Duke Nukem Forever 1996 Prototype(s)

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Duke Nukem Forever 1996 Prototype(s)

#1 Posted 25 December 2022 - 05:45 PM

https://rentry.org/x0r_jmp

Posted Image

#2 Posted 25 December 2022 - 06:12 PM

holy shit

#3 Posted 25 December 2022 - 07:12 PM

Ninety-Six, on 25 December 2022 - 06:12 PM, said:

holy shit

It is 100% them.

#4 Posted 25 December 2022 - 07:13 PM

It’s awesome to finally get to see more of this than just the few blurry screenshots.

#5 Posted 26 December 2022 - 03:28 AM

Cool!

What's next? DN3D alpha and beta builds? Considering we got DNF 2001, Endangered Species and now DNF 1996, I guess my statement is not really that far stretched. Someone really has access to all good stuff.

This post has been edited by Dzierzan: 26 December 2022 - 03:28 AM

# 1 duke nukem spanish fan

#6 Posted 26 December 2022 - 04:03 AM

Dzierzan, on 26 December 2022 - 03:28 AM, said:

My bet will go to the 1998 DNF build, but who knowns.

Ninety-Six

#7 Posted 26 December 2022 - 08:39 AM

Dzierzan, on 26 December 2022 - 03:28 AM, said:

What's next? DN3D alpha and beta builds? Considering we got DNF 2001, Endangered Species and now DNF 1996, I guess my statement is not really that far stretched. Someone really has access to all good stuff.

# 1 duke nukem spanish fan, on 26 December 2022 - 04:03 AM, said:

My bet will go to the 1998 DNF build, but who knowns.

Honestly, all of those seem likely at this point. DNF 1996 was probably at the bottom of the list of things I expected to ever see, so the sky's the limit as far as I'm concerned.

Happy late 30th birthday, Duke. I think the best gift the franchise could have gotten are all of these prototypes telling of a better timeline than the one we got.

Morpheus Kitami

#8 Posted 26 December 2022 - 09:37 AM

Somewhat off-topic, but you don't need to make screenshots with DOSbox like that, it has a screenshot function that just takes the actual game, no window around it. Dunno what it is by default in DOSbox-staging though.

On-topic, could someone catch me up to speed on this particular version? I understand what's going on with the other two leaks, even if I think the Prey one is kind of underwhelming, but I wasn't aware there was a a version of DNF in 1996. I thought they just started it as what would be eventually known as the 1998 build before the fire happened and they had to restart everything.

Ninety-Six

#9 Posted 26 December 2022 - 09:49 AM

Morpheus Kitami, on 26 December 2022 - 09:37 AM, said:

On-topic, could someone catch me up to speed on this particular version? I understand what's going on with the other two leaks, even if I think the Prey one is kind of underwhelming, but I wasn't aware there was a a version of DNF in 1996.

Sparknotes version is that DNF was originally going to be a platformer like the first two Duke Nukem games, but not too long after 3DR scrapped the whole thing and restarted the project from scratch as an FPS in the footsteps of DN3D.

The platformer version is generally considered a completely separate cancelled game that the DNF we know just inherited the name from.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 26 December 2022 - 09:49 AM

Phredreeke

#10 Posted 26 December 2022 - 10:30 AM

Wasn't the scrapped DNF platformer reworked into Alien Rampage?

DNSkill

Honored Donor

#11 Posted 26 December 2022 - 10:43 AM

Phredreeke, on 26 December 2022 - 10:30 AM, said:

Wasn't the scrapped DNF platformer reworked into Alien Rampage?

From what I can tell, it was just the engine itself that was repurposed for Alien Rampage.

Poorchop

#12 Posted 26 December 2022 - 11:32 AM

Dzierzan, on 26 December 2022 - 03:28 AM, said:

What's next?

Hopefully Prey 2.

Ninety-Six

#13 Posted 26 December 2022 - 02:04 PM

Poorchop, on 26 December 2022 - 11:32 AM, said:

Hopefully Prey 2.

Would 3DR even have that?

OpenMaw

Judge Mental

#14 Posted 26 December 2022 - 03:37 PM

As far as i'm concerned... Of course, all this stuff is neat.

It's also too little too late. Why couldn't this shit have happened ten years ago when we still had something resembling a sizeable community?

