18 AM, said:

I don't remember much about making ARSP1 but, there is a small sector inside the room, and if you walk on top of it and perform a jump, you should be able to get out of the secret. Still, bad design is bad design and there's no way around it.

Not proud of the map these days, but if anything, it's these kind of maps that will eventually tell the mapper to learn away from their bad habits. My issues at the time were rushing, inconcistency and the lack of patience, which would often result a mess of a level that all of my maps from 2003-2004 would be.

These maps taught me the "dont's and no's" of mapping, and that's a valuable lesson for any mapper.

Ah I see, thanks for letting me know. I don't know if I tried this method when I got stuck in the bathroom but it should be helpful when I get around testing more addons for NightFright's compilation, as I think ARSP1 is included in the Urban Map Pack.

Ninety-Six, on 10 December 2020 - 01:56 AM, said:

Thing is I made it past the first three levels. I'm on level 4 and just getting more and more infuriated.

Here's a thing I've noticed. So far these levels seem to count on the player finding damn near all the secrets to survive. Expecting the player to find some secrets to get by is fine; expecting the majority is not.

Moreover, so far every level has had one particular secret. A room that is basically a massive ammo dump. These levels are balanced expecting you to find this exact secret. I'm on level 4 and have yet to find this secret, and so the dearth of ammunition continues to be an utterly massive problem. As does the abuse of darkness and the poor placement of enemy types. Particularly Battlelords. George here loved to put Battlelords in a lot of tight spaces where you don't generally have room to use explosives safely but the battlelord has no such trouble ripping you to pieces at such short range. That is of course assuming you even have any explosives. Which, without finding said secret, you almost certainly don't.

Unfortunately I would classify this level as quite awful too. Right in line with the travesties that are the first three levels.

DOS Duke 100% supports mouse and keyboard.

Damn, sorry to hear you didn't enjoy LR&WB at all and eventually gave up. I wanted you to like the mod since the later levels are among the best you'd ever see in old Duke3D TCs, at least that's what most people noticed and I agree with them for the most part, the levels were really good. You are right that the first couple of levels are really bad and suffer from major balance problems and kinda ruin the pacing and the whole TC. In particular, there are a lot of issues (most already mentioned) like the oversized rooms, the dark rooms, confusing levels, not being too much health/ammo at times (and instead there are some secrets that contain a massive ammo dump as you said, though they can be missable too) and the enemy placement not being that good either. Even though you have a slightly higher health than normal (125 health which also affects the portable medkit amount, the max armor and max atomic health), sounds like the mod is still difficult even with these changes. I'm wondering if it was even possible to complete with the default 100 health amount, maybe the change was made after the author found the levels a bit difficult and tried to help the player. That and maybe that bullshit long underwater tunnel that forces you to drown and lose tons of health to progress, I suppose it would have been impossible or extremely difficult with just 100 health, though you should be given medkit and atomic health before you get to that point. I may try that one day for an extra challenge by modifying the USER.CON (or the LR&WB.CON file, assuming this con file stores all mod related changes, unless there's another con file inside the LR&WB.GRP file) and reset player's health to 100, see if it's possible to complete the mod.

Just curious, did you manage to find every secret and even kill every enemy and still manage to run out of health/ammo or you just try to first finish the levels quickly and move on to the next mod? If you don't intend to go back to Last Reaction, I would recommend you give Water Bases episode a try too and then Chimera (which requires LR&WB installed), then you can judge after playing the whole thing. All that talk about LR&WB makes me want to install both it and Chimera and give them a try after not playing them in years and try to finish them 100% this time around (and start analyzing all the levels and which are good and which are bad). And yes I'm aware DOS DUKE3D.EXE supports mouse aiming and movement but I am more comfortable with keyboard only controls in old DOS games (since it was their default setting too), unless I'm playing in source ports where I use Keyboard + Mouse and modernized controls. It's not a big problem, everyone has their preferred configuration when playing the game.

I haven't played Starship Troopers TC yet, it is on my to-play list along with Platoon TC and others. I would also want to recommend you to play JJ Duke Nukem 3D, as its levels seem to resemble levels in style of original episodes, though I heard some levels are short and a bit buggy.

Aleks, on 10 December 2020 - 02:15 AM, said:

Glad to see you posting again, man! I'd sure love to see your video of Alex City, would be fun to see how people would play it these days

