[Player Lin]

The Kins, on 24 September 2019 - 07:15 PM, said:

Id Software had already struck a deal with a Taiwanese publisher called Kingformation, who had previously been involved in translated pirate versions of games such as Dragon Quest. So the story goes, Id licensed several of their games to them in exchange for a low royalty rate of $1 a copy. This way Kingformation were able to obtain a bit of legitimacy and Id were able to make at least a little money off the Chinese market.

As I heard something about this from a former Kingformation co. ltd. employee -- was a game designer/producer in that time, he's still actives these days but some times ago, I did tried to ask some info about that time but sadly he just cannot remember most of details about them...and I don't want to bother him about these things again --, those games from id software didn't really sold well, so they changed plan.

But still, they(Kingformation) tried.
I'm sure they have nothing to do with mainland China as I know, at least on early DooM & Quake time.

BTW, Kingformation did made a game strategy RPG game: Dragon Force(Guang Ming Zhan Shi 光明戰史), its gameplay was like Shining Force from Sega Genesis. They also put a lot of Dragon Quest/Shining Force elements in Dragon Force's background and main story, use its spell names(pure transliteration, they're all original Japanese spell name, but in Chinese), player character(s) designs and some other things.

In the game's secret battle that cannot visit by normal means(as it was designed for cheater, when it triggered, the game will show an error message and sent player to the studio of Kingformation...and it can be avoid by just go to city/town to find church then save the game and exit, them quit and restart), the player's force have to fight the game devs, and they are overpowered but still, the battle can be beaten if your characters are also overpowered too but it's only possible by doing memory hacking(Kingformation also published some memory scanner/debug tool for hacking...so how irony), I did tried that but...since no reward so beaten the level just pointless...

Well, the point is : A developer enemy unit named "Game Desinger", his battle sprite looks like he wears a white T-shirt, with DooM 2 logo on it. It was confirmed by the former employee : they had a lot of that T-shirts for put into the package boxes of DooM 2 they published, and most of employees also had the T-shirt as reward and wear the T-shirt too.

Proof of in-game footage, in 1:27 :

(I failed on this video because Game Designer's instant death attack just overruled my cheat program so my hero just dead and Game Over, sad. I did tried again but without recording and I got victory, so I know it's no reward, just sent player back to game)

The Kins, on 24 September 2019 - 07:15 PM, said:

Supposedly Kingformation went on to publish Duke 3D in China, but I haven't been able to find any information on this release.

No, Kingformation never publish Duke3D, that was other company that I never heard, I did saw the ad of DN3D and I'm sure it was from other company(in a game magazine), but I don't have the ad anymore so I cannot show the prove, and if Kingformation did had publish Duke3D, then I would know and found some info about that I also found nothing......but then again, Accend Inc. was published original RotT but still not many remembered this.

[Sanek]

2001 Spanish game called Theta



This floor texture looks VERY familiar.

[Sanek]

Found it on ebay:

Spoiler

Don't remember seeing this cover art posted before. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Fox]

There are a few clues that in Duke Nukem 64 the Freeway was planned to not be a secret level like Launch Facility in this version, but they changed it back later on during developmnt.

- The more obvious evidence is that the Nukebutton at the end of Freeway is not green
- The secret exit in Hotel Hell is missing the manhole under the Nukebutton
- Stadium doesn't start in the lifting platform, likely because it wouldn't be the level after Hotel Hell

What level would be found in the Hotel Hell secret is up to speculation. But Derelict can be seen in an old screenshot...

[jet_nick]

Fox, on 30 October 2019 - 06:11 AM, said:

There are a few clues that in Duke Nukem 64 the Freeway was planned to not be a secret level like Launch Facility in this version, but they changed it back later on during developmnt.

- The more obvious evidence is that the Nukebutton at the end of Freeway is not green
- The secret exit in Hotel Hell is missing the manhole under the Nukebutton
- Stadium doesn't start in the lifting platform, likely because it wouldn't be the level after Hotel Hell

What level would be found in the Hotel Hell secret is up to speculation. But Derelict can be seen in an old screenshot...

was the cycloid emperor map a cut level? Or a community user map?

Spoiler

[Fox]

No idea.

The game box says there are 32 levels instead of the actual 30, but these numbers are definitely not reliable.

I suspect it's just a test map. Most time it is seen next to Hollywood Holocaust screenshots, plus that map doesn't seem fit for a boss fight.

Collection of images:

[Sanek]

It's funny that devs made these screenshots just for the magazines, while in reality the maps simply doesn't exist. Yet people have odd nostalgia for the maps that never were, being mesmerized by these images decades after game's release. I remember Gambini said that he was very dissapointed by the absence of police car in E1L1.

I have the odd nostaliga for Witchaven. I have it on a warez cd, and I remember my father played it a couple of times - I never actually played it myself until my late teens. When I was a kid the game seemed so cool and awesome to me, almost on par with Hexen and Heretic, which I actually played back then. Somehow the game's cover image become sort of childhood/nostalgia symbol to me - the image I always remembered. Oh well.

