[Sanek]

Duke3D was released 23 years ago and we still play it. Of course, it's hard to have nostalgia for a game that you play on a regular basis.
But I'm sure that your expierence of the game back then is different that it is today. So...do you have any memories of your early days of kickin' ass?

Here's my memories of playing a game when I was a kid:

1. Actually being scared of octabrains and underwater in general.
2. Ambient alien sounds was scary too! I usually just skipped most of the E2L4 because of it.
3. I thought that the sounds of switching weapons was so cool that sometimes I just constantly switched the weapons for the heck of it.
4. I thought that I was extremely accurate with rocket launcher - I didn't know about autoaim at first.
5. I hated drones because the game occasionally crashed because of these fuckers.
6. I didin't know the Battlelord's name, so I just called him "the scariest one", because he seemed like one to the young kid.
7. Also didn't know the Enforcer's name, for some unexplained reason I thought it was a mutated RABBIT of a sort.
8. While there's a night skybox in the city levels, I was under impression that it was actualy a daytime because of how bright it is. E1L1 and E3L4 was the only ones that actualy looked like night levels.

Do you had any similar memories? Let me know.

[Ninety-Six]

sounds fun.

1. I was terrified of octabrains at first, too. They look and sound pretty horrifying.
2. I used to count Lunar Apocalypse as my least favorite episode because of how dark and oppressive it was. Now it's my favorite for those same reasons.
3. It took me years to understand the dead liztroop sprite. I only saw the blood stain and the teeth and could not correctly interpret the image.
4. I used to have way too much fun just messing around in Movie Set and Pigsty. I'm not even sure how.
5. I remember always using shift+F5 to change the music to either Taking Names or Aliens Say Your Prayers. Part of that was my aversion to dark things, and part of it was our terrible sound card that made those more somber songs excessively quiet.
6. I got so fed up with trying to find the red key in Babe Land that I gave up on trying and just DNSTUFF'd my way through. This lasted until I got the game back and decided to just sit down and try to figure it out one more time.
7. I used to DNSTUFF just to go wild with the shrinker.
8. I didn't find either Lunatic Fringe or Tier Drops until after I returned to the game with a fresh disk from 3DR. I remember always hearing about the "Secret level with a 720 degree circle" and kept thinking they were talking about Spin Cycle, and not quite understanding how that was possible. Needless to say, finding it for the first time and having reality just bend over and die was quite the experience.
9. I used to be terrified of the track in Rabid Transit because of how often I got ran over back then. It didn't help that the red door was on the tracks, and it took me quite a while to get over my fear. Until then I just kind of panic-sprinted to the door and prayed to god I would survive.
10. For some insane reason, I thought the secret firing squad execution room in Pigsty was a radio station. I also thought the interrogation room was a radio station because of the microphone. I did indeed find it weird that this police station had two separate radio rooms (I can not for the life of me figure out how I ever interpreted the execution room as a radio station)
11. I used to misinterpret the events of Lunar Apocalypse as Duke navigating a massive starship at it flies towards, and eventually lands on, the moon. I was only mildly disappointed when I found out the truth.
12. I missed almost all the references. ...This one is still partially true, actually. i live under a rock

[NNC]

1. Loved Hollywood Holocaust, the cinema thing (yay, I can go inside), the early secrets that were showed in the demo, the hydrant, the toilets, the movie, the entire level.
2. Loved Red Light District too. Strippers, adult bookstore, airplanes, building can be demolished, freakin' Octabrain!
3. Death Row: it was scary, frustrating and hard. I loved it. I didn't find the way out, but saw pigcops on the other side of the door with security camera, so there must be some way. And then, the submarine. How far did I get?
4. Toxic Dump, swimming, there can be more Octabrains on the map than 1, the crane, the shrinker puzzle (and not to die in it), more swimming (holy crap, why?), the gears. Again, how far is the nukebutton?
5. The Abyss. I got lost. This place is scary. Cacti hurt. I want more Pigcops, even they can't bear this place. Shrinker. More clueless wandering. Amazon in the secret!!! Ouch, long way down. That scary sound. And the Satan himself with a chaingun.
(after like 10 playthroughs)
6. Launch Facilty. Another level? REALLY? And I can blow up a rocket! (Wow, this poor level looked so good back then, just because of being a secret level).

Honestly, the demo episode was amazing. It's one of the best FPS adventures ever. Everything (almost) is so perfect. I very rarely found that excitement later on with this game, despite playing many maps. The five regular levels firmly belong to my top 20 levels of all time, some may be in my top 10.

