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What are some good Duke Nukem addons/map packs?

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I'm not done with my hunt for addons yet. This time however I'm looking for Duke custom content.

 

Finding custom content for this game seems to be pretty darn difficult. I tried finding stuff a couple of months ago and didn't have much luck. Do any Duke fans from around here know any good stuff?

 

Similar to Doom, I'm looking for mapsets rather than full blown TCs, so long as they don't deviate from the game dramatically, preferably one episode long or more. I'm aware of places such as the Duke Repository but finding good content is still no easy job... (finding good content for Blood was so much easier in comparison). The only things I've played so far are Alien Armageddon and DNF2013. I'm also aware of Metropolitan Mayhem but haven't checked it out yet.

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I was big into Duke for many years and its user content situation seems to be a lot more single-map driven than Doom, for example. Making a chain of maps in Duke requires custom CON files and while sometimes you'd see sets that were a few maps, most of the time it was only single levels.

 

That said the ROCH1-ROCH8 by Pascal Rouaud were a very popular set of city levels. Not sure if anyone ever chained them all together.

 

Red1 to Red5 by Merlijn van Oostrum are also very well done, some of the best Duke3d usermaps.

 

My favorite maps for Duke3d are Moonbase Beta and Moonbase Beta 2 by Robert Travis. I would recommend anything you can find by the users Geoffrey, Quakis and Puritan, just off the top of my head. 

 

and here are links to my favorite sites for Duke maps in case you don't know them:

 

https://msdn.duke4.net/

http://www.scent-88.com/

Edited by reflex17

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8 hours ago, reflex17 said:

I was big into Duke for many years and its user content situation seems to be a lot more single-map driven than Doom, for example. Making a chain of maps in Duke requires custom CON files and while sometimes you'd see sets that were a few maps, most of the time it was only single levels.

 

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I've found a number of maps in the past but there barely is any episodic content, like... almost nothing, which sucks. I would have played much more community content if there was more of those.

 

Blood's situation was fairly different, the opposite actually, it seems to have mostly episode-long map packs and TCs, and fewer single levels.

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Hmm...never played any separate maps. Just the expansions although i did play the "Plug 'N' Pray" Playstation exclusive episode via the TC. I remember it being quite hard for me. I know you weren't looking for TC's though. Also the N64 version of the game (another TC) is supposedly interesting. I haven't personally tried it though.

 

I never did play the official/unofficial expansion "Duke It's Zero Hour" (not related to the N64 game of the same name) (it's also sort of a TC as it has custom enemies and stuff). No idea how to install it though. Sorry.

 

I was just looking at the Duke Nukem fandom and also didn't realize that the shovel ware pack Duke!ZONE II also included 3 new episodes. No idea how good those are. I'm going to assume that they are probably not that good but who knows. They might be worth a look and i believe that it's available on archive.org (?) Not sure if that is legal though. 

 

Otherwise i'd just say look at the links that @reflex17 posted as i've used the first one before to read some reviews and see what was worth playing, even though in the end, i ended up not playing anything haha!

 

 

 

Edited by CyberDreams : adding link

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Blood and Shadow Warrior maps were more involved in terms of boolean tags and variables in the editor compared to Duke3d. I think the relative complexity of Build at the time with a comparative lack of accessible documentation for Blood and SW editing turned a lot of casual mappers off. Sure folks figured them out and wrote guides, but the communities for Blood and SW were never as thriving as Duke3d's. Couple that with the rise of Quake's true 3d and you have a recipe for small passion projects in these niche communities.

 

Maybe those who were making Blood or SW maps were more heavily invested, and so made more campaign length user content. I myself made many Duke maps and was working on campaigns for the later build games but abandoned Blood and SW for what I saw as potential lack of demand or feedback. In the late 90's early 2000's there was little to no online community for anything Build related other than Duke, from what I recall. 

 

I also forgot to mention for Duke3d - there's the authorized expansions "Duke it out in DC" and "Life's a Beach". They aren't TC's more like mods with new graphics/textures. I'm not sure how readily available they are nowadays, though.

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17 hours ago, seed said:

finding good content for Blood was so much easier in comparison

 

Really? Would love a few links.

 

As for Duke3D (or rather: eDuke): there's Bottles to the Ground, AMC Pleaser (from same author as Roch); Alpha City, which has a very weak subway start area but improves greatly after; Welcome Home (whome.map), a short solid romp; a big city map called Filler; and a pretty recent comeback by well-known author Merlijn van Oostrum with a huge destroyed city map called Collapse, or 'Shaky Grounds pt1: Apocollapse'; and It Lives, an attempt at a haunted hospital.