[jet_nick]

Fox, on 31 October 2019 - 01:22 AM, said:

No idea.

The game box says there are 32 levels instead of the actual 30, but these numbers are definitely not reliable.

I suspect it's just a test map. Most time it is seen next to Hollywood Holocaust screenshots, plus that map doesn't seem fit for a boss fight.

Collection of images:

I see,
I would like to replicate this map to prove how it behaves with the boss, it must certainly be very challenging.

[Fox]

The boss also seems smaller (1/2 of the size, based on the floor texture), and the real thing may not fit there...

[F!re-Fly]

Daedolon, on 16 November 2016 - 04:50 AM, said:

Here's everything extracted from the Duke Nukem Mobile game. I didn't realize it'd be this easy when I wanted to take a look at it.

Art included as .PCX with a few .TGA tiles. All audio .WAV except for the music as .XM.

Would be fun to reverse engineer the level file format, too (.xff). I'd love to see a re-creation in EDuke32.



Some examples of files included:

Good works man!

Is there any way to have scripts for the new enemies of this mobile version? The textures are really interesting.

[F!re-Fly]

Darkus, on 16 November 2016 - 04:28 AM, said:

Already done.

Not really censoring but a regional difference, if you can spot it:



Answer:

Spoiler

JP: press o to continue
US: press x to continue

Good! Has anyone found the logo "Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown" written in Japanese, as in the trailer?

[ViDi]

Firefly Trooper, on 07 December 2019 - 03:06 PM, said:

Good! Has anyone found the logo "Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown" written in Japanese, as in the trailer?

Only this



And CD covers

Spoiler

[NNC]

Duke Nukem 64 is an atrocious bastardization of the original game that should have never been greenlit.

[Phredreeke]

The Watchtower, on 23 December 2019 - 07:51 AM, said:

Duke Nukem 64 is the best console version of the game, while changing the game to adhere to Nintendo's policies at the time still does so in a way that makes it stand on its own.

FTFY

[NNC]

Haha, no.

[NY00123]

So, a little-known fact about the Apogee Sound System (the audio library used in ROTT and differing Build Engine games), is that it has audio recording capabilities.

These appear to be used for voice chat in multiplayer ROTT LAN sessions. If you see any DemandFeed-related code in the audio library (e.g., FX_StartDemandFeedPlayback), it seems to be used on the receiving side as follows: First, audio arrives from the network and is added to an internal playback buffer. The DemandFeed code is then used in order to play back the sound data from this buffer. This differs from playing a premade audio segment, say a WAV or VOC file.

The opposite is essentially done for sound which is recorded and then sent over LAN.

Now, as it turns out, the last version of VMware's desktop VM software has improved SB16 support. There might still be enough which is missing, but audio recording is, in fact, covered, at least partially. (I actually don't recall checking if this worked before the update, but it's still been a good chance.)

Other than VMware, and possibly also NTVDM for Windows XP, only other environments which I know to have working audio recording for SB-compatible DOS programs are actual DOS/Win9x setups with compatible sound cards.

As the following step, locating DOS software which supports audio recording with the SB *and* can do so under VMware turned out to be less than "simple".

While not letting me hear the recording as-is, I could at least see the reported volumes, using Cthugha: http://www.afn.org/~...a/archives.html

As for actually hearing whatever is recorded with a microphone: Eventually, I looked at the Apogee Sound System sources, which include the sound playback utility PS, and modified it into RAW PCM sound recorder, shortly named RS.

Source on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/NY00123/audiolib-rs
Last binary and source are currently available from my Duke4.net-hosted site: https://ny.duke4.net/files.html

[Marphy Black]

While browsing through archived versions of Bobby Prince's old site, I came across what seem to be a couple (very scant) unused alternate Duke line recordings. Don't get your hopes up!

• One is simply named "ooh.au": https://web.archive....80/sound/ooh.au
  
  Unsurprisingly, it's Duke saying "Ooh!". Not that remarkable, unfortunately, but this is not the same "Ooh!" from him saying "Ooh, I needed that!" or "Ooh! That's gotta hurt!"
  
  
• The other is slightly more interesting, "letsrock1.au": https://web.archive....nd/letsrock1.au
  
  It's Duke saying "Let's rock!" with a repeated echo. This is not the same "Let's rock!" used at the skill menu, and the seemingly peculiar echo seems like it was meant for the menu selection sound. You'll note that the filename here is letsrock1, while the line used in the game is LETSRK03, suggesting other takes we've never heard.

Both sounds can be found on this page: https://web.archive..../frame_3dr.html

And this segues into my next interesting discovery on the site. Each image here links to a Duke-related piece of audio, and apart from the aforementioned Duke lines, we can see that Bobby linked to myrtle.mid which we know didn't actually end up in Duke 3D but rather only in Xenophage. But even better than that, the page provides a whole backstory for the track explaining how that all came to be! And there are even more backstories for most of the tracks he made pages for on his site!

