[MrFlibble]

Actually I also thought that maybe they removed the demos because there's that nice title screen background for the menu. Duke3D however will show the alien slime wall texture background if no demos are present.

[MetHy]

I seem to remember the game loaded faster with no demo playing.

[dnskill]

I found a text file found here that mentions:
4DUKE.ZIP 1120253 07/06/94 Duke Nukem 4!!!!

This seems to be a text file related to Gravis Ultrasound support.

Other file mentioned related to Duke, but that I'm sure can be explained is:
NUKEM2.PHX 1800 08/22/94 Set for Duke Nukem 2 by Apogee

and,
NUKEMINE.ZIP 614657 09/27/94 wad file

[Hendricks266]

I found a 4DUKE.ZIP that I downloaded ages ago and this was the FILE_ID.DIZ:

░▒▓█ DUKE NUKEM II -- APOGEE'S SEQUEL!! █▓▒░
APOGEE'S MATCHLESS HERO RETURNS IN VGA! This
sequel takes Duke to an alien planet where
his brain can be used to devise the ultimate
attack agaist Earth! Two years to make, this
sequel to the award-winning original boasts
more incredible action than any game ever,
with killer music, SB effects, & cinematics.
Duke uses four powerful weapons, flies an
attack shuttle, shoots in 4 directions, etc.
Multiple skill levels. 80386+ recommended.
Duke I was 1992 Shareware Game of the Year!

The zip is 1146465 bytes.

[MrFlibble]

Hendricks266, on 15 July 2016 - 07:50 PM, said:

I found a 4DUKE.ZIP that I downloaded ages ago and this was the FILE_ID.DIZ:

The FILE_ID.DIZ appears to be identical across all known versions of the shareware distribution: De-ICE installer (1,117,465b), SubZero Software installer (1,152,447b), current installer (1,146,465b). It seems that the one you have is the latest version from 3DR FTP.

[Frenkel]

Tristan, on 15 July 2016 - 07:17 PM, said:

I found a text file found here that mentions:
4DUKE.ZIP 1120253 07/06/94 Duke Nukem 4!!!!

Duke Nukem II has 4 episodes, that's why there's a 4 in 4DUKE.ZIP.

[MrFlibble]

Actually I've always assumed that the first episode of Duke Nukem II was called 4duke.zip because it came after the third episode of Duke Nukem. So it's "kind of" the fourth episode in the Duke Nukem adventure, although technically the first episode in the new game.

The same logic was applied to the naming of shareware distributions of Commander Keen: the very first episode of the first trilogy is 1keen.zip, and the first episode of the second game is 4keen.zip.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeah, but that was actually Episode 4 (or, technically, Commander Keen 4) not Commander Keen 2. I see what you mean, though.

[Frenkel]

MrFlibble, on 21 July 2016 - 03:42 AM, said:

Actually I've always assumed that the first episode of Duke Nukem II was called 4duke.zip because it came after the third episode of Duke Nukem. So it's "kind of" the fourth episode in the Duke Nukem adventure, although technically the first episode in the new game.

The same logic was applied to the naming of shareware distributions of Commander Keen: the very first episode of the first trilogy is 1keen.zip, and the first episode of the second game is 4keen.zip.

That thought didn't occur to me. That's also a nice explanation.

[MrFlibble]

Frenkel, on 24 July 2016 - 02:19 PM, said:

That thought didn't occur to me. That's also a nice explanation.

Hopefully not to derail the topic, I've always assumed that the convention of naming Apogee model shareware distributions starting with number 1 wasn't solely to get them onto or near the top of the file list - it was to indicate that the archive contained the first episode of the respective game. For Apogee/3D Realms, the only exceptions to this are the 3D Realms titles, all of which are named starting with a 3D instead.

Curiously, id Software and Raven Software seem to have never adopted this convention at all, but other shareware game developers and publishers (like MVP Software and, to a limited extent, Epic MegaGames) appear to have followed suit - possibly, too, hoping to get their files more attention by getting them higher on the alphabetically sorted file list. Note that there were other tricks to "up" a file, like adding a $ or # character at the start of the file name. I'm not sure if this was something originating with the developers/publishers or BBS sysops though.

