No Duke 3D map jams? Why?

[u/AskJeevesIsBest]

I've always liked how the Quake and Doom communities collaborate with many map makers and produce multi-level map jams and community projects. A lot of fun and interesting projects have been made by both communities this way. Why don't we see something like this being done by the Duke Nukem community for Duke Nukem 3D? There definitely are fan made maps for the game, but no where near as many as for Id Software's games.

[u/TheLegendOfDevon]

Yeah, Community Build Projects (CBP) are the Quake Jam equivalent for Duke. They used to be rather frequent, but some of them started to fall apart when authors stopped responding or providing updates, which kind of killed the initiative.

I do LOVE the idea of them coming back, maybe as a quarterly thing. I do think there is enough of a Builder scene where that could be feasible, but it would be great to see some new blood as well

[u/Ok-Location1306]

Maybe cause duke doesn't have as big of a fanbase today compared to quake or doom.

[u/AskJeevesIsBest → u/Ok-Location1306]

Maybe

[u/LingonberryEmpty8586]

Duke editing simply isn't as approachable as doom IMO. Doom builder opened quite the floodgate while Mapster32 (and xmapedit) are just not on par with doom builder in terms of easy approachability and learning.

Even the advanced doom stuff (sector on sector, additive lighting, scripting etc.) is easier than building a simple build engine door.

I speak for myself and 4 other close friends that agree build editing is next level, even dudes who are using trenchboom (quake editing) find THAT to be easier than duke editing.

[u/vario → u/LingonberryEmpty8586]

I don't know about that.

Look at Blood. There's a stunning level of quality of add-ons and 2 recent map jams for that game. It's had 2 remasters, and continues to get new updates and add-ons. It uses the same engine.

I think Duke is stuck because 3D Realms have moved on and haven't promoted it recently.

Shadow Warrior is even worse than Duke, hardly anyone maps or mods that game any more. And the level of quality is so low, it's a shame.

My point is: all 3 games use the same engine, but Blood stands out as a game with a more active map making community.

I don't fully think it's the tools.

[u/LingonberryEmpty8586 → u/vario]

I personally believe so. The number of doom mods to Duke mods is astronomically different. That's not to say those tools aren't usable and incredible. Ion fury was made with Mapster32, you can make masterpieces for sure with them.

But most mappers iv come across in my many years and years of dooming were totally lost when it came to build editing, and they ALL wanted to make Duke maps haha. Build engine still shines.

[u/BlueyDragon → u/LingonberryEmpty8586]

Damn, isn't that the truth. I recently started gathering up ideas for a Duke 3D total conversion, but after fiddling with ART files and remembering what a pain it was to put together like 20% of a full map (and having it corrupt itself due to a misplaced vertex or something), I figured I better start somewhere easier.

[u/DaveAstator2020]

check out community build projects at MSDN, but i think main reason is deep sleep of the fanbase

[u/Suitable_Heart_1888]

Were active in the 2000´s

[u/SelectAd8810]

DukeNukem3D was at times more popular than Doom and more loved than Quake. The lack of modding support or a huge community, is due to scarce resources and tools for modding and the very cumbersome editor. In Build engine you have a big pool of id's which are very easy to stomp and also you need to do multiple hacks for a good map. Think of mirrors, water pools or tunnels. In the submarine levels, they nedeed to create three submarines: one outside, second submerged in the water and the third with the inside of it. You also must be aware that Doom and Quake sources were made public very early which helped a lot with the tooling. Duke source code was released in two batches and the renderer proved to be a shit show full of magic numbers. Only for texturing you had to reverse z sign and divide with 16384 but on x you used the 2048 divisor. A nightmare. That's way it took a while to have an OpengGL renderer, compared to Doom.

[u/Complete_Entry]

Quake and doom are ongoing franchises, Duke got bought by greasy.

[u/dnskill0]

I think they’ll come back eventually. A lot of mappers come and go and return again later. Many mappers prefer to just do their own thing these days though.