[SecularSteve]

If Freedoom can be a thing, then why can't Duke have one of his own?

I mean, Dave Gnukem is already a thing:

https://djoffe.com/gnukem/
https://github.com/d...ffe/dave_gnukem

With the still strong modding community of the Build Engine, it would be interesting to see a 3D version of Dave, with open-source assets free-to-use by anybody.
I mean, I'm no attorney, but I assume Build is under a similar "mixed source" law as the Doom Engine/s. You have everything you need right there.
Just like Freedoom itself, it could also come useful as a "legally unbinded asset-neutral" way to play mods, and mod the game itself.

But that's just my rookie suggestion. I'm still new here.

[MrFlibble]

SecularSteve, on 21 May 2024 - 12:49 AM, said:

it would be interesting to see a 3D version of Dave

Ironically, this is exactly the thing that already exists... sort of:
https://www.moddb.com/games/dave-3d

But 3DR was so very kind to utterly C&D this project out of existence, so I guess another one is very unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.

That said, I guess the community could get away with a libre game based on the Build engine, but not specifically related to Duke3D in any way (but perhaps still supporting usermaps?). I also think that making a libre assets pack for nBlood could work, because it's not really based on the real Blood source code.

However, it looks like no one is currently interested in such project ATM.

[Aleks]

MrFlibble, on 21 May 2024 - 06:01 AM, said:

That said, I guess the community could get away with a libre game based on the Build engine, but not specifically related to Duke3D in any way (but perhaps still supporting usermaps?). I also think that making a libre assets pack for nBlood could work, because it's not really based on the real Blood source code.

However, it looks like no one is currently interested in such project ATM.

Well, AMC Squad and WG Realms are kinda like that, even though they might be a bit related to Duke 3D.

[Hendricks266]

FYI, we don't like ideas threads here. Besides, you're not the first to come up with this.

[Phredreeke]

Duke3D costs six bucks on Zoom platform, and if you're willing to wait for a sale, the World Tour edition often goes as low as $2 on Steam.
If Doom was as easily purchasable in 2003 as it is now I doubt FreeDoom would have happened either.

[Perro Seco]

Hendricks266, on 21 May 2024 - 02:22 PM, said:

FYI, we don't like ideas threads here. Besides, you're not the first to come up with this.

[MrFlibble]

Aleks, on 21 May 2024 - 12:09 PM, said:

Well, AMC Squad and WG Realms are kinda like that, even though they might be a bit related to Duke 3D.

Well, I meant a project with minimal engine changes. BTW, Duke3D CON files are also part of the source code release and licensed under the GNU GPL, so there's technically nothing stopping anyone from making a free game that plays exactly the same.

It is true that any community-made assets that were created for the two games mentioned could be used, with appropriate permissions, for building at least a prototype of the hypothetical Duke3D engine libre game. Also, IIRC, Project A.W.O.L. contains art such as textures and props that was made very similar to 3DR originals for the sake of maintaining the visual style of the original TC. I've not looked into this, but I guess those assets could be used as texture replacements, again, if only as placeholders.

Phredreeke, on 21 May 2024 - 08:24 PM, said:

If Doom was as easily purchasable in 2003 as it is now I doubt FreeDoom would have happened either.

That is actually up for debate; you know there are people who won't touch proprietary stuff out of principle, but would not mind playing a Doom-esque game. One could say these are a minority, but likely much less so when it comes to the Doom community.

Besides, there is a definite appeal of libre projects beyond just not having to pay for them. They provide a degree of artistic freedom that is much greater compared to whatever might pass for "fair use" with proprietary games. For example, if Duke3D was in its entirety released under a free license, projects like Alien Armageddon could exist as completely stand-alone games, while the original Duke3D could be still sold by 3DR or whomever.

My contention is that the idea of these "freeeclones" is, ultimately, to first copy and then improve upon the original, and not just to produce a cheap replacement for those not willing to pay. I guess those who don't want to pay will more often resort to straightforward piracy, rather than go into the effort of creating something on their own.

So, on the contrary, I do believe that there would be more interest in Dave3D in the community, had 3DR not decided to crush it, along with the other, even less "threatening" mod projects (didn't they C&D a Quake and/or Unreal recreation of E1L1, among other things?) -- a policy which I strongly believe did more harm than actual good to the franchise.

