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That APC is badass!

Good detective work, man.

Been dong more research.

One of the maps unused in the Shadow Warrior beta is Garden.map. At first, it looks like nothing from it appeared in the final game, but a closer look reveals that it's actually a prototype version of Zilla's Villa! All of the rooms are arranged differently and the level has a completely different flow from Zilla's Villa, but a good chunk of Villa's rooms are in Garden.map, but in different locations and connected in different ways. As usual, final version image is on top, beta image is bottom.




























The rooms are basically the same, but they completely redid the room's textures.

Player Lin, on 02 September 2013 - 07:22 AM, said:

So you were able to make it run after all? Cool BTW, does the game's IWAD work with any modern source port?

(Sorry for the off-topic guys! )

The heck is with that blue cinema sign?

That APC is so awesome, I want to drive it now.

This photo reminds me of the LA skybox.

http://twistedsifter...-lapse-over-la/

MrFlibble, on 03 September 2013 - 07:18 AM, said:

No, it is custom format and needed hacks to load with original DooM engine....

Hendricks266, on 04 September 2013 - 07:41 PM, said:

The style is similar, but the angle the photo was taken is very different. I have compared enough photos of LA to tell.

The blue cinema sign i'm guessing is texture cache debugging. It was a tall texture.

So I was looking at the map of Gates Motel, and I noticed there was a flipped section of the level on the other side of the mirror:



So I went and checked it using no-clipping cheat:



The door leads to an unfinished room with a Enforcer that does nothing:



Has anyone ever reported before that it is impossible to kill 100% of the enemies on this level?

Am I right that the level map scans you're posting (here and some pages ago) are from a strategy guide?

MrFlibble, on 06 September 2013 - 03:42 AM, said:

Posted the other day by a super cool dude: http://forums.duke4....post__p__170563

t800, on 02 September 2013 - 01:47 AM, said:

Rides Again: biker is pissing over yer corpse

I'll just leave this here

http://forums.duke4....ritish-tv-show/

Later build of 'Lameduke' on British TV show - GamesMaster!

Interesting, I've managed to check that video out. Does anyone have anymore of these footages, like later build of Lameduke?

I was playing around with the Shadow Warrior beta and wrote up a few things that I don't think have been documented yet.

One of the "DELETE ME" items can be picked up. It looks like an animated red orb and, when collected, gives you "6 Deathcoils". This is ammo for the Ripper Heart, but it doesn't actually give you the Ripper Heart if you don't already have it.



If you kill yourself in the beta, even just by fall damage, you get this message:


I also found the old Sumo boss. Rather than reside in his Sumo Sky Palace level, his boss arena is located at the end of Dark Woods of the Serpent after the magic carpet ride where the Serpent boss is normally first encountered.


For the most part, he just walks around aimlessly, but he does occasionally perform two attacks: the leg stomp and bending over to fart at you. Both of these attacks play their appropriate sounds, but neither do direct damage. However, the fart attack occasionally spawns the gas grenade effect in the room which harms you if you walk into it.



The Sumo doesn't perform his thunder clap attack although he has the art for it. He can be killed, but it doesn't end the level and he doesn't do a death fart like his finished counterpart.

There's also one other unique detail here I found amusing. The Sumo's lair is decorated with his steaming turds:


In the beta version of Floating Fortress, the biohazard chamber in the ship housing the Serpent Apprentice was originally a chamber filled with a bunch of Baby Rippers:


I think it's quite a bit creepier than a mini-Serpent seeing all of those guys clinging to the glass and looking at you from inside there, but there's also a button nearby that activates a crusher which kills them all, so they're not much of a threat. However, I point this out because these Baby Rippers combined with the original Sumo boss placement in the woods provide evidence for my upcoming point.

In the beta version of Stone Rain, the final map of the game taking place on and in the volcano, the interior of the volcano is bereft of machinery and much more cavernous. In the final game, the caverns were heavily cut down to just hold the Ninja Turtles secret. However, here in the beta, these caverns are the setting for the final boss fight. And who's the boss waiting for you here? Take a look:


(Screenshot taken in Redux because I couldn't noclip to this part in the original executable)

As you can see, it's the Serpent boss. Since no other Serpents or mini-Serpents appear in the other beta levels up to this point, I offer this hypothesis for your consideration: The Serpent was originally intended to be the final boss of Shadow Warrior.

I was always wondering what the Deathcoils did.

Also your hypothesis very much supports the idea of that being the final boss of the game considering there is artwork that suggests that too.

I think fighting the serpent through some caverns would be pretty interesting. I always thought it was a bit too simplistic fighting Zilla in a small area with no cover where the slope changes like a seesaw. That area didn't really make sense.

RinyRed, on 13 October 2013 - 04:18 AM, said:

That's not a surprise considering the early artwork for the cover.

RinyRed, on 13 October 2013 - 04:18 AM, said:

I suspected that because the start location in the beta in the Dark Woods level is called "Dojo of the Sumo" (while in the final version it's appropriately renamed to "Dojo of the Serpent"), but I didn't bother completing that level during the brief encounter with the beta.

BTW, do I remember correctly that you start outside the Dojo in the beta, and not sliding down into it as in the final release? Or did I launch that level in the "fake multiplayer mode"?

I fucking knew it! The Serpent God was meant to be the final boss at one point! Excellent find!

MrFlibble, on 13 October 2013 - 10:12 AM, said:

You're correct, the beta woods map begins outside the dojo while the finished version begins inside it.

