[nukemania]

We have a preview version of Duke Nukem TMD that is noticeably different from the final.

-The disc doesn't boot up and we're relying on disc swapping and gameshark codes to view whatever content we can. This is likely causing issues in-game, though, and we might not be seeing content that should be there. It's described below. The game not starting up could be due to a security measure or copy protection on the disc, and we might be bypassing it to a certain extent.

-The music is all over the place. None are associated correctly; not playing from the start of the tracks; some maps don't play music; abruptly cutting at places and resuming at others or playing other tracks; the unused Metallic Horrific plays in one of the maps. I feel like this is neither intended nor an error with the prototype; might be related to the disc swap method we're using, the game data might not be arranged the same between retail and prototype.

-An xa music file is missing on the disc.

-No sound effects during gameplay, but might be due to swapping discs.

-FMV files missing

-Pausing the game interrupts the music. The menu text itself is pretty neat. It's orange instead of yellow and looks like it uses the 1.3D font instead of the one the retail uses which IINM is based on 1.4/1.5

-Some sprites might be different (ie requiring touching up), but it's hard to tell because most of the enemy sprites are corrupted which is very likely due to disc swapping.

-In Plug n Pray, some of the maps have text on the wall near the player at the start. They all say "V X.X" or some variation (like version 2.0).

-Ministry of Fear appears to occupy E4L5 slot, and E4L6 just doesn't load. The sentry drone at the start of Ministry of Fear is absent (correction, it's actually there but the sprite is corrupted and I didn't notice it flying away out of view the first time I played it).

-In E1L1, the theater's main lobby, the posters are actually the same as the PC version, the adult movie posters.

-Random odd difference that E1L1 has the blue keycard instead of red. Correction: it's still the "red" keycard, but this appears to be some sort of palette error. All cards and readers are blue, but the messages about the cards and required cards are correct.

-In hex editor, these texts are found:
Quirk of Nature
Hotel Motel
With Cheese
Mattfort
Mancar2
Rampage

There might be more, but I haven't tested the other levels. The prototype crashes very frequently. Some of those crashing might be related to the disc swap. We can't reach the next level after completing a given one.

This site has some pre-release material scans, including some screenshots of maps not seen in the retail game. At least one of those maps is in this prototype, possibly even mancar2.map but I haven't checked that PSM scan in a while to compare. There are total 3 cut maps, all multiplayer as there are no enemies.
I also noticed E1 has Faces of Death in slot in L7 and that arena map in L8. Maybe these are in the final version too but I first noticed these maps here when using the gameshark cheat.

I'll report back later if I find more differences, and try to get some screenshots. There is also a titlepic image file in the disc contents, uncompressed. Not sure if that's also on the retail disc. I'll link that as well soon, and also a shot of the disc's file list.

Updates:

-Uncompressed title picture file, seems to not be on the retail disc:



-Assault Trooper corpse sprite:

[Lunick]

Would love to see those screenshots

[Radar]

What are the names of those 3 cut map files that are presumably DM maps? (besides mancar2)

[Fox]

Awesome



Can you upload an ISO?

Mancar2 is an user map that can be downloaded, and it appears on some magazine scans

[nukemania]

Radar 100 Watts, on 04 January 2020 - 03:23 PM, said:

What are the names of those 3 cut map files that are presumably DM maps? (besides mancar2)

It doesn't say in-game. They have map slots E4L9-L11, and are called Blank on the loading screen and automap. They might correspond to Rampage and mattfort. Quirk of Fate is also called Blank when loading it on E4L8; it has Enforcers in it, but maybe that's in the retail as well (?).

[Phredreeke]

Lunick asked me to upscale the title screen, here it is.

Edit: Added a second upscale using a different model. Noisy, but a bit crisper.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 
• 

[OpenMaw]

That's fuggin schexy.

I'd love to see some footage.

[Jimmy]

Holy fuck dude. You have to rip this to an ISO.

[nukemania]

Screw it. Tried but I have to settle with barebones image quality on the hardware I'm able to run this on. I'm going to update the OP. These are just quick shots to demonstrate the main things that were found so far.
EDIT: Right. Can't edit OP now. Next post then.

Fox, on 04 January 2020 - 03:32 PM, said:

Awesome



Can you upload an ISO?

Mancar2 is an user map that can be downloaded, and it appears on some magazine scans

HorseDongSub69, on 04 January 2020 - 05:25 PM, said:

Holy fuck dude. You have to rip this to an ISO.

Yep, this is what he have planned, for anyone interested.

[Fox]

Perhaps a question that is too specific, but anyway...

Out of curiosity, what is the largest size of the .PMP files?

The biggest one in the final release is 1.67mb.

Files that are too big would imply they did not cut content to fit in, and there would be a lot of leftover stuff.

[nukemania]

Version numbers on walls:











Blue card palette:



Blank as map names:



Ministry of Fear is E4L5:



Alien Rendezvous is E4L7:



Pause menu:



Posters:



E4L9:



E4L10 (mancar2):



E4L11:

[Fox]

The 3 user maps:

Attached File(s)

•  Mancar2.zip (12.74K)
  Number of downloads: 450
•  newfort.zip (17.26K)
  Number of downloads: 442
•  Rampage.zip (8.74K)
  Number of downloads: 484

[Ninety-Six]

Interesting. I wonder if those usermaps were used as placeholders? Though that seems like an odd way to go about it...

[OpenMaw]

Ninety-Six, on 05 January 2020 - 12:57 AM, said:

Interesting. I wonder if those usermaps were used as placeholders? Though that seems like an odd way to go about it...

