[Phredreeke]

Nuke fixed that last year though

[MetHy]

Looks like I forgot to update Rednukem in my RA folder also then.

[MetHy]

MetHy, on 30 September 2020 - 12:26 AM, said:

Anyone has more Build engine and Build engine related (console ports etc) ads?

Here is what I got

Couple more ads but all I got are lousy ebay pictures and not proper scans

Gotta love the bullet points on the 2nd one

Spoiler

[oasiz]

SE_19_EXPLOSION_LOWERS_CEILING: //Battlestar galactia shields

It's documented already but I don't see places mentioning the side effect seen in the 95 videos, which is that it can control rotating lights when in sealing mode.
This is meant to be combined with the vacuum fx, both of these effects already exist in LD but they weren't combined at that point yet.

[gibfrag]

The leaked V0.99 beta version of DN3D has a different version of GLASHEVY.VOC compared to the final version of the game. This video demonstrates why they likely made the change: https://www.youtube....h?v=FddnJXOUB1w

[oasiz]

Is it the same sample but the samplerate was changed? (Making pitch higher and speed quicker)

[gibfrag]

Top is from the beta, bottom is from the final game. Seems you're right about it being the same sample, but the final version has not only a different sample rate, but it seems to be edited in general to be shorter in length overall. Less sounds coming towards the end of the audio.

[ck3D]

To this day I keep regularly discovering new stuff about this old game; I was just watching someone's playthrough of Lunar Apocalypse and spotted something I never realized was there before, which is an instance of tile #0 (the default shitty brick texture) in at least one of the base maps. It's obviously accidental (forgotten texturing on some double walls) and I'm sure the renderer the streamer was using makes the problem even more visible than it might have been back in the day - where off the top of my head, on default settings darkness would sometimes look just pitch black. But it's kind of blowing my mind for what it is still, I don't think I've seen that brought up before, is it a known thing? At least I never knew.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Aleks]

ck3D, on 09 May 2021 - 03:02 AM, said:

To this day I keep regularly discovering new stuff about this old game; I was just watching someone's playthrough of Lunar Apocalypse and spotted something I never realized was there before, which is an instance of tile #0 (the default shitty brick texture) in at least one of the base maps. It's obviously accidental (forgotten texturing on some double walls) and I'm sure the renderer the streamer was using makes the problem even more visible than it might have been back in the day - where off the top of my head, on default settings darkness would sometimes look just pitch black. But it's kind of blowing my mind for what it is still, I don't think I've seen that brought up before, is it a known thing? At least I never knew.

Hmmm just checked these tunnels in Dark Side out of curiosity in Mapster and there isn't any texture 0 there - maybe the guy was just using some bugged out version of the map/missed some arts/renderer problems?

[ck3D]

Aleks, on 09 May 2021 - 03:29 AM, said:

Hmmm just checked these tunnels in Dark Side out of curiosity in Mapster and there isn't any texture 0 there - maybe the guy was just using some bugged out version of the map/missed some arts/renderer problems?

That's so weird! From what I gathered, he was using basic ass Megaton. Everything else in his playthrough of the entire episode (and of the game from what I've watched thus far) looked fine to me.

[gibfrag]

EDIT: If you saw this post I had to redo it all...
It seems it can happen in DOS Atomic, WT, Total Meltdown, and Megaton. It looks the way it should on N64 and through EDuke32. The Saturn version replaces this area with teleporters.

So I wonder if it happens in V1.3D?

The weird thing is some videos showing this level on youtube using these various versions (excluding N64 and Saturn), some show the right tile while others don't.. so wtf is the deal here?!! Is it a bug? Sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't? Regional GRP difference? IDK.

[High Treason]

Dark Side sure seems more prone to this than any other level. I'm still trying to find the cause and, as I have done several times before, would ask anyone who encounters it to save their game, type DNDEBUG to dump the map (as DEBUG.MAP) and upload the resulting files. You know how the world is, where now that I've wanted the game to do this, it never seems to happen.

Still, at least I have another spot to look at now, though it's weird that it happens on multiple walls at once. It's also interesting that they're window/forcefield walls, because the one outside the crater airlock that seems most prone to it used to be a window at one time in development.

[Jimmy]

There's definitely some kind of corruption to the map. I wonder if this is present on some or all of the pre-release versions.

[oasiz]

My wild guess is that since these specific walls are maskwalled with BIGFORCE, there are some oddities that can happen.
I tried blowing it with rockets and I tried checking by blowing the reactor to see it it triggers it (as these have a tendency to trigger more than needed) but no luck. I even tried tagging the BIGFORCE to be disabled but it didn't throw me tile0.
Duke code has some remnants that apply to BIGFORCE specifically, like the vacuum shield windows, which actually let you destroy the force field!
Curiously the other end of these forcefield things do have tilenum0.

