[Phredreeke]

Posting this because seeing speedruns of the console ports is quite the rarity, and the Saturn version even more so.

[DNSKILL5]

Neat, this port seems to be the least talked about and played. While it doesn't use the BUILD engine, the devs did a pretty great job of fitting what they could into their SlaveDriver engine. My biggest gripe with this port is the "Exclusive level" they advertised as if it was something great is by far one of the worst maps ever. It could've been an attempt to make something at least interesting enough to be memorable, but it felt like it was just a gimmick to have an excuse to use the song in the map for a level revolving around toilets, plus it was rather linear and overall pointless.

This was a pretty interesting run of the game, and shows some of the major differences in level design and engine quirks from this version compared to other ports. Hopefully he'll get E3 done soon.

[ck3D]

DNSKILL420, on 04 June 2022 - 01:44 PM, said:

Neat, this port seems to be the least talked about and played. While it doesn't use the BUILD engine, the devs did a pretty great job of fitting what they could into their SlaveDriver engine. My biggest gripe with this port is the "Exclusive level" they advertised as if it was something great is by far one of the worst maps ever. It could've been an attempt to make something at least interesting enough to be memorable, but it felt like it was just a gimmick to have an excuse to use the song in the map for a level revolving around toilets, plus it was rather linear and overall pointless.

This was a pretty interesting run of the game, and shows some of the major differences in level design and engine quirks from this version compared to other ports. Hopefully he'll get E3 done soon.

I was always fascinated by that port ever since I found out about the whole deal with the engine, it is my understanding that someone had to recreate every single level from the original blueprints by hand in SlaveDriver for this (all the while having to deal with the lack of room-over-room support and having to make arrangements accordingly), that must have been such a tough or at least weird experience. Because of that, Saturn Duke 3D to me feels like something akin to a fan recreation or reinterpretation, very much à la Doom the Way iD Did or that one type of purely off-memory remakes. It looks sketchy as hell with the weird palette, low res and stretched textures everywhere, but that's also its charm, when in comparison a Duke 64 looks a lot cleaner and more like an official extension of the PC game (and also has its own charm, in fact all things considered 64 may be my preferred version).

It's not too dissimilar to how I think some (original) Game Boy games were essentially glorified, officially licensed fan recreations of home console hits sometimes, because they had different studios or teams work on what was considered inferior hardware and so there could be this big gap in fidelity in the pseudo 'ports' there (Duke Nukem GBC vs. PC Duke Nukem II being an especially intriguing, albeit late example). 3D franchises being brought to 2D out of necessity and thus the devs having to come up with something original but under the guise of an established imagery, making for Doki Doki Panic type of situations. Funny business.

[Jimmy]

ck3D, on 07 June 2022 - 09:12 AM, said:

Very much à la Doom the Way iD Did

Not at all.

[Phredreeke]

IIRC they had some kind of conversion tool, but the resulting levels needed major reworking, and of course a lot of the map effects in Build can’t be done in Slavedriver.

[ck3D]

Jimmy, on 07 June 2022 - 04:27 PM, said:

Not at all.

Because that project actually took certain design liberties whereas here they were trying to follow more or less exact blueprints I assume you mean? Right if yes but I'm sure you catch my drift. Process is different but in both cases on practical terms, you have people try and reinterpret a base product, albeit in different ways, dimensions and for different reasons. I also mentioned the off-memory recreation projects because that actually sounds a bit closer, but in reality that process too is a different thing. It's all toying with the lines of approximation around a base game as its own meta theme and reference, whether consciously or not.

But the case of Saturn Duke 3D is particularly fascinating, especially because it was a licensed port but had to be remade in a home-brewed but also inappropriate engine. A lot of the strengths in the base Duke 3D levels relied on the at-the-time novel sector-over-sector design style; take that away and suddenly they feel a lot more generic. Honestly, as a user mapper, even if someone paid me to not just to remake all the base Duke 3D levels by hand but also and most importantly without all the fun stuff, dooming them to be inferior ersatz before they're even there I would probably find the experience so depressing.

[Phredreeke]

Slavedriver doesn’t need sector over sector, it’s fully 3D. What it lacks over Build is the ability to dynamically alter world geometry. Hence you’ll find no grinders in Toxic Dump, no trains in Dark Side or Rabid Transit, doors that previously opened outward now slide vertically like Doom or sideways.

