Nukeland is the nineth level of Mr. Caliber, the first episode of LameDuke. In the LameDuke game files, it is generically titled "L9" in keeping with the prototype's naming conventions, but the official "Nukeland" title is known from the April 1994 Build demo, where the same map is included in a slightly modified form.
Nukeland may be the first map that was ever created specifically for Duke Nukem 3D, and it is the only Duke Nukem map known to have been created by Ken Silverman. The map does not appear to have survived into the commercial release in any recognizable form, but given its geometric similarities with the fountain on Zoo and the lava pools on Faces of Death, it cannot be ruled-out that certain elements may have been copied-and-pasted into these commercial maps.
Because L9 is formatted as MAP V4, it is not readily playable with the LameDuke executable. However, this can be fixed by downloading CONVMAPS.ZIP from Ken Silverman’s website and running convmap5.exe in the terminal. Moreover, the tile picnums in the L9.MAP file are corrupt, resulting in incorrect textures on most of the surfaces. This can be fixed by downloading a corrected version of the map file (readily playable as MAP V5) that reassigns the picnums to those from the April 1994 Build demo.
Map
 NUKELAND.MAP |
 L9.MAP |
NUKELAND.MAP vs L9.MAP
NUKELAND.MAP and L9.MAP are different in a few ways. Neither of the two maps is "older" than the other; both maps are actually forked from a common source map but have been changed in unique ways. NUKELAND.MAP has sliding doors and additional rooms, and L9.MAP has added security cameras, which are not even part of the native Build engine (though they use the Build engine's render-to-tile functionality) and must have been programmed by Todd Replogle.
The security cameras on L9 are notable for floating in the air and sometimes being nearly stacked on top of each other; this is in contrast with the security cameras seen in the April 1994 Duke Nukem IIID prototype footage, where they are attached to the ceiling as one would expect. This strongly suggests the security cameras either worked differently or were still being tested when they were added to L9. Therefore, the security cameras must have been added to L9 before they were added to the version of M1 seen in the April 1994 prototype footage. Given this information, March 1994 seems like a reasonable upper bound on the timing estimate for L9, given that NUKELAND.MAP is dated April 7, 1994 and there were already normal LameDuke-style security cameras in the April prototype. It is harder to discern a lower bound for L9, but other publicly known information about the game's development suggests Duke Nukem 3D likely started development in January 1994. It is possible Ken Silverman may have created the first version of NUKELAND.MAP as a demo for the Duke Nukem 3D team around that time.
| NUKELAND.MAP | L9.MAP | |
|---|---|---|
| Packaged with | April 1994 Build engine | LameDuke |
| EXE timestamp | Apr 7, 1994 | Dec 30, 1994 |
| MAP timestamp | Apr 7, 1994 | Sep 10, 1994 |
| MAP format | V3 | V4 |
| Pre-April security cameras | No cameras at all | Yes |
| Horizontal sliding doors | Yes | No |
| Extra rooms | Yes | No |
| True age | Started Jan – Mar 1994; new rooms and sliding doors were added Apr 7, 1994 | Started Jan – Mar 1994; updated sometime before April to include cameras; no further updates except up-versioning to V4 |
Development history
The Build engine change log packaged with the April 1994 Build demo states that Nukeland was created by Ken Silverman as a demo for the Duke Nukem 3D development team. The note, which is dated March 22, 1994, specifically says Silverman added horizontal sliding doors to the map. It can be safely inferred that the map must have already existed prior to this update because those horizontal sliding doors and accompanying sectors are missing from the L9 fork in LameDuke. The original note reads:
Added doors that open left and right. See sector[].tag #9 in game.c for details - also look at my board, NUKELAND.MAP, in BUILD to see how to make this type of door.
Because the map already existed prior to March 22, 1994 and because Silverman was using it to demonstrate the Build engine to the Duke Nukem 3D development team, Nukeland was likely packaged with the first version of the Build engine that Silverman shared with the team, which could not have been earlier than January when Silverman – according to his personal website – first pioneered the sector-based mechanics of the engine. This would make Nukeland the first map ever created specifically for Duke Nukem 3D.
Faces of Death
Because Nukeland and Faces of Death both have very simple geometry – and because sectors in the Build engine are typically drawn on grids with defined increments – it may be impossible to convincingly prove or rule-out a relationship between the two maps. Nevertheless, there are a few reasons to take this possibility seriously.