 

Found at the repository and/or the usual duke3d sites.

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I wish you had asked this a few years ago when I started to play custom DN3D maps and downloaded a ton of them, unfortunately I don't remember what most of them were like since I haven't played them for a long while. I still have the whole lot of them in the games folder, I will try to load a fair amount of them to jog my memory on which were the good ones.

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On 8/31/2019 at 12:16 PM, Mordeth said:

Really? Would love a few links.

 

Sure, here you go boss.

 

1) Blood wiki. It lists plenty of Blood mods, with links to download on their respective pages.

2) There's blood.freeminded.de, a repository for Blood content, and most of the mods have images so you can decide for yourself whether they're your cup of tea or not.

3) Various Youtubers make let's plays of mods, most notably pagb666, that's where I found most of the good mods. Yours truly also makes let's plays of Blood mods, but has ran out of mods to play a while ago, there's only a few I haven't played.

 

Now, if you're looking for actual recommendations, let's see (I have played all of them; they all have links to download on the Bloodwiki, I'm going to link only those that have rescripted versions to work in ports that aren't listed there):

 

- Inherit the Earth. Some competent levels but the gameplay is kinda BS. That's because most enemies are found behind corners so prepare for peekabo shooting.

- Death Wish. Combat focused, good atmosphere and overall gameplay.

- Bloodlines TC Beta. Unfinished but fully playable, has some new enemies, fun gameplay, and plenty of atmosphere. It's not that kind unfinished beta. It's also planned on being remastered, along with the final episode that was not finished at the time.

- Caleb will have his revenge on Toronto - Scum of Dallas. This one has new weapons and sounds too.

- French Meat.

- Legends of the Iconoclast. This one is very story focused so expect some long ass cutscenes (or rather, walls of text) if you wanna read them. Good fun but since it's old the lightning is quite rough on some maps. It's also being remastered.

- The Cult.

- The Lost Episode. This one is mostly polished up alpha maps, but still fun to play.

- The Lost Episodes. Not to be confused with the aforementioned mod, this one is more like a small compilation of various maps.

- Hostile Takeover.

- Dark Times. Brilliant levels with good gameplay but one major flaw: cryptic progression. All maps have this. Well worth a shot but keep a walkthrough at hand if you get lost (which you probably will).

- Rage Against the Machine.

- Bloody Pulp Fiction. Contrary to the name, it has nothing to do with the movie. Good gameplay and beautiful levels, with locations that are atypical to Blood (such as a desert, the same can kind of be said about CWHHROT). Along with Death Wish and Dark Times, by far some of the best looking maps I've seen for Blood.

 

Stuff I have not played but seems interesting enough to check:

 

- Somewhere Under the Sea. (download; let's play).

- Out for Blood. (download; let's play).

- Banzai's Addons (let's play).

- A Bloody Mess (download; let's play).

- New Alone in the Dark. (download; let's play on pagb's channel, this one doesn't have a playlist).

- Dead Letters (download).

- The Hall of Epiphany (download; let's play).

- Maniac Mansion (download; let's play).

- Ghost City (download; let's play).

- Eviction & Eviction Retail Therapy (download; download2; let's play).

 

Some stuff to avoid, for obvious reasons (poorly designed, too newbie-ish, etc):

 

- Outpost Mortem.

- Season of Death.

- Time Episode.

- Killing Time.

 

On 8/31/2019 at 11:32 AM, reflex17 said:

I also forgot to mention for Duke3d - there's the authorized expansions "Duke it out in DC" and "Life's a Beach". They aren't TC's more like mods with new graphics/textures. I'm not sure how readily available they are nowadays, though.

 

Collector's items nowadays, sadly. After Gearbox replaced Megaton with WT those became unavailable, and Randy explicitly stated that neither those expansions nor the platformers are coming back since "anyone who cared enough about those platformers and off-shot expansions bought them by now". I was lucky enough to get Megaton back when it was still available though, so I played them back then.

Edited by seed : Added more stuff.

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Thanks for the list of links, it'll be interesting to see how this stacks up to all the things being made for Doom.

But... is there anything for Redneck Rampage or was that game just a bit too obscure to gain a modding community?