[ck3D]

Ah then I stand corrected, thanks for pointing this out. I was recalling about a limitation which to me had read overwhelmingly crucial, and wrongly assuming it must have been sector over sector and all the non-Euclidian stuff (actually, would true 3D allow this?). But really missing dynamic real-time level alteration is just as bad. If there's any other novel element that made Build was it is other than sector over sector, it had to be that (not to mention that both mechanics always shined best when complementing one another within the same level or contraption). Now I wonder how things would have looked like if the goal hadn't been to make a Saturn Duke 3D port, but Saturn Duke 3D version or just an original Saturn Duke game using that engine and adapting to its specifics instead of sticking to the old, more or less incompatible blueprints, even just reusing the PC Duke 3D .art or code.

[Ninety-Six]

ck3D, on 08 June 2022 - 02:42 AM, said:

and all the non-Euclidian stuff (actually, would true 3D allow this?).

I don't think there's any true 3D engine that can do that sort of thing without relying on tricks like portals, silent teleports, and instant walls... Not even GZDoom seems capable without those same tricks.

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 08 June 2022 - 03:00 AM, said:

I don't think there's any true 3D engine that can do that sort of thing without relying on tricks like portals, silent teleports, and instant walls... Not even GZDoom seems capable without those same tricks.

Not familiar with any engine but Build personally but if that's true (which would also confirm both my original impression and dedication to Build out of all engines) then that's two key points about the base game that SlaveDriver literally couldn't replicate, really dooming part of the whole idea from the start. But only makes it all the more valiant that they actually came through with no less than a somewhat credible product.

Guess I should have said non-Euclidian possibilities to begin with and not sector over sector, but in my head both are pretty much synonymous, the former being the latter just cooler as the way I like it. Whereas to me 3D platforms are 3D platforms whether sprite- or sector-based I don't really give a hoot past differences in in-game behavior.

[Jimmy]

ck3D, on 08 June 2022 - 12:17 AM, said:

Because that project actually took certain design liberties whereas here they were trying to follow more or less exact blueprints I assume you mean?

DTWID are completely original maps intending to replicate the design philosophy of the original episodes.

Phredreeke, on 08 June 2022 - 01:14 AM, said:

Slavedriver doesn’t need sector over sector, it’s fully 3D. What it lacks over Build is the ability to dynamically alter world geometry. Hence you’ll find no grinders in Toxic Dump, no trains in Dark Side or Rabid Transit, doors that previously opened outward now slide vertically like Doom or sideways.

It looks like any of the other changes were purely down to keeping the framerate stable. It seems SlaveDriver doesn't like large wide open areas.

I think Saturn Duke is a great port all things considered but I think if it had a few more weeks, few more months in the oven it would have been a great game on its own. Pretty clearly a rushed product.

Ninety-Six, on 08 June 2022 - 03:00 AM, said:

I don't think there's any true 3D engine that can do that sort of thing without relying on tricks like portals, silent teleports, and instant walls... Not even GZDoom seems capable without those same tricks.

It looks like they were trying to come up with some solution to this problem with DNF '01 looking at some of the test maps.

[ck3D]

Jimmy, on 08 June 2022 - 08:33 AM, said:

DTWID are completely original maps intending to replicate the design philosophy of the original episodes.

Gotcha and so I think I've made it clear enough that I understand that. But that's just another strength or at least reason for my interest in the Saturn 'port', its existence alone raises the question of the limit, what's a port, what's a recreation, what's a derivative. Maybe it's because I'm a mapper that I see this but since the files weren't directly ripped, someone in SlaveDriver actually had to manually redraw all those walls, so the level design is in a sense original/personal and just constrained by much tighter imposed restrictions (e.g.. has to match the general idea, design and feel of the game as exhaustively as somewhere in the upper 90%, instead of say as little as 3, 5 or 10% in the case of a more 'philosophical' approach). A lot of mapping and/or level design has to do with synthesizing established, existing concepts (or real-life structures) and in a way reinterpreting them into the language of whatever the game is, flexing it just right around the given mechanics, so I'm easily intrigued by that aspect and mostly I just recognize and appreciate the work when I see it.

I'm starting to imagine this may be the whole reason for Urea 51 too or whatever the toilet map was called. Regardless of how enthusiastic a human being could have been about doing level design for a Duke game, redrawing and reworking the original layouts within a completely different system with the least originality as possible as an oppressive motto must have destroyed their sanity when the time came to finally make the bonus level. Wouldn't be surprised if they literally wished to piss and shit all over the 'port' at this point. And regardless, they did eventually pull it off.

[Ninety-Six]

Jimmy, on 08 June 2022 - 08:33 AM, said:

It looks like they were trying to come up with some solution to this problem with DNF '01 looking at some of the test maps.

Guess they wanted to make surreal Escher levels a staple of the franchise going forward? That's pretty awesome if true.

