[Micky C]

James, on 01 May 2012 - 11:49 PM, said:

Too bad they took this out and that the art is probably lost. The Overlord's the most boring boss since he only has a single attack.

He also charges at you, and the Overlord boss fight area is probably the smallest boss arena making his charging attack more deadly than all the other bosses'.

[Jblade]

Micky C, on 02 May 2012 - 12:31 AM, said:

He also charges at you, and the Overlord boss fight area is probably the smallest boss arena making his charging attack more deadly than all the other bosses'.

Eh, I don't really see that as an attack since you can out-run anything in the game really easily. Duke doesn't move as fast as the Doom marine, but he still moves pretty damn fast.

[Gambini]

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

A note to everyone:

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

I had them, somewhere. Main problem is, I don´t have a scanner.

What I remember of those were a few lizmans in a moonlike level, and they was wearing a different armor, more like medieaval armor.

[Fox]

Use a camera or your cellphone then.

[Gambini]

If i use a camera, then I have a picture that needs to be scanned too. And... I don´t understand how my cellphone would help on this. Should I call Hendrix to explan what i see in the screenshots?

[Hendricks266]

Could you tell the name, issue, and page number(s) of the magazine(s)?

[Gambini]

The magazine was PC Mania (spanish - Spain). And that had to be prior N*46. I remember I had tons of those and had to throw them to the bin, so i kept that page. But again, that was like 10 years ago and since then my kids have destroyed most of my magazines and books. So I doubt that page survived.

Dukespaña (the duke site in spanish) had a sort of library with lots of scanned pages, but unfortunatelly the link seems to be dead. I just sent a PM to the admin, asking for them again. Will let you know what he answers. Maybe we don´t find that exact thing i mentioned, but there were a lot of cool stuff.

[Fox]

Everything makes a lot more sense when you think of the Cola cans. There are medkits in the bar in Hollywood Holocaust, or in a refrigerator in Hotel Hell. Besides the Cola machines makes a lot more sense.

[MrFlibble]

I really like the outdoor level screenshot in the top left corner of this page, it strongly reminds me of the urban levels in LameDuke It's a pity that most urban levels in the final game got much less spacious.

As for the old footage from the John Romero interview video (nice to know he likes Duke Nukem 3D and Age of Empires ), I do wonder if there are other videos from early builds left anywhere. Could be lying around in some archives actually, maybe used in some old (local) TV commercials or something. (BTW, is there any archive for TV commercials - Internet-based or not? I think those might be archived, either by TV channels/stations, or maybe even on a larger, nationwide scale?)

[Edit] Just noticed an obvious idiocy on my part, calling John Romero John Carmack. Sorry!

[Fox]

MrFlibble, on 21 May 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

I really like the outdoor level screenshot in the top left corner of this page, it strongly reminds me of the urban levels in LameDuke It's a pity that most urban levels in the final game got much less spacious.

I don't know, but I am not particularly a fan of that kind of level because there aren't many details in the streets, just some flat repeated textures all over the place, not to mention that you won't be able to get inside most of the buildings. It turns out Doom II had some levels like that. It's much better to have just one street with lot of stuff.

On the other hand, a level of that kind with details and indoor areas is too large, which turns out to be exhaustive. So if you was to ask me, I think 3DRealms did a good job in how they made the city levels.

[Diaz]

Gambini, on 03 May 2012 - 08:04 PM, said:

The magazine was PC Mania (spanish - Spain). And that had to be prior N*46. I remember I had tons of those and had to throw them to the bin, so i kept that page. But again, that was like 10 years ago and since then my kids have destroyed most of my magazines and books. So I doubt that page survived.

Dukespaña (the duke site in spanish) had a sort of library with lots of scanned pages, but unfortunatelly the link seems to be dead. I just sent a PM to the admin, asking for them again. Will let you know what he answers. Maybe we don´t find that exact thing i mentioned, but there were a lot of cool stuff.

PC Mania even had a section dedicated to level design (it was called "tiempo real") and they were using BUILD for some time... I actually got into BUILD due to this magazine, as I didn't have access to the Internet back then. Too bad they later switched to Worldcraft

[MrFlibble]

 Fox, on 21 May 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

I don't know, but I am not particularly a fan of that kind of level because there aren't many details in the streets, just some flat repeated textures all over the place, not to mention that you won't be able to get inside most of the buildings. It turns out Doom II had some levels like that. It's much better to have just one street with lot of stuff.