After that:

7. Full version, demo of Dark Side. Wow, this thing is very good. More excitement. (Which wasn't followed eventually, but Dark Side, along with a few other levels like Fusion Station - dat reactor - were and are amazing).
8. Expansion pack. Wow, another episode out of blue. Thunderstorm in It's Impossible, and a girl broadcasts a weather forecast. And that tape self destructs! Did I mention the newbeasts in the end? It's Impossible was mind blowing back in those days.
9. Critical Mass and Derelict. Just triggering an atomic reactor to self destruct. How scary it can be? And that ceiling really fell. Then a big ship outside. Derelict. MORES STORM! And what a cool leveldesign it had. I loved it (although I have cheated in many parts, as it was hard).

Bonus 10. 25 years later we get a new mapset by the kings themselves. It wasn't exactly mindblowing, but Mirage Barrage and especially Golden Carnage were magic. Golden Carnage gave me vibes of 1996. That level legitimately looked like LA's awesome Meltdown.

And some usermap moments:

A. That Aqua series looked so good back then, maybe because the other maps in those packs were so bad.
B. Red3 by Merlijn van Oostrum. That level brought me into the Duke community. So if you hate me for my presence, blame Merlijn!
C. A Dream by Zyvkov Eddy... Well, a reasonable city map. all nice. OVER HERE! That harmless vent. What happened here? It was mind blowing. And somehow I returned into reality. But yeah, it's not the same place anymore. What are these big gaps in the shopping center?
D. Last Reaction and Water Bases. That was the TC. It made every other TC dull. That second episode felt like an official expansion. I was even thinking: did I pirate something? Those desolated drones in the final maps. And that boss!
E. Duke Forever 2013 TC. Seriously, this must have been made. And it was so satisfying. Not perfect (I'm still waiting for 2.0.), but lovely and adventurous. And a DLC had an awesome ride, enter Davox.

Nah, enough of ranting.

[t800]

On nostalgia trip are we, eh? Cant blame you.

Few notes: I didnt have full version only shareware at first. My computer skills at that time were pretty much limited to playing games on our Windows 95. And better not talk about english (not native speaker you know), I sucked quite much in elementary school at it.
1. I remember finding about U and I enabling mouse aim and crosshair. Felt like unlocking secret to pro playing. Still hated inverted mouse aiming but didnt know how to change it to normal, so got used to it. But still not fan of it to this day.
2. Bicycle-kicking was my thing. Thought I was doing double damage and laughing out at image of Duke walking on his hands.
3. I didnt understand concept of "book shop" from E1L2 at all. Why were there those small cabins with TVs?
4. In the same shop, that back room with 3 button combo code was scary to me. Because of those aliens ambushing you in darkness after you return down.
5. Kept trying for so long to avoid capture in end of E1L2. Thought it was trap for stupid players, so I wasted lot of energy trying to avoid it before giving it up.
6. At start of E1L3 I remember dying few times because I didnt understand what was going on, why was I hurting. Even after I realized what was going on I still found that beginning quite brutal. Didnt know back then about shotgun secret under electric chair, so I was trying to bicycle-kick to death all those aliens.
7. Dont even get me started for how long I was stuck on that damned level. Didnt understand hint from that big map screen, so I just roamed and roamed all over place until I accidently went trought that fake poster wall. Was quite mad at developers for doing such cryptic thing.
8. And of course Octobrians and their ear screeching roar. Quite effective trick to make them more scary. Nowadays, packing hefty load of devastator rounds just for them I only find their sounds annoying.

[Sanek]

@t800 yeah I just recalled all this stuff while playing the original 1.3 dos version after so many years

Ninety-Six, on 29 August 2019 - 01:56 AM, said:

12. I missed almost all the references. ...This one is still partially true, actually. i live under a rock

Me too. The only references that I was aware of back then was E4L1, Mickey Mouses and Indiana Jones.

Since we're also talking about user maps, here's my memories:

1. Nuke It CD was a huge source of nostalgia for me. It was the only the collection I had back then. Every time I hear the deathtoll.midi, I was remembring these levels. Also, what's the name of that deathtoll replacement that was one on every collection back then?

2. Duke NW seemed like a huge leap in quality after 1996 user maps. The mirror floor part was so mind-blowing back then!

3. Making my first map (CAFE) with my friend back in 2003 on MS-DOS. It was a piece of crap, be we were so proud of it! We used floppy disks so I can have fun with the map while at home. Yes, I used floppy disks in 2003. When we got bored with Duke, we played Wing Commander. Oh boy.

3. I thought of Fusion TC as the best TC ever back then, because it was so jam-packed with features from other games it was unbelievable.

4. On opinions site called lovehate.ru, I saw some russian people posting their opinions of the game, and one of those people was Lezing.

5. Cinema Walker Part 2 was TC that I was most excited back then. I was dreaming about maps set in typical russian neighborhood. I'm still disappointed that he never finished it.

