[Daedolon]

I noticed that the early Shadow Warrior ad in CGW #140 has a screenshot that I don't believe is in circulation at the moment. It's not in Jimmy's BUILD Archive or in any of the disc previews I've went through on my own. ANY information on this would be welcome.





The three first screenshots are available and around:







P.S. If anyone has any idea for the source of the Shuriken render on this ad as well, please let me know. I don't think I've seen it anywhere else.

[neznam]

Player Lin, on 30 August 2013 - 09:09 AM, said:

C. 搖滾少林系列 - 廖添丁傳
Rock 'n' ShaoLin - Legend of Liao Tian-Ding 3D
(Looks like the sequel of the Lot7P...)

I'm not a native speaker of Chinese, but using google translate, I find that some Chinese forum posts say that this sequel was indeed released on August 11th, 1995.
https://bbs.saraba1s...682153-1-1.html

Perhaps someday someone with more intimate knowledge will find the game itself.

[Player Lin]

neznam, on 16 September 2017 - 12:41 PM, said:

I'm not a native speaker of Chinese, but using google translate, I find that some Chinese forum posts say that this sequel was indeed released on August 11th, 1995.
https://bbs.saraba1s...682153-1-1.html

Perhaps someday someone with more intimate knowledge will find the game itself.

People in China didn't really know Taiwanese shit, at least about shit from EngineSoft and Accend.

https://forums.duke4...e-by-taiwanese/

The 4th game of EngineSoft(東方傳記 Legend of Eastern, released on 1998) may not be a FPS-like game, since it's RPG and according the guy who were worked for EngineSoft and he didn't said any about that game so I'm not sure...and I just can't found more about that game(unless I can found a copy and check) so maybe I'm wrong. :\

Accend, Inc. only released RS:Lot7P and then went bankrupt, states with their rest games just unknown...

[FistMarine]

I have asked on this topic and I didn't get an answer, so I will ask again: What was changed on maps E1L1, E1L2, E1L8 and E3L11 between versions 1.3D and 1.5?

[Fox]

They fixed some warp glitches in the maps (and added some expander ammo to E1L8).

[FistMarine]

Thanks! I was actually thinking that Expander Ammo was added in E1L8.

[MrFlibble]

I was just browsing a gaming site archived by the Wayback Machine and came across this screenshot (source):


It clearly belongs to the same batch as some of the shots in the November 1995 preview, but it's not there. Anyone know where this is from? Also the Trooper sprite has some weird pixels on the edges.

[oasiz]

Not part of that bunch... just look at the missing skull/armor HUD icons and toxic dump being very different compared to the DM shot and this snap.
Possibly earlier 1995 with this snap.

[MrFlibble]

You're right, silly me didn't look closer at the HUD in the November pack. I meant the August 1995 Duke/Shadow Warrior combo pack, it has the same type of HUD.

[Perro Seco]

I've found an unboxing video of Tekwar. With the box comes a magazine which also talks about other games in development, like Duke 3D. There's no much to see, and the screenshots aren't new, but looks like the story is a bit different:


Something about a giant bomb and a dome in which Duke has to infiltrate? Here's the video, but it is hard to read the rest.

[MrFlibble]

I seem to vaguely remember the dome concept from somewhere, perhaps it was in some magazine preview.

[OpenMaw]

I swear, that reminds me of something I thought I read at one point about the whole thing being a police state and having Escape from New York influences, at one stage.

There is some of that sorta in the urban map designs, with giant walls and barriers blocking streets, as if they were closed in by military/police.

[oasiz]

Bummer, my Shanty-box only has the manual and no preview catalog.

This kind of is present in early LD maps in EP2 that are mostly focused on entering a nuclear plant and blowing it's reactor up before hitting the streets proper.
I'm kind of really interested on how the story evolved as there are various traces to a plotline but it's hard to tell what the big picture is exactly since there are at least two major stages of development present in LD.

[MrFlibble]

I was browsing a Wayback Machine copy of a Brazilian software publisher BraSoft and found their page for the Plutonium Pak:
http://www.brasoft.com.br/produtos/dukeplut/index.htm

Interestingly they have several screenshots that seem familiar but are not found on the 3D Realms website (the archived copy from 1998 has one more shot compared to the current version, but still none of the following images). At the same time these screenshots are featured on the back of the box.



Sadly the moon surface (or is it Movie Set?) screenshot showing the Devastator used against a Commander and an Enforcer was not archived.

On a side note, it seems that BraSoft had a habit of tweaking the brightness/contrast of screenshots, so the images above are most likely not in original quality.

[Perro Seco]

The protector drones over the truck are wall-aligned.

[Daedolon]

We have a cropped version of the moon pic from the XBLA assets.

[Jmoc]

Commando Nukem, on 23 September 2017 - 10:30 PM, said:

I swear, that reminds me of something I thought I read at one point about the whole thing being a police state and having Escape from New York influences, at one stage.

There is some of that sorta in the urban map designs, with giant walls and barriers blocking streets, as if they were closed in by military/police.

Is there any source beside LameDuke backing this? Makes a lot of sense for the first LA Meltdown episode, just by replacing aliens with soldiers and policemen. Especially the electric chair execution. Maybe it was too ambitious given the dumb AI.

[Daedolon]

Update on the girl in the Blood alpha, someone asked about it on discord and I remembered TinEye (uses different methods from Google Image search) still exists, so:

(NSFW) https://tineye.com/s...9077c2e4a20de3/

Apparently it's someone called Donna D'Errico who was a Playboy Playmate at least when the photo was taken (also from where the photo is, the same background can be seen in September 1995 centerfold).