 

On 8/31/2019 at 10:32 AM, reflex17 said:

I also forgot to mention for Duke3d - there's the authorized expansions "Duke it out in DC" and "Life's a Beach". They aren't TC's more like mods with new graphics/textures. I'm not sure how readily available they are nowadays, though. 

 

They are pretty much unavailable. Guess how happy I was when I unexpectedly found them in some random map compilation I once downloaded, which had all the original game (which I already own) and its add-ons (which I did not and couldn't find anywhere.) packaged with a large number of old custom levels from the late 90's.

I can't say I was too thrilled about their quality, though. They felt very much like a run-of-the-mill user mod that tried to be cool while putting little focus on providing genuine quality.

 

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On 9/1/2019 at 3:11 AM, seed said:

Randy explicitly stated that neither those expansions nor the platformers are coming back since "anyone who cared enough about those platformers and off-shot expansions bought them by now".


Wow, what a dick. Fortunately I own Megaton Edition and have not missed out on them.

 

also, nice to see that the PSX Episode is finally released. Is it playable in Megaton?

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5 hours ago, Devalaous said:

Wow, what a dick. Fortunately I own Megaton Edition and have not missed out on them.

 

also, nice to see that the PSX Episode is finally released. Is it playable in Megaton?

 

Yea, just a regular thing from Randy these days.

 

What's "PSX Episode"? 

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21 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

The Plug n Pray episode that was exclusive to the playstation DN3D, was linked somewhere above.

 

Oh, from the Total Meltdown TC.

 

The mod lists eduke32 as the required port, so it probably doesn't run in Megaton (but its .grp file works).

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I haven't played a lot of Duke3D user add-ons, but I really like Infinity: Secrets of the Acropolis (although I only played the first level). Personally I have a soft spot for Ancient Greek settings (love Will Rock), and the design is really good as far as I can tell. This is from the same team that made Twin Dragon for Shadow Warrior.

 

Also The Gate seems like a cool add-on episode.

 

Out of new ones, be sure to check out Alien Armageddon, and it is also my understanding that AMC TC is worth checking out.

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Correct me if I am wrong but from what I understand about the jank that is Duke 3D modding, you can place .map files with the names E#L# (eg E1L2 for red light) in the Duke Directory to kinda bootleg your own episodes together, what I'd suggest is daisy chaining a bunch of great standalone maps together like this if you struggle finding any episodes.

 

You can also do this with MIDI files by placing the files in the directory with the file names of in game soundtracks (example STALKER.mid replaces track 1 of the game)

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I was fortunate enough to have purchased Megaton Edition when I did, but I never got around to purchasing Manhattan Project. It was always on my to-buy list, I just never got around to purchasing it. I remember the demo for it being pretty good.

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On 8/31/2019 at 12:12 AM, reflex17 said:

That said the ROCH1-ROCH8 by Pascal Rouaud were a very popular set of city levels. Not sure if anyone ever chained them all together.

I was literally about to suggest them as well, probably my favorite Duke maps. As well as Warz and Godzilla! If there is a way to play the Roch maps without having to load up a new one individually, that would be nice.

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On 9/2/2019 at 8:24 AM, Graf Zahl said:

Thanks for the list of links, it'll be interesting to see how this stacks up to all the things being made for Doom.

But... is there anything for Redneck Rampage or was that game just a bit too obscure to gain a modding community?

 

I remember being able to find new episodes/TC's for Nam and WW2gi, so I would have thought some RR stuff is around.

 

I've been playing some duke3d recently.. kind annoyed that I didn't get the Megaton edition at the time and bit gutted I never picked Duke 2 up as that game was pretty cool. Damn Randy.. he's great if you'rea Borderlands fan I guess.

 

The new episode in the 20th anniversary edition seems cool tho.. 

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I find I tend to like single map releases best for Duke, there are tons of great ones.

 

And for fun, you could play a map of mine, Groovy Street. http://www.mediafire.com/file/827zta25k6mra1p/GroovyStreet.zip/file

 

The Shaky Grounds maps are great, mentioned above, here's the first of those two:

https://forums.duke4.net/topic/8891-releaseshaky-grounds-pt1-apocollapse/

 

The add-on compilation for eduke32 by NightFright is terrific, it has tons of map packs, including Roch and whatnot.

http://hrp.duke4.net/download.php (at the bottom of the page under Bonus Files)

 

The Urban Map pack in particular is one of the ones in the add-on compilations huge list, that is a nicely curated selection of a bunch of cool city maps.

 

 

 

 

Edited by PsychoGoatee

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