6. Roch series was THE user maps, everything else seemed like a step behind.

7. Almost 11 years ago (geez!) me and Zykov Eddy started talking together, and we set up the russian community and made two community maps and all the gang were here in one place. Good old days!

[Never Forgotten]

Many, many memories with it. But I'll keep it simple.

1. Watching my dad play it before I was allowed to. He'd always kill the women to avoid nudity, instead of turning adult mode off for some reason, that is until he got the ooooold xxx pack. Then adult mide was very rarely on.

2. Secretly playing with adult mode on while my parents were asleep was always fun, especially after we discovered the xxx pack.

3. The User maps my dad had downloaded, the most memorable was timecop, because it ALWAYS crashed everytime we opened it.

4. HRP. Some of my fondest memories were in the early days of HRP.

5. Last but not least, always going out of my way to not kill the babes. In bank roll, save before opening the vault, then get the battlelords out. Kill them and the Octanrains, then shrink the pod babes, then blow the explosives up. Babes saved. Raw meat, set pipebombs outside of the sliding doors. Open the doors, but don't watch, then blow them up. The babes will be safe.

Ahh, good times.

[pacman]

I was traumatised for a while due octabrains. The look and sound combo was lethal. And it was even more insane when it was underwater or in reverb zones.

[ck3D]

Had the Octabrain thing (they wouldn't scare me per se but I would find them annoying, especially in packs), also took me years to decipher not just the dead Liztroop sprite (really funny seeing this mentioned, I thought I had to be the only one) but also the dead Pigcop sprite, for some reason I'd keep picturing it laying face down and in that pose the frame then resembles a bloody Super Mario Bros Bowser sprite or Doom-like creature or something that to me made more sense somehow. Every now and then to this day I'll occasionally still have a double take then laugh at myself.

The enemy I was legit scared of was the Overlord, but that was partly to growing up mostly playing the N64 version of the game where you encounter them in packs as minibosses, for some reason in general minibosses were too oppressive for me and regularly made for jump scares and panic in-game deaths. Getting physically crushed by a boss was also my nightmare, I really never wanted to take that close of a look at such heavy masses of pixels. I also used to be scared of Newbeasts as a kid before I figured out the chain gun technique (so probably not for long), not because of their design but because of their silence, sheer power, jumping abilities and the general threat they caused in tight spaces.

My version of the Nuke It CD was called Come Get Some! with 1000 levels, I remember going through them all just to peep at the author's design styles and get gameplay ideas, that was before I got the internet so late 90's early 2000's and for some reason the maps that would stand out to me the most out of the whole pack were two deathmatch maps, both involving houses and a city block. Binn.map and the other one had to be something generic like a Myhouse.map but it was actually brilliantly designed, both in terms of looks and layout (whereas The Binn was a bit rougher around the edges but still, particularly creative). Something about their design was super original, all the while being abnormally detailed and fresh at the time. Also remember loving the Aqua maps and really all the classics that were on that CD in doubles or triples, each map felt so unique at the time (as they were still a scarce resource) they legit felt like full on games or adventures of their own.

Favorite weapons as a kid were the pipe bombs and trip bombs (regardless of their actual effectiveness) because for some reason, something about blowing up stuff from distance felt so tech, or even like some esper shit.

I made like three versions of a map based on my high school at the time and only realized years later how bad it could have been interpreted after hearing about school shootings being a thing in other countries and that school was renowned as one of the most conservative in the region, too. Wouldn't prevent me from programming satire fighting games, rogue likes and shoot them ups involving my classmates and the school staff and sharing them on the calculators of anyone who would request.

Favorite alternative thing to do in the game for a while as a bored kid was to just turn on God mode, maybe even monsters off and fly around the levels to explore each of the nooks and crannies with the unlimited jetpack. Consequently I'd regularly have dreams where I'd be peacefully flying around in the game, and then run out of jetpack.

[Ninety-Six]

ck3D, on 29 August 2019 - 02:02 PM, said:

but also the dead Pigcop sprite, for some reason I'd keep picturing it laying face down and in that pose the frame then resembles a bloody Super Mario Bros Bowser sprite or Doom-like creature or something that to me made more sense somehow. Every now and then to this day I'll occasionally still have a double take then laugh at myself.

I forgot to mention it, but yeah I struggled to decipher the dead pigcop as well (though I figured it out much earlier than the liztroop, which is probably why I didn't think about it).

