[zykov eddy]

Hello everyone! For almost a year, I've been doing a remaster of one of the biggest and earliest DN3D mods ever, Mystique: Ages in Time. If you've never played it before, this is a great time to give it a go. In the remastered form, it basically became a new build engine game. This was one of the first TCs I played as a kid, and because I have a lot of affection for it, I decided to update it and make it into a much better experience. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a fantasy themed TC, released in January 1998, and hugely inspired by Heretic, Hexen 1 & 2, and Quake. It was made by a large team of developers and features 30+ levels, new graphics, sounds, and an original soundtrack. Not to mention, a big story and new gameplay mechanics. Interestingly, it features textures from Layre family of mods (which also include Realms of Grune and Nuclear Winter). Some of the developers went on to successful careers in the gaming industry, and later went to work for companies such as at 3D Realms and Ritual Entertainment, where they worked on cult games like Prey, Sin, Heavy Metal, and others.

I converted Mystique: Ages in Time to a standalone status, by removing 99% of Duke 3D assets and replacing them with original ones. Just unzip the package and play, no installation required! Also, I'm not gonna lie, I don't recommend playing the original 90's version of this mod. It has a great atmosphere and is very impressive in scale (especially for 1997-1998, damn), but I get the feeling that it was released unfinished, because it has tons of bugs (including game breaking ones), tons of unused content, unfinished levels, broken game balance, etc. When I was uncovering and fixing all of it, I was surprised that this TC even ran at all! It's so rough and broken, you wouldn't believe. Thankfully, I was able to polish it up, and now I enjoy playing it much more, and I hope you'll enjoy it too. Here's the big list of changes in remastered edition:

• Hundreds of bugs fixed, including messed up textures, unplayable levels, broken sound files, poor level geometry, nonsensical code. etc, etc...
  
  
• Game balance has been reworked. It now plays much smoother, and difficulty increases as you progress through the levels. In the original version, mosters constantly spawned weapons and health items, so playing it was very easy and extremely boring. Not anymore!
  
  
• I updated all 30 single player levels, and now they look and play much better! I even added new areas, objects, enemies, etc.
  
  
• EDuke32 visual updates have been introduced, such as new weapon animations, effects, etc. If you don't want to play with these effects and would rather stick with vanilla code, simply remove "EDUKE.CON" file from Data folder, it won't affect the gameplay.
  
  
• Game was converted to widescreen.
  
  
• Almost all unused content was put back into the game. I think, about 1/4 of files weren't used in the original version for some strange reason, including sounds for enemies, important voice lines, lots of textures, and even a couple of original music tracks.
  
  
• I also added some new gameplay mechanics and new enemy types, for a much needed variety.
  
  
• I reshuffled the music tracks and even remixed some of them for better sound quality. This game features some amazing compositions, and they are better showcased in this version.

The world of Mystique awaits you, brave warrior. Time to get medieval on their asses!

Download














Please help me convert this TC to DOS! I wasn't able to do it, due to it crashing.

[Mike Norvak]

Congratulations Eddy!