Thanks man! I have sent you a PM in past two days with links to my YouTube videos of the map. I have a couple of Duke3D videos uploaded on YouTube (original levels and various user maps) but they are all unlisted at the moment. I will post them on forums in next couple of days if anyone's interested and make them public videos too. Maybe after I complete a few TCs, such as LR&WB as it has no walkthrough available on YouTube (at least not a finished one). It would be a good idea to play some TCs and post videos on YouTube and help others that have trouble with certain levels of the said mod. I know there's a few dedicated Duke channels that play through various user maps and mods but there are still some unexplored episodes that should be uploaded on YouTube.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I started last month or back in October, two mods that I never played before: Oblivion TC by Zaxtor (RIP) and WGRealms 2: Siege Breaker. I'm halfway through E1 in the former (yeah I know the levels are confusing and take me like 40 mins or an hour to complete each, I also had to look in mapster32 sometimes to see what to do and to get to secret level) and the latter I'm playing the old 2011 version of WGR2 (didn't want to jump directly on Demon Throne and wanted to learn the basics) and I'm on second level, I remember even the first level being difficult and killed me a couple of times (died about 5 or so times) mostly to shotgunners and those exploding lost souls that killed me in one hit (probably it was the bigger variant that spawned later in map and gave me trouble when sneaked in behind me). I have gotten every secret and I believe I killed all enemies as well (and may have killed some critters too in the process, which made a higher kill count than the total). I don't think I managed to collect all gold because some enemies dropped gold where they died (I think their corpse also turned into gold when I rescued all the fallen souls that follow you in the map and attach into walls) and couldn't collect all of it, especially since at end of level I couldn't backtrack anymore but otherwise I remember getting everything else, I think. I may have to look at stats again when I return to the mod.

[Aleks]

Arzca, on 12 December 2020 - 10:14 PM, said:

AlexCity 1: Bank Heist: https://msdn.duke4.net/hotalexcity.php (MSDN)

I did manage to beat the level even I struggled quite a lot inside the bank. At first, I though I got a softlock at the nightclub area where I couldn't find a hidden switch that would open the Arcade area across the street, so I kept wandering around the map for 10 minutes until I discovered that the hidden switch was located behind a speaker inside the nightclub. I had literally been looking at the switch a few times, but somehow I didn't notice it. I remembered that the player has to "detonate" the door leading inside the Bank by using a box with a hidden Red Access Switch in it. The effects was pretty cool, although someone else might not have been able to figure out the puzzle, which is a must to complete the level, I just happened to remember it from the good ol' days.

Another cool effect was the invisible "missile launcher thing", that keeps shooting rockets at you constantly after you've been inside the nightclub. This kind of limits your movement outside, or at the very least, pay attention when moving around the main street. In general, I'd say the map was way bigger than I remembered, and it was well connected too. There is a sewer area with some clearwater stuff that's connected to the street area. In general, it wasn't too hard to find your way around, because most of the gameplay takes places inside the buildings on the main street, so getting lost certainly wasn't an issue.

The issues started to pile up a bit inside the bank, at least for me. I got softlocked twice. The first one took place after I accidentally triggered a Tripmine that you're supposed to avoid in order to get the Yellow access card. I did survive the explosion, but as a result, the ceiling of the room collapsed, and I was not longer able to obtain the Access card that would open up the door leading to the vault. The other softlock took place around the same area, where I happened to use the previously mentioned Yellow access card. As I used the access card, the door of leading inside the vault opened "in my face", and thanks to EDuke32', the door closed instantly because of the recent swing door behaviour change. The vault door is a one-time activator swing door, so I had to restart.

The vault itself was a big shocker, as I didn't remember the boss fight at all. I died here a few times, until I came up the idea of using Steroids to jump to safety to a nearby pile of boxes in the same room, which is the only way to deal with the boss, but you have only seconds to make up your mind because of how little space you have to deal with the boss, and to make matters worse, the vault door closes behind you, so you cannot escape.

Even I died and got a few softlocks, I didn't get frustrated at any point, and I had a genuine interest to beat the level without saving, and I did. It was a bit rocky road partially due to design, even so, I had a plenty of fun playing this, because there is a good set weapons laying around. I found 2/3 secrets along to way as well. There might have been a Devastator somewhere, but I found it. There's still a beatiful map behind a few hickups.

And some mid-level saves can always be used as a safety net if needed.

Thanks for playing it despite the softlocks and such an elaborate review, man! Yeah, I've heard many people complaining about that damn hidden switch in the nightclub behind the speaker, it's so against the logical path of the level and today I wish I haven't put it there, but ah well. Other things I really don't like about this map now are the terrible sky texture pick and going for such low building height, but I have no idea about effectively varying the heights back then with layout tricks.

As for the vault door, completely forgot it worked like that, so thanks for reminding me. Yeah the current swing door behaviour is terrible, but I hope this is something that would get a fix one day. As for that room with tripmines, that's actually something I'm still quite happy about, forcing the player to do some gymnastics there instead of just blowing the room was my goal - but I can understand this can get frustrated with no saves gameplay. But that's probably one of the few actual uses for that obscure SE19 (IIRC) effect. And yeah, boss fight was supposed to be the kind of "find this lone strategy to kill him or die" thing.

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 13 December 2020 - 05:10 AM, said:

Just curious, did you manage to find every secret and even kill every enemy and still manage to run out of health/ammo or you just try to first finish the levels quickly and move on to the next mod?

I tried to find the secrets, but they started to get bullshit too, real fast. Eventually the author stopped marking them altogether. So I settled for finding the ammo dump. And while that would carry me through to the next level just fine, not finding it in the next guarantees it will be uncompletable. The incessant conga line of battlelords and overlords make sure of that. As well as being in generally poor health since healing items also usually exist only in secrets. It's pathetic. Especially for a mod that's trying to carry on the legacy of Duke 3D before we got an actual Episode 5.