[dnskill]

Not sure if this has been posted before, but I noticed that in v1.1 shareware, and the 1 level demo of DN3D, episode 3 is spelt as Schrapnel City. This was fixed in the the registered version to Shrapnel City.

It may have been a simple spelling error, or maybe they decided to spell it as it was in the first game.

[brullov]

Have you seen a shotgun which is on the second pic before? I like it!

[PsychoGoatee]

Hadn't seen that before, pretty cool! Not as cool or Duke-ish as what we got, but always cool to see different assets.

[TheDragonLiner]

I actually don't recognize the levels in the pics O_o

The one with the SG looks like Abyss but way different, the one with the battlelord looks like Occupied Territory, and the last one looks like a smaller version of the bar in RLD. Only the picture with the Octabrains looks like a level from the real game (Toxic Waste) it's weird :/

[Jolteon]

I've just noticed the fourth picture (The one that from Toxic dump), Duke is using the Space Suit underwater.

[MrFlibble]

Vazovski, on 12 August 2016 - 07:07 AM, said:

Have you seen a shotgun which is on the second pic before? I like it!

There's a different screenshot with the same shotgun sprite somewhere here in this thread. IIRC it was also from some magazine scan.

[Edit] Here you go:

Darkus, on 18 June 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

And finally, one last scan that intrigues me: It's a commercial with only two screen of beta DN3D. The first screen is either E1L1 or E1L2, but the second screen more intersting because we can see Duke carrying a different shotgun model...
http://download.aban...ril%201996).jpg

[dnskill]

In speaking of that shotgun... I remember seeing on the forums once somebody found video footage of that gun in the game.

Also, there was another promotional cover that showed what the pickup sprite of that version of the shotgun looked like, and I made a sprite out of it:


Maybe the people with the beta stuff could see how close to the actual sprite this is. I'm really curious to know lol.

[FistMarine]

Some random miscellaneous stuff about DOS versions of 1.3D, 1.5 and the expansion packs:

Duke It Out In D.C. and Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach were made with 1.3D in mind. That's why you won't find any expander ammo in any of the maps. The differences are mostly seen in Caribbean where the Commander's spinning animation is a bit stretched similar to the one from original 1.3D. Same goes with pipebombs, you get 6 per pickup just like in 1.3D.
One of the stands in first level only opens if you play the expansion in original 1.3D. If playing in 1.5, EDuke32 or Megaton, the stand will never open.
The paletted pig cops are more dangerous in 1.3D because they have twice as much health, making the levels more challenging.

Duke It Out In D.C. shows this unique ending screen if you play in original 1.3D version in DOSBox:


Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach has unique episode textures if you play in original 1.3D version in DOSBox:


Duke Nuclear Winter has a dancing babe frame that replaces Duke's sprites while jumping. Can be seen during the third NW demo in the following screenshot:

To watch the NW demos, you have to delete the Atomic demos from your NWINTER directory.

User Map menu exists in original DOS version of Atomic Edition 1.5 as well. It can only be seen during demos playing in background that were recorded from specifying map name, I believe. For example NW maps or user map demos. It also shows up when you start a game from User Map menu. Not sure if it shows up if you start the user map from SETUP.EXE, I have never played user maps in DOS version before. Shown here are screenshots from Nuclear Winter, as well as two of my favorite user maps (Dukai and Streets of Gotham City) that have demos recorded (Dukai has a demo available at DukeWorld, Gotham comes with a demo file inside zip file):

[Hendricks266]

FistMarine, on 22 August 2016 - 05:46 AM, said:

Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach has unique episode textures if you play in original 1.3D version in DOSBox:
VACATION_EPISODES.png

This is what you get if you hack the exe to use lowercase letters. The special control bit for my screentext command to use the redfont tile order restores this functionality, though for our menus I also define the bit to always use uppercase.

