[gemeaux333]

personnally, I always found the Redneck Rampage games fun ^^

[DisgustedGrunt]

So, apparently the demo for Redneck Rampage has been listed on Steam has "coming soon" for over 4 years. lol

https://store.steamp...e_Possum_Bayou/

According to Wikipedia:
"Possum Bayou is an alternate limited version of Redneck Rampage released on September 30, 1998, which allows players to play the first seven levels. It does not have any multiplayer options"

[dwtietz]

Lazy Dog, on 21 April 2021 - 12:52 PM, said:

So, apparently the demo for Redneck Rampage has been listed on Steam has "coming soon" for over 4 years. lol

https://store.steamp...e_Possum_Bayou/

According to Wikipedia:
"Possum Bayou is an alternate limited version of Redneck Rampage released on September 30, 1998, which allows players to play the first seven levels. It does not have any multiplayer options"

Technically speaking, "Possum Bayou" is not a demo. Neither is "The Early Years".

[Ninety-Six]

dwtietz, on 22 April 2021 - 05:02 AM, said:

Technically speaking, "Possum Bayou" is not a demo. Neither is "The Early Years".

What would it be classified as?

[dwtietz]

Ninety-Six, on 22 April 2021 - 05:19 AM, said:

What would it be classified as?

Both of these were stripped down retail products.

[gemeaux333]

Civvie have been bringing an excellent point : If Redneck Rampage sold better than Shadow Warrior which got a reboot, why Redneck Rampagne wouldn't be rebooted too ?

[Ninety-Six]

gemeaux333, on 22 April 2021 - 06:56 AM, said:

Civvie have been bringing an excellent point : If Redneck Rampage sold better than Shadow Warrior which got a reboot, why Redneck Rampagne wouldn't be rebooted too ?

Might be a quality or impact thing. RR is generally seen as the weakest of the Build games (not made by Capstone or completely forgotten like NAM or paintbrawl). And even if it sold better, people generally remember Shadow Warrior a lot more than they do Redneck Rampage (and more than Blood too, actually).


It's also probably a publisher thing. Devolver and Flying Hog both seemed to have a genuine desire to reboot the series for its own sake, rather than purely commercial. Obviously that was a factor, but it wasn't the only motivator in play. It also probably helped that the original Shadow Warrior was basically Duke 3D's direct sibling, and since they couldn't get Duke himself Lo Wang seemed the next best thing.

Meanwhile Xatrix/Grey Matter is owned by Activision and I don't even remotely have a clue what the deal with Interplay is.

[oasiz]

This again makes me want to do a sort of "patch" for the game that balances things out in script while editing some of the maps and other annoyances... If only map mods could be distributed as binary patches.
Maybe sharing maps like it was done with duke3 user maps isn't that bad... just make sure it doesn't work with shareware and you're good to go.

While I joke about Tekwar, RR is really beatiful for a Build title and I think it pulls off many crazy tricks that still aren't too common in user maps today.
Like mentioned there, atmosphere is awesome. To me RR has top immersion out of the classic titles, probably due to the good lighting, realistic art style and ambitious large areas with loads of nature.

It's really a shame that gun balance is somewhere between duke3d and NAM while having some terrible progression decisions.
I haven't put thought to it before but it's kind of clear that they really have quite a bit of unfinished areas & polish left to do in the main game.. Too bad that the sequel didn't go around fixing these.

[Aristotle Gumball]

I never realized until now that Rides Again is meant to be an official sequel and not simply an expansion pack.

[Kristian Joensen]

Activision(as the succesor of VU Games) would seem to own the RR IP.

[NightFright]

So that means RR IP = RIP.

[ReaperAA]

gemeaux333, on 22 April 2021 - 06:56 AM, said:

Civvie have been bringing an excellent point : If Redneck Rampage sold better than Shadow Warrior which got a reboot, why Redneck Rampagne wouldn't be rebooted too ?

It really baffles me that Redneck Rampage sold better than Shadow Warrior and even Blood (from what I have heard from some people).

[gemeaux333]

Activision usually accept to put its old games on GOG if players heavily insist... the latest in date : Outpost / Outpost 2
Devolver Digital did get the rights for Shadow Warrior, failed (to get the rights) for Blood, but perhaps they could succeed for Redneck Rampage if they approached Activision (not like if Activision needed that kind of money)

[Master O]

gemeaux333, on 23 April 2021 - 07:40 AM, said:

Activision usually accept to put its old games on GOG if players heavily insist... the latest in date : Outpost / Outpost 2
Devolver Digital did get the rights for Shadow Warrior, failed (to get the rights) for Blood, but perhaps they could succeed for Redneck Rampage if they approached Activision (not like if Activision needed that kind of money)

If Devolver gets the rights to RR, I hope they also release the source code, too. It can't hurt after all, as the RR games have already been reverse engineered.

