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Title : BOBSP4: Sub Species
Filename : bobsp4.map
Author : Bob Averill
E-mail : bob.averill@gmail.com
Web Page : None
Misc. Author Info : Author of the BobSP series and few others.
Other Levels : BobSP1, BobSP2, BobSP3, BobSPX, BobDM1, BobDM2
Description :
“How do you alien bastards like it when someone shoots up *your* ride?” Duke sneered as the mangled Reptoid mothership sank beneath the waves. One boat left at the dock, and just enough gas. “Hot damn, I’ll be home in time for Oprah.”
Months later, the EDF came knocking with General Graves in tow. “Duke, did you get my email?” He raised an eyebrow. “The one about the free penis enhancement pills?” He scowled. “No Duke, you know the one I mean. Duke looked taken aback. “But you’re not a Nigerian prince.”
Graves sat across from Duke while his men raided the fridge. “Do you recall the Reptoid mothership you destroyed last week?” Duke stroked his chin. “You’ll have to be more specific, that happens to me a lot.” Of course, he did remember. Partially healed radiation blisters from the stolen nuclear core he was sent to take offline still dotted his face and chest.
“Well, this was the first time you left one mostly intact, so the EDF Naval division established a submarine base and Reptoid detainment center on the seafloor. To recover and contain any survivors from the wreck, and to research what’s left of their ship.” Graves handed Duke a tablet playing a slideshow of photos depicting two monolithic undersea towers, with an inset topographical map of the seafloor around them and a red outline where the mothership was in relation. “Great, sounds like you got things under control. What a general of the EDF does with alien scum in the privacy of his own underwater prison is none of my-” Graves became visibly irate.
“Enough with the cute remarks Duke, you know we lost control of the situation or we wouldn’t be here. A huge module separated from the underside of the mothership as it sank, then moved under its own power to emplace on the ocean floor West of the mothership wreckage, where it transformed into a sea base of their own. By the time we had subfighters in the water, so did they, and it was a bloodbath. We gave as good as we got, but in the end they destroyed all but two of our subs, then invaded both the sub base and the prison as well as invading your own private undersea resort that we so generously built for you following your defeat of the Reptoid armada. Our best subfighter pilots are dead or missing, and the Reptoids freed as many of their own from the prison as they could. But not before we torpedoed prison pod B, flooding it and drowning about half of the Reptoids held there.”
“Sounds like a hell of a fight. Sorry I missed it.” Duke sat crosslegged in boxers and a bathrobe, craning his neck to watch Oprah on the livingroom flatscreen over Graves’ shoulder. “Well, you’re in luck. You’ve been chosen to-” Duke leapt up, strode across the room, opened the door and gestured for Graves to leave. “Fuck no, I hate swimming, makes my fingers go all raisin-y.”
But of course everything had been decided ahead of time, and even Duke Nukem answers to the US government. “The chopper is waiting on the roof. Pack some swim trunks. Oh, and Duke? You’ll be fighting deep this time. Your whole body will saturate with nitrogen, dissolved into your blood stream.” Duke vaguely remembered something about this from his Bill Nye DVDs but waited for Graves to elaborate.
“Once you’re down there, you can’t come back to the surface for any reason or you’ll die. Not without 17 hours of decompression in a special chamber. There's one in the prison and another in the sub repair facility. Whatever happens, you’re alone down there, and coming up for air isn’t an option. But you will be dressed for success; Our lab guys came up with magnetic soles for your protective boots. Now in addition to shielding your feet from acid or magma, they’ll also adhere to some types of flat metal surfaces and let you walk normally instead of swimming, which may help if you get disoriented in the weightless underwater environment."
Graves demonstrated, producing a familiar black boot from his suitcase and sticking it to Duke’s fridge. “Groovy. But it sounds like what I could really use is a submarine”. Graves sighed. “We threw every sub we had at the Reptoid base. Their subfighters were faster, more maneuverable. We destroyed or crippled them all but not before they chewed up our whole fleet. So our entire undersea fighting force, for the purposes of this mission, consists of you. To impove your odds, we've dropped some air refill stations down to the sea bed along with ammunition crates in a number of spots around the lagoon, so that you can resupply as you go. They are marked by a bright yellow light at the top, you should be able to see them from a distance.”
"Nice. I'll look out for those. Hey Graves, what's long, hard and full of seamen?"
"I've heard this one Duke. A submarine."
"My dick"
"Charming as always. Start packing, we're leaving immediately. Once you get down to the resort, look for a computer monitor. We'll instruct you from there. Good luck."
Additional Credits To : The astonishingly still thriving Duke community.
This map is a love letter to you maniacs.
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* Play Information *
Episode and Level # : Custom map.
Single Player : Yes
DukeMatch 2-8 Player : It's possible, but kind of a headache.
Cooperative 2-8 Player : See above. Try it and see why.
Difficulty Settings : No.
New Art : No.
New Music : Yes. Set music volume to 50%. It's fitting,
but a little overpowering otherwise.
New Sound Effects : No.
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* Construction *
Base : None.
Level Editor(s) Used : BUILD.
Art Editor(s) Used : None.
