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Cool that you got an interview with him.
Interesting article.

He is very kind though he even shared it himself. It was pretty crazy he needed to confirm with Gearbox if it was okay to share this. You know with the World Tour stuff going on so he was definitely in a contract lol. It wasn't allowed to be about the World Tour maps or anything connected I believe, which I was totally okay with I wanted to get the OG Levelord.

I tried to have a little fun with writing this. I like another jab at what happen to his Quake map seems he won't let that go.

Hi! Do you know an e-mail contact address for Levelord or Mr. Blum? I don't want them to be interviewed, just a few questions about their mappings etc.

I'm not sure if anyone still visits this forum, but do anyone of you know about any e-mail contact addresses to Levelord and Allen Blum?

As for the "missing levels" part, I've always wondered what happened to Pipeline's "The Day After" levels?

In the text files, it says Suburbia is the 1st map, Doomcity is the 3rd, Hell Station is the 6th and Mothership is the 7th. This means there should be at least 3 other levels. "At least" means there was a secret passage in Mothership which led to a nonfunctional Nuke Button with secret level message. It's level is a boss level though.

It's interesting that Hell Station and Mothership are the earlier levels, they were made in 1997, a year before the seemingly superior Suburbia and Doomcity have been made. Anyway, I'm not sure about the 2nd level, as the ending of Suburbia fits rather well with the starting locations of Doomcity. Maybe there were no more releases after all.... too bad the authors can't be found anywhere, neither their swiss site. Stupid nicknames.

I remember other ancient maps as well. Aqua series (which were pretty good in their time), Duke Prox, Lunar1 (a notably scary looking space map), Anarchy, Sand etc etc.

I got a few maps named Lunar 1, Lunar 2...etc but they're all crap.
Would have been interesting to know which Lunar 1 you're referring to, Nancsi 

I'm still curious 

Sorry, I haven't found it online.

Also remember a map called "The Base". It was a decent level for its time.

Well, I created this thing a few months ago. It added everything that were removed in the final version including the garage, the exploding room with the liztroops and such. The yellow key was relocted, and some ugly textures were replaced too, forgive me for those hacking.

I definately remember Slumcity, Oasis and Reactor. They are not very good maps, but were a little bit better than those awful hackworks that flooded those level pack CDs. I think Slumcity is the map when I first realized that the Battlelord can be shrunk.

I remember other ancient maps as well. Aqua series (which were pretty good in their time), Duke Prox, Lunar1 (a notably scary looking space map), Anarchy, Sand etc etc.

It's shame some of the locations have been dropped for the final release. Particularly, that hidden starting segment in E1L2 (in a beautifully shaded garage) should have been in the final game. Once, I decided to add it to the final version, and it looks great. Since then I always play the map that way. Some other minor locations have been dropped as well, like an exploding area somewhere around the blue key room in E1L2 too, a parallel sewer part in E1L6 starting location and a new boss area. That latter one stinks though, the final version is so much superior, except it doesn't have those yellow flamethrower things which would have been a great fit there.

Nuclear Winter & Caribbean are like exact opposites. NW is lazy and unprofessional, Caribbean polished and quality all around.

The new weapons (especially the water pistols and guns) and the wind.voc screwup should have been fixed before the release though.

They are just a hybrid of the Ripper and the Pig Cop.
Pinky is a lit different though. They have a little different physics.

Finally got around to finishing my own review for this. Had trouble articulating my thoughts precisely on certain issues I had, but felt it was about time I just let go and upload it;

http://taw.duke4.net/2013/05/duke3d/dnf2013/

"There is a bug worth mentioning regarding the shooting range door, preventing access because Duke can't squeeze through, requiring a noclip."

Excuse me, but what? I never had to use DNCLIP in this level nor in the entire game.

"The cable cars provide a core visual feature this time, having not seen this done before in Duke3D, at least not on a large scale."

Actually we have seen it in the Lost highway episode and it's secret level (that one has some strong similarities with this episode).