I know expecting actual commercial-grade level design on par with the originals is asking a lot for a modder, especially one from the 90s, but even with that in mind, if you're going to have the balls to call your mod episode 5 and episode 6, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect you fill it with something better than your first mapping attempts.

And it's for that reason I really don't feel like going back. Even if the aesthetics have been improving, like I said the gameplay has just been a flat curve of misery. It did not improve with the visuals. Given that I'm in the part of the episode considered "average" and yet I'm just as angry and frustrated as the first three, I think it's a fair assumption that the "Good" parts are probably not going to be "good" for me. I care way more for gameplay over aesthetics here and the gameplay is just terrible across the board. I really don't see why I should expect the level design to improve that much in terms of play by then.


Also the health thing, who knows. I can tell you that you probably weren't intended to do the dives without the suba gear. The author just decided to hide it. When I reset the episode after the softlock, I checked that again. It's actually not marked as a secret. He expected you to find it. In the piss-poor visiblity of the level. A+ level design.

RunningDuke, on 13 December 2020 - 05:10 AM, said:

(didn't want to jump directly on Demon Throne and wanted to learn the basics)

As a WGR2 veteran, let me advise you against that. First, the level designs didn't change much between versions. There are some differences here and there but that's mostly for the better, such as the start of the game and beginning of Evil Awakens being way less of a slow burn, and getting you into fights a lot faster.

Second, the weapons have changed a little, and outright replaced in the case of the flamethrower, so learning the basics will actually end up being a detriment as you will have to relearn habits you built up. Especially in the case of the gunners. If you try OG strategies against them in DT, you will die. Fast. Some of the powerups and items have also been completely reworked with the arrival of a proper upgrade system.

It took me a lot longer to get into the groove of DT because of all that. I really strongly advise just starting with DT. Mod compatibility isn't really even an issue anymore since as of 2.0, Castle Demonhorn and Utter Chaos have been brought back to DT, and the previously standalone Knee-Deep was also integrated (I was the beta-tester for all three conversions!). I promise you, as someone who went through Siege Breaker many different times, I remember it down to surprising detail. So believe me when I say this: you are literally missing out on nothing. Everything that was in SB is present in DT. There was no content lost, especially with the lost levels having been resurrected and converted.

Third, DT is just overall a better experience. A lot of the rough parts were smoothed over, both in terms of what small level design changes there were, gameplay refinements, Quality of Life improvements, and even changes to the level progression in the case of Episode 2. In SB, the WGR1 levels had two new levels inserted into the progression. While they weren't bad, they were definitely way harder than the surrounding levels, so in DT they were more appropriately shifted to episode 3, leaving the original WGR1 ordering intact.

You mentioned losing gold in SB, well in DT not only does gold dropped onto hazardous surfaces automatically get sent to your wallet, but gold that falls out of reach or gets hidden behind corpses or you just overlooked, there's now statues that you can pay some health to have all the loose gold summoned to the statue's location. And that's just one of the changes. There are a bunch more that just make the game a smoother experience overall to play. Plus there are bug fixes, like the Headshotter (kinda your main weapon) having its iron sights work properly on differing elevations.


Also the game looks better too. AllMost of the sprites borrowed from other games have been redrawn by dukeboss. It makes everything look a lot more cohesive, while everything that was original (such as most of the weapon sprites) has remained.


Again, as a seasoned veteran of WGR2, I advise strongly against playing Siege Breaker for your first run. Not only is it an inferior game in comparison to DT, you will be developing habits that will actively get you killed. It is a lot better to learn from a blank slate than it is to relearn strategies you already developed.


EDIT: Correction.

[Arzca]

Aleks, on 13 December 2020 - 05:39 AM, said:

Thanks for playing it despite the softlocks and such an elaborate review, man! Yeah, I've heard many people complaining about that damn hidden switch in the nightclub behind the speaker, it's so against the logical path of the level and today I wish I haven't put it there, but ah well. Other things I really don't like about this map now are the terrible sky texture pick and going for such low building height, but I have no idea about effectively varying the heights back then with layout tricks.

As for the vault door, completely forgot it worked like that, so thanks for reminding me. Yeah the current swing door behaviour is terrible, but I hope this is something that would get a fix one day. As for that room with tripmines, that's actually something I'm still quite happy about, forcing the player to do some gymnastics there instead of just blowing the room was my goal - but I can understand this can get frustrated with no saves gameplay. But that's probably one of the few actual uses for that obscure SE19 (IIRC) effect. And yeah, boss fight was supposed to be the kind of "find this lone strategy to kill him or die" thing.

For me, it was still fun despite I was hindered by certain design choices, but instead I felt it was just the end of the level that I needed to master to nail it. I never got frustrated. I just quit the map after dying, did something else for a while and tried it again say, 15 minutes later. There was no frustration, even you could get the kind of tone from my post.


