[HulkNukem]

A Kingpin remaster/rework of sorts by 3DRealms for consoles and PC.

3DRealms has been on a roll lately.

[OpenMaw]

HulkNukem, on 17 January 2020 - 09:29 AM, said:

https://www.youtube....h?v=bIZncEjZoig

A Kingpin remaster/rework of sorts by 3DRealms for consoles and PC.

3DRealms has been on a roll lately.

I wasn't sure if I should post it here or over in the Height of Gaming Excitement section, but here we go.two threads for the price of one!

I only played about five minutes of Kingpin back in the day. It didn't do much for me gameplay wise, which from what i've heard is where a lot of people got turned off. That initial section. If you're not reading the booklet, and you drop into the game, you won't know what's going on. Back then most of the time you get a game that looks like that you expect it to be just immediate shooting.

I'm curious to see how well some of the quality of life improvements... improve... the... er, game.


Edit: The bad omen just hit me... Reloaded... They called it Reloaded... Ohh shit.

[Mark]

Darn. I sat on my hands too long and might not finish remaking the Suburbs TC before "Reloaded" is released.

It sure would be great if it supports 3D glasses like the old days. It was a blast playing it that way.

Attached File(s)

•  suburbs.jpg (177.59K)
  Number of downloads: 72

[Seb Luca]

The last one is my favorite ! So amazing ! GG !

[HulkNukem]

Commando Nukem, on 17 January 2020 - 09:47 AM, said:

I only played about five minutes of Kingpin back in the day. It didn't do much for me gameplay wise, which from what i've heard is where a lot of people got turned off. That initial section. If you're not reading the booklet, and you drop into the game, you won't know what's going on. Back then most of the time you get a game that looks like that you expect it to be just immediate shooting.

I'm curious to see how well some of the quality of life improvements... improve... the... er, game.

Kingpin is interesting because it was kinda a pseudo-rpg where you'd go into a hub city section with a bar that you would get missions from, a pawn shop you could buy stuff from, and 2-3 areas that branched off into a typical linear FPS level, as well as a dialogue system where you could give good or negative response. Sometimes there'd be people that would give you a side task in reward for money. It had all of this instead of something like Quake 2 which was a straight forward shooter.
The levels and environment art are great, each hub has their own theme, from a wharf town with swimmable areas to a big industrial area to a retro-futuristic art deco downtown area among others.

It was also fucking hard. The beginning of the game is the hardest it will be, too. All you get is a crappy melee weapon with no idea what to do.

I assume the quality of life stuff will be to help train players more and guide them to what they need to be doing.

I hope this whole thing leads into an expansion or sequel using the same engine and assets. The game ends on a cliffhanger and we never got resolution.

Mark, on 17 January 2020 - 12:10 PM, said:

Darn. I sat on my hands too long and might not finish remaking the Suburbs TC before "Reloaded" is released.

It sure would be great if it supports 3D glasses like the old days. It was a blast playing it that way.

I remade all of Poisonville, complete with the branching areas, for Half-Life 2 back in the day. Wonder if I still have those map files

[Mark]

I released a bonus map for Decay that loosely based a few areas from Poisonville.

Seb: With 5 maps it was tough to decide what screenshots to show. I STILL haven't made a Youtube account so I can post a video.

[Seb Luca]

Anyway, well done for all this work

[HulkNukem]

Mark, on 17 January 2020 - 12:36 PM, said:

Seb: With 5 maps it was tough to decide what screenshots to show. I STILL haven't made a Youtube account so I can post a video.

Send a video to me and I'll upload it for you

[Mark]

Thanks. I'll keep you in mind.

I don't have a powerful comp so the video I recorded is a bit choppy. I'll lower the resolution and try again. I have the unregistered version of Fraps. I can make it only a 30 second video. Good enough for a teaser I guess as long as I don't throw in any logos or credits. Or I can try OBS to record. I had it working once but forgot the settings after I updated to a newer version.

Hey, remember late last year when 3DR teased that another popular game of the DN/SW era was in the works? I guess this is it.

[PikaCommando]

Who in their right mind thought that fighting tiny ass rats is fun? I wonder what makes most games feel the need to have these annoying tiny enemies that you wont notice until they are already nibbling on your feet, especially in games where the focus is on cooler enemies. I hope the rebalance includes taking them out of the game.

One thing that surprised me is how good the navigation for AI partners are. In later levels with lots of platforming, they can jump and climb and get to you with no problems (unlike another game on the Q2 engine). Hell, I'd say it's even better than Half-Life's.

Ah, if only SiN was also fortunate enough to be not hoarded by certain legal entities.

[Mark]

In Kingpin some of the paths taken by the enemies are built into the model's animations. Little to no AI needed in those instances.

[necroslut]

Kingpin looked great, but I never felt it played all that well. Quite a bit like Xatrix' previous title. Had some neat ideas though.
Not sure what a "remaster" could bring to the table though, as from the looks of the video they didn't even fix the game's most obvious issue – the ridiculous amounts of vertex swim.

[PikaCommando]

I guess they're just making the enemies deal lower damage and doesn't react instantly upon sight, since instant reaction hitscan enemies is undoubtedly the game's biggest problem.

I'm surprised they're remastering Kingpin before Redneck Rampage though.