[Mark]

When DN3D came out I was almost 40 years old so there was no scare factor for me and the WOW factor may have been less because I was already playing computer games for close to 15 years. Oddly I don't remember a lot of details about those first months of playing the game. But I do remember the countless hours of tieing up our telephone lines with friends and brothers for deathmatching over my 56k modem. Then I set up a 2nd computer at my house with a nullmodem cable for LAN fun.That phase lasted close to a year. Then we all moved on to something else.

[Kyanos]

Mark, on 29 August 2019 - 04:15 PM, said:

...deathmatching over my 56k modem...

The most nostalgic part of Duke is the lag.
Ace of spades hit the nail on the head too. Must be some type of interpolation Ken does cause his engines lag the best!

[Radar]

All I remember about the early days of Duke is that I started with the original DOS shareware version. I got it from a disk of 1000 shareware games. I spent a week trying to get off the roof, not realizing I had to shoot the fan. Then I spent a month just walking around the streets of E1L1. I didn't know how to get in the theater because I couldn't read the F1 help screen for the controls. I was 10 years old and it was too pixely. I played it every day because the atmosphere of the street was amazing. The dark and gritty setting really captured me. I LOVED keeping it open just to hear that ambient scream, and that helicopter sound. Who was screaming? Who was in the helicopter? Man that always got me. I wonder if the betas have any information on where those sounds came from. I remember my friends all thought I was retarded because they played CoD and Halo and I played Dook with bAd GrApHiCs. "OMG TH0SE GFX SUX!!! UR NOT L33T G4M3R!!!!!" LMAO Yeah I got bullied for playing Dook.

[Hank]

Memories? Sort of!
My office played it, local, via lan, it was exiting. Then, I discovered Build on the main CD. A program, hmm, what does that do? Oh, lots of shit! Bought my own Duke 3D. Best investment to date. I know, it’s not Duke 3D related, but Build, and later on, mapster, where the easiest map software to actually make maps/textures etc. It got me into the groove, to this day.

P.s. to this day, I never finished Duke 3D. The Queen, and those spawns. Hell, fuck it.

[Seb Luca]

Great idea of subject, Sanec
For sure, the subtle mixture of octopus and spider that makes the Octos did not give them "a lucky charm's face"


I was 10 when Duke3D was released. I was fascinated by the large amount of novelty the game offered compared to Doom:

- In particular, the fact of being able to destroy a large number of objects.

- The devastator was a huge happiness

- An urban setting, the fact of being able to enter the buildings ... this immersion! This feeling of freedom! Grandiose!

- Of course ... the possibility to create our own maps! I spent many hours doing it (what a surprise, in here!)

[the_raven]

DN3D was the first "modern" pc game that I played (until that point I had only played stuff like Tetris, Alley Cat, Arkanoid, and a bunch of others made for older computers like Amiga and the like; or was it the very first pc game I played in general? ), naturally, it immediately became my favourite. We had just gotten our first computer, I remember the guy who came to install it (the computer) had a cd with some really ugly faces on a bloody-red background on its cover, and that cd had DN3D, among some other stuff. He asked me if I wanted a cool game to play, I said 'yes', and he installed it. Thank you, sir! Now, I don't remember much of my impressions from the gameplay back then, since I was kinda little and couldn't even get past E1L2 ( ), but what I do remember is:

• GIBS!
  
• The Ripper. I loved it, it felt so powerful. My dad didn't, he liked the shotgun because it was mostly a one-hit-kill against the weaker enemies and didn't waste as much ammo. Yup, we sometimes took turns playing the game. I kinda miss it, could never get him to play a video-game with me after that.
  
• E3L1 - for some strange reason, the music I memorized when I first played the level is different from the I heard playing on later playthroughs. Maybe they changed it across versions?
  
• I noticed that some of you guys were afraid of octabrains, well, me too, especially when they'd shoot that energy bubble.
  
• I mostly played the game without any sound, either because I couldn't set it up, or because the computer didn't have any kind of speakers (well, it was on subsequent playthroughts)
  
• I have never been much of an early bird, so my dad motivated me to wake up in the mornings to go to kindergarten by allowing me to play a level of the game until I either died, or passed it. It was fun!
  
• The only cheat I knew for the game was DNSTUFF, and I used the heck out of it.
  
• I was so proud of myself when I discovered that a couple of shots from the shotgun were all I needed to get rid of those mounted turrets.
  
• Lunar Apocalypse was my favourite episode, still is in fact, though not as much. I remember when you first spawn at the beginning of level 1, there' that darn spaceship outside that does a flyby and shoots at the window you're standing near. I was always so upset about it that I'd try to shoot it, not realizing that the window had an impenetrable forcefield, and that I was just wasting ammo (and health, standing there).
  
• My cousin would sometimes come over to play the game too, and I'd be so impressed by his skill, and how he'd reach Flood Zone (the level just felt so atmospheric to me). He (as well as his sister, my cousin as well, obviously) were more Quake fans though.
  