[Sanek]

Obscure logo from old 3DR site. I don't remember seeing it before.

 apogee.gif (6.31K)
Number of downloads: 490

[Sanek]

Why some gaming magazines and distributors used screenshots from not the registered version of Duke, well after the game's release? I remember seeing a couple of reviews of DN3D that used screenshots from beta-versions of the game.

[CryptKiller]

They had only those screenshots around, most probably. I remember even seeing a review of Saturn version with mix of screenshots from beta and Atomic Edition. Annoying, but oh well...

[MrFlibble]

Sanek, on 15 November 2017 - 03:14 AM, said:

Why some gaming magazines and distributors used screenshots from not the registered version of Duke, well after the game's release? I remember seeing a couple of reviews of DN3D that used screenshots from beta-versions of the game.

Different publications had different standards regarding custom screenshots. Many of them received official screenshot right from the developer/publisher, and preferred them to images that the editorial staff could produce (especially considering that software for taking screenshots was not as advanced as it is today). Quite often a magazine would preview a game using official screenshots available at the time, and once the full version became available they would "recycle" some of the screenshots they already had in the review as well.

Also don't forget that many differences between some pre-release screenshots and images from the final release only become obvious after a careful study and comparison, which is something magazine reviewers and/or distributors might have not have time for.

[Daedolon]

Duke Nukem 3D ad insert from US Gold's 1995 release of Chronomaster.

[NNC]

They really tried to advert the tripbomb back in those days. Even in the 1.0 demo, the weapon they advertised the most was the tripbomb. I thought it will be something special back then, only to realize it's totally useless.

[High Treason]

They're not useless, they prevent fall damage.

Anyway, putting this here for people not on Discord, I think I've discovered an unused prototype boss in V0.99 of Duke Nukem 3D;


It was hiding right at the end of the GAME.CON file as DUMMYDUKE and BIGDUMMYDUKE. It is the only thing in there to have any reference to BOSS2. Incidentally, what would be called BOSS2 in the final game is the Cycloid Emperor, yeah, Overlord would become BOSS3. In this proto, BOSS3 is actually within the Cycloid's tile numbers, but at times and when he is killed, his picnum will move up into the Overlord's range.

DUMMYDUKE and his bigger brother appear green, the big one uses the sizeto command as opposed to sizeat, so he grows or shrinks to size, he dies in a single hit whereas the regular sized one does not. They walk around slowly, trying to find Duke and they also fall much more slowly than other actors. They both fire a chaingun hitscan. One has to wonder if the giant fembot in LameDuke's E1L6 wasn't just a gimmick for magazine shots and was, perhaps, once an idea, only with a giant Duke Nukem.

DUMMYDUKE and BIGDUMMYDUKE in the GAME.CON file;


It does not appear to be a DukeBot as those are present to an extent, they do not move and really do nothing beyond simply exist. Also, enemies attack DukeBots whereas they do not attack DUMMYDUKEs at all, the non-big DUMMYDUKE also adds one kill whereas the BIGDUMMYDUKE does not. Here is a DukeBot with an enemy attacking it;



As for the noted "BOSS3" there's no way to know what tiles were meant to be there, only that the Cycloid did end up here. It mostly works but he shoots a hitscan like DUMMYDUKE does instead of his barrage from the final game.


He will, however, turn into the Overlord at times and appears as one permanently when killed. Here he's alive but moving his picnum up to the Overlord's area;


Upon death;


Remember we don't know what these tiles were supposed to look like, it is likely coincidence that they happen to share numbers with the final versions of these bosses. It seems likely to me that they bosses were having their tile numbers moved, especially with the swap in the final game.

[Fox]

I presume the dummies would be clones, akin to the Nuclear Winter bosses.

define APLAYER 1405
define PLAYERONWATER 1420
define DUMMYDUKE 1425
define BIGDUMMYDUKE 1430

define BOSS1 2630
define BOSS1STAYPUT 2631
define BOSS1SHOOT 2660
define BOSS1LOB 2670
define BOSS1MISSLES 2680
define BOSS3 2710

define BOSS1STRENGTH            2000
define BOSS2SMALLDUKESTRENGTH   1000
define BOSS2LARGEDUKESTRENGTH   2000
define BOSS3STRENGTH            2000

[Fox]

Perro Seco, on 06 October 2017 - 06:17 AM, said:

The protector drones over the truck are wall-aligned.

Good catch. Also all sprites are are too big.

[Daedolon]

[Fox]

Hendricks266, on 01 May 2012 - 01:52 PM, said:

A note to everyone:

If you have magazines with beta screenshots, scan them. (Please.)

I have collected these from the Internet:

https://imgur.com/a/5V2Cu

[MrFlibble]

On a side note, with good, high-quality scans it should be possible to get pixel-accurate versions of screenshots (but of course with colour inaccuracies due to the specifics of the printing process) if the source images are large enough. Sadly much of the stuff available online are scans that are a) not in the highest resolution available, b) often mangled by high levels of JPEG compression and c) may be not perfectly aligned vertically, distorting the images.

To give you some idea of what I'm talking about, here's my attempt at restoring a screenshot on this page:


Compare it to another screenshot in original quality:


It's not 100% perfect but you can see that the ARMOR and HEALTH text, the compass, ammo counter and the SAFE indicator are pixel-accurate in the restored image compared to the original screenshot. The left side is somehow mangled a bit, perhaps due to some inaccuracies during scanning (?). I got this by cropping the screenshot from the scan, resizing it via Nearest Neighbour to 1280x800 (4x the original size), applying Gaussian blur at 1 pixel radius, then downsizing everything to 320x200 with the Bicubic interpolation method (all done in GIMP).

Note that the quality of the scan is far from excellent; I'm hoping that with better source images, even more accurate results may be achieved.