"Would have been nice to at least reward the player with a shortcut out of the room upon bypassing the crusher though."

Yeah, I agree. Those crushers are terribly enough for once.

Btw. I tested the drone, and their attack is somewhat buggy. They look clueless where to shoot at times.

I pointed to several minor nitpicks/bugs of this mod, but linearity and monster strength ain't any of them.

I totally agree with Mikko. Making maps mazey is a bad leveldesign. I hate wandering through areas before I find the right path. I don't like the linear pipes of modern games, but this found the balance very well.

As for monsters: the infected EDF Soldier is brilliant, except for the Freezer bug. They can be threatening like the Enforcer, and have a good AI. I don't like the modified slimers, it should be something else, a facehugger thing that is responsible for the infestation, but the soldier itself is excellent. The Terminator robots are very good as well, they can be threatening in large numbers (in map 2) and you know the way how to destroy or dodge them. They look very authentic.

I somewhat agree that those wild pigs should have been a little tougher, I wouldn't mind the same HP as those shotgun wielding ones from the original game, but they are still good and at tighter places (like in the 1st map) they can be dangerous. Giving them the HP of a Newbeast is absurdity. Newbeasts are terrible with 300 HP, they look lot weaker than that.

The boss itself is not a tough one, I agree, but there is a real challenge coming from the fact you don't have your explosive arsenal against it. That was probably the point. I'm sure you all used your DEV ammo at that point when you reached the bridge, and don't have much of the RPG too. I had to use shotgun, freezer etc to finish the boss, which wasn't that easy.

Drones are easy too, but they are very rare in this game. Map 1 has two, and the boss fight has four more. The red one is a tougher dude, and the 4 supportive ones are annoyances within' the bossfight. That might be their point.

The only reason that thing is there near the end of the donkey ride is because there was one in the trailer too. Had I not put it there, Gambini would have become very depressed.

Yes. I would have cried out loud and begged you to include them.

Gals, our motto was: If it was in the trailer then it make sense.

But it still doesn't make sense there. And the slimers are buggy when they reach you on the donkey anyways.

ck3d: Thanks for playing and I´m glad you enjoyed it. Mikko´s Dam map is indeed maybe the most conceptually great map ever made for Duke. Just it´s massive view, at the road, shocked gamers from the new era by how large the draw distance is in Build.

speaking of t800s
why is there one lonely random terminator in the desert canyon of the third map?
i understand what they're doing in the lab in the second map, but talk about out of place

It was sad for me that they were only in that section of the 2nd map. It´s two rooms to fight an enemy that took us quite a lot of work to do. I wanted to add some random ones at later points, as a recordatory. With those exceptions (because there´s another one in the mines) we went very cohevise regarding the use of enemies: You can see the wild pig at the very first part of the mod, but you won´t be able to fight it until the third map (although there´s one locked in the labs, as scientistics are experimenting with it). When I did that, I imagined myself as a player and I would have found some kind of WOW factor with that door sequence... Then I´d be eager to fight those pigs again and I´d have to wait until the desert, which is infested of them.

The terminators, in our story, were bought to Skynet by the EDF to support troopers in their missions. They´d never get to be used as the aliens hack the EDF system and turns them against their owners. It´s expectable some of them were deployed around the Dam area.

the laptop i am on right now gets painfully slow whenever i type a reply longer than a couple of lines on this site (and this site only, which is weird ?).

It´s not painful here but I do sense some slowness when typing on this site too.

Actually the only time I felt those Robots are not out of place are them in the 2nd map (in two areas) and maybe the 2 exploded from the box in Mikko's map. They look utterly dull in map3 and 4 and I would consider to remove them.
The same applies to the EDF Soldiers. They are good in map2 and map4, but the single ones in map3 and map5 is WTF (they have a different pal as well, and the donkey ride can cause problems too).
The lone egg in the street in the 1st level is also out of place a bit.
I would consider more use of the "lame drones" though.