[Joshua]

I did a little researching on why almost nobody ever gets 100% kills on the Wetworld level in Duke Nukem Zero Hour (and also Up Ship Creek).

Turns out, it's an issue with the sentry drone enemy in the game (both levels contain sentry drones).

Sometimes, if you allow it to explode into you (does very little damage), it's death will increase the kill count by 1 twice, thus making the 51 kills possible to get.

It's hit or miss when it happens though. But it's also not very hard to trigger either.



This video is how I figured it all out.

(Skip to 4:39 in video, this shows a sentry drone exploding into Duke with the debug menu showing, and shows the kill count increasing twice)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6ZeuucU_L0

[Joshua]

Update:

I've figured out exactly how to perform the glitch. And it's actually extremely easy.

Just shooting the sentry drone with the SMG's once before it explodes into you and then letting it crash into you will cause the double kill glitch to occur.

I did this glitch on the Up Ship Creek level using this method on all of the sentry drones featured on the map and wound up with 65/64 kills.

I have now gotten 100% on all of the levels with all of the kills, babes, and secrets gotten.

(Don't mind the HD texture replacements, I forgot to turn them off)


Contrary to what the game manual and cheat sites say, there is unfortunately no unlockable Extreme difficulty mode, and the select skin cheat does not become accessible even after the game has been 100% completed. Therefore, it is impossible to access the cheat without using the button code to unlock it.

[Kerr Avon]

That is very impressive detective work! Duke Nukem: Zero Hour is one of my favourite N64 games, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be too well known outside of the N64 game scene.

Granted, that's largely because it's an N64 exclusive, but considering how popular the PC game Duke Nukem 3D is (and DN3D still has a dedicated and widespread group of fans making mods for it too), then you'd perhaps expect fans of DN3D (and it's ports, on the N64, PSX, and Sega Saturn) to be more curious about later Duke Nukem games, even if they are on other machines. But DN:ZH seems to be very often rejected unseen, because it's on a console and not the PC. I think that's a real loss to many DN3D fans, who would, I believe, really like DN:ZH. But even amongst N64 fans, the game seems to be pretty unknown. A real pity, as it's both a great game, and also a great Duke Nukem game, doing much more justice to the character than Duke Nukem Forever managed to do.

I always play DN:ZH in first person mode (when playing the single player campaign, I mean), as I much prefer first person view in games. To me, it makes it more immersive. The only disadvantages in first person view in DN:ZH are that you don't see your weapon onscreen, that you lose the small but real advantage of the wider viewing area that third person gives you, and that the (fortunately very few, and not too hard) miss-and-you-die jumps are harder to perform.

I do have a little bad news for you though (sorry!). You're a little late discovering the solution, as it was discovered a while back. Here's the main thread about the mystery and it's eventual solution:

My link


Or use this link to jump straight to the first post about the actual solution to the mystery:

My link

But it's still really impressive that you managed to work it out unaided. I've seen the problem mentioned a few times over the years, and you're only the second person (as far as I know) who managed to solve it. Kudos, mate.

[jkas789]

Well that is a way to take the wind out of someone sails Kerr Avon. Lol jk.

Anyways yeah, this is really impressive detective work mate. It's nice to see DN:ZH get some love. It's a very underrated game IMO (along with Duke Nukem Advance and Duke Nukem for the GBC).

[Jimmy]

Unpopular Opinion: Zero Hour is the second best Duke game. It gets the attitude right (despite censorship, although Nintendo was more lax by that time) and it has similar gameplay to Duke 3D albeit more "cinematic" and "consoley". A PC port could rectify many of it's problems. I love Zero Hour.

[ck3D]

^ Never played the game but growing up with the Nintendo 64 and Duke Nukem 64, to me the aesthetics I'd get to see of Zero Hour at the time would make it feel especially canon, I guess also due to it being rather contemporary to Duke 3D alongside Time To Kill (but that one looked worse and more like a Tomb Raider clone) - and so before the franchise even really had the time to go anywhere far.

It just took me a minute to find this video again but a while ago I ran into this:



Now that may or may not be problematic on the legal side of things eventually, but I kind of do feel like Zero Hour .art could be interesting to explore the use of in the context of a Duke 3D user episode. Some of it looked a bit rushed, cartoony or over the top but it would be interesting to see how one could reinterpret it into Mapster32 and exploit the best tiles to result in a map set with a unique feeling. The description of the video is making it sound like those assets have been out there for a while (maybe already rearranged in an .art files pack?) so I'm probably out of the loop once again because I don't recall ever seeing them.