Don't tell @Aleks, but I recorded a my walkthrough 4 old times sake:

[Aleks]

Played some alien-themed classics, partly as a form of research to the current map I'm working on (it's gonna be quite far-off stylistically from these though), partly for catching-up. This involved 2 of Maarten's classics and a Devastator map.

Alien Planet X64-2 is something I remembered well back from AMC days, still it felt really fresh to replay it after 17 or so years. It aged greatly - the ideas used still feel really fresh, and there's a lot of nice sequenced events and cool effects (like the lights shuting one by one, the spinning wheel that raises the large door, keycard machine, running from Overlord and the sequence at very beginning of the map that uses Commander). Maarten's style greatly fits this kind of theme, with all the creative use of textures, lots of palettes and a bit chaotic type of layout. Felt great to replay it!

The Unknown Planet I haven't played before. It felt like a successor of X64-2, albeit much larger. The 2D layout of the map is super impressive actually. Use of textures and palettes exceptional as always, I also loved the more open design, allowing for both exploration and doing puzzles in any order. The combat was cool, with mostly Battlelords and the final battle sequence worked great. Some parts felt a bit too dark, which was the main drawback of the map. Also, I managed to find a shortcut, where I could pretty much skip about half of the map - one of the secret places lead me straight to the final area. The final battle was a bit tougher this way, as I had less supplies than expected, but managed it and was like "oh this is the end already"? I still went back and explored/opened the rest of the map for the sake of it, because it was too cool to finish so abruptly Also the progression in the red key area wasn't really clear (maybe because it was too dark), it was quite hard to tell what the key really opened there. Loved the type of secrets used here - some of them almost in the plain sight, but requiring some navigation to actually access (especially the one with freezethrower).

Aquatic Hive - lots of cool, creative ideas here, but the whole thing seemed very incoherent, despite having quite a solid story to it. The beginning was super confusing with very little ammo and a couple of possible ways to go, some of which will simply end with running out of supplies at this stage. Also providing very limited scuba gear for the player wasn't the best idea, running out of it pretty soon, the underwater parts of the map were a nightmare. Some of the puzzles felt quite frustrating/confusing (especially combination of hurt floor, fast spinning rotating sectors that would squish you easily and a 4 button combination at the end required a lot of tries to make, and it still was more based on luck than actual reflexes). I managed to find all 3 endings, the battle with the Queen was quite spectacular (even without airtank at first), Octabrains stacked corridor with no way back was quite unfair, but managable.

And yesterday I played Anarchy City X, and it immediately went up there to my hall of fame for the best Duke maps (probably level on with Happy Hangover as my favourite ck3D maps). The survival gameplay worked perfectly in this one, with perfect enemy placement, not too confusing puzzles and perfect 10-15 minutes length. The design was almost too good here, it was a pity that I had to run all the time and couldn't just stop and admire some of the things (which I still did, which ended up with being killed a few times). I played it like 3-4 times trying different routes to finish, because of the openness of the map. Also made a video, which I may upload on YouTube later on.

[Aleks]

Am I the only one still playing Duke around here?

Played Poison Heart on Christmas Eve (because what better time to play this one?) and it probably even topped Happy Hangover and Anarchy City X for me. Great design, layout and ambience mixed with really cool and challenging gameplay just did the trick for me. I loved to just explore this one and find a lot of these little details, secrets or random jokes ("I think I'll climb a board" cracked me up the most, just brilliant). I especially liked the "encore" gameplay at the end, when instead of just taking on the boss from the windows, you could clear the streets once more and unwrap those present. I also liked the final puzzle, despite it took me a while to figure, but it's nice to have some really small detail like this actually play a role.

And yesterday I played X3 Studios, a level which was way bigger than I expected and kept in Arzca's very classic style. The gameplay was nuts at times, with very crowded places and a lot of difficult respawns, but at the same time it was so challenging and fun (along with quite scarce ammo supplies) that I have nothing to complain about here. This time, the puzzles were pretty straightforward, besides a couple of spots where I did wonder for a few minutes before figuring what to do.

[Šneček]

I finished last level The Queen from original Duke Nukem today. I wasn't sure if I had ever finished the whole game in my life without using any cheat:-), so I finished the whole game again from the first episode to the end of the fourth episode (including all secret levels) and I paid attention to honesty. So today I can say with a clear conscience that I finished the game in the way I should. I just wonder what the idea is to place access cards in secret places, as in the Fahrenheit (117▼) and Babe Land (119↓) levels.

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[oasiz]

Probably the same reason why the air ducts in E1L2 are marked as a secret despite being mandatory for progression

[Ninety-Six]

oasiz, on 28 December 2020 - 09:30 AM, said:

Probably the same reason why the air ducts in E1L2 are marked as a secret despite being mandatory for progression

I can buy that for Farenheit, since in both cases the mandatory path is still not really "hidden" to any degree.

Babe Land is another matter entirely since to this day I still have no idea how you were ever supposed to figure that out.


Also what is that first screenshot from?