I wonder if something is simply triggering the "channel 0" of these shields and things go haywire?
Just pure speculation at this point.

[High Treason]

The thing is, I'm not sure the mask is still set on the one near the airlock, but I'd have to go back and check again. I've been playing the level whilst logging all of the values of things for those walls in EDuke, have just played 'abusively' in the DOS original, but annoyingly I can't get it to go off at all any more. Will keep trying.

Rockets don't work, nor do drone explosions (I've no idea why those would be different aside from, maybe, the owner value or something). Reactors, yeah, I had issues when using them in maps - I know I have a map out there with some weird tags going on to work around a reactor mysteriously setting off every explosion in said level - and I'd almost wondered about really obscure things like the reactor's explosions 'hitting' the forcefield windows behind it.

Not really related, but I once had items in a map move towards a single point like the vacuum effect and could never figure out how or why it happened. Unfortunately I think the grainy recording of it was lost around 2007 to drive failures and I feel more like that was corruption of memory, as I don't think the effect itself is in the game's code any more.

I do think tag 0 likely has something to do with it, somewhere, but can't really rule out other things, like the wall array being corrupted somewhere.

[ck3D]

@High Treason IIRC reactors have always been coded to do that, their destruction will trigger any Masterswitch in the level that doesn't have a Hitag (or more exactly has one of zero) - and Masterswitches will trigger any C9 in their sector regardless of their channel values - that's why mine always come with a Hitag of at least 1 'just in case' since I know the function just exists - even if there's no reactor in the level, I'd always rather be safe than sorry. That's brought up a few times in the Infosuite so my apologies if that's already common knowledge to you, but unless I missed something more specific that you meant there is nothing 'mysterious' about that behavior.

[gibfrag]

I was reading this TCRF page as well as this thread, and it had me thinking about a few things that I wanted to bring up here:

It's likely well known by now that hlminhal and hlmexhal have been found in Duke Nukem Total Meltdown's sound data. They were used for the airtank likely when it had the goggles (before V0.99), and it would've likely interchanged between the two sounds for as long as Duke had the item activated. It could've also been for the spacesuit.

Quote

definesound DUKE_BREATHING hlminhal.voc 0 0 255 4 0
definesound DUKE_EXHALING hlmexhal.voc 0 0 255 4 0

Comparing the technical parameters of those, as well as practically every Duke (himself) sound's technical parameters, plus the obvious hint here with it being included in "Duke Movement Sounds", we can infer that this is an unused Duke line:

Quote

definesound DUKE_YES yes.voc 0 0 255 4 0

Perhaps this was a nod towards ROTT, as one of the character's says "Yes!" when certain things take place in the game. Since there's a few others like DUKE_PASSWIND, DUKE_GLAD, DUKE_HEHE, and DUKE_SHUCK, we can assume these are also unused Duke lines, but these are not defined, only labeled, so I can't compare the bit parameters. PASSWIND is obviously meant to be a fart or a reaction to such a thing. No idea what the others could be, but my guess is HEHE and SHUCK could've been taunts, while GLAD may have been a line used for something specific to a level or use of an item. There's another sound that has a definition but is missing the sound file:

Quote

definesound GENERIC_AMBIENCE22 vpiss2.voc 0 0 255 4 0

The parameters are the same as the other GENERIC_AMBIENCE sounds that are Duke lines (as well as most of his other sounds). So this is likely also another cut line.

If vpiss2.voc is an unused Duke sound, then that would mean there are 8 cut Duke related sounds that are mentioned in the CON files, and they existed in V0.99 and onward. If we include the 2 sounds that were removed after V0.99 (think06.voc and seen01.voc), that would be 10 cut Duke sounds, 11 if you count the sound from the beta's RTS file that was replaced with Duke's scream in the final release.

With all that considered, and not including audio that exists in the GRP but is unreferenced/unused, I'd guess there's likely around 12-15 lines total that may have been cut from the game, but only 11 of them do we have any leftovers of. As I said, DUKE_BREATHING/DUKE_EXHALING have been found, and of course the beta contains 3 lines that were not found in later versions, but as for the rest - I don't think there's any sound files around for those. Maybe a few made their way into DNTM and DNZH, but I'm unsure.

[Jimmy]

Total Meltdown and Zero Hour had their own unique recording sessions, so it's unlikely.

[Fox]

ck3D, on 09 May 2021 - 03:02 AM, said:

To this day I keep regularly discovering new stuff about this old game; I was just watching someone's playthrough of Lunar Apocalypse and spotted something I never realized was there before, which is an instance of tile #0 (the default shitty brick texture) in at least one of the base maps. It's obviously accidental (forgotten texturing on some double walls) and I'm sure the renderer the streamer was using makes the problem even more visible than it might have been back in the day - where off the top of my head, on default settings darkness would sometimes look just pitch black. But it's kind of blowing my mind for what it is still, I don't think I've seen that brought up before, is it a known thing? At least I never knew.