With that in mind, I have collected all of the midi pages on Bobby's site that present historical backgrounds (sans the Doom ones which can already be found here and here):

Duke Nukem 3D

• citystreets.mid
  
• invader.mid
  
• myrtle.mid

Duke Nukem 2

• depths.mid
  
• kissgirls.mid
  
• hesback.mid
  
• dukeii.mid

Wolfenstein 3D

• pow.mid
  
• warmarch.mid
  
• getthem.mid
  
• funky.mid
  
• corner.mid

Commander Keen

• mamsnake.mid
  
• jazzme.mid
  
• sphereful.mid
  
• aliensate.mid
  
• kickpant.mid

Other Apogee games

• Bio Menace - circles.mid
  
• Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure - breakdown.mid
  
• Major Stryker - dizzy.mid
  
• Realms Of Chaos - badlands.mid
  
• Blake Stone: Planet Strike (the page says Aliens of Gold, but Bobby is wrong, that hack!) - fortress.mid
  
• Xenophage - fromhell.mid
  
• Rise of the Triad - hereboy.mid

Other games

• Pickle Wars - linda.mid
  
• Pickle Wars - kingdill.mid
  
• Terrace - joecool.mid
  
• Terrace - cogitating.mid
  
• Zorro - fiorini.mid
  
• Zorro - zorro.mid
  
• Black Knight - afterburner.mid
  
• Black Knight - starman.mid

If you want to listen to the midis themselves, go here and either sort type by audio or add ".mid" as a filter.

And a lot of these tidbits are already fairly well known, but I also recommend checking out Bobby's Little Known Facts page.

[oasiz]

I found out that Lameduke has a suicide function that if you mess with FILE_ID.DIZ, the game.exe will erase itself when it fails integrity checks.
This file can't also be edited, unless you open D3D.EXE and find the text content embedded in the executable and modify it there also.

Based on compiled files the game also internal definitions for some sounds that do not exist, along with copter/elevator movement sounds but these are not correctly defined and some names are garbled. Despite renaming files, I was unable to get these play in-game. References to KSM also exist, so it's likely that the game+engine might still be able to play those back somehow. Actually not, no KSM. Wrong notes to another file.

[Phredreeke]

oasiz, on 09 March 2020 - 07:33 AM, said:

I found out that Lameduke has a suicide function that if you mess with FILE_ID.DIZ, the game.exe will erase itself when it fails integrity checks.
This file can't also be edited, unless you open GAME.EXE and find the text content embedded in the executable and modify it there also.

Didn't Blake Stone also do this?

[MrFlibble]

Phredreeke, on 09 March 2020 - 07:38 AM, said:

Didn't Blake Stone also do this?

I also remember reading about this type of copy protection, maybe even for other Apogee games. The FILE_ID.DIZ of the registered version would say something like "This is the registered version, do not distribute, and notify sysop if found on a public FTP", and the game would not run if the text was altered or removed altogether. Actually a good way of preserving integrity of distributions and discouraging tampering, even if the game is not commercial.

[necroslut]

MrFlibble, on 13 March 2020 - 02:17 AM, said:

I also remember reading about this type of copy protection, maybe even for other Apogee games. The FILE_ID.DIZ of the registered version would say something like "This is the registered version, do not distribute, and notify sysop if found on a public FTP", and the game would not run if the text was altered or removed altogether. Actually a good way of preserving integrity of distributions and discouraging tampering, even if the game is not commercial.

I'm quite sure Duke II did this. Interceptor broke the Steam version with one of their updates by "accidentally" removing the file_id.diz.

[oasiz]

Decided to do a video that kind of shows the build engine looking up/down in a nutshell for those who are curious.

[nukemania]

Listen from 1:50 here on Mark Knight's Chaingun in My Hands (Total Meltdown E3M1, E4M7):



On a Japan PS1 demo disc, from 2:23:



Is it just a shared sound sample, or?

[Darkus]

Another movie reference? I would say yes:

[Fox]

IMHO a bit too generic, probably something made up

[Phredreeke]

In Warp Factor there's a bunch of porn mags in the really ready room. One is unique in that it has the palette set to 22 (not used elsewhere AFAIK) but the sector's palette overrides it.

In Life's a Beach's The Wavemistress there's a liztroop with the palette set to 10, but the sprite used by the expansion makes it hard to tell.

[Fox]

Odd palettes are quite common. The strangest one is the respawning Newbeasts with pal 14 at the end of Area 51.

[necroslut]

Fox, on 18 April 2020 - 04:02 PM, said:

IMHO a bit too generic, probably something made up

Especially as the poster exists in LameDuke already but with different (alien) text. Still, Fright Night was hardly an obscure movie at the time, so who knows.

[Darkus]

After seeing the threads 'running EDuke in 320x200' and 'how things have changed' I got the idea to see the differences between DOS and EDuke using 320x200; I taken screenshots of the start from E1L1 with DOS 1.3D, Atomic Edition and the recent EDuke32 and made an animated gif.

The only difference between 1.3D and 1.5 is just the slope texture being shifted to some pixels (I verified both map versions). In EDuke32, the slopes are being more 'wavy' than original version. There's more, see:

[Radar]

Does anyone know why the viewing angle in EDuke32 is slightly shifted compared to DOS?