[Phredreeke]

Assuming they actually kept it.

I'd be more interested in the models used for rendering the enemies. That would make any upscales I'd make of those redundant

[Merlijn]

I loved the redneck rampage games as a kid, yet I can't say Civvie is wrong on any of these points. XD

To be fair even back then I knew the game was flawed, it was mostly the art style and general theme that made me like it.
That sewer level though... How did that ever get into a commercial release?

[Jimmy]

If RR sold better it's because of the largely untapped redneck market at the time. Hunting games were a huge market back then, as we've talked about before. The industry cares even less for this market than ever because developers are either urbanites who hate rural people or foreigners who don't know anything about redneck culture. Rednecks tend to gravitate towards "bro titles" like Call of Duty these days.

The Early Years/Possum Bayou are definitely demos. Before high speed internet this made sense. You could try out the game at a fraction of the price. It was common then for even shareware to be sold commercially even though you could literally just download it for free. Not everyone had that luxury.

[dwtietz]

Jimmy, on 23 April 2021 - 07:56 PM, said:

The Early Years/Possum Bayou are definitely demos. Before high speed internet this made sense. You could try out the game at a fraction of the price. It was common then for even shareware to be sold commercially even though you could literally just download it for free. Not everyone had that luxury.

While that certainly was the case with many shareware titles back then, that does not make these titles shareware or demos. Here are some excerpts directly from the HELPYALL.TXT file from both of these products:

Quote

Helpyall.txt
Redneck Rampage™: The Early Years
5-Level OEM version 1.00
By Xatrix Entertainment, Inc.
Published by Interplay Productions

...

ABOUT THIS VERSION

This is the 5-level version of Redneck Rampage. Please note that THIS
GAME IS NOT FREE and we ask you to not pass copies around to your
friends. Instead, make them buy their own damn copies of Redneck Rampage,
to encourage us to keep making great games like this in the future!

If you'd like to pass *something* around to your friends, you can grab
the free demo version by visiting Interplay's World Wide Web site at
http://www.interplay.com.

Quote

Helpyall.txt
Redneck Rampage™: 'Possum Bayou
7-Level version 1.00
By Xatrix Entertainment, Inc.
Published by Interplay Productions

...

ABOUT THIS VERSION

This is the 7-level version of Redneck Rampage. Please note that THIS
GAME IS NOT FREE and we ask you to not pass copies around to your
friends. Instead, make them buy their own damn copies of Redneck Rampage,
to encourage us to keep making great games like this in the future!

If you'd like to pass *something* around to your friends, you can grab
the free demo version by visiting Interplay's World Wide Web site at
http://www.interplay.com.

[FistMarine]

Excellent video! Most issues with the game are covered, the video did not disappoint at all. I have watched it about four times in past few days. It's interesting the video went up 2 weeks after the game's supposed 24th anniversary (the game files are dated 07/04/1997), though I doubt many people know the exact day when the game was released (I originally thought it was released in late April 1997). Not gonna lie, I have waited for this day since back in summer 2019 after ranting on this topic: https://forums.duke4...me/page__st__60

Quote

I also can't wait for the day when Civvie 11 will review and trash RR. He has claimed at beginning of his Blood: Fresh Supply review that he HATES RR (good to see more people hating RR), which seems fitting and it would be nice to see how he will rant about the game.

Oh yeah, before I go into details, I changed my name recently to the name I used originally on the forum and use on many Doom forums. The running Duke gif picture might come back if I decide to use it as my avatar again or as signature, not decided yet if to change on the DoomGuy gif picture or the Duke Nukem running gif picture. Maybe putting both on the signature may be better looking.

Back on topic, much like in Civvie's case, I have zero nostalgia for RR and the first time I saw the game was in late 2000s on YouTube, probably around 2008-2009 and (as someone in comments similarly mentioned), I was more familiar with the monsters & weapons from playing Aeons of Death mod for ZDoom back then. Now I will admit the first time I saw RR, I thought it was just ok, maybe a weaker version of Duke3D. I remember one of my online friends at that time loving the game and he uploaded some videos of the game on YouTube and I watched them. I thought it's an interesting Duke3D clone but nothing more. I wasn't aware of the game's flaws, even if I watched some random videos of some let's play. I did appreciate some things about the game but that was it, it didn't interest me, I didn't grow up with it, it was just like any other game out there. In 2013 when Gmanlives uploaded his review of RR, that's when I became more familiar with the game, since at that time I was getting more familiar with the rest BUILD engine games. Until that time, I was only familiar with Duke3D and have never played other BUILD engine games. I started to notice the flaws and never cared much about RR and realized how crappy the game is after all.

