[The Nate]

Darkus, on 25 April 2017 - 11:01 AM, said:

More about faces of death...

(devheads)

I look forward to seeing this in an SVN update

[Hendricks266]

Newcomer, on 25 April 2017 - 02:43 PM, said:

Shit should be in an HRP SVN update by now.

Nice sense of entitlement.

[The Nate]

Hendricks266, on 25 April 2017 - 04:49 PM, said:

Nice sense of entitlement.

Shit, as in the shit, as in the good stuff, as in it's cool. Sorry.

[Hendricks266]

No, I get that. I'm talking about the "should", as in someone should have done the volunteer artist work in the four hour timespan between the two posts.

[The Nate]

Hendricks266, on 26 April 2017 - 04:04 AM, said:

No, I get that. I'm talking about the "should", as in someone should have done the volunteer artist work in the four hour timespan between the two posts.

Ok, I edited it. "Could"

[Hendricks266]

Newcomer, on 26 April 2017 - 04:10 AM, said:

Ok, I edited it. "Could"

That actually makes it sound worse, more passive-aggressive. Try "I look forward to seeing this in an SVN update."

[Mark]

I'm too busy to do these properly but I felt like spending about 10 minutes just for fun using the pics from the earlier post. I used the clone tool to transfer the face from pic to original. Then I used the line tool to make a more defined tan border. Then I used pixelate tool make the face look less like a high def photo which looked out of place against the lo def backround. I hope the rest of the faces can be found so someone can do the entire set at once.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Fantinaikos]

Frame still low quality and the shirt collar of Lee isn't gray 0/10. Also you didn't fixed the too much water in Mark's Picture ()

[Mark]

...and that is why I don't do HRP content. That was only a 10 minute quick test for fun and already the nitpicks start in. But honestly, I would have no problem using it as-is for myself. If it was going to be for the HRP, obviously the entire backround would be made from scratch

[Darkus]

Mark., on 25 April 2017 - 12:06 PM, said:

Are there more where those came from?

Well... No, that's all I could find. Note that the pictures I posted above are resized, the original pictures are in much better quality, and they can be found in the ROTT goodies pack.

From the beta thread:
3D Realms site article

FilePlanet download

[CryptKiller]

Steve looks like Rob Hubbards long-lost brother.



Great find!

[NNC]

Miscellaneous knowledge, without much importance:

Were there any direct reasons why the 3DRealms devs left the sentry drones out of The Birth episode? They made two "cameo" style appearances, once early in the first level, and later a single one (with S2 skill) in XXX Stacy.

Was it the case that devs simply didn't notice or thought it would be cool to add them as cameos, since they weren't that popular? In my theory the reason is technical. By that time, I had terrible issues on my computer with the drones' sped up humming sound. Sometimes the computer simply crashed as soon as drones appeared. The same problem occured with the intro of The Birth episode, somewhere around the rape moment, also in Caribbean with the modified wind.voc in the last 2 levels... except those crashes were permanent in both cases without exceptions. The drone sound problems appeared randomly instead, so it didn't broke the game. But I remember that others had this issue as well on the AMC board.

In the release of WT, the humming sound was throttled down. Maybe they remembered the problem... anyway, drones became regular again in E5.

[Marphy Black]

I've just received a copy of the Rise of the Triad Official Player's Guide (way at the bottom), and reading through the beginning sections, I realize that it clears up several long held mysteries I've had regarding the game's plot.

If you've played the game, you've most naturally seen the in-game intro sequence which summarizes the story as thus: a strike team known as the HUNT is sent to San Nicolas Island to scope out a bunch of weirdos inhabiting the island's monastery. Before they can report back to their HQ, their boat is exploded, forcing them to enter the ancient site of worship.

It's the manual that explains a bit more of the things we're familiar with now:


So this is where we learn about the Oscurido cult that worships El Oscuro and wishes to blast Los Angeles to kingdom come for bad guy purposes. However, one thing always puzzled me: the mention of "a pyrotechnics expert and a rich movie studio head have joined forces with the Oscurido cult." What's that all that about?