Yeah, you'd think if they needed placeholders they'd just make some box maps to slot in there or something.

[Ninety-Six]

Maybe they were trying to test the limits of their version of the engine? I've not played any of those three maps so I don't know if they were advanced in some way or not.

[Phredreeke]

Trying to think of things that changed between PC and TM versions in maps that your friends can check for.
- Is there a mirror in the room behind the moviescreen with the jetpack in Hollywood Holocaust?
- In Warp Factor, do the screens in the really ready room show the same tile?
- In Lunar Reactor, is the mirror at the toilets broken?
- Do the TVs in the apartment in Fahrenheit all show the same tile?
- Is the mirror behind Freeway's toilet broken?

[nukemania]

Fox, on 04 January 2020 - 08:27 PM, said:

Perhaps a question that is too specific, but anyway...

Out of curiosity, what is the largest size of the .PMP files?

The biggest one in the final release is 1.67mb.

Files that are too big would imply they did not cut content to fit in, and there would be a lot of leftover stuff.

Quite a few pmp files are bigger than 1.67mb. Largest one is 1.84mb according to these comparison shots (retail on left, prototype on right):

Phredreeke, on 05 January 2020 - 07:28 AM, said:

Trying to think of things that changed between PC and TM versions in maps that your friends can check for.
- Is there a mirror in the room behind the moviescreen with the jetpack in Hollywood Holocaust?
- In Warp Factor, do the screens in the really ready room show the same tile?
- In Lunar Reactor, is the mirror at the toilets broken?
- Do the TVs in the apartment in Fahrenheit all show the same tile?
- Is the mirror behind Freeway's toilet broken?

I'll look into these later today when I get home.

In the meantime, here's the disc:

[Radar]

LMAO MANCAR2

Seeing one other shot made me realize what that was. It's a bastardized version of Mancer01, which is a top classic DM map.

https://www.arrovfnu...-01-cole-savage

[Fox]

The PMP file sizes are very interesting, they appear less optimized than normal (and probably cause many errors for not having enough RAM)

They may also be the reason why the game won't run on a console, and would only work on the PSX devkit (which have 8mb of RAM or so I heard)

[NNC]

Ninety-Six, on 05 January 2020 - 12:57 AM, said:

Interesting. I wonder if those usermaps were used as placeholders? Though that seems like an odd way to go about it...

I'm pretty sure they are placeholders. They were made by 3 random people and have very poor quality. The levels of the game were all made by Ian Boffin.

[Hendricks266]

Great find! Please prioritize dumping the disc. You should try the accurate dumping guide at redump.org.

[nukemania]

Late reply. E1L1's secret behind the theater screen doesn't have the mirror. I haven't been able to try the other maps but I should be able to try them in a bit. It's worth noting that due to the game crashing so much, most levels are unplayable as the game just hangs a few seconds into the start of the maps. As Fox mention, it's possible to be related to insufficient RAM.

This is what the missing mirror section looks like, which is greenish whereas I think it's black in the retail? Maybe it just looked different in the video I compared it to.



We managed to access the title screen by disc swapping at the attract mode demos:



Doing that makes the Pig Cop corpse appear:

Fox, on 05 January 2020 - 10:31 AM, said:

The PMP file sizes are very interesting, they appear less optimized than normal (and probably cause many errors for not having enough RAM)

They may also be the reason why the game won't run on a console, and would only work on the PSX devkit (which have 8mb of RAM or so I heard)

Can you upload the PSX executable (SLUSxxx.xx)? With it we can reverse engineer the CON file to compare

For the moment, we're trying to find out more about the booting problem and frequent crashes, because we'd like to release it with a separate patch so everyone can play it right off the bat, and everything will be accessible. We're tagging in some people to help with this and may recruit from here, too. Even if it can't be fixed, no matter what, it will be released (redump guide is being used).

[Fox]

Have you tried emulators? They may bypass the hardware disk protection

Disk swapping sounds similar to loading the savestate from another game. It's only natural that this leads to corrupted data.

Lastly, is it possible the disk is damaged?

[nukemania]

Yes we've tested on emulators and are experiencing the same things. Some things we've found out for sure are causing at least some problems, but modifying those aren't enough to fix the problem, it seems.

For disc damage, that's one of the possibilities we're considering, but we seriously hope not. It's a preservationist's bane when that happens.

[Fox]

We should still be able to rip the CON, maps, art and etc so it's still preservation

[nukemania]

Yeah, at least. It'll all be available.
Small update that the rest of the maps Phredreeke suggested to try also crash at the start of the maps.

[nukemania]

Update: So we got the game running properly now. Thankfully there was no damage to the disc. A few of the screenshots are incorrect.

-That unfiltered titlepic I uploaded earlier is the bootup screen. You press start to continue
-Ministry of Fear's track plays during the main menu.
-The main menu is navigated by start (choose a selection) and select (go back to previous menu). It is X and Triangle in the final.

Actual title screen:



Controller presets are clearly not the same:





And Nick's Bass is OLD:



Sound options menu looks like this:



Something seems different here...:



(and yes, enemies respawn!)

Pause Menu (music doesn't interrupt actually):



Are there Y/N buttons on a PS1 controller?



How about a space key?



A release is much more imminent now.

[Fox]

Could it be there's some connection PSX port and that infamous Total Meltdown add-on compilation?

I cannot but notice it includes these 3 user maps

[Fox]

[Phredreeke]

Do any PS1 emulators have the ability to use more than the default 2 MB RAM?

Please dump so Fox can get his paws on it.

I wonder what else is different...