I would even say that Duke3D actually suffers from these license restrictions, which resulted in Megaton being discontinued, HTTKC being whatever happened to it, and so on. It's not about individually purchasing a copy of the game, it's about a lack of freedom for the fans to do as they please with the game. 3DR and their successors could have given us more freedom without giving up the rights to Duke as a character/trademark/franchise, but they chose not to, and now the franchise may very well suffocate from limitations, neglect and outright mismanagement by people who never cared for the character and the game, and do not understand it, but are in complete control to do whatever they want with it.

[Reaper_Man]

I was always under the impression that the point of FreeDoom was to provide assets required to launch the game, specifically so players without the retail IWADs could play the myriad PWADs out there, if they didn't own or couldn't acquire them. Or at least this was the original "pitch" of the project. And less so to specifically make a game that copies Doom.

We have kind of an irrational amount of textures in AWOL, and I'm not even sure they're all actually in-use. We made a lot of assets and content to get used that either had the areas get cut or just wound up not being useful. Some of it is Duke3D-like but that wasn't necessarily the goal. The #1 rule was not reusing any Duke3D retail assets (or any other assets stolen from other games, as is common in modding), as we were releasing on Steam and that would technically be a copyright violation.

While making AWOL, I started using Material Maker, which is a free and open source alternative to things like Substance Designer, to make some textures. After we released, I've been experimenting with the software and making retro / low-fi textures in it, and recreating Duke3D textures from scratch as an exercise. Here's a few I posted, I think I had more I never released.

https://forums.duke4...846#entry367846

https://forums.duke4...389#entry375389

It's a really great program and I really recommend anyone who wants to try and make custom textures give it a try. The same concepts from Substance transfer over, and there's a million tutorials on YouTube on how to use Substance, you just have to figure out what the different node names are called or find a decent substitution.

[Phredreeke]

MrFlibble, on 23 May 2024 - 05:36 AM, said:

I would even say that Duke3D actually suffers from these license restrictions, which resulted in Megaton being discontinued, HTTKC being whatever happened to it, and so on.

Those things happened because Fred Schreiber

[jkas789]

Well shit it is funnier to be on the other side of this situation lmao.

MrFlibble, on 23 May 2024 - 05:36 AM, said:

So, on the contrary, I do believe that there would be more interest in Dave3D in the community, had 3DR not decided to crush it, along with the other, even less "threatening" mod projects (didn't they C&D a Quake and/or Unreal recreation of E1L1, among other things?) -- a policy which I strongly believe did more harm than actual good to the franchise.

I would even say that Duke3D actually suffers from these license restrictions, which resulted in Megaton being discontinued, HTTKC being whatever happened to it, and so on. It's not about individually purchasing a copy of the game, it's about a lack of freedom for the fans to do as they please with the game. 3DR and their successors could have given us more freedom without giving up the rights to Duke as a character/trademark/franchise, but they chose not to, and now the franchise may very well suffocate from limitations, neglect and outright mismanagement by people who never cared for the character and the game, and do not understand it, but are in complete control to do whatever they want with it.

Let's all be real. Duke as a franchise is dead. Thank God it is as well. Tbh I don't see the current IP holders giving a single fuck about a freeduke clone today. It's not going to happen though me thinks.

[Phredreeke]

I just stumbled upon this

I haven't looked on the maps, but the art assets are of very varying quality...

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 
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• 

[Lunick]

Sexy Meg...

[MrFlibble]

Reaper_Man, on 23 May 2024 - 11:04 AM, said:

I was always under the impression that the point of FreeDoom was to provide assets required to launch the game, specifically so players without the retail IWADs could play the myriad PWADs out there, if they didn't own or couldn't acquire them. Or at least this was the original "pitch" of the project. And less so to specifically make a game that copies Doom.

Yes, that's pretty much the original intent, although that of course had changed through the years as well.

I've been following Freed∞m development for about a decade, and there was a lot of enthusiasm from the contributors, and a lot great creativity. I think there's a great appeal in taking part in the creation of a complete game, which seems to me to have been a greater motivation than a simple desire for "Free Doom". There seems no reason why the same enthusiasm could not attract Duke3D fans to a similar Build engine project, perhaps even less similar to its inspiration than Freed∞m.