• The brown cliff levels felt atmospheric in general. Them brown cliffs are like a 90's staple for aliens-related stuff. Maybe I just watched to much X-files, I don't know.
  
• A more recent memory: I was in high school and was playing on the XXX-Stacy level, particularly, the set where two girls are on a bed and a dominatrix is standing next to them. Suddenly, my mom entered the room (she came to take her nose-drops or something), saw the scene was like "What the hell is that?", and I calmly tell her that I'm just playing Duke Nukem. It was at that point, I think, she realized that I shouldn't have been playing this game as a kid.
  
• Oh, how many times I'd kill myself trying to use the RPG at inappropriate times!
  
• My favourite enemy was the enforcer, obviously, because he gave me ammo for the ripper.
  
• I'd call the assault troopers a particular insulting name, not a swear, but still insulting. I can't translate it though, don't know its equivalent in English.
  
• I also thought the assault troopers were fashioned after felines because of their head shape. Maybe a mix of felines with reptiles (because of their feet and tails).
  
• My second favourite weapon was the Devastator because I could blow stuff up with it without dying, unlike with the RPG. Since I didn't exactly understand its design at the time, I assumed it was robotic arms rather than two low-cal missile launchers. Still, made me feel really cool, like Jax from Mortal Kombat.
  
• I also really liked the Freeze Ray's design.
  
• Destructable walls were a lot of fun!
  
• I also thought Duke was somehow related to the Terminator.

[Ninety-Six]

the_raven, on 05 September 2019 - 09:49 AM, said:

E3L1 - for some strange reason, the music I memorized when I first played the level is different from the I heard playing on later playthroughs. Maybe they changed it across versions?

Maybe it was because of your soundcard that it sounded off?

the_raven, on 05 September 2019 - 09:49 AM, said:

I mostly played the game without any sound, either because I couldn't set it up, or because the computer didn't have any kind of speakers (well, it was on subsequent playthroughts)

...wait, huh?

the_raven, on 05 September 2019 - 09:49 AM, said:

My second favourite weapon was the Devastator because I could blow stuff up with it without dying, unlike with the RPG. Since I didn't exactly understand its design at the time, I assumed it was robotic arms rather than two low-cal missile launchers. Still, made me feel really cool, like Jax from Mortal Kombat.

My father and uncle used to believe similarly, calling it the "rocket gloves" instead of the Devastator. Still do, actually.

the_raven, on 05 September 2019 - 09:49 AM, said:

I also thought Duke was somehow related to the Terminator.

i mean you're not entirely wrong

[NNC]

XXX Stacy was interesting back then because it felt like a lost episode 3 level trapped in episode 4. Considering some of the map's lo tag numbers, it's actually the right assumption. Everything between the blue key window and the red key door felt like Fahrenheit part 2. Also it's the only map with organic FEM sprites. The maps' biggest surprise was the sentry drone though. When I first found it, I realized it was missing in the entire episode except for the first level.

[Sanek]

Ninety-Six, on 05 September 2019 - 01:55 PM, said:

...wait, huh?

It was common problem in the DOS days, because of the different soundcards and because most people can't figure out how to set up the game in the right way. IRQ 7 dma 2 and all the stuff...

The Watchtower, on 06 September 2019 - 01:23 AM, said:

XXX Stacy was interesting back then because it felt like a lost episode 3 level trapped in episode 4. Considering some of the map's lo tag numbers, it's actually the right assumption.

What's lo-tags got to do with it?

The Watchtower, on 06 September 2019 - 01:23 AM, said:

The maps' biggest surprise was the sentry drone though. When I first found it, I realized it was missing in the entire episode except for the first level.

I wonder why. I think that's because of that annoying bug in 1.3D when the whole game crashed because of these fuckers. Perhaps the problem didn't solved during the map's development, so they decided to cut the guys. Or maybe they got feedback that most players hate drones.

Spoiler

Too bad Voidpoint didn't listen and put these annoying spiders ALL OVER their game

[NNC]

I think they cut them because of the bug, that always matters more, hard to believe they got that many feedbacks at the dawn of the internet. I also think the sped up machine ambience sound was the reason of the crash. In World Tour, they use the same sound but with normal speed. At least the new episode had a healthy number of drones without ever reaching the annoying level. Other notable sound crashes happened at the end of the episode 4 intro, and with the corrupted wind54.voc in Caribbean (on Map 6 and 7).

As for the drones' popularity, I never understood the hate. They don't make that much damage, can be cleared easily, including the door trick. I think only Incubator and Warp Factor (and to a lesser extent, Fahrenheit) went over the top with them. Mini Battlelord is clearly worse, it was easily the hardest boss in the game, due to the annoying hitscan hell.