Strictly speaking, the manual does plainly, if not indirectly, identify who these two individuals are supposed to be:


So if you were ever curious, "General" Darian is not actually a general. He's just a special effects guy. And Sebastian Krist is not a man of military rank either. He's the former head of a movie studio. That studio was called "Triad Pictures".

Technically, everything I've stated here so far has always been easily accessible information for anyone who checked the manual, although I don't think many people acknowledge the fact that half the bosses in the game are filmmakers. Still, what the hell is "Triad Pictures"? Where does San Nicolas Island fit into the picture? What does a man with a lunchbox obsession and Joe sitting in a chair threatening to staple his own hands have to do with Tom Hall wearing a robe? Why does the HUNT blow up an innocent and defenseless tower at the end of the game? Believe or not, there are answers to all of these questions, and as far as I can tell, they were only revealed within the Player's Guide story synopsis and no where else.

Rather than provide a scan, I'm just going to retype the whole section:

Rise of the Triad Official Players Guide said:

THE STORY SO FAR

Triad Pictures, owned and run by Sebastian Krist, has long been suspected as a haven for the cult worshippers of "El Oscuro, the Dark." The Oscuridos believe their divine godhead will come and cleanse the world of non-believers. Their rituals are rumored to include animal sacrifices, pagan "black magic" ceremonies, and other grisly satanic events.

Krist has masterminded a number of weapons heists and tapped the expertise of John Darian, a special-effects wizard, to kill his Hollywood rivals. Now the pair and their followers have retreated to an old Spanish monastery on San Nicolas Island, a secluded hunk of rock that's situated about 20 miles west of Los Angeles and partially owned by Triad Pictures.

Even though there isn't enough evidence to directly link Krist with the Oscuro cult, a special team of counter-terrorist agents, organized with the cooperation of major world powers under the United Nations and called the HUNT (High-risk United Nations Taskforce), has been trailing Krist and observing activity on the island. In the last few days, monk cultists and guards wearing uniforms with the Triad Pictures logo have been spotted overseeing the movement of a shipment of explosives off the island. The HUNT has also discovered that the cult plans to destroy Los Angeles. In fact, the bombs planted around the city have already begun to detonate, but before the HUNT can leave the island or even get to a radio transmitter, the cultists destroy their boat. Left with no way out, this lightly-armed band of commandos decide to fight their way into the monastery and destroy the remaining detonation devices before Krist and Darian can wreak havoc on an unsuspecting city. Millions of lives hang in the balance. You're a member of the HUNT team. If you succeed, you'll be a hero to billions. And just think of the movie offers...

MISSION OBJECTIVE

Kill or be killed. This simple statement encompasses a number of more complicated tasks, like solving puzzles, killing Triad members, finding weapons, killing monks, getting ammunition, slaughtering more followers of El Oscuro, and finding power-ups and life restoratives.

The overall goal of the game is to locate Darian, Krist, and El Oscuro's earthly manifestation, and then rid the world of their odious presence. They guard the detonator device that is systematically blowing up explosives hidden all over Los Angeles. Destroy this device, win the game, and you may earn a few weeks of leave before your next mission.

And there you have it. Everything about the game makes sense now. The ancient monastery was renovated by Triad Pictures to be used as a movie set, a cover for their true nefarious deeds. The triad logo and even the "Triad" name itself alludes to the cinematic production company owned by movie mogul Sebastian Krist, John Darian being the head of the special effect department. The thing you blow up at the end of the game is a "detonation device" that would have blowed up Los Angeles (or rather, you stopped it from further blowing up the city, it seems). And that truly is some miscellaneous knowledge.

For the record, I don't think the 2013 remake utilized much of this movie production studio/filmmaker espionage aspect of the Triad storyline.