That's a bug in older versions of Megaton.

IIRC for the widescreen tiles, they only changed their width in the code, not the ART. This would eventually lead to some memory corruption.

[gibfrag]

Top is from the Official Duke Nukem 3D Strategy Guide, the in-game screen is from the E3M9 level walkthrough while the images of the map are from the CD that is only included with the 3-episode version of the book. Bottom is of course from the final game.


The top version of the map resembles this from V1.2:



Here's where things get interesting, the strategy guide says the following:

Quote

By now you have probably figured out that you need to climb on the bleachers as soon as possible. And if you take to the air, the better off you will be. If you hop on the bleachers, you want to draw the Cycloid Emperor as close to the bleachers as you can. When he bumps against them, the Emperor's hell-bent nature will keep him trying, in vain, to climb. This renders him practically immobile. If you manage to climb as high as you can in the bleachers, you will also have succeeded in severely limiting the Emperor's fire range. His projectiles might land close, but without much of an angle, you can breathe somewhat tenuously as you plan your next move.

Thing is.. you cannot get the Cycloid Emperor to come near the bleachers in the final game, at all. He gets stuck on the edges of the field near the field goals. You can't get him to appear where he shows up in that photo seen in the guide. Other than that paragraph, the rest of the walkthrough sounds quite normal to what was in the final version of Stadium.

The author also wrote in the book he had been in contact with 3DR's in relation to DN3D since 1995. I don't find it strange that the guide could have some pre-release material, as it was likely being worked on between shareware and retail release, but I do find it to be interesting they made this change to this map so late.

[ck3D]

^ You may already know this, but in the final game the Cycloid Emperor is coded in such a way that it won't venture out of any sector that doesn't have a Lo-Tag of 3, basically making it a stayput actor by default instead of having a designated tile for that sort of behavior and that's unlike every other enemy in the game, meaning I'm sure it was originally supposed to cover more terrain than it does in the game. I'm guessing that was a rather late choice from the devs, the evolution of the terrain changes also seem to reflect that, for instance I'm sure he should have been able to maneuver around that earthquake (or perhaps actually not and that's where the Lo-Tag 3 idea originally comes from, so that he could avoid those sectors in addition to the bleachers?). That earthquake looks so sick by the way and would have made the fight so much better with some evolution in real time, I have no idea why they took it out (frame rate?), sometimes it feels like they originally had great theatrical plans for Stadium and in the end ditched them all and dumbed it down to a fight that can be over in ten seconds as long as you've saved up your Devastator ammo throughout all of episode 3. If I'm not mistaken, I think TerminX once said Stadium was the oldest original map in the base game (I may be misremembering though), so it's no surprise that it underwent the most revisions in the end but it's pretty funny the way those revisions went, they didn't get rid of just the surrounding buildings but also of all the detail from the bleachers to just turn them into some empty flat zone, at least Duke 64 brought the slopes back (they actually had a shit ton to gameplay there). Also had seen some of those screenshots before but never noticed the original blimp with the Nuke icon, that's pretty cool, I can see why they changed it though (and ironically enough, now the Simpsons can't even use Duff beer imagery in their own show anymore, at least here).

[gibfrag]

Darkus mentioned this before, but I wanted to elaborate on it a little bit more.
In the beta footage of DN3D that was of French origin, it shows the early version of Hollywood Holocaust with the green carpets. You can see this:

Obviously, this is an early version of the "Attack of the Bleach Blonde Biker Bimbos" poster, under a different title, "Debbie Does Duke".

It is also pretty obvious they were nodding to this porno film:

It also seems the artist was trying to somewhat emulate the poster as well, and this can still be seen in the final version of the poster despite the change in name.

[ck3D]

Amazing looking out!

Haha, the actress' names. Attack of the Bleached Blonde Biker Bambi. And you reckon Misty Winter was the beta for Nuclear?

"Paula Head" - goodness gracious. Vivid colors, oh I'm sure. Speaking of which, now I'm catching myself wondering if the red and black font on yellow background style of the E1L1 theater porch wouldn't have anything to do with this poster too, originally, although I'm surely looking too deeply into this.

[Aleks]

Wow, I'm glad this apparent sequel wasn't released yet in 1995/1996: Debbie Does Damnation, who knows what ideas the guys at 3DR would get otherwise... There's also Debbie Does Demon, Debbie Does Dallas... Again and finally, Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical. Also I've just noticed in the cast of Debbie Does Damnation is a character named Duke Flyswatter!

[TerminX]

vpiss2.voc was a temp one-liner recorded by whoever it was who voiced Duke before JSJ.