[NNC]

oasiz, on 28 December 2020 - 09:30 AM, said:

Probably the same reason why the air ducts in E1L2 are marked as a secret despite being mandatory for progression

They probably did this (at least the E1L2 one) to encourage the players to find secret areas. The Fahrenheit one is still WTF, there was no reason to tag that place as a secret. But the whole level is a major fuckup, and shouldn't have been greenlighted by George in its shipped form.

[Ninety-Six]

My theory for RLD and especially Farenheit is that in older versions they were proper secrets, but when the level progression was changed later on they forgot to un-tag them.


Still got nothin' for Babe Land though. That one's just inexcusable.

[NNC]

Ninety-Six, on 28 December 2020 - 06:39 PM, said:

My theory for RLD and especially Farenheit is that in older versions they were proper secrets, but when the level progression was changed later on they forgot to un-tag them.


Still got nothin' for Babe Land though. That one's just inexcusable.

Fahrenheit was a last minute map glued from Levelord's multiplayer testlevels. Just like Movie Set, Tier Drops, Raw Meat, Incubator, Spin Cycle, Lunatic Fringe.

[Aleks]

I'd agree with The Watchtower about the RLD air ducts, especially considering how many secrets are packed into first 4 levels of LA Meltdown. Fahrenheit looks like something has just been missed in between the versions of the level, either red key put into a secret or secret tag put on the sector with red key (or another option, just all the extra red key progression being the last minute add - more natural way would be putting the key on the balcony where sentry drones spawn). The secret is quite obvious there though, with an actual door leading into it.

Babe Land probably just didn't get enough beta-testing. It's not much of an issue if the red key area is specifically marked as a secret or not, but I remember spending days trying to figure where that damn key was on my first playthrough as a kid, then just randomly spamming the targets with freezer and noticing something has opened. On the other hand, there's been all the pistols left and the area was a dead end otherwise, despite being after blue key lock, so maybe there was enough hints and I just sucked back then.

[Šneček]

Ninety-Six, on 28 December 2020 - 10:15 AM, said:

I can buy that for Farenheit, since in both cases the mandatory path is still not really "hidden" to any degree.

Babe Land is another matter entirely since to this day I still have no idea how you were ever supposed to figure that out.


Also what is that first screenshot from?

First screenshot is from Area 51 (E4L11). That moon reminds me a little of an arse, that is reason, why I took that screenshot.

[Ninety-Six]

Aleks, on 29 December 2020 - 03:54 AM, said:

Babe Land probably just didn't get enough beta-testing. It's not much of an issue if the red key area is specifically marked as a secret or not, but I remember spending days trying to figure where that damn key was on my first playthrough as a kid, then just randomly spamming the targets with freezer and noticing something has opened. On the other hand, there's been all the pistols left and the area was a dead end otherwise, despite being after blue key lock, so maybe there was enough hints and I just sucked back then.

If it were just shoot all the targets that would be one thing. Trouble is it's specifically targets 2 and 4, and I don't even think it's possible to hit them all before the first one pops back up (with the pistol at least) as the timer is very strict, and with random spread it makes it that much more ridiculous. The presence of the pistols doesn't even mean that much in the long run since it is a shooting gallery. It would be weird if there weren't guns present.


It took me literal actual years to figure it out. When I was a kid I would reach this point and just be completely stuck. I would try every idea that came to me, but in the end I would just give up and use the DNSTUFF code just so I could move on.

It wasn't until literally a decade later when I reunited with the game that I really just dug in my heels and tried to tackle it with a much more experienced mindset. ...And I still couldn't figure it out. After a good long time spent in that single room, I eventually just sprayed and prayed. Shortly after I heard pigs and was shot from behind. Turning around I saw the teddy bears were lower than they used to be, a pig with a gun pointing right at me from a room I had literally never seen before.

At that point I believe I immediately jumped to a wakthrough (maybe even the official one?) to figure exactly what the hell I did to open the room.


I love this game to death, it's one of my top 5 games of all time, it's my favorite FPS of all time, the level design is some of the best out there... except that damn room. I will never defend that room, short of having the clue to opening it finally being revealed to me 20 years later.

Šneček, on 29 December 2020 - 07:36 AM, said:

First screenshot is from Area 51 (E4L11). That moon reminds me a little of an arse, that is reason, why I took that screenshot.

Why does your Area 51 load the orbit sky...?

[Šneček]

Ninety-Six, on 29 December 2020 - 12:54 PM, said:

Why does your Area 51 load the orbit sky...?

Have no idea. I looked for this level on youtube and found that someone had a red sky (-in 20th anniversary) for the game, but another one stellar like me! It probably depends on the game version?

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[240-185]

LGR just uploaded a German CD containing lots of stuff for Duke Nukem 3D: https://archive.org/details/power-duke

The link to his presentation of this CD:

[Ninety-Six]

Šneček, on 30 December 2020 - 05:41 AM, said:

Have no idea. I looked for this level on youtube and found that someone had a red sky (-in 20th anniversary) for the game, but another one stellar like me! It probably depends on the game version?

what version are you running?