[MrFlibble]

Cool find! I wonder if this plot was there from the start or created as an afterthought for the players' guide. The game seems to "work" quite well without these details. In fact, I remember Krist being described somewhere as "movie mogul turned cult pawn" suggesting that his role was not as important at least in some versions of the background story.

[Marphy Black]

MrFlibble, on 06 May 2017 - 04:32 AM, said:

Cool find! I wonder if this plot was there from the start or created as an afterthought for the players' guide.

I'd hazard a confident guess that Tom Hall did indeed handle most of the lore bits that appear in the guide. For what little the story had relevance to the gameplay, there are still smatterings of innocuous plot bits scattered all around in the enemy and item descriptions. For example, the TNT crates are specifically described as being unused explosives meant for the LA bombings.

Also, I just remembered that I totally forgot that ROTT's manual has a second story section for some inexplicable reason at the back. It's a tad more wordy:



While it mostly reiterates what it already said at the booklet's beginning story section, it does reveal to us the name of Triad Pictures' island monastery film, "Prayers in the Dark" (The Dark, El Oscuro, get it?), and clarifies that the cult's detonation device used to set off the explosives planted in LA is also a mobile band jammer, so in addition to saving LA, blowing up the tower also conveniently gives the HUNT the ability to contact HQ again. And I guess the Triad's uniforms are actually Korean military surplus, which I would theorize is just Hall's way of acknowledging why the costumes fit so poorly (more so on the cut actors that we haven't seen much of, unfortunately).

[MrFlibble]

This bit of narration from the manual seems to suggest that Thi Barrett is the team leader. I'm not sure if this is mentioned elsewhere (IIRC in the 2013 remake Taradino Cassatt is the leader). At least, that rhymes somewhat with her taking the cetral part of the box art.

[Sanek]

Is there any Balls of Steel promos? I don't know how popular these game was, but I'm sure 3DRealms at least did some effort to promote it, since it have so much Duke Nukem connections.

[Micky C]

Marphy Black, on 05 May 2017 - 08:47 PM, said:

I've just received a copy of the Rise of the Triad Official Player's Guide (way at the bottom), and reading through the beginning sections, I realize that it clears up several long held mysteries I've had regarding the game's plot.

A bit late to the party, but wouldn't it be hilarious if the cult was simply a film crew making a movie, all the instances of aggression from both sides were just a series of misunderstandings?

[Marphy Black]

Just stumbled into a bit more of Rise of the Triad trivia, this time offering a little insight into a cut feature. To set the stage, I imagine many of you are familiar with the Lightning Guard, if not by his name then likely by him being the "No, don't shoot!" guy who sometimes pleads for mercy. His other notable characteristic is his ability to steal your missile weapon if you get to close to him. When he does, he says "Gimme that!" and plays a unique two frame animation. However, there are some peculiarities about this animation sequence when you view the raw frames.



Rather unnecessarily, this animation has full 8-sided rotations even though you're pretty much always only ever going to see the Lightning Guard from the front perspective when he steals your weapon. Perhaps the explanation behind this can be derived from the sprite names: LIHUSE. Clearly these sprites weren't originally intended for weapon stealing at all. They were meant for a generic "Use" state.

I thought I'd seen this pose in this context before, and lo and behold, reviewing Joe's actor capture session videos shows that the Low Guard, Death Monk, and Deathfire Monk also had these poses recorded:

https://youtu.be/zUbuFR6tVrc?t=9m28s - Low Guard
https://youtu.be/QPyeeSKlnWY?t=1m47s - Death Monk
https://youtu.be/QPyeeSKlnWY?t=7m58s - Deathfire Monk

And while we don't have any visual confirmation for the rest, checking the source code, we can see a whole commented out section for most of the enemies' Use states.

	/*
	{&s_lowgrduse1,&s_highgrduse1,&s_opuse1,&s_strikeuse1,
	 &s_blitzuse,&s_enforceruse1,NULL,NULL,
	 NULL,&s_darianuse1,NULL,NULL,
	 NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL},*/
	 {0},

Curiously, though, the Use states for the Death Monk and Deathfire Monk are null'd out here, making me think the Use state was either cut early before being implemented for those two, or the monk types were not meant to have a Use state at all, despite having already recorded said frames.