For some reason I feel nostalgic when looking at those screenies (and playing the large city levels in LameDuke. Maybe it's partially the colours, I like the light red-brown colour of the LameDuke era more than the grey of the full version. BTW, I just remembered that the Freeway secret level in Episode 3 is rather large and spacious, although I still would like intersections, several buildings etc., which is more like a real city, even if there weren't too much detail. I'd say there is some charm in the old games that do go for creating realistic environments yet the limits are still felt, and it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to maintain the illusion of reality

As for Doom II, I remember that the urban levels are rather abstract, like pretty much everything else there. ZPC, on the other hand, has some nice urban areas (infested by weird zombies, no less), but it has a very distinct artistic style courtesy of Aidan Hughes. (ZPC is hard to find these days but one urban level is present in the "mega" demo v1.2.)

[Jimmy]

Freeway is one of the best Duke3D maps.

[MrFlibble]

 High Treason, on 26 April 2012 - 03:41 PM, said:

• 2:05 - That Parallax Sky seems to be like a Day version of the LA one, I think we saw a bit of it in an old screenie. The level is clearly an earlier version of Red Light District which we've seen screenshots of, now we can see the layout much more clearly in the video. If you're quick, you can see the room Duke jumps out of (Blue key was here in final - looks like Duke has a red one) appears to continue through a doorway too so maybe there was more to this building before?

Come to think of it, I don't remember any daylight sky levels in the final version of Duke3D (the closest thing to it is the sunset sky in Rectricted Area). Am I right? If yes, any idea why such a preference for nighttime levels?

[High Treason]

This was something I noticed when mapping, there are no daylight sky textures - some mappers use Tile #199 for a pure color as the tile is a blue square - so palettes can be applied.

The Nintendo 64 version has a day sky though.

[Kathy]

I always thought The Abyss was in clear daylight. Apparently, it wasn't. Probably got it mixed up with some canyon in DNF'98 trailer.

[Hank]

^ The moment you entered a 'skyless' sections of the map, it became dark, and light when you left. The Abyss felt(feels) like daylight. Even with this oddity I think it is one of the best maps from Level Lord.


As High Treason wrote, the first thing you looked for is a half decent sky texture for the daylight.

[Fox]

High Treason, on 27 May 2012 - 08:24 AM, said:

This was something I noticed when mapping, there are no daylight sky textures - some mappers use Tile #199 for a pure color as the tile is a blue square - so palettes can be applied.

The Nintendo 64 version has a day sky though.

#199 was also used in Total Meltdown level Nightmare Zone.

[MrFlibble]

Hank, on 27 May 2012 - 10:06 AM, said:

^ The moment you entered a 'skyless' sections of the map, it became dark, and light when you left. The Abyss felt(feels) like daylight. Even with this oddity I think it is one of the best maps from Level Lord.

In fact, I was almost sure Raw Meat is in daylight for presumably the same reason. Outdoor areas that are well lit, and the night sky isn't immediately visible, produce the impression of daytime.

As for the N64 version, I guess they decided that a blue cloudless sky would be more realistic than a black starless sky. I think there's some internal limitation of the N64 version that does not allow normal sky textures. Oh, and BTW, I do like how there's an inaccessible area behind the Innocent sign in level 1 on N64. Makes the level feel more spacious somewhat

[TerminX]

It wasn't a N64 limitation, it was a design choice. There are a lot of really old Duke Nukem 64 preview shots from magazines and whatnot that show the game looking identical to the PC version before they worked on making it unique.

[Hendricks266]

See "Prehistoric Images".

[High Treason]

I wonder what the smooth red lighting is on some of the ones at the bottom of that page... Is it perhaps possible the N64 was supposed to have lighting like the Saturn version at one point but it was removed (probably due to perfomance) I wonder?

Who knows for sure.

[OpenMaw]

High Treason, on 28 May 2012 - 04:41 PM, said:

I wonder what the smooth red lighting is on some of the ones at the bottom of that page... Is it perhaps possible the N64 was supposed to have lighting like the Saturn version at one point but it was removed (probably due to perfomance) I wonder?

Who knows for sure.

I'd venture to say that was probably the case. Duke Nukem : Zero Hour would go on to have similar lighting effects after all.

[Fox]

MrFlibble, on 28 May 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

As for the N64 version, I guess they decided that a blue cloudless sky would be more realistic than a black starless sky. I think there's some internal limitation of the N64 version that does not allow normal sky textures. Oh, and BTW, I do like how there's an inaccessible area behind the Innocent sign in level 1 on N64. Makes the level feel more spacious somewhat

I once asked William Beacham (aka Bill Beacham) about it, and he answered that they did it because it looks better.

Also note that the gradient sky you see in the N64 version is also an image (tile #3979 in the Rom). So I am very sure they could have used a paralaxed sky