In 2017 I played RR for first time (after acquiring RR family reunion disc images from other places for free, note that I have original CD copies of Duke Nukem 3D Kill-a-Ton Collection, Shadow Warrior and One Unit Whole Blood, before you call me a filthy pirate!) and gave a go in DOSBox thinking "Maybe it's not that bad!". Well, sometimes I thought it was pretty decent. I did have some fun with the game when the levels weren't confusing, I was kicking ass and progressing through the game at a normal rate and I was playing on 4th difficulty. But there are way too many fucking issues that drag the game down. Most (if not all) of my issues were mentioned in the video. Duke3D had very few of these issues (most of which are engine related) and even then the game was still a perfect 10/10 to me because it was a game created with love and care, plus I grew up with the game and it will still be my favorite, even if people create shitty mods for it (like a certain recent April fools mod) that almost kill the game. Redneck Rampage, being based off Duke3D (somewhere between version 1.3D and 1.4), seems like it adds many issues on its own that didn't exist in first place in Duke3D. I will not go into details because it's not worth it. It would take me an hour to list every problem with RR. I do have an idea to make a topic called "Everything wrong with Redneck Rampage" one day, where I will list ALL the issues of the game but I don't know if people are even interested.

My only minor complaint with the video is that he didn't go into detail of certain levels (mostly the ones from the Route 66 and Rides Again) but it's understandable because it would make the video go on for a bit too long, though I wouldn't be bothered personally if the video was longer. I think he should have talked about E2L3 instead of dismissing it as "filler", I thought it's one of the better levels in the game and wasn't too difficult (except the part with crushers, which I remember killing me once or twice). He also somehow didn't get the softlock bug in E2L4 with the last door not opening, it opened just fine, though it could be because he was playing on RedNukem which might have fixed that bug (and seems to introduce a minor one with screen flashing white upon taking damage/dying?). I remember getting softlocked on that level back then and had to use a weird trick with the moonshine to somehow reach the end because that stupid door didn't unlock upon inserting the key and I was looking on internet for help and if there is a way to reach without cheating. I didn't want to restart the level and cheats weren't even working on 4th skill (they still work if you activate the cheat on an easier skill and then start new game on harder skill, like in Duke3D) and I am kind of person who doesn't use cheats at all (in a normal playthrough at least) unless absolutely necessary to progress.

To be honest, I'm also baffled how RR was so popular in first place and the fact it managed to get so many re-releases, an expansion, a sequel and so many spinoffs, meanwhile no other BUILD games got so much stuff, Duke3D and Blood got crappy sequels instead and SW didn't even have addons released commercially (though it got two reboots and a third one in the making as far as I know), I'm completely speechless. Why didn't Duke3D get a sequel on BUILD engine instead of DNF failure? Just imagine if Duke3D got a sequel on BUILD that gave you THREE new episodes instead of releasing Plutonium Pak/Atomic Edition, although the first episode could have been The Birth as it is today, can't imagine what E5 and E6 would have looked like back then.
And all of that for a game that wasn't even good in first place, plus it came out way after Quake came out (which I thought it was great, I know some people don't like Quake here but I personally liked it and it was another game I grew up with). I will say, to make everyone happy, that RR (main game) is just mediocre, Route 66 is ok (in terms of level design obviously) and Rides Again is good (but still inherits many of the game's issues).

In regards to who owns RR IP, I wouldn't mind if one day RR games get a remake or even a fully remaster in a proper port and most/all issues fixed, but then I will also complain that Duke3D didn't get a proper remaster (Megaton Edition and World Tour were both disappointing) and RR somehow gets one, even if it's much needed.