The big question still on my mind: What exactly was this Use state intended for? The only object interaction I can recall enemies performing is opening doors. Even if doors were the sole intended use case, there's still the question of why the monks lack the Use state. Maybe they just interacted through intangible sorcery powers?

Technically, we do have one other example of the Use sprites being used in-game: "General" Darian pressing the spear stabbing buttons in his cage employs his DARUSE frames, the only other character to have such frames in the released game files. However, as you can see from the commented out code section above, this isn't necessarily reflective of the generic Use state all enemies were meant to have.

As a side note, we do have evidence that the missing Use frames were fully digitized for all of the actors. In the ROTT manual, we can see the Death Monk using his Use frames in the bottom-left flip book on pages 24 and 26.

[MrFlibble]

I have always wondered why you see the dog's paw opening doors when in Dog Mode but no comparable animation during normal play. That would be much similar to the animation of Duke using keycards.

[oasiz]

Wanted to give LD a quick spin again...
M4 has a quake effect that has always been broken, decided to do a quick fix by adding some triggers and such.
Mostly was curious about that building which gets ripped apart.

I'm guessing that this is the first instance that they tried Quake fx in the game and it appropriately gets done in a Hollywood blvd. themed area, probably wanted to combine those two early on.

[MrFlibble]

Not sure where to post this, a guy recently did interviews with Scott Miller, Ken Silverman and Jon St. John:
http://www.arcadeatt...k/scott-miller/
http://www.arcadeatt.../ken-silverman/
http://www.arcadeatt...uk/jon-st-john/

[Micky C]

oasiz, on 17 May 2017 - 01:33 PM, said:

Wanted to give LD a quick spin again...
M4 has a quake effect that has always been broken, decided to do a quick fix by adding some triggers and such.
Mostly was curious about that building which gets ripped apart.

I'm guessing that this is the first instance that they tried Quake fx in the game and it appropriately gets done in a Hollywood blvd. themed area, probably wanted to combine those two early on.

Looks like something that can be emulated pretty easily with the sliding door effect.

[oasiz]

It actually should be doable in retail as well, quake effect just works a tiny bit differently since it triggers less hardcoded stuff (sound/shake)
Quake is one of the few "wallpoint mover" effects along with curtain/bridge that exist in Duke.

Mostly was curious about it's application in this map since that building ripping apart is something I haven't really seen in maps.

[Marphy Black]

I came across an odd feature in Redneck Rampage: When you die, you can use the "rdelvis" God mode cheat to resurrect yourself, but this will cause the game to continually repeat the message "CHEATER! YOU USED THE CHEAT TO COME BACK ALIVE" in your HUD.



Not sure why this technique warrants endless spam on the player, but it's amusing nonetheless.

[Marphy Black]

I finished Redneck Rampage for the first time proper, and while looking up some related information, I came across a preview for the game in the March 1997 issue of Computer Gaming World. (Unfortunately, I can't find a reliable source to determine when the game finally did ship.) Of interest is that this article mentions a few features that did not appear in the finished version. Here's an on-line scan of the preview: https://archive.org/...e_152#page/n45/

The notable points:

• Bear Traps are referred to as a weapon that you could lay down and would latch onto enemies to slow them down. No Bear Traps can be found in the final files, but there exists a relevant text line in the 0.7 alpha demo's USER.CON:
  

  definequote 58        BEAR TRAP!

  
  
  In the final game, this quote is designated for "POWDER KEG!", which is a strong hint that the cut Bear Trap was previously meant for the Power Keg's weapon slot. In a sense, the Powder Keg does seem similar in function to the Bear Trap's description since it's an item you can drop at will, but otherwise, I couldn't find any other remnants of the trap's behavior.
  