The first reason to suspect Faces of Death may be related to Nukeland stems from a thematic observation: Faces of Death is a map credited to Allen Blum, who made the map into a tribute to his team at 3D Realms, so portraits of each of the developers are textured onto the walls of certain sectors. Based on sector chronology, the oldest of these sectors is the one with a picture of Ken Silverman, the creator of Nukeland.
The oldest sector overall is the passage in which the player starts, which has no analogue on Nukeland. However, the z-coordinate of this sector is not the default z-coordinate when creating new sectors, whereas the ring around the lava pit has the default z-coordinate and matches the arena on Nukeland. One way of interpreting this is that the sectors around the lava pit may have been created first but were subsequently merged or split – or, even more likely, copied-and-pasted from a modified neighbor and then rotated – which would technically make them “newer” sectors.
The openings onto the lava pit on the bottom floor have widths that match the bottom-left door connected to the arena on Nukeland. The openings into the arena on the top floor have widths that match the top door connected to the arena on Nukeland. The lengths of each side of the arena on the top floor also match Nukeland, but the sides with lava outpours do not match, possibly because the arena was stretched in that dimension to accentuate the tidal waves in the lava. The dimensions of the lava pit on the bottom floor do not quite match the arena on Nukeland, but it may have been slightly stretched to accommodate the symmetrical layout of rooms around the perimeter.
There is evidence that Todd Replogle was testing the security camera functionality on L9 before the feature was fully fleshed-out, so it may be odd that there are no security cameras on Faces of Death. However, there are conveniently shaped windows between the developers’ portraits on the second floor that look like they may have once contained security monitors. Moreover, the security cameras on L9 were stacked nearly on top of each other and floating in mid-air, so it would not be such a strange decision to remove them altogether. It is also important to note that Faces of Death was intended for Dukematch, and given how small the map is, it would not make sense to include security cameras.
Possibly the strongest evidence against a relationship comes from the platform in the lava pit on the bottom floor. This platform has the same number of sides and the same x- and y-dimensions as the pit at the center of Nukeland, but it has a mismatched rotation and, when rotated to match, no longer has matching x- and y-dimensions. There is no reason for the designer to change the rotation and dimensions like this, so if the two maps are in fact related, then the designer probably merged the pit and the two square pillars from Nukeland into the surrounding arena, before drawing the central platform from scratch. However, this seems like a complicated ad hoc explanation; it would have been much simpler if the developer had just raised the z-coordinate of the pit on Nukeland to create the platform on Faces of Death.
Zoo
Zoo suffers from the same basic problem as Faces of Death; because it has such simple geometry and because sectors are typically drawn on grids with defined increments, any geometric similarities with Nukeland may be a coincidence.
The platform with the Enforcer statue in the fountain on Zoo has precisely the same shape and dimensions as the pit in the center of the arena on Nukeland. Additionally, there are many doorways from the central courtyard on Zoo that share dimensions with doorways from the arena on Nukeland. In particular, the oldest of these doorways – according to the map’s sector chronology – seems to correspond to a doorway on Nukeland.
However, the sector chronology of Zoo strongly argues against an iterative relationship. Specifically, the platform with the Enforcer statue is sector number 67, which is irreconcilable with the observation that the sector has not been redrawn.
Further evidence that Zoo probably is not related to Nukeland comes from beta footage of a build dated October 7, 1994. This footage shows a test map where the player spawns in a room with all of the game’s inventory items, and connected to this room is a hallway with further rooms showcasing each of the game’s enemies. Apart from the lack of a fountain courtyard, the map has a very similar layout to Zoo, raising the possibility that it may have been directly iterated into Zoo.
Later versions of Nukeland
Ken Silverman's NUKELAND.MAP continued to undergo development, with new rooms being added to showcase new features as they were added to the Build engine. In 2024, Silverman sanctioned the release of an archive of historical versions of the Build engine, which included 10 iterations of NUKELAND.MAP. The one shown above in this article is the oldest, dated April 7, 1994. Later iterations do not show any evidence of merging with Allen Blum's L9.MAP fork. (Note: The archive contains a readme file that incorrectly credits Silverman and Blum as co-designers of Nukeland. However, the archive was assembled by a volunteer and includes a disclaimer which states that the readme file was not coauthored with Silverman.)
Videos
 BUILD Engine (April 1994) Walkthrough of NUKELAND.MAP |
 Duke Nukem 3D beta (Lame Duke) L9.MAP (with corrected textures) Walkthrough of L9.MAP |
| |||||||||||||