FistMarine, on 22 August 2016 - 05:46 AM, said:

Duke Nuclear Winter has a dancing babe frame that replaces Duke's sprites while jumping. Can be seen during the third NW demo in the following screenshot:
NWINTER_WTF.png

This is an oversight. SillySoft moved the textures for that TV so that they could use more frames for the movie theater screen. They didn't realize that APLAYER defines the action for falling to the formerly empty tile range that they used for the textures, because defining an action at blank tiles lets you keep whichever art tiles were showing previously.

[FistMarine]

Hendricks266, on 22 August 2016 - 08:30 AM, said:

This is what you get if you hack the exe to use lowercase letters. The special control bit for my screentext command to use the redfont tile order restores this functionality, though for our menus I also define the bit to always use uppercase.

Interesting. I didn't know that they used lowercase letters for the episode names, now I see why the apostrophe remains unchanged. At first I thought they simply decided to change the font/textures to better highlight that those episodes are replaced and maybe for looking a bit more unique and to fit the "Caribbean" theme.
In Duke DC, they simply hacked DUKE3D.EXE to change the episode name (unlike in Caribbean where they did their own carib.exe file to launch the expansion, though you still need to download an unofficial caribfix.exe to make it run through latest version of DOSBox), since 1.3D does not support changing episode names.

Hendricks266, on 22 August 2016 - 08:30 AM, said:

This is an oversight. SillySoft moved the textures for that TV so that they could use more frames for the movie theater screen. They didn't realize that APLAYER defines the action for falling to the formerly empty tile range that they used for the textures, because defining an action at blank tiles lets you keep whichever art tiles were showing previously.

I see now and I think you explained to me before but I wanted to point that out anyway. It's fixed in NW+ though.

[Doom64hunter]

FistMarine, on 22 August 2016 - 05:46 AM, said:

Some random miscellaneous stuff about DOS versions of 1.3D, 1.5 and the expansion packs:

Duke It Out In D.C. and Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach were made with 1.3D in mind. That's why you won't find any expander ammo in any of the maps.

The strange thing is that, in the Megaton Edition, I do clearly remember finding expander ammo when playing in coop on one of the D.C. maps, specifically Metro Mayhem.
Maybe it's something the Megaton edition added for some reason?

[LeoD]

Doom64hunter, on 30 August 2016 - 11:28 AM, said:

The strange thing is that, in the Megaton Edition, I do clearly remember finding expander ammo when playing in coop on one of the D.C. maps, specifically Metro Mayhem.
Maybe it's something the Megaton edition added for some reason?

Most of Megaton's Addon Pack maps have been patched by NUKEMDAVE, addition of multiplayer items included.

[MrFlibble]

I found five pre-release screenshots of Redneck Rampage in a OGR preview (Wayback Machine link) dated 10 December 1996. All shots show a Duke Nukem/Shadow Warrior-style low-res HUD:
http://web.archive.o...es/redneck6.gif

The preview text suggests that Interplay sent OGR a payable demo. The demo map seems to be largely identical to the map in the public alpha 0.7 demo.

[MrFlibble]

I just found some pre-release shots of Duke3D on this coverdisk (the respective magazine was published in September 1995) and uploaded them here:
http://imgur.com/a/qP4Sg

Some of the shots were included with the shareware versions of Terminal velocity, but there are some that don't seem familiar to me, including:


The third shot above seems to suggest that the Enforcer could have been armed with the same type of electricity gun as Duke is using on the very next shot (the weapon known from LameDuke ).

[Hendricks266]

Awesome, I haven't seen that electricity sprite in use before. (It survives in the final's ART tiles.)

[Captain Massive]

MrFlibble, on 09 October 2016 - 09:01 AM, said:

I just found some pre-release shots of Duke3D on this coverdisk (the respective magazine was published in September 1995) and uploaded them here:
http://imgur.com/a/qP4Sg

This ones hawt.

[Daedolon]

Isn't that the same girl that's on the SW art?

[Fox]

Green access card, that's interesting...

[Lunick]

It looks like a lot of these screenshots comes from this magazine scan in Jimmy's Build Archive http://imgur.com/a/DUmZP

[Shaq Fu]

Does anyone else know what's with this place outside the map in E1L2 of the 0.99 beta?

It looks to be an early version of the beginning of the map.





More images of this place can be seen here: http://imgur.com/a/DdQqH