  
• A cowboy boot kick is mentioned, most likely a direct reuse of Duke's mighty foot feature. The final game does not have any such quick melee feature.
  
  
• Perhaps most intriguing, a pre-finale sub-boss by the name of William Joseph Beaudrey is brought up. He's described as a wealthy landowner who acted as an alien collaborator, becoming a living head preserved in goo who rides around in some sort of tractor vehicle. Again, there's nothing left of this boss in the files. The only hint that he was even planned is the name of the penultimate map, E2L7: Beaudry Mansion. That the level takes place in an extravagant mansion does match his character description. However, nothing in the finished level suggests that a boss battle would have occurred here. There's a big open field at the end, but that's just a transition to the area seen in the next map, ENDGAME: Close Encounters, where you fight the UFO and eventually the Alien Queen end boss. Since the article's enemy descriptions are accurate, including spoilers for the rest of the bosses, I would have to believe that Xatrix did seriously consider including this Beaudry guy as a whole extra boss encounter. He had to have been cut pretty late, though.

And not a cut feature, but apparently the Skinny Old Coot's appearance is supposed to be based on Ross Perot. I wouldn't have guessed, but I do see the resemblance now.

[Mark]

skinny old coot kind of reminds me of the dad from "That 70's Show"

[Marphy Black]

Still continuing my odyssey through the Redneck series. In the Route 66 expansion, I found this secret message in the OOB area at the end of E1L4: Big Billy's Brewery.


Eric Boltjes is one of the ten credited mappers on the project. For the record, the expansion includes 14 levels, and 2 of those were inconsequential episode openers with no actual gameplay. Eric later ended up at Guerrilla Games where he worked on the Killzone series. Incidentally, fellow Route 66 mapper Cho Yan Wong (whose name recently came up in the Deadly Kiss thread) also went on to work on Killzone at Guerrilla Games.

I also found this secret message in the OOB area at the beginning of the final map E2L7: Oddity Museum.


Unlike most messages, this whole spiel is actually a single ART tile (except for the alien head) rather than individually placed letter sprites, so it was easy to find.

I've only just begun Rides Again, but I've already stumbled into a strange oddity while converting the soundtrack. The lyrics in the game version of Mojo Nixon's "Cybersex" track are different compared to his later studio album release.

Redneck Rampage Rides Again - Cybersex third verse:

Game lyrics said:

Well, I'm lookin' through your Windows
And I can see your very bold font
Why you tiltin' my hard drive?
Baby, please don't taunt

I don't wanna log on, baby
I just wanna slip my log in
Digital's all right with me
As long you don't cut my skin

Sock Ray Blue album - Cybersex third verse:

Album lyrics said:

Well, I'm lookin' through your Windows
And I can see your very bold font
Yeah, postcards from the King
That's the only email I want

Well, I don't wanna log on
Slip my log in
Wanna point and click my joystick
In your silicone valley of sin

I can't offer any particular explanation for this. As far as I can tell, the album with Cybersex was released about a year after Rides Again. I imagine the change wasn't actually directly related to the game, but there you go.

[Hendricks266]

When I was working on HTTKC, I did some digging and was able to get in contact with the original artist of the Duke Caribbean and Nuclear Winter box art. His name is Preston Palmer, and he has a Facebook page for his art, including tattoo work: https://www.facebook...onPalmerTattoo/

Before you ask, he did not have a copy of the original images.

[Jimmy]

Marphy Black, on 05 June 2017 - 10:49 PM, said:

I can't offer any particular explanation for this. As far as I can tell, the album with Cybersex was released about a year after Rides Again. I imagine the change wasn't actually directly related to the game, but there you go.

As an avid Mojo fan I can tell you there is probably no reason beyond "just because." Mojo would do a lot of takes and change lyrics. He did the same thing with High School is a Prison which appeared on Rock N Roll High School Part 2. Sometimes these minor lyric changes would just evolve into completely new songs.