Morpheus Kitami

#15 Posted 26 December 2022 - 06:20 PM

Ninety-Six, on 26 December 2022 - 09:49 AM, said:

Sparknotes version is that DNF was originally going to be a platformer like the first two Duke Nukem games, but not too long after 3DR scrapped the whole thing and restarted the project from scratch as an FPS in the footsteps of DN3D.The platformer version is generally considered a completely separate cancelled game that the DNF we know just inherited the name from.

What a shame, seems like a neat little Abuse-style platformer. Probably would have taken too much money and effort for a game that wouldn't give much back though.

DNSKILL5, on 26 December 2022 - 10:43 AM, said:

From what I can tell, it was just the engine itself that was repurposed for Alien Rampage.

Really? Not that I entirely doubt it, but that seems wrong. Alien Rampage, while not the best side-scroller IIRC, was fairly well-polished. I don't know what month the build was made, but Alien Rampage was released in September of '96. That seems an impressive amount of time to get a game like that out. Guess it would help in that case that they didn't have to deal with mouse aiming. (Alien Rampage didn't have mouse aiming did it? I don't remember that)

Lunick

#16 Posted 26 December 2022 - 06:20 PM

Morpheus Kitami, on 26 December 2022 - 09:37 AM, said:

It was to show that the game is a DOS application rather than Windows

Fantinaikos

#17 Posted 27 December 2022 - 03:03 AM

It's pretty clear that they reutilized the same rendered model to make Duke sprites, the weapon is the only different. If someone will be ever able to rip them, with few retouch, you could put them in DN3D in a "Movement Extention" mod.

DNSkill

Honored Donor

#18 Posted 27 December 2022 - 04:41 AM

Morpheus Kitami, on 26 December 2022 - 06:20 PM, said:

Well, it has been known to be the case for a long, long, long time now that these two games were connected in some sense. The only question we were left with was if Alien Rampage was a reworked continuation of this cancelled Duke game, or did it just use the same engine? This leak appears to reveal the answer is the latter.

Remember, this cancelled Duke game is not a complete game. Of course it wouldn’t feel as polished as Alien Rampage. This game wasn’t officially confirmed to be cancelled until 1997 after Alien Rampage had come out. This means the two games were certainly built independently but used the same game engine. Work on this DNF side scroller seemed to have ended soon after it started, while Alien Rampage completed development and had more time to polish the game engine than this did.

Edit: Alien Rampage started development in 1995 as Ravager, so I think that also explains why it was more polished is because it was in development longer.

This post has been edited by DNSKILL5: 27 December 2022 - 07:56 AM

Morpheus Kitami

#19 Posted 27 December 2022 - 08:04 AM

DNSKILL5, on 27 December 2022 - 04:41 AM, said:

I wasn't saying in comparison to this unfinished demo, I was saying its impressive that the Alien Rampage guys made it that well-polished in so short a time. I realize that development times were shorter but it still seems surprising to me that they made such a game in 8 months, tops.

DNSkill

Honored Donor

#20 Posted 27 December 2022 - 08:49 AM

So to clarify a bit, as I was kind of preoccupied while typing earlier.

It appears that Alien Rampage started out as Ravager, which began development by or before Nov 1995 according to this link:
http://legacy.3dreal...3d_slide_s.html

This link explains that Ravager was sold and rebranded as Alien Rampage:
http://www.rinkworks...gee/s/2.5.shtml

So this further points to the fact it was never derived from the DNF side scroller project. It was its own project entirely. As for if they use the same engine, I guess we will need to dig a bit deeper to have a true answer, but I am leaning more towards yes, they share the same engine but everything else is different between them. In the past, it was said that this DNF became Alien Rampage and from old archived posts from 3DR’s on top of the leaked files themselves, that has been proven to not be the case.

Poorchop

#21 Posted 28 December 2022 - 03:16 PM

Ninety-Six, on 26 December 2022 - 02:04 PM, said:

Would 3DR even have that?

Nope. I would imagine that Microsoft now holds ultimate sway over the fate of the scrapped Prey 2 assuming that any builds still even exist. I'm still hoping for a miracle. My thought process was that if the early incarnations of DNF can get leaked, then maybe there's hope for other games.

The Kins

#22 Posted 28 December 2022 - 10:17 PM

Anyone had any luck poking around the files? The LBM files used for environment art are generic DeluxePaint LBMs that Irfanview can happily crack open, PIPE.ANM can be viewed in VLC Media Player, and a few metadata formats (.DES, .TIL...) are plaintext, but I'm lost re: anything else. It'd be nice to get the Duke and HUD art to fool around with for mods...