BTW, I mentioned above that I thought nBlood to be a nice candidate for a libre game target engine. I was thinking about this a while ago and tried to come up with a story/setting that would be dissimilar to that of Blood, but could accommodate similarly functioning weapons, monsters and map layouts. I thought that some kind of alternate history post-apocalyptic setting could work, e.g. the world in the 1920s after WWI went awry. Large-scale chemical or bio weapons that created mutations and zombies, plus let's say Germans in gas masks and stuff (perhaps some steampunk elements thrown in) instead of the cultists. Somewhat cliché, but at least it would not draw criticisms for being a direct copy.

Reaper_Man, on 23 May 2024 - 11:04 AM, said:

We have kind of an irrational amount of textures in AWOL, and I'm not even sure they're all actually in-use. We made a lot of assets and content to get used that either had the areas get cut or just wound up not being useful. Some of it is Duke3D-like but that wasn't necessarily the goal. The #1 rule was not reusing any Duke3D retail assets (or any other assets stolen from other games, as is common in modding), as we were releasing on Steam and that would technically be a copyright violation.

You did an awesome job!

BTW, I think recent releases of The AMC Squad also mentioned phasing out some Duke3D textures (apart from the obvious massive replacement of character and HUD weapon sprites), which is great if they're going in the same direction.

Phredreeke, on 24 May 2024 - 05:50 AM, said:

I just stumbled upon this

I haven't looked on the maps, but the art assets are of very varying quality...

Wow, you're wonderful! Thanks, it looks like a great find. At least, I've not heard of this before.

The project author should drop by us sometime, perhaps our resident artists will be willing to lend a hand?

[jkas789]

Phredreeke, on 24 May 2024 - 05:50 AM, said:

I just stumbled upon this

I haven't looked on the maps, but the art assets are of very varying quality...

Oh shit ti actually exists. And some of the assets look nice. AND it has commits from like less than a month ago.

Well damn I will humbly accept I was wrong. Miracles do happen sometimes. Nobody tell 2K or Gearbox plz.

[MrFlibble]

Reaper_Man, on 23 May 2024 - 11:04 AM, said:

We have kind of an irrational amount of textures in AWOL, and I'm not even sure they're all actually in-use. We made a lot of assets and content to get used that either had the areas get cut or just wound up not being useful. Some of it is Duke3D-like but that wasn't necessarily the goal. The #1 rule was not reusing any Duke3D retail assets (or any other assets stolen from other games, as is common in modding), as we were releasing on Steam and that would technically be a copyright violation.

Would you be willing to (re)license your textures under BSD-3-Clause (which I think what's the new project is using) and contribute them to Luke Ken 3D?

[Reaper_Man]

You mean the textures from AWOL? I can't make that call, they aren't my textures, they belong to the dev team. I didn't make most of them anyway. Plus all the textures have an intentional, quasi-handpainted or comic book look to them, so any that are Duke3D-like are incidental that way rather than intentional.

Or do you mean the other random textures I made in Material Maker? Those, sure that would be fine, I release everything as CC0 meaning "I don't care and do whatever you want". I have a handful of others I never finished or released, and I'd probably be happy to help make more. You can send me a DM here or if you're in the Shotspark discord you can ping me there.

[MrFlibble]

Reaper_Man, on 01 June 2024 - 07:37 PM, said:

Plus all the textures have an intentional, quasi-handpainted or comic book look to them, so any that are Duke3D-like are incidental that way rather than intentional.

Actually, I'd say that both the hand-painted look and the fact that they're not a conscious imitation of 3DR textures makes them even more fitting for the Luke Ken project.

I'd definitely give it a try and ask the devs (as far as I can tell, there is currently no license attached to the A.W.O.L. assets?), but I'm afraid I'm unable to use Discord at the moment. Is there any other way to contact them?

Reaper_Man, on 01 June 2024 - 07:37 PM, said:

Or do you mean the other random textures I made in Material Maker? Those, sure that would be fine, I release everything as CC0 meaning "I don't care and do whatever you want". I have a handful of others I never finished or released, and I'd probably be happy to help make more.

Thanks! I believe that would be certainly very nice if you could contribute to the project. Perhaps you could upload all of your CC0 textures somewhere?