[gibfrag]

ck3D, on 27 May 2021 - 01:19 AM, said:

I finally decided to look more into this, and changed the lotags of the field to 3, so the Cycloid was able to get past the goal posts and near the bleachers, and I also was able to raise the bleachers and change the texture to match the strategy guide version. If that’s how Stadium was at one point, between the earthquake effects version and the final version, I think I can safely say this was changed because the Cycloid is more likely to kill himself before he ever kills Duke, because most of his rockets will just hit the bottom of the bleacher stand, hurting him in the process.



From my tinkering with E3L9:

Raising the bleachers but not changing the Lo-tags for the field makes little difference in how the map plays out, and this is exactly how the version in Total Meltdown plays for the most part.

Raising the bleachers and adjusting the Lo-tag so the Cycloid can reach beyond the field makes things too easy once the player reaches the bleachers, and changing the Lo-tag but keeping the bleachers flat seemed to mostly lead to this same outcome.

[ck3D]

Yeah, Cycloids have the bad tendency to hurt themselves with their own rockets, mini-Cycloids (and mini-Overlords, too) are especially notorious for being prone to that, I guess due to their rockets spawning in a place that doesn't exactly align with their reduced hitbox (that's especially visible in their default behavior without a .con hack where they only have one health point and will usually just commit seppuku in front of Duke), but the normal ones have that problem too to an extent. I've used them multiple times as fixated RPG turrets in some maps of mine before (including scenarii where they aren't meant to be directly reachable/hurt), and noticed every once in a while they will still hit themselves, usually if the player gets too close but lower than whatever floor or platform they stand on, then they will just keep shooting their own legs like maniacs.

Either way I think that's an interesting example of an anti-pattern here - in order to compensate for relatively poorly coded boss behavior, the level designers had to dumb the map down to adapt the design around the mechanics, when in reality that should have never needed to happen in the first place had the code been a bit more refined originally. But I guess in a commercial product it sort of makes sense to reward the player with an easy, simple fight after they've ventured through the whole game painfully stocking up on ammo and items. The blimp sort of ruins that principle though, although I can see why its existence would be regarded as convenient upon the average player dying and needing to pistol start.

I just never really got the whole idea of the poorly coded bosses, to be honest. Out of all of them only the Battlelord is really properly coded complete with its mini counterpart, but it's also one of the most annoying of them bastards with that cheap high-rate hitscan weapon and only getting to meet those in 'vanilla' user maps with no .con hack gets stale real quick. The Overlord is great, but without even more advanced hacks it loses its most underrated forte - its melee attack combined with its speed. Cycloid is a toy and the Queen outside of water feels broken and besides spawning Newbeasts that pose no threat underwater it's essentially another barely moving target that can only really kill you by using time against you. The way I see it, bosses in a game should be one of the priorities, where in Duke 3D it really feels like they were designed for proper use in their original context in the base game levels where they all worked quite-to-very well, except as soon as you take them some place else the duct-tape that really holds them together becomes so apparent.

Also personally, I remember I thought the sloped bleachers in Duke 64 played different/amazing and added a lot of (or, well at least, some) depth to the fight. Completely changed your approach to diagonal strafing from up there when dodging the rockets and also enabled you to get height advantage even without a jetpack. But perhaps the alternate weaponry in that version (which I loved, by the way) especially played a role there, with the game's ultimate gun having a different pacing (long charge BFG-9000 type of weapon vs. constant DPS explosive type of weapon). The Cycloid model in Duke 64 was also a lot taller than its Duke 3D sprite counterpart IIRC.

[Fox]

ck3D, on 10 June 2021 - 05:54 AM, said:

The Cycloid model in Duke 64 was also a lot taller than its Duke 3D sprite counterpart IIRC.

Behind the model the enemy is also 50% larger (repeat/clipdist).

[High Treason]

Somewhere in the time of Map Version 5, Ken Silverman altered the wall[].extra to default to 0 instead of -1. Whilst this was later changed back for Duke Nukem 3D, likely on the part of 3D Realms, many walls remained in the game with this 'invalid' 0 value. This is to blame for the Tile 0 bug in Dark Side - you should read that first, as well as the proceeding posts, as Oasiz and Doom64Hunter made further discoveries as to what is going on with that.

Meanwhile, here is a bunch of boring prattling about walls in the game with an extra value of 0, far too long to post in the thread, as well as a link to download the script used to find them, or just read a pre-generated report of them. I have yet to run the script on LameDuke's levels, though it is known that they also feature this oddity, on account of that build of the game being from Version 5's time. In any case, this allows us to see where older and newer parts of affected levels might be and, in some cases, we have older shots or other findings to back this up. Only recommended if you're really, really bored or trying to cure insomnia.

[brullov]

I am not sure if it was posted before. Duke Nukem: Endangered Species promo art in high quality: