[Marphy Black]

I was scanning over dopefish.com again on a lark and came across Chuck Jones' Dopefish sprites apparently meant for a cameo appearance in Duke Nukem 3D, replacing the Sharks as an Easter egg. As described on the page, however, this cameo was ultimately cut by release (incidentally, making it the second Chuck Jones Dopefish Easter egg to be cut from an Apogee/3D Realms title, following Rise of the Triad).

Anywho, since the original Dopefish sprites for the Shark were available here, I checked to see if anyone had reintroduced them into Duke 3D before, but I only found this long dead download. Since there's nothing else around, I figured I'd just do it myself, only this time as a non-intrusive DEF file tile replacement. Et voila!

Download: dopeshark.zip

Installation instructions included. The zip comes with two sets of Dopefish Shark sprites: the original 8-bit color conversions and the raw high color renders. The original 8-bit conversions are enabled by default, but you can edit the included def file to use the high color versions instead. However, you'll need to use a true color renderer to enjoy the benefits from the greater color depth.

Preview screenshot:

[Danukem]

I think I might want to use it. But I would only have it replace one out of 8 sharks randomly, and if you shoot the dopefish it's like a piñata that spawns random health and ammo.

[High Treason]

That link on dopefish.com wasn't working back when I tried, a very long time ago mind.
I kinda like the idea of the fish being coded to eat enemies it bumps into like slimers do, probably wouldn't be too hard to code but I don't have time right now.

[Danukem]

Well I added my version, now I'm off to bed.

EDIT: One quick thing I'll mention. If you are using the 8-bit version with all the fullbright pixels, then you should probably also use spritenoshade or equivalent and make the whole fish fully bright via code (shade == -100ish). Otherwise it looks weird to have the glowing skin but the eyes and teeth a much darker shade.

[Fantinaikos]

OR, we can wait until this easter egg/tribute project is done and take some proper stuff from there (with credits and all).

[Phredreeke]

What if the dopefish eats Duke?

[Fantinaikos]

 Phredreeke, on 24 February 2020 - 05:44 AM, said:

What if the dopefish eats Duke?

Death Message: Duke got duped by a Dope.

[Phredreeke]

Needs to play the Commander Keen death music too

[Jimmy]

There's a better hand drawn Dopefish enemy replacement from many moons ago floating around out there. I'm sure it's on Dukeworld. I believe it was for the Octabrain.

[Hendricks266]

This mod could benefit from gradient mapping the bright green of the true color renders to the more natural green from Duke's palette as well as Keen 4, and re-indexing the images without Duke's lime green fullbright colors.

[Marphy Black]

 Hendricks266, on 24 February 2020 - 09:46 AM, said:

This mod could benefit from gradient mapping the bright green of the true color renders to the more natural green from Duke's palette as well as Keen 4, and re-indexing the images without Duke's lime green fullbright colors.

I've gone ahead and done just that, and I have to say, I'm very pleased with how the results turned out. It was definitely worth the extra effort as the colors and shading are much more attuned to Duke 3D's palette and the body is no longer fullbright. Here's a comparison of the new remapped colors alongside the original 8-bit color conversion:



The download link in the OP has been updated with these new remapped colors (now set as the default appearance, the aforementioned original 8-bit and high color versions still included as DEF file options), which I'll link again here for convenience: dopeshark.zip