DN Map Loader Help

When It Doesn't Work:

Not necessarily every map or TC in existence will be compatible with DN Map Loader but it does its best to try and figure out whatever you throw at it. Generally if a map or TC is not working it is because DNML doesn't know which file to use when there is more than one of the same type. Also you may occassionaly come across maps or TCs that were distributed with errors in their con files which will not work with Duke Nukem.

Aborting Duke

If Duke Nukem 3D starts up and then just stays on the splash screen for a long time, try hitting the escape key. This should cause Duke to quit gracefully.

About Maps

Besides providing a new level for the game, 3rd party Duke Nukem maps can change or add sounds, graphics, weapons, enemies, etc. The simplest distribution of a map will only consist of a .map file (and possibly a Read Me text file). More complex map distributions can contain new art and sound files (such as .art, .wav, etc.), new con files (game.con, user.con, defs.con), and installation files (.bat or .exe). Ideally a total conversion will either include a group file and a con file or it will just have all of its files loose (no group file).

When you add a folder that contains a .map file along with other support files, DN Map Loader attempts to determine each file's type by its extension.

• Installation and Read Me files (.bat, .exe, .txt) are marked as "Unused" and are not included when the map is run.
• Graphics and sound files (.wav, .art, etc.) are marked as "Other", which means that the files will be included when the map is run but that they don't require any special handling.
• If more than one .map file is found, DNML marks the first map it comes across as the one to launch the game with ("Map") and the rest as alternative maps ("Alt Map") which should be loaded automatically by a con file at the completion of the first level. There's no way for the program to know which map should be considered the first map so you may have to change this manually.
• Con (.con) files are evaluated based on their file name and then by their content. If a file name contains the text of one of the standard con file names it will be recognized as such. So "user.con" and "mymapuser.con" are both recognized as a user.con file. If a file has an extension of ".gam" it is assumed to be a game.con file since this appears to have been a common practice. If a con file is not recognized as any of the above by its name, the contents of the file are examined to determine its type. If a v1.3 user.con or defs.con file is encountered it is updated to v1.4.

Solutions

• More than one map file: You will have to manually select the .map file that is supposed to be loaded first and use the popup menu to change its file type to "Map". Then change any other map files to a file type of "Alt Map".
• Group file only (no map file and no .con file): Some maps or TCs are distributed with a group (.grp) file and a Windows batch file (.BAT) or executable (.exe) that runs the game. All of the map, art, sound, etc. files are inside the group file. In this case DNML doesn't know what map to launch Duke with and Duke doesn't know about the new files in the group file. To get the map or TC working:
  1. Make sure you have the original folder you added to DNML.
  2. Remove the map from DNML.
  3. Use the Group Extract utility to extract all of the files out of the group file.
  4. Place the extracted files in the same folder as the original group file.
  5. Add the map folder to DNML.
• Other options: If you still can't get the map to work you may be able to determine the problem by loooking at any .bat files that were included. These are plain text files that contain dos commands for Windows users. Look for copy and rename (ren) commands to determine how the installation was supposed to procede and then change file types in DNML to match.