[the_raven]

Ninety-Six, on 05 September 2019 - 01:55 PM, said:

Maybe it was because of your soundcard that it sounded off?

Might have been the sound card.
Holy smokes, I just found it! It did sound different (at least, the intro)! Apparently, it was the hardware.
Here's how it sounded back then:

And here's a more modern version:

[Merlijn]

Fun topic!

Some of my memories:

1. The demo's for Duke and Doom were the first 3D shooters I ever played, they were both on a compilation CD ROM. I vastly preferred Duke because of the immersive city environments. Seeing those huge skycrapers around me and the hollywood sign in the background was extremely impressive (I wasn't aware of the concept of skyboxes at the time, so I thought it was part of the level )

2. First thing I tried when getting the jetpack: fly out of the map towards the hollywood sign. Of course that didn't work.

3. Our demo version did not have sound, only music. So we had to imagine what the enemies would sound like. It did make the game even more atmospheric though.

4. We also came up with our own names for the enemies because the demo didn't have a manual. Pig cops were Schweinhunds (pig dogs), liztroops were raptors etc.

5. I also tried to escape the trap at the end of E1L2 so many times. I thought it would be possible to jump through the window in the ceiling just before the trap.
Again, I didn't know the limitations of the engine at that time. In my defense, it is pretty confusing level design to put a window plus a bunch of crates at that particular spot.

6. Our father eventually bought the full game for us, even though he personally thought it was way too violent. Good dad.

7. When we got the full game with all sounds enabled, a part of E1L5 became unplayable for me because those weird monk chants creeped me out.

8. Lunar Apocalypse was extremely impressive for me at the time, seeing spaceships fly around and the Earth in the background was just awesome.
At this point I did understand it was just a skybox, don't worry. Didn't make it any less awesome though.

9. I hated the sentry drones because their explosion would gib the corpses of fallen enemies, making them disappear. I wanted hallways filled with the corpes of the enemies I killed, damnit!

10. Shrapnel City felt disappointing because most of the levels were so small and (IMO) too brightly lit. As Sanek mentioned, it's supposed to be a city at night.
But most E3 maps feel like they're taking place in the middle of the day.

11. This one is extremely stupid but: when playing Lunatic Fringe the first time I didn't even realize it was a 720 circle.


As for user maps:

A. Maarten and I learned mapping through trial and error. I vividly remember the sense of triumph when we managed to add a functioning enemy into the map haha.

B. When I made Red1/The long road, I was convinced it was a masterpiece. But the first version actually got rejected at MSDN, Mikko said the level wasn't good enough.
After I made a couple of tweaks he reluctantly gave it a (not so positive) review. So yeah, the map used to be even worse.

C. The Roch maps were the ones that introduced me to 'modern' design and made me realize how much was possible with the engine.

[the_raven]

Merlijn, on 08 September 2019 - 12:59 AM, said:

2. First thing I tried when getting the jetpack: fly out of the map towards the hollywood sign. Of course that didn't work.

Oooh! Me too! Though I figured that there was an "invisible wall" preventing me from getting to the Hollywood sign, so instead, I tried to reach the roofs of those skyscrapers, only to run out of Jetpack and fall to my death. Good times!

[Putrid Pete]

Sadly I missed out on Duke back in the day. I only got around to playing it in 2013 when the megaton edition was released on steam. I do have memories of Duke from my childhood, despite not playing it. Well, sort of not playing it. My best friend who lived across my house had Duke Nukem 64 and we played a lot against each other. My cousin had that Duke game on the playstation that was like in third person, but don't remember which one. He let me borrow it for a weekend, and I remember not being able to get very far in it. I must have been around 8 or 9 at the time.

The biggest and saddest memory I have of Duke, was finding the atomic edition on sale in some bargain bin very cheap this one time I visited NYC on a summer. I think it was the summer of '99 when I was 9. I asked my mom to buy it for me, and she said the game has strippers in it and refused to buy it. Always hilarious to me that she bought me Doom, Quake, Shadow Warrior (not knowing it had some mild sexual content in it), Blood, etc. Lots of gore were a-okay, but booty was too much!

[Sanek]

Merlijn, on 08 September 2019 - 12:59 AM, said:

10. Shrapnel City felt disappointing because most of the levels were so small and (IMO) too brightly lit. As Sanek mentioned, it's supposed to be a city at night.
But most E3 maps feel like they're taking place in the middle of the day.

It's not that I had any trouble with it. I knew that brightly lit streets doesn't match with the night city skybox, but I actually made myself believe that it's actually a daytime during most of the game.


