Official Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook, The

2 hours ago, StrykerOfEnyo said:

This is an amazing find to put on the site for all gamers. I was ALWAYS baffled when other reviews would talk about how this game would actually transport you any time you would use a spiral stairs or on an elevator, I never understood how they knew this stuff, but clearly, they either spent time designing their own levels or they had this book (the chances of them doing both is impossible, so let's not talk about it:) I don't know if the way you design maps is done the same way today or if newer tools exist -- but this still has a TON of great info. You even have 17 tips from Richard "Levelord" Gray himself. Along with ideas from Alen H. Blum III, the two men that have used the Build engine more than anyone else (at the time of this publication). Even if some things have changed, you get step-by-step instructions in this massive 348-page tome. You are taught how to create sectors. How to embellish walls, ceilings and floors. Not to mention panning and scaling it all.

You will be shown how to place sprites and manipulate them, and they go over all the special types of sprites. Aside from the programing language, there is a number of instructions on how to create good levels and deathmatch maps. The included CD-ROM file is a nice extra, not having to track it down separately makes it more enticing. Thank you for preserving this Areala, and making it available to all of us.

Aside from some minor updates to the Build engine for later games like Blood and Shadow Warrior, which added voxel support and other technical upgrades, you could easily use this book to make a level for Duke 3D today. I haven't messed around with making levels in the Build engine for over twenty years, and I'm sure that between the release of the Build source code and the source code for Duke Nukem 3D itself which has allowed for a variety of source ports there is new (and better) map making software that supports the enhancements those ports have provided. Probably most notably is EDuke's implementation of "true room-over-room", which lets you pretty convincingly fake a Quake-style fully 3D environment, something the original Build engine couldn't do. 

All the information in here is pretty much freely available online, in numerous FAQs, and other places, but it still makes for great reading if you're curious about how the Build engine worked and achieved effects that hadn't been possible in the Doom engine.

5 hours ago, StrykerOfEnyo said:

Thanks for taking the time to scan and put this huge book together. It must take several hours or even all day to edit something of this size into a small enough file to distribute.

You've no idea.

I'm the only person here lunatic enough to do my scanning on a flatbed, so unlike all those other cool people with their double-sided document feeders and auto-correcting software, I sit here with my music on and hand-place each page, then flip, then next page, then flip, then next page, then flip, until I either go crazy or I finish the task.