[Šneček]

Ninety-Six, on 30 December 2020 - 09:49 AM, said:

what version are you running?

I play Plutonium Pak in eduke32

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[Sanek]

240-185, on 30 December 2020 - 09:10 AM, said:

LGR just uploaded a German CD containing lots of stuff for Duke Nukem 3D: https://archive.org/details/power-duke

I wonder if that's the CD that ck3D mentions from time to time.

[ck3D]

Sanek, on 31 December 2020 - 08:53 AM, said:

I wonder if that's the CD that ck3D mentions from time to time.

I clicked that video last night to check just that (out of simple curiosity since I still have that CD somewhere, and its contents are available online anyway; it's just that people don't go out of their way to look up shovelware out of all things); it's not. The one I sometimes refer to was another German CD with no interface whatsoever and much less polished, it was just a handful of folders with the contents hastily thrown in. I think it did have that exact weapon mod, though, or something very close to it. Rest looks completely different. Ironically enough 'my' CD was called 'Come Get Some!', when this one is called 'Come, Get Some' yet appears to be something else entirely. Still, it held some bits of content (mostly 1996-ish user maps, some of them actually cool) I'm not sure I ever saw online elsewhere. A lot of them I sent to Kim at DN-R throughout the years, but not all.

[FistMarine]

Ninety-Six, thanks for the advice. I will finish WGR2 (old version) in following days as I don't want to leave the playthrough unfinished and then I will start with the new version. If I will get stuck or have trouble defeating a certain boss, I will ask for help.

Regarding the Area 51 screenshot above with the Earth sky, that is really weird and could be an EDuke32 bug. However now that you posted that you are using Plutonium Pak (DUKE3D.GRP v1.4), that could be the reason of the glitch above. I don't know what are the GRP differences between v1.4 and v1.5 but I know the differences between v1.4 and v1.5 DUKE3D.EXE and the fact that v1.4 is really buggy with the save game glitching and if game freezes/crashes during saving, it can eat your saved game, mostly the one(s) from the current level you are playing. I had that happen to me last month I played through The Birth in v1.4 in DOSBox, thankfully I had a backup save (from end of E4L1) when it happened in Duke Burger and it ate two of my saves from the current level. Then later it occurred at start of Area 51, though the other saves were fine from levels until end of Pigsty, so I could continue game just fine. In both cases, the screenshot in save/load menu got glitched with weird colors and saving took a bit longer than usual, eventually it would freeze the game, so if that happens, just quit the game and come back. I will also mention that I had to look for a different NO-CD crack than the one I use to play Duke3D v1.5 in DOSBox (for original game and all Atomic maps/mods). I don't like that the Atomic Edition asks for having the CD in drive, this is an early kind of copy protection that is easily fixable with the no-cd crack. Thankfully original v1.3D is unaffected and I actually prefer for original 3 episodes and whatever maps/mods were made for v1.3D.

OK now in regards to what I played, I forgot to mention 3 weeks ago I finished The Birth in v1.4 in DOSBox and died twice this time around: once at end of Babe Land as I mentioned in previous posts and once at toxic acid part of Derelict because I started panicking when I couldn't get through those barrels that blocked the way and eventually died, even though I had 150 health and full medkit, I also remember having 62% boots before that and thinking it was enough to survive, I was wrong and I regret not picking up the new pair of boots before that. Yes I realized I could have used jetpack to fly up there and skip this part but I chose to do anyway since there are some things down there in acid, like an atomic health and some octabrains. I chose to not restart the level this time and I think pistol starting would have been suicide. Seriously, if you can't beat the level with all the stuff you entered with, do you stand a chance with just a pistol with 48 bullets? Especially a large level such as this one?

Oh also when I finished the level, as I remembered from my old 2015 playthrough of DUKE3D v1.5 in DOSBox, results showed 200+ missing enemies due to vanilla Duke3D having a 255 cap on various things (stats included, as well as time rolling back to 0 when an hour passes), so if you kill more than 255 enemies, then the counter starts rolling and end up with weird shit like that. This bug is fixed in all Duke3D ports (JFDuke3D, EDuke32, Megaton, World Tour).

Today I also finished that pistol start coop each level of original Duke3D in v1.3D (using a glitch I discovered as kid), I have everything recorded and uploaded on YouTube, I wonder if anyone is interested in seeing my playthrough? I managed to do very well, each level was done in first try with exception of Faces of Death of course that I remember taking me 20 tries to do it. I also had to do Stadium with the stuff I earned from Freeway because I just gave a small test (based on my memories from past, when I tried this before) to pistol start stadium and it's impossible in this case due to those 3 inactive players, the Cycloid kills them and then lands on TOP OF YOU when the elevator is just raising, so yeah it's impossible without respawning, I don't like to respawn, so I did with stuff from previous level, meaning I jetpacked quickly as soon as I started level, killed the Cycloid with Devastator as you would normally do in original game and that's it.