Hey, another thing I remember that back when I didn't have internet, I used to come to the local video game shop once in a while, asking "Is DNF out yet?". It was early-to-mid 2000s. If I only knew...

[Mister Sinister]

I don't get nostalgic abouth anything at all, but DN is somehow an exception of this rule.
In chronological order:

My first introduction to DN3D happened when I was 4 years old. My dad owned a Pentium I PC (that's what he called it anyway) and used to play the game almost every evening, and I would sit by his side and watch him play. The game scared the living hell out of me, but my dad would let me shoot the monsters sometimes, which provided a bit of a relief. He called every monster "freak" and every time he'd let me play the game he sat by my side and said stuff like "kill the freaks" or "there's a lot of freaks in this room, kill'em all".

Dad owned both Nuclear Winter and Life's a Beach, but the latter didn't work since every CD we had were pirate copies because 90s, so I only got to play Nuclear Winter as a kid. The game was glitchy as shit and many times it spawned fucking Santa Claws bots instead of XMas PigCops. They obliterated me and made the game absolutely unplayable. I vividly remember every time I launched the game I would rush to the presents in the club and try to kick them open (that was another accompanied glitch - presents didn't work, elves and snowmen didn't move and etc). BTW I loved Nuclear Winter and everytime it would launch correctly I was always trying to make the most of my allowed PC time. I got around playing Life's a Beach only when I was like 16-18 years old.

The Duke Nukem CD we owned had a few funny things - one of those was a particularly creepy screensaver which made the DN3D monsters fall to the bottom of the screen and it would eventually flood the screen completely with corpses. Everytime the monster fell to the bottom of the screen it woudld trigger a "SQUISH" sound effect for complete immersion. It was so fucking frightening that it made me cry several times and I couldn't be around the PC. Too bad I can't find this screensaver now, it's dope as shit.

We had another Duke Nukem CD which contained hundreds of usermaps - that was my first exposure to custom made content. As I got older I'd spend many hours going through every single map present on the CD. I can't remember what was the CD called and I can't find it anymore, but this was amazing to me at the time. I always tried to complete the map, but at the time I couldn't tell the difference between DM map and SP map.

The very first thing I discovered in regards to DN modding is how to change user.con files. I compiled several episodes made of other people's work and I played the heck of it. I showed it to my friend - he was blown away (we were 10-11 years old). Eventually I got my hands on BUILDED or what's it called and tried to make a map - I made a room with an Overlord, a bucnh of ammo and a few slopes. Also this was the first time I tried using "kexctract" and even successfully so. I got very inspired, painted the pistol red and made a small map which was reminiscent of a E4M4 of Blood ("crystal Lake") - it was a forest with a small cabin and a bunch of stuff, looked like shit. All of this stuff is lost now.

When I was 12 years old we ditched the old computer and finally bought a brand new top PC at the time - the first games I got were Painkiller and Half-Life 2. Loved those games and still do. At the time I got my information about new games from a popular russian gaming magazine "Igromania". The magazine came with a bunch of CDs filled to the brim with content - videoreviews, mods, drivers and etc. Once I was browsing through the pages and found out that in the latest CD they included Duke Nukem HRP. I was in awe and got inspired to play the game again. It fucking blew me away and I tried to shove this into the throat of every friend I had, I was NUTS about HRP. After messing around with HRP I noticed that someting named "Mapster32" was included and my modding obsession began again.

After several failed attempts of making a map and learning stuff about Mapster32 the hard way, I began making my first serious Duke Nukem project. It was called "Vengeance Duke", which consisted of 2 insanely hard episodes, a bunch of pirated Marilyn Manson/Korn/Slipknot songs, custom art, sounds and etc. I spent almost a year making it. Everytime I made a new map a friend would come over to my house and test it, he loved it, he loved the difficulty, he loved the traps, the design, but he always said the Episode 1 was better than Episode 2, but I didn't care, I was on fire. At the time I was 13-15 years old and it was my first contact with social media. I registered a VK account, somehow found the DN3D Russian Community (which consisted of many Russian mappers you know like Eddy, Sanek, Lezing and etc.) and teased the mod there. After sometime it got released there and I also made a torrent which is still somewhere on RuTracker.org. I even made a cover - some black and white DN fan art with old english gothic font slapped on it (I was a moody kid back then).
Then I got my first respones - both Eddy and Sanek said that the mod is a stinking pile of shit.
You can find this mod with a few pirated songs cut on this forums under the name "Der Ist Mars" released on April's Fools Day.

And then I made "Bad Weekend". The rest is history.