As for RR demo versions, I am also impressed by Interplay's idiocy to not releasing the games correctly on steam, not only charging more than the cheaper GOG version but also putting a supposedly demo version of the game that is still saying "Coming soon" after FOUR fucking years! Why? Anyway, I can confirm what dwtietz has been saying all along. Recently, I managed to finally get these two versions of the game from a place that I'd rather not mention as I don't want to risk a ban or something. I will say the site has been very useful so far, especially for preserving history. Once I downloaded them, I took a look inside and compared the GRP files and game data. The GRP file is nearly identical between the two "demos" with only a tile changed I think (I just loaded the REDNECK.GRP in mapster and took a look at maps and tiles) and although most of the game is identical, only the executable and GRP file are different. Yeah the GRP files are still named REDNECK.GRP. The modified executable restricts access to second episode, I think. I haven't played through these demos yet (the only demo I played was the Early Alpha Demo 0.7, which is the common cut-down first level of the game) but I imagine this is what it does. The full game is still there (as in the rest levels E2L1-E2L7 and ENDGAME.MAP) and the rest levels can be still accessed with command line parameters (I think?) because the devs Xatrix or the publisher Interplay was too greedy and lazy to do a proper cut down shareware episode of the game because they were probably afraid the sales would go down or something. A rather interesting and sad turn of events that turned out RR to be so successful after all, despite the overall "Mixed" feelings of the game. Yes, I read the game was selling very well when I looked at some archived sites and sales data back in mid 1997, there were times when this shit was selling better than both Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition AND Quake! At least the games Xatrix made later were good, to justify commercial success (can't comment on Kingpin as I never played it but I enjoyed Quake 2: The Reckoning mission pack despite the stupid "function pointers have moved" error that corrupted the saved games and I heard Return to Castle Wolfenstein was really good, should play it soon since I had the original CD from a while back and installed it recently).

Sorry if this message turned out a bit too long...

[gemeaux333]

The strangest thing is... I never had these musics civvie is talking about, what did I do wrong ?

[Phredreeke]

Jimmy, on 23 April 2021 - 07:56 PM, said:

The Early Years/Possum Bayou are definitely demos. Before high speed internet this made sense. You could try out the game at a fraction of the price. It was common then for even shareware to be sold commercially even though you could literally just download it for free. Not everyone had that luxury.

I think their intent was to offer something cheap OEMs could bundle with their systems, while at the same time not eating into their own market for the full version of the game.

FistMarine, on 24 April 2021 - 02:00 AM, said:

In regards to who owns RR IP, I wouldn't mind if one day RR games get a remake or even a fully remaster in a proper port and most/all issues fixed, but then I will also complain that Duke3D didn't get a proper remaster (Megaton Edition and World Tour were both disappointing) and RR somehow gets one, even if it's much needed.

AlexeyLM has been working on a remake actually. https://sites.google...neck3d/main-eng

[Ninety-Six]

Isn't there someone here on duke4 working on an RR improvement mod?

[jkas789]

Ninety-Six, on 24 April 2021 - 07:31 AM, said:

Isn't there someone here on duke4 working on an RR improvement mod?

Yeah, SomeThingEviL was working on it and it is called Redneck Redemption (funnily enough).

Here is the link to the thread. There has been no updates since last year though.

[NightFright]

Redemption denied.

[Jimmy]

dwtietz, on 24 April 2021 - 12:22 AM, said:

While that certainly was the case with many shareware titles back then, that does not make these titles shareware or demos. Here are some excerpts directly from the HELPYALL.TXT file from both of these products:

Demo does not mean free.

[dwtietz]

Jimmy, on 24 April 2021 - 10:01 PM, said:

Demo does not mean free.

And reduction in accessible content does not mean demo. Neither of these products were ever marketed as such so I don't know where you're getting the idea that these are demos from. The readme files clearly and specifically state that if someone wants to share the demo version they could go get that from the interplay website.

It's like Phredreeke said, these were likely meant to be OEM versions to be bundled with new systems. One of the two (The Early Years) even states that it is an OEM version but then Softkey obtained the rights to sell it as a stand alone product. It looks like Possum Bayou was published and sold directly through Interplay, likely after little to no interest in any OEM's wanting to use it perhaps ~ Dunno... that part is just pure speculation.

[Jimmy]

Quote

Demo:: A demonstration of a product or technique.

It's a demo because it demonstrates the game. If it was intended to be an OEM bundle-in then it was still a demo because it demonstrates the type of software that the hardware can run.

The end result of both of these products, whether they were bundled in or sold at retail, is to get people to play the game so that they would buy the full version.

You're so caught up in trying to sound smart that you have forgotten what the fucking word "demo" even means.

[MrFlibble]

AFAIK OEM releases often included quite a considerable chunk of the retail game (e.g. exactly one half of both campaigns in the case of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and about twice as many levels as in the regular shareware version in the case of Descent). I guess in part it was done as an incentive to buy the respective hardware products these were bundled with.