Oh and I should mention I didn't actually get all secrets. There's two secrets I didn't get in this playthrough: one from Lunar Reactor and one from Overlord. Although there is no stat screen in coop mode, I am sure I got everything else. There is a reason I didn't get those two tricky secrets: In Lunar Reactor, there's that rotating gear that holds behind two enforcers, a secret and even the optional red key. Getting there isn't easy at all, the rotating gear has a high chance to randomly crush you for no reason and it's more apparent in v1.3D. As I remembered from last summer when I replayed a few Duke3D versions, since there is no way to save game in coop mode, I decided to just finish level since I finished better than I expected, considering the level is really difficult and it's not fun to redo the same 20 minutes, the level has many difficult sections.
And as for Overlord, that secret requires you getting inside his room and then running and reaching that opened secret on the other side of the room. It is very risky to do with the Overlord around as it can either squish you or kill you with its RPGs.. Like in Lunar Reactor, I did the level just fine in first try and since I liked how the recording turned out to that point, there was no need to risk. But I may do a bonus video with no monsters option enabled and get the secrets.

Also I will even consider doing Duke It Out In D.C. and Duke Caribbean (and even certain maps/mods) in coop mode exactly like that. I will consider doing if the playthroughs I will show soon will prove to be popular, if people won't be impressed with my gameplay, then I guess it will not be worth the effort. I will admit that I had to backtrack sometimes in some levels and wait for the respawning inventory items (since they all respawn in multiplayer mode, meaning as long as you get the medkit, you will be fine for the rest of the level and often in many levels the medkit is right at start) but hopefully that shouldn't impact the quality of my videos. Oh and the fact I played keyboard only, meaning dodging enemy attacks and just walking/running through the levels was much harder and I had to be a lot more careful.

Outside of these, I played various other stuff, low quality mods (such as Duke's Revenge) and even some 1-level mini mods like Y2K: Nuclear Meltdown (misspelled as nuklear). In both cases, Duke's max health is changed, in former is 250 (and you will need it due to enemies doing a lot more damage! though sadly Atomic Health max is also 250 and that means you can't pick it up unless you have less than 250 health and maximum health you can have is 299) and in latter is 150, though it's not very needed since I don't remember if I got below 100 health. That reminds me I should play Last Reaction & Water Bases which has 125 max health and I still wonder where is that damn scuba gear in first level? Ninety-Six, can you help a bit? Don't want to go through that long underwater tunnel without scuba gear...

I also continued my FM2X in JFDuke3D, started E2 (on Let's Rock though, as I did E1 that way and I will do on CGS when I play FM3X and FM4X, meaning I must replay first episodes as well) and died once in first level, kinda annoying that at one point (at part with the buttons puzzle) I got ambushed by Sentry Drones and Enforcers, probably my bad for rushing and not checking the corners, then enforcers spawning behind me. Restarted level and reached that part in just 1-2 minutes, so there wasn't much time lost. Then found vital items like armor and other goodies (mostly inside secret areas) and the level flowed nicely at that time, though was still annoyed how quickly you can lose health and mostly thanks to random enemies spawning (some behind you). Still had to look in Mapster to get some secrets.

I think that's all for now. After I finish stuff I have in progress, I will try to play some more recent releases because there's so many cool maps I missed. A random screenshot of FM2X.

[Sanek]

@RunningDuke I'm actually interested in seeing videos with the coop starts of each level!

And FMX2 is a great episode in my opinion, one of the best user-made vanilla episodes!

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 31 December 2020 - 01:28 PM, said:

Ninety-Six, can you help a bit? Don't want to go through that long underwater tunnel without scuba gear...

I'm not going to reinstall to give you the exact coordinates, but I can tell you the important stuff.

It's a crack on the rock wall of the lake, thankfully on the surface and not actually in the lake. If memory serves, it's on the "west-southwest" side of the lake (if the position you start in faces what we will call "North." I don't know how else to describe it). It should be above a very small little island, I think.



I can only say good luck to you. Before I uninstalled it, I DNSCOTTY'd to level 7, wherein it was said to get good. And what I found was a dark prison level with no ammo (since you start with no guns it's the same as getting there normally. So the even more poor ammo balance than usual can't even argue it was balanced for continuous, much less prison start.) So yeah I have no regrets about being rid of it. I'm still sad there aren't more classic-styled mapsets that include more custom enemies like that, new art or not. That was the one thing I really did like about my experience were the new enemy variants. They added something to the otherwise mediocre combat and was looking forward to seeing if there was any more.

[Aleks]

Speaking of bad level design, I've just finished Plug and Pray (of course the PC remake) for the first time and can't believe this thing was actually commercial. The level design is your typical 1996 user map stuff with blocky looks, misaligned textures, all the details thrown-in in form of random wall-ornamented sprites and complete texture/scale incoherence, even some bugged doors. The new enemies we're jokes (pig in a dress, seriously? Other variations of pig cops had such bad graphics that I could barely tell what they are anyway), some of the puzzles were so obscure like noone even beta-tested the levels in the first place (especially in Nightmare Zone, the first level which was so off-putting that I can't understand why'd they make it the first level at all). Combat and enemy placement was tedious and annoying as well, mostly rooms full of enforcers, cheap ambushes and too many sentry drones for anyone's good. Also the health was super-sparse - there was almost no medkits throughout most of the levels. New art barely fit in, besides some rather rare occassions.

