16th of July 2024

BattleDuke 2 Contest Pack by various authors

Last summer Sanek started a Spiegul contest, offering mappers a chance to make maps for his rather polarizing BattleDuke 2 mod. At the end of the day there were three submissions (plus one which eventually became Der Zorn Gottes), not a bad tally for such a short contest.

First we have the contest winner (as decided by the public at duke4), Subtifuge, which is also IIIIIIIII's first public release. The first section could use a bit more shading, but overall the map looks quite nice with some curves and all-around good use of alien homeworld textures. Organic alien walls have a "natural" look to them (aside from the somewhat flat lighting), and I like the way blown up walls look. However, I could not finish the map. The Battlelords reveal themselves in a timed sequence so that without foreknowledge of where they're located, you can get surrounded quickly. The map also has practically no cover aside from corners (which makes the Devastator such a lousy weapon here; you can easily lose half of your shots to walls), so you find yourself trying to find these angles where you can fire rockets at the enemy without getting shot a lot in return, but it's an extremely tedious process. There's also extremely little health, so you'll quickly find yourself in a situation it's almost impossible to recover from, leaving no other option but a full restart of the map. To be sure, there is an efficient path to beating the map, but getting there requires way more trial and error than I'm willing to put up with.

Next we have DNSKILL5's Lunar Greenhouse, another first public release. After gearing up aboard a spaceship and teleporting out, you find yourself surrounded by Battlelords. Luckily there are some forcefields keeping most of them at bay, but the only way to get your hands on the RPG & Devastator is to flip that switch and turn off the forcefields (and staying put isn't as safe as it might seem at first anyway, as there are three Battlelords overlooking the force-fielded area). This is a small map that can be resolved within a few minutes. You can take advantage of the forcefields and the fact that Battlelords seem terrified of water. It's somewhat easy to herd the Battlelords along the map's edges, either to build a bit of space between you and them or to lure them into killzones. Those who want to take down every enemy will have to put in a bit more work, but I killed what I had to and went for the exit (you can get there even faster if you take advantage of a certain Build-engine quirk). All in all this was a fun map to figure out, but design-wise it's rather unimpressive. The concept is nice, but design is quite basic with most detailing consisting of scattered sprites (satellite dishes, observatories, plants, etc.), some flat walls surrounding the "greenhouse" area, and a rather crude sector-based spaceship housing the Nukebutton. The map is so small that it wouldn't have taken that many steps to make it look noticeably better; some simple 3DR type lighting effects and more texture trimming alone might have done wonders. But hey, it's the author's first public release and he had limited time to work on the map, so it's definitely not a bad effort.

Last we have MRCK's Duc-Man. This is a rather miserable experience from the start, as the map's first half is a maze with constantly flickering lights and neon walls everywhere. At least there's cover, but the constant visual assault on your senses is a rather painful burden on the player (though your tolerance may vary; I'm not even particularly sensitive to flickering lights or anything). You get the RPG only late in the maze (and there's a good chance you may miss it entirely, as it's behind a key and several Battlelords), which means killing (or trying to avoid) lots of Battlelords with weak weapons, which is an exercise in utter misery. I then gave up and dnclipped to the surrounding street part. It looks really good with its more conservative approach to texturing, and the section has plenty of good looking vehicles scattered across the streets. It's nothing you haven't seen in MRCK's recent urban maps but still so much more pleasing to the eye than the first section. Gameplay-wise I cannot comment on the flow of it, as by cheating I had already skipped the most vital items, but I can't imagine fighting Battlelords being much more fun here either, as there seemed to be quite a few of them.

Conclusion: If BattleDuke itself is polarizing, this pack is even more so due the differing styles of the three authors. Of the pack the only map I actually somewhat enjoyed was DNSKILL5's Lunar Greenhouse, so that's the winner as far as I'm concerned even with its newbie design. The other two I didn't even bother finishing because of the sheer amount of grinding and tedious trial and error, saving and reloading, involved. Duc-Man's visuals are a mixed bag (even though MRCK's quirks are always his own "artistic" choice, not so much a flaw), but IIIIIIIII's Subtifuge shows plenty of promise in the design department.
Anyway, if you're looking for maps to really test your patience and force you to find solutions through excruciating trial and error, then feel free to give this pack a try.

Score: 6
Download: Download
Version: 1.4, 1.5
Author: Various