[Mark]

The video mentions classic and remastered. I don't think we know for sure if we saw any of the big remastering. So maybe the models shortcomings were addressed. That would be a big plus.

[Zaxx]

PikaCommando, on 17 January 2020 - 02:40 PM, said:

I guess they're just making the enemies deal lower damage and doesn't react instantly upon sight, since instant reaction hitscan enemies is undoubtedly the game's biggest problem.

We can only guess what the rebalance will mean but I wouldn't say that's the biggest problem.

I love Kingpin, I have huge nostalgia for it but balance wise the introductory section sucks on higher difficulties (even normal sucks though, hard just makes the problem bigger) because you're supposed to be stealthy but stealth really doesn't work if you have to bash or shoot dudes 3 times in the head from behind in order for them to finally go down. Generally the enemies are bullet sponges and your weapons kinda suck, for example I'm pretty sure that Kingpin has the most useless grenade launcher and flamethrower ever put into an FPS.

The issue of crazy hitscanning bullet sponges is something that affected a bunch of games back in the day but Kingpin is worse in the sense that even if you keep replaying the game it will never really click and just feel bad forever. You can master Half-Life to the point where those hitscanning HECU marines become your bitches but you can't really do that with Kingpin.

[OpenMaw]

Well, on top of the hit scanning, they have pitch perfect accuracy and immediate, down to the frame, reaction time.

The grunts in Half-Life for example, have other bits of code they can activate. Withdraw, regroup, flush, use grenades. They don't just always go for the spray and pray. (For example the big battle with the grunts before you take the elevator up to the surface(briefly), that squad always got me with grenades thrown up at me when I was entering the room and walking on the catwalks. Very impressive shit for the time.

It's actually an interesting thing with a lot of the second tier FPS games. None of the bad guys seem to have wide ups or tells. You look at Doom, Wolfenstein, or Quake/II, and you can see the enemies have a wide up before they attack. So maybe they added in something simple like that to at least balance out the heavy damage they do.

It seems to just be the developers thing. They did it with Redneck Rampage, too. Just very spongey enemies.

[Zaxx]

Yeah, simply put the weakness of the HECU marines in HL is that they can't move and shoot at the same time and they do a lot of moving next to all the instant hitscan. Compared to that Kingpin's "THICC BOIS" (yes, KP has the THICCEST gangbangers ever!) just come at you and shoot, if you're lucky you can stagger them a bit by doing damage but that's it, they keep shooting until they go down basically.

[HulkNukem]

Plus, Kingpin's enemies charge at you shooting while shouting "FUCKER!" so the game really disarms you at every encounter

[Zaxx]

But at least the protagonist was a charming fellow, a real good guy:
https://youtu.be/-m2Ru4so3Xg?t=154

[HulkNukem]

This is all you need to see that the enemies reaction time is complete BS

https://www.youtube....MbFi-GyT8&t=718

(Also a good review of Kingpin)

[Zaxx]

They are thick and quick!

[PikaCommando]

Rise of the Triad is the only FPS I know that's the closest to doing hitscan enemies right by having them get stunned by every single shot so you can stunlock them.

[Zaxx]

Guess everybody's different in their tolerance to hitscan but in my book games like Half-Life or Blood do it just fine: as long as you have the option to outmanuever the enemies to counter hitscan it works for me. I don't hate hitscan with a passion though and I'm even a bit weirded out by the current trend of "hitscan = cancer", I think it has a place in FPS design.

[Morpheus Kitami]

I was going to ask why would someone do this, but judging by others reactions, I can see why. Count me in the didn't complete opening section part of the players. That, combined with over-the-top language and the creepy flesh bubbling on all the characters you can see why I would be doubtful at first. If they can fix two out of three, that ain't bad.

[Tea Monster]

What exactly are they remastering.

And yes, 'triggered' by the title!

[NightFright]

Now this is a surprise. I remember playing this. It was a quite decent game, very atmospheric and violent. However it didn't really ever get the attention it should have. Maybe this is its second chance. I am also having problems seeing what exactly has been remastered, though.

[OpenMaw]

NightFright, on 18 January 2020 - 01:12 AM, said:

I am also having problems seeing what exactly has been remastered, though.

Reloaded, NightFright. Reloaded. Seeeee?

[OpenMaw]

Well, that answers that question.

[necroslut]

NightFright, on 18 January 2020 - 01:12 AM, said:

It was a quite decent game, very atmospheric and violent. However it didn't really ever get the attention it should have. Maybe this is its second chance. I am also having problems seeing what exactly has been remastered, though.

It didn't? I remember it as being both well-reviewed and fairly big and popular. Sure, it's been largely forgotten since, but I don't remember it being overlooked at release.

Commando Nukem, on 18 January 2020 - 02:53 AM, said:

Well, that answers that question.

So, higher resolutions, changed lighting and... upscaled textures, maybe? Well, unless they've done something about the vertex swim (and I doubt it, I imagine it'd be a ton of work), I can't imagine that making the game look any better, rather the opposite. But we'll see.

[NightFright]

Well, I can only speak for Germany. Over here the game was kept under wraps due to its heavy emphasis on violence. It was pretty hard to get.

Indeed it was pretty dark, so if they improve that, you could actually see a lot more level details than before.