On the behalf of Duke's 20th Aniversary, I want to make a little post which will be relevant to this theard.
After spending last night by reading this theard, playing lameduke and some of the betas, my opinion about the final game grew more than ever. Most of us probably don't realise that we've got probably one of the best FPS's ever made! Sure, when we launch Duke almost every day our initial opinion will diminish rapidly and Duke3d will become a routine. Like the rest of you, I'm just as interested in the original concept - all the robots, weapons, space stations, futuristic cities and coca cola cans. But let's be honest - if Lameduke was somehow finished and released as Duke Nukem 3D, it will go pretty much unnoticed and fade into oblivion very fast. Just imagine - there will be no forums, no sites and user maps that we made over all these years! I have nothing against Lameduke enemies and levels, but there's just no atmosphere that made the final DN3D so cool and iconic. Lameduke is just a 3D version of the previous 2D games, somehow mixed with TekWar and Doom-engine shooters set in space. I feel some strange feel of nostalgia, through - thanks to Rise of the Triad soundtrack in the background and those generic 90s shooters feel. It's sad that most of the pre-release content is collecting dust somewhere in 3DRealms vaults (or Scott Miller's attic lol), because I would like to have a clear look on the aliens we saw on the promo materials.
And so, the developers was trying to make the coolest game possible and I think they pretty much achieved it. We take the original game for granted, but If you're a mapper my advice to you is to replay the original game and analyse every level of it, and if you somehow care about layout, design and progression, you'll find out that the original maps, despite very basic design, is better than 99% of the user maps released today(even great ones!), with all of it's fancy spritework and architecture. You can't ask for a better thing. What we've got in the end is the best version of Duke Nukem 3D ever, with the best maps ever, still fresh and interesting 20 years later. Long live Duke Nukem!