Now some things I did like: Trackside Tragedy had quite nicely designed track (one of these rare good uses of new textures) and the outside part of this level played quite well. I liked all the locations from Tarantino's movies in Duke Royale, especially Mia Wallace's house, despite their poor design (oh, the bar from "From Dusk Till Dawn" had probably some of the most annoying combat I've ever encountered here). Gates Motel had some cool ideas and the movie references were quite clear, although again the layout was super-confusing in a bad way (not the good horroresque way). Tentacles hanging from ceilings were quite cool in this one. Alien Rendezvous had a very nice alien ship landing sequence (even if it did have a parallaxed sky covering part of the building), although the Battlelords spawning in this one were pretty unfair. And the final boss fight and the arena for it was very nice and challenging, even if the boss himself was a lazy copy of Battlelord. I also liked mid-level and final cinematic, and that's pretty much it.

Oh, and one more thing, the secrets. If the puzzles within the levels were sometimes confusing and illogical, then secret hunting was an outright joke. Again, Nightmare Zone is the most obvious offender here - some of the secrets required opening an unmarked wall in one part of the map to unblock something in another secret in a completely different part, others required activating 2 very short-lived timed doors, of course also completely unmarked, and running through them - right into a bunch of enemies. Duke Royale was probably my favourite level of the bunch.

[FistMarine]

Sanek, on 01 January 2021 - 09:05 AM, said:

@RunningDuke I'm actually interested in seeing videos with the coop starts of each level!

And FMX2 is a great episode in my opinion, one of the best user-made vanilla episodes!

Thanks Sanek! I will post the videos on the Duke Nukem Videos topic. I agree that FMX series by Fernando Marquez are one of the best user-made vanilla episodes! My only complaint being that progression can be a bit obtuse at times and the version I'm playing currently is the old FM2X from 2009 (which was my first experience with author's work, though I think I may have played through some of his maps separately) that was made for JFDuke3D and I play JFDuke3D in windowed mode because it doesn't run well in fullscreen on Windows 7 and above, so when I took the screenshot, I had to cut the background and leave only the JFDuke3D window.

I definitely plan to play FM3X and FM4X in upcoming weeks (maybe for Duke3D's 25th anniversary?) and I will do it in DOSBox as the author intended as well. I will choose FM3X for v1.3D and FM4X for v1.5. I may also do a coop pistol start of FM3X as bonus after playing through levels normally. Though I was already planning to go through Duke It Out In D.C. and Duke Caribbean in coop mode first before jumping on the FM3X/FM4X series.

Ninety-Six, on 01 January 2021 - 09:40 AM, said:

I'm not going to reinstall to give you the exact coordinates, but I can tell you the important stuff.

It's a crack on the rock wall of the lake, thankfully on the surface and not actually in the lake. If memory serves, it's on the "west-southwest" side of the lake (if the position you start in faces what we will call "North." I don't know how else to describe it). It should be above a very small little island, I think.

I can only say good luck to you. Before I uninstalled it, I DNSCOTTY'd to level 7, wherein it was said to get good. And what I found was a dark prison level with no ammo (since you start with no guns it's the same as getting there normally. So the even more poor ammo balance than usual can't even argue it was balanced for continuous, much less prison start.) So yeah I have no regrets about being rid of it. I'm still sad there aren't more classic-styled mapsets that include more custom enemies like that, new art or not. That was the one thing I really did like about my experience were the new enemy variants. They added something to the otherwise mediocre combat and was looking forward to seeing if there was any more.

Thanks for the hints and for wishing me luck. I know I will definitely need it, I can already tell each of the first couple of levels will take me an hour to complete and I will most likely wander around to look what to do next or struggle with health/ammo supplies. I will also try getting all secrets and kills. We will see how things will go, then I will write how was the experience.

About that seventh level with the prison, yeah I remember that level started without any weapons and inventory items, however do note that the health transfers between levels, so maybe you would have handled it better if you could finish previous level (too bad the levels until that point sucked and you skipped them) and with better health than just 125. Too bad you didn't enjoy the mod, though I agree with your thoughts of the mod. I will say it definitely captures the feeling of the original game and it has nice new enemies and custom art to go with it. If only the first half of the episode wasn't that badly balanced and designed. Maybe you would have enjoyed the mod if you just started with Water Bases? It's a shame because I think many people gave up on playing this mod after their experience with first level or first couple of levels. I definitely remember first time I played the mod and it made me wonder why it's so popular in first place, after struggling with the first couple of rooms and I even remember asking myself if I really had to go down in that underwater tunnel to progress, without scuba gear!

I suggest you to give Water Bases a try and if not, then try Chimera and see if you think the level design has improved. Note that Chimera requires LR&WB to be installed to run it.

EDIT: I have posted the videos on the Duke Nukem videos topic. Let me know what do you think about them.