TTYW - Behind the Scenes: Flood Zone

Angel Ramon
Oct 30, 2017
3 min read

I decided to start a new blog series, surprising huh? With so many series's out there, you might think I'm crazy. However, I take each of them with lots of pride. I think the fans of The Thousand Years War Series should have a blog of their own to enjoy and read cool behind the scenes stuff. So this a series where I will discuss how I got the inspiration to write a certain chapter or in the world of gamelit a certain level. They're in no order, I'll just pick them at random or have you the fans choose one. Plus I'll let you in a few secrets on the levels. So kick back, grab some popcorn, your controller, and a couch as we prepare to dig into the Flood Zone chapter of The Thousand Years War book.

For the true Duke Nukem fans out there you'll quickly realize how fustrating the level was and as an underwater level it was one of my least favorite levels to play. That was when I was younger, but now that I'm older I begin to admire how the developers were able to make a level that plays mostly underwater back in the 90's when FPS gaming was in its beginning state. Especially with the build engine, which was a hard gaming engine to master then and still one I can't understand for the life of me lol. Basically this is level in an underwater city that was flooded and the level design inspired me to write it in a scene in my book.

Above is a portion of the level that was not in the PC version, it was in the N64 version. I decided this was a part I wanted to inculde in The Thousand Years War book. To be honest this was a chapter that was not as tough to write as I had an idea of how the level was designed, unlike the my original levels that I wrote from scratch.

So the idea of the chapter just to bring you up to speed, our four heroes meet up. Angel and Dayvon come in from the Bank in Cali while Maria and Luis enter through the sewers they find in the sushi restaurant. They find themselves in a part of Hollywood that has been flooded for the most part. They need to find a way out of the flooded area of the city. However, Maria has a fear of the water and is not a very good swimmer, so Angel and the others will have to guide her through to fight her fear of the water.

Above is a picture of how the level starts in Duke Nukem 3D. The level can be accessed by playing Epsiode 3 - Shrapnel City. You have to beat the Raw Meat and Bank Roll levels first, so grab a copy of Duke 3D and see where I got my inspiration for the chapter.

Secrets of Flood Zone:

- There is a secret cave next to the office building that could be accessed had the heroes used a explosive weapon to break the crack.

- There is a cliff across the sign of a strip club that is underwater. On that cliff there is a window that is full of goodies, will our hero's find it?

- There is a secret cave next to the underwater building that used to house a lawyer's office.

- The city was flooded due to the gloobas messing with the weather patterns and causing monsoon conditions in the area. The city had recieved 6 days of non-stop rain and only stopped when our heroes turned up.

- There is a poisonpus breeding ground next to the strip club where the street used to be before the floods.

- I used the level design of the N64 version for Flood Zone as it had a few more perks than the PC version.

- The heilpad in the N64 version is where the chopper is located in the book that Orlando rescues Angel in. In the game the heilpad is in an open area while in the book the heilpad is behind a locked door.

- The freezethrower is useless underwater, in the game though, it's a useful weapon.

(Author's Edit: I missed some details that I wanted to add, below are the additional notes)

Players in the level: Four (Maria, Dayvon, Angel, and Luis)

Difficulty Level if it were an actual game: Hard

Actual Difficulty in Duke Nukem 3D: Medium on Piece of Cake to Hard on Come Get Some/Damn I'm Good

Well that's all she wrote, there will be more level secrets to come. So be on the look out. Hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look at Flood Zone. If you read the book, congrats. If not or have a friend who would enjoy it click on the link below!