Micky C, on 13 October 2013 - 04:53 AM, said:

There's more evidence to suggest that the final boss encounter was rushed. According to the July 1997 development updates, the robot suit Zilla boss didn't even exist as a concept on July 7 and was only implemented into the game on July 29 while they still planned to finish the game by mid-August. Conversely, the Serpent boss had been seen as early as mid-to-late 1996.

Looking deeper into the timeline, the Shadow Warrior beta is dated April 4, 1997, and the volcano map (started by Jim Norwood as early as August, 1996) seems to already establish the Serpent as the final boss of the game while the unfinished Sumo is placed as the boss of the woods map. The first version of the shareware episode, released May 13, 1997, had by that time replaced the Sumo with the Serpent as the boss of the woods, although the battle ends ambiguously with the Serpent escaping mid-fight.

I find this timeline a bit confusing as it appears the game lacked a Zilla all the way up until July, the final month of the development, yet many maps in the April 4 beta (namely Zilla Contruction, aka dozer.map started as early as October, 1996) had already demonstrated the existence of the Zilla character and his corporation, the same beta which places the Serpent as the final boss. Where could Zilla be if the Serpent was supposed to be the final boss of the game?

Hence, I'll go a step further with my initial hypothesis: Not only was the Serpent supposed to be the final boss of the game, but I posit that the Serpent was also originally intended to be Zilla himself.

I believe this to be true as it's clear the developers had already established the idea of Zilla and his corporation at this point of development (again, see the Zilla Construction map and the fact that it's near complete in the beta). I don't think it's a coincidence that the Serpent had also been placed as the final confrontation at that time. That the change requiring the creation of a new Zilla occurred fairly late would also explain why the final Zilla was honestly a bit underwhelming. Therefore, placing the Serpent/Zilla as the boss of the shareware episode can then be seen as a last minute change made out of necessity as their old Sumo boss wasn't in a finished state yet, and having the Serpent/Zilla escape mid-fight was a cop out to make the player want to buy the game to finish the fight with the big baddie himself. However, come the finished game, 3D Realms probably realized that fighting the same boss twice at the end of both the shareware and registered episodes wouldn't set well with players. Hence, they relegated the Serpent to a sub-boss (his death in the registered episode doesn't even warrant a cutscene) and capitalized on the fact that his identity as Zilla was largely ambiguous by then, the only hints in the shareware being the opening line "Zilla sends his regards" and all of the Zilla corporation signage throughout the levels.

Not to mention, "Zilla" is a name much more suited to a four-armed reptilian god than some guy in a weird robot suit with jetpack legs.

Interesting. The tiles for Zilla sprites are indeed in the very end of the art files. Checking the source code I couldn't find much evidence, they are refered as serpent boss and Zilla respectively, which of course doesn't dismiss the idea of Zilla being added latter as such.

I mean to say that the Serpent boss pre-dates the concept of Zilla (and may have even been "Kirin", although that's reaching), then became Zilla once the idea came to be, and ultimately lost the identify of Zilla after 3D Realms hastily repurposed him when throwing the shareware demo together. Also, the idea of the intended final boss being demoted to a sub-boss after the developers hinted otherwise doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. In fact, the the Serpent/Zilla connection came to me after I remembered reading about a similar situation on the Doomworld forums regarding Raven Software and the intended boss of Hexen after Heretic.

On a related note, there's another instance I forgot to mention in the Shadow Warrior beta of a Serpent appearance being different. In the final version of Rising Son, the first map in the registered episode, the level ends with you solving a weird color puzzle to open a door leading you to the arena where you finish off the Serpent boss from the shareware episode. However, in the beta version of Rising Son, the level just ends with you opening the silver key door to this room:


It appears the developers already intended for you to fight mini-Sumos throughout the registered episode after you were supposed to defeat his boss version in the previous woods map, the cut off for Shadow Warrior's shareware episode. Ergo, this is another example of the Serpent being missing in the beta maps which lends more credence to the idea that he was supposed to be the one-time final boss of the game.

And incidentally, the mini-Sumo pictured above doesn't actually function. It's just a static sprite.

I always suspected the reason Shadow Warrior wasn't as good as Duke was because of rushing. This confirms that fact, to me at least. Some of the levels really suck (and no surprise, they're the ones by Randy fucking Pitchford!)

Hmm, it just occurred to me that perhaps they decided that the Sumo wasn't a good character to use as a degraded boss (unlike the Battlelord/Mini Battlelords in Duke3D), maybe because of the special attacks.

Another possibility though is that perhaps the Sumo was at some point scrapped and later re-introduced into the game. The fact that the final version of this boss has completely different graphics might be indicative of this.

Or maybe because of the ongoing redesign, they had to swap bosses for the shareware version release.

MrFlibble, on 15 October 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

If you compare old screenshots, it would seem like most of the enemies had their artwork replaced at least once.
Were there really no mini-sumos in the released game? Maybe they were only in Wanton Destruction...

I think claming that the serpent god actually was Zilla is reading a bit too much into stuff. Maybe Zilla wasn't the main bad guy even though he existed as a character. And of course, making changes to a game isn't instant - he might have been planned as a boss for quite a while before they actually got around to implementing him.

Huh? There are plenty of Sumos in the second episode.

necroslut, on 15 October 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

I think that is also true for Duke.

Fox, on 15 October 2013 - 01:32 PM, said:

In the case of Duke many had their whole design changed. In Shadow Warrior, it is quite easy to follow which enemy is which just by looking at them.

It's because the enemies were redesigned by Chuck Jones.