[ck3D]

This thread delivers, love reading everyone's stories. Everyone's different backgrounds is making me wonder how many local, non-English speaking Duke communities there (still) are out there and how well they are doing nowadays, I remember a lot of crews/reviews/message boards in different languages still around a few years back, and some of those websites are still up. But besides this place here, most of the OG universal forums are pretty dead (DN-R, AMC etc...) that I know of; I wonder how many fans are still active in ways I just can't directly keep track of because of the language barrier.

Sanek, on 11 September 2019 - 10:53 PM, said:

Hey, another thing I remember that back when I didn't have internet, I used to come to the local video game shop once in a while, asking "Is DNF out yet?". It was early-to-mid 2000s. If I only knew...

If you still live in the same city and that shop is still there with the same people working (fifteen years later that's unlikely, but yeah), you should totally go back in 2019 and give them the exact same line. Then, enjoy witnessing even more confusion propagate when they realize you don't even want the game and you just let out one big sigh that could be interpreted as either relief, disbelief or dismay.

[Altered Reality]

Here are some of my most vivid memories regarding Duke Nukem 3D.

1) Buying a computer magazine during a school trip in May 1995, and reading a preview that described it as "better than Doom", with screenshots of urban environments, space stations and the Moon. The aliens shown in the screenshots were still the silver humanoids shown in early screenshots, and the Ripper was still a plasma cannon. According to the preview, the game started on the Moon, then we would visit various space stations, and only at the end the action would move to Los Angeles. The preview already mentioned the expander, while it considered the shrinker as merely an alt-fire mode.
That's when I got hooked.

2) Watching a video preview of the game on MTV while my dad was sleeping on the couch. The preview still showed the plasma cannon and the silver aliens, so by this time I was firmly convinced they would be featured in the game.

3) reading a leaflet about it in a computer store. It stated that Duke Nukem 3D would "out-Doom Doom and out-Quake Quake".

4) Trying a one-level demo from a coverdisk that could be run a limited amount of times (except that it could be deleted and reinstalled all the times you wanted and the counter would be reset). I was absolutely astonished, I had never seen anything more REALISTIC running on a PC, and in "high" resolution too (meaning 480p)! The magazine that came with that coverdisk had an in-depth review of the game, showing all the weapons and mentioning the included level editor.

5) Finally, buying the game and having an absolute blast with it. However, I was perplexed about the lack of silver aliens, and I thought the plasma cannon was made less interestng by turning it into a chaingun.

6) Attempting to make new levels for it: first, by making Doom levels and converting them with the included Wad2Map, then directly. One of my first attempts was an approximate reproduction of the bridge of the Enterprise D, after trying and failing to find it in the map Warp Factor. Another one was inspired by the arcade shooter Area 51, which levels I wanted to be able to explore in real time.

[NNC]

When I finished the shareware episode and saw the preview pics exiting the game I firmly expected "space station" and "moonbase" to be the 2nd and 3rd episodes in the final version. Also expected the laser tripbomb to something extraordinary, it was heavily advertised back then. Also expected the laser gun to be the last weapon. When my friend (RIP) said in school there is a weapon which freezes the enemies, I thought he just mixed up something and didn't believe him for a second.

[Sanek]

ck3D, on 23 October 2019 - 02:56 AM, said:

This thread delivers, love reading everyone's stories. Everyone's different backgrounds is making me wonder how many local, non-English speaking Duke communities there (still) are out there and how well they are doing nowadays, I remember a lot of crews/reviews/message boards in different languages still around a few years back, and some of those websites are still up. But besides this place here, most of the OG universal forums are pretty dead (DN-R, AMC etc...) that I know of; I wonder how many fans are still active in ways I just can't directly keep track of because of the language barrier.

The russian vk group was huge when Eddy and I started it back in 2008. Everybody was making maps, discussing the game and stuff. Eventually, it wall kinda slowed down over the years; nobody's talking to each other anymore. I remember we had some argument over RCBP III development, but I don't think it's the reason. Still, it's sad that Eddy de facto left the community by now. Not to mention the rest of the gang.

However, the most unfortunate was the CGS forums demise. I remember when it was just started it was full of activity, and people like Bob Averill and reflex17 used to come over there. I believe that one of the reasons why people used to come over there is because of the folks who only used that particular forum to share their maps and opinions. I actually think that we all betrayed Puritan when we all migrated over here at duke4.

[Perro Seco]

Radar 100 Watts, on 29 August 2019 - 04:51 PM, said:

I LOVED keeping it open just to hear that ambient scream, and that helicopter sound. Who was screaming? Who was in the helicopter? Man that always got me.

Those sounds also captured my attention when I was a kid. The ambient scream is not only a scream, there's another sound mixed with it, what is it? There's also another sound that is not the scream, the helicopter or the ship, but I don't know what is it either. Maybe a building collapsing? Some kind of aircraft passing through?