[Jimmy]

I've posted edited versions of many ZH tiles in the stockpile thread, trying to make them less bit-crushed. I know Alien Armageddon uses some ZH resources, perhaps even my edits but I'm not exactly sure on that.

Zero Hour was built on top of Duke 64, and is basically a secret BUILD game. It still has a lot of Duke3D's DNA in there.

[Joshua]

Kerr Avon, on 23 March 2021 - 01:03 PM, said:

That is very impressive detective work! Duke Nukem: Zero Hour is one of my favourite N64 games, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be too well known outside of the N64 game scene.

Granted, that's largely because it's an N64 exclusive, but considering how popular the PC game Duke Nukem 3D is (and DN3D still has a dedicated and widespread group of fans making mods for it too), then you'd perhaps expect fans of DN3D (and it's ports, on the N64, PSX, and Sega Saturn) to be more curious about later Duke Nukem games, even if they are on other machines. But DN:ZH seems to be very often rejected unseen, because it's on a console and not the PC. I think that's a real loss to many DN3D fans, who would, I believe, really like DN:ZH. But even amongst N64 fans, the game seems to be pretty unknown. A real pity, as it's both a great game, and also a great Duke Nukem game, doing much more justice to the character than Duke Nukem Forever managed to do.

I always play DN:ZH in first person mode (when playing the single player campaign, I mean), as I much prefer first person view in games. To me, it makes it more immersive. The only disadvantages in first person view in DN:ZH are that you don't see your weapon onscreen, that you lose the small but real advantage of the wider viewing area that third person gives you, and that the (fortunately very few, and not too hard) miss-and-you-die jumps are harder to perform.

I do have a little bad news for you though (sorry!). You're a little late discovering the solution, as it was discovered a while back. Here's the main thread about the mystery and it's eventual solution:

My link


Or use this link to jump straight to the first post about the actual solution to the mystery:

My link

But it's still really impressive that you managed to work it out unaided. I've seen the problem mentioned a few times over the years, and you're only the second person (as far as I know) who managed to solve it. Kudos, mate.

Thank you.

I am definitely not the first one, but I figured I'd get this out there so that it would make it easier to find the solution to the mystery.
I agree that Zero Hour is sadly a bit obscure these days. That's one of the reasons that made me want to design an HD texture pack for the game (and as everyone saw with the 65/64 kills debug menu photo at the end of Up Ship Creek, there are some texture replacements).

It's largely unfinished, but stuff like a few geometrical textures and most of the crosshairs have been improved.
I intend for the pack to be faithful to the original, and not to create textures that would deviate from any of the original graphics from the game.

jkas789, on 23 March 2021 - 03:24 PM, said:

this is really impressive detective work mate. It's nice to see DN:ZH get some love. It's a very underrated game IMO (along with Duke Nukem Advance and Duke Nukem for the GBC).

Also thank you.

I like Zero Hour. The controls are great as you have great maneuverability over Duke, and it's one of the few games where the platforming was actually somewhat acceptable and even fun in some instances.

Jimmy, on 23 March 2021 - 10:19 PM, said:

Unpopular Opinion: Zero Hour is the second best Duke game. It gets the attitude right (despite censorship, although Nintendo was more lax by that time) and it has similar gameplay to Duke 3D albeit more "cinematic" and "consoley". A PC port could rectify many of it's problems. I love Zero Hour.

I'll have to agree with you there, Jimmy.

I myself would love a PC port of Zero Hour. And as you said, it would rectify the problems that it has on the N64, like the sluggish frame rate and the aiming controls (N64 controllers have a bad rep for it's analog sticks getting loose).

Jimmy, on 24 March 2021 - 10:12 AM, said:

Zero Hour was built on top of Duke 64, and is basically a secret BUILD game. It still has a lot of Duke3D's DNA in there.

This is actually true.

There are remnants of some of Duke Nukem 64's graphics left in the game, and in some levels, you can even see the brown brick texture that you would normally see when you first design a map in BUILD.

[Joshua]