Construction Time : Technically many years. I abandoned it for
a very long time when it became apparent
that building an entire convincing ocean
environment was going to be a bigger job
than I initially expected. That's why
BobSPX is named that, instead of BobSP4 or
BobSP5. I didn't know whether I'd ever
finish number 4 or if I'd ever want to
do more maps in the series, but I knew I
wanted SPX to canonically be the final one
as it's the best example of the BobSP
detailed techbase style.
Known Bugs/Problems : Slight visual glitching in some places and
angles. Every last wall is used, so this is
not a surprise. Switches can be hard to
toggle, especially the spot where you place
the fusion detonator. If you're having
trouble with that stand a little further
away and try different angles. Not sure
why this happens or how to fix it.
* Where to get this MAP file *
File location : MSDN, Duke Repository
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*Important Information*
Installation : Stick it in the Duke folder.
Important Notes : This is, more than anything else, a concept
map. It's fairly boring and conventional
gameplay wise, with just some keycards,
pickable objects and an exploding alien
base at the end. What is I think very
unusual about it is the design philosophy.
Some time after SP2 I began wanting to
experiment with very large wide open
spaces. The problem with this was that
it meant I could not pack in the dense
detailing that I wanted to. The result
of trying to achieve the best of both
worlds was BobSP3. I was not satisfied
with it. Eventually I realized there had
to be a good reason for the player to
explore large areas or it was simply
boring. And there had to be some kind of
limiting mechanism to make it tense. For
SP4, I set the whole map underwater. This
gives a novel, interesting place to
explore but which is exciting and dangerous
on account of the limited air supply.
Exploration is rewarded with air resupply
stations and ammo crates as well as some
neat/funny easter eggs in far flung
corners of the map. Now, to have BobSP
level detailing, I realized I could just
condense it into a small number of places.
In this case, the underwater bases. This
made for a logical contrast; large organic
outside details for the oceanic terrain,
densely packed BobSP details for the
interiors of the bases. And the player is
compelled to spend time there by puzzles,
enemies, supplies and the fact that they
are the only safe havens from the hostile
and difficult outside environment. I believe
this formula can be reproduced to make a
new generation of more engaging maps. All
it requires is some compelling natural
environment to explore, with serious work
put into diversifying terrain so that there
is something new to see wherever you go and
funny/useful things to find, and crucially
it must be dangerous to the player in a way
that requires periodically resupplying some
finite powerup. For SP4 that was the scuba
gear. But I can imagine for example, maps
set on the Moon, with flickering spooky
abandoned Lunar outposts, highly detailed
and accurate to what we might actually
build someday. I would love to explore that.
But now, suppose the real star of that map
is the Lunar landscape! Plenty of moon maps
focus entirely on the base interior, and only
have rudimentary outdoor terrain just for
scenery. What if there were several modestly
sized outposts on a huge, sprawling, detailed
realistic (i.e. white textures, NASA aesthetic
like the upcoming game Routine rather than
the cartoony aesthetic of the textures used
for the original episode 2 Moon base levels.
hard scifi space habitat architecture would
look fantastic in Duke, as this engine excels
at small details and working/scripted machines)
There'd be realistic, hilly Lunar terrain to
entice the player to explore, albeit carefully.
And a little CON hacking could produce a working
space suit that the player must refill with
oxygen only at special filling points within
the habitats. And the gravity is reduced, and
there are all sorts of lunar relics like the
Apollo landing sites to discover if you explore
the entire map. You can see how this design
philosophy lends itself very well to lots of
different settings. Why not a map set in a
Bioshock Infinite style sky city, where you must
keep collecting new jetpacks in order to travel
between different floating city platforms? A map
like this could really showcase the new true
room over room feature, in fact it would be
necessary for such a map to exist, as the floating
city platforms must have an underside to them,
and float at different heights relative to one
another. Or, imagine a map set in the center of
the Earth, where you must dash from research
station to research station through magma
filled caverns, using the protective boots and
regularly needing to find replacements for them.
And large dark stretches of cavern require that
you take care to periodically find new night
vision goggles. Or what about an Antarctic map
where to explore all of it without freezing to
death you must search for batteries that power
your suit's built in heater? And so on and so forth,
the idea is the same, only the setting changes
between maps. Large, beautiful and varied natural
landscape which the player is enticed to explore,
but which is hostile to him in a way that requires
periodically replenishing some powerup. And a few
modestly sized bases, where you can condense the
geometric detailing in a way that provides logical
contrast between the indoor portions of the map
and the natural terrain outside. And you know,
now that SP4 shows how to do it, I'd even love to
see more undersea base maps. Perhaps in Bioshock
style? Or steampunk/Victorian? Or retrofuturistic,
1970's style? It's a setting not commonly explored
in Duke maps even though this engine is very good
for it because of the ease of defining where water
is and isn't, compared to how hard that is to do in
a real 3D game.
Needless to say, I don't intend to make these maps.
They are an exhausting undertaking. I made BobSP4
simply to demonstrate this new gameplay concept,
in the hopes that much like BobSP1 inspired very
talented copycats, BobSP4 will inspire new maps
built in this radically different SP4 style.
Go ahead,let's see what you can do.
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