But these Redneck Rampage CD demo releases indeed stand out from the rest of similar products, I don't think there were many other versions like those. I do remember a Blood shareware beta 0.99b (IIRC) which I guess accidentally was uploaded to FTP by Monolith -- I think it was not the entire copy of the shareware CD and was missing the CGI FMVs, but included a copy of TEN software. The readme also stated that users were prohibited from distributing that version, even though it was for all intents and purposes identical to the regular Internet shareware release as far as available content goes, save for the TEN client. The binary was different though, and required a different set of patches compared to the Internet shareware version.

[dwtietz]

MrFlibble, on 26 April 2021 - 09:57 AM, said:

AFAIK OEM releases often included quite a considerable chunk of the retail game (e.g. exactly one half of both campaigns in the case of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and about twice as many levels as in the regular shareware version in the case of Descent). I guess in part it was done as an incentive to buy the respective hardware products these were bundled with.

But these Redneck Rampage CD demo releases indeed stand out from the rest of similar products, I don't think there were many other versions like those. I do remember a Blood shareware beta 0.99b (IIRC) which I guess accidentally was uploaded to FTP by Monolith -- I think it was not the entire copy of the shareware CD and was missing the CGI FMVs, but included a copy of TEN software. The readme also stated that users were prohibited from distributing that version, even though it was for all intents and purposes identical to the regular Internet shareware release as far as available content goes, save for the TEN client. The binary was different though, and required a different set of patches compared to the Internet shareware version.

I'd think that if the Blood shareware beta that you're referring to here was indeed uploaded to their FTP server by accident, then that particular version might not entirely be a fair comparison as it could be speculated that some of the files that accompanied it were supposed to be replaced by others. I guess we don't know for sure so it's kind of hard to say.

Coming back to the Redneck Rampage discs though, it's difficult to define them as a demo for a number of reasons:

1) At least one of the two discs (The Early Years) specifically states that it is an OEM version. Perhaps this was pre-installed on some systems as an incentive to purchase a machine. I've never seen or heard of it coming pre-installed on a system, but that doesn't mean that that wasn't ever done.
2) Neither disc mentions even once in any printed form or within the digital data on the disc that they are demo versions. There is not even a hint to suggest this.
3) Both discs do specifically point the end user to go to Interplay's website to obtain "the demo version" (0.7 Moonshine being the only officially released demo version of RR that I've ever heard of).
4) These discs were specifically sold in retail stores and the argument that publishers often sold demos at cheaper prices so that people would try them out doesn't entirely hold water in the case of these discs... I have these discs, I purchased them myself at a store back in the 90's when they came out, and while I don't recall exactly how much they cost me way back then, I do recall that the price difference was not significantly different than that of the regular full retail game (and I was kind of pissed about that at the time).
5) There's one thing that you'll invariably find with any demo, and that is some form of advertisement and/or promotional discount to purchase the full retail version. To the best of my knowledge, neither of these discs contain a single shred of such information. (I'd need to go double check everything to be 100% certain, but I don't recall anything like that on either disc).
6) I appear to have personally hurt Jimmy's feelings in some way. I hope that he may be able to get over it and recover one day.
7) One thing that Interplay was well known for is having a "demos" folder on the CD of the discs that they sold (these discs being no exception) where demo versions of their other games could be found. I'm willing to bet that you could take any other Interplay published CD in the world and you'll never find a copy of either of these versions in the demos folder on any of their discs.
8) As noted earlier, the grp files may actually include all of the game files from the full version. While obviously a lazy mistake, that would be a pretty glaring oversight for something that was specifically intended to be a demo. Back then there were some programs that were distributed as demos that only allowed access to certain areas of the application, but all of the modules were present - This would typically be unlocked by means of a license key that the end user could obtain, but these two game versions offer no such unlocking mechanism so it does not appear at all that this was ever intended.

[Kristian Joensen]

Sometimes terms have some specific meaning within a field that is different from what the literal meaning would suggest. I think many people would object to this line of reasoning:

1. A role playing game is a game where you play a role.
2. In Duke Nukem 3D you play the role of Duke Nukem
3. Therefore Duke Nukem 3D is a role playing game.

This is a perfectly valid syllogism and premise 2 is obviously true, the problem is that premise 1 is taking "role playing game" too literally.

The same COULD be the case with "demo". I doubt just any "demonstration" qualifies as a "demo". For example a trailer is a "demonstration", yet I doubt it qualifies as a "demo".

I have no opinion whatsoever about ehat is actually the case with those two disputed RR products.