[Jimmy]

ck3D, on 08 June 2022 - 09:38 AM, said:

Gotcha and so I think I've made it clear enough that I understand that. But that's just another strength or at least reason for my interest in the Saturn 'port', its existence alone raises the question of the limit, what's a port, what's a recreation, what's a derivative. Maybe it's because I'm a mapper that I see this but since the files weren't directly ripped, someone in SlaveDriver actually had to manually redraw all those walls, so the level design is in a sense original/personal and just constrained by much tighter imposed restrictions (e.g.. has to match the general idea, design and feel of the game as exhaustively as somewhere in the upper 90%, instead of say as little as 3, 5 or 10% in the case of a more 'philosophical' approach). A lot of mapping and/or level design has to do with synthesizing established, existing concepts (or real-life structures) and in a way reinterpreting them into the language of whatever the game is, flexing it just right around the given mechanics, so I'm easily intrigued by that aspect and mostly I just recognize and appreciate the work when I see it.

I'm starting to imagine this may be the whole reason for Urea 51 too or whatever the toilet map was called. Regardless of how enthusiastic a human being could have been about doing level design for a Duke game, redrawing and reworking the original layouts within a completely different system with the least originality as possible as an oppressive motto must have destroyed their sanity when the time came to finally make the bonus level. Wouldn't be surprised if they literally wished to piss and shit all over the 'port' at this point. And regardless, they did eventually pull it off.

Except the maps are not original creations or recreations. They are very clearly converted from the original maps, and then just pared down where needed. I think that's why the textures are all fucked up. Looks like their xy info didn't convert properly and every texture had to be fixed manually. My guess is they only got to finish the important textures and whatever was left was just fucked up. Powerslave's textures are not misaligned everywhere like Duke is.

Ninety-Six, on 08 June 2022 - 09:51 AM, said:

Guess they wanted to make surreal Escher levels a staple of the franchise going forward? That's pretty awesome if true.

I know you haven't played DNF '01 yet, but the end of the Hollywood Holocaust recreation gets into bizarro stuff too.

[DNSKILL5]

Looks like achille pentacule has started episode 3, though so far has only posted E1L3. I also noticed they've done some Quake Saturn gameplay as well. I didn't realize that version had its own secret levels unique to that port until now.

[Phredreeke]

I think the Saturn version is interesting from a speedrunning perspective as all existing strats goes out the window,

Quote

Matt: What, besides data like textures and models, was carried over from the PC versions? How about porting Quake?

Ezra: For Quake, all the levels were rebuilt by hand using our in house tool “Brew”. For Duke, we had a way to import the level data into Brew, but it still required substantial reworking.

Jimmy, on 08 June 2022 - 08:33 AM, said:

It looks like any of the other changes were purely down to keeping the framerate stable. It seems SlaveDriver doesn't like large wide open areas.

I think Saturn Duke is a great port all things considered but I think if it had a few more weeks, few more months in the oven it would have been a great game on its own. Pretty clearly a rushed product.

I know that the first level of Quake had an extra wall added for that very reason.
Saturn has my favourite rendition of the Duke3D soundtrack. And for its flaws at least it didn’t chug along like the PS1 port.

[Jimmy]

Flood Zone has a wall added in a similar way too. That level is much more claustrophobic. I kind of like it, but it is definitely inferior to the PC.

Saturn's soundtrack is excellent, it's just a shame they weren't able to do the entire soundtrack. I also really love the dynamic lighting system. I wish EDuke32 had something comparable. Polymer's lighting felt too modern to me, something about the Saturn lighting feels just right.

[ck3D]

Jimmy, on 08 June 2022 - 10:21 AM, said:

Except the maps are not original creations or recreations. They are very clearly converted from the original maps, and then just pared down where needed. I think that's why the textures are all fucked up. Looks like their xy info didn't convert properly and every texture had to be fixed manually. My guess is they only got to finish the important textures and whatever was left was just fucked up. Powerslave's textures are not misaligned everywhere like Duke is.

Oh so this would invalidate a lot of my praise indeed, I'll take your word for it. I really wasn't under that impression at all upon watching footage over and over, there always seemed to be tiny things off such as this or that wall's odd length or angle, might have been renderer or engine differences. But it's true that some other elements such as the more or less cheaply 'retextured' building sandwiching the window in E1L2 (which I actually kind of like) should have been just as many dead giveaways of some kind of conversion process. Maybe it's those little touches that give off the 'artisanal take' vibe. I have a completely different of what the development process must have been now, less drawing but a shit load more cutting and duct-taping until either the deadline or the product passes.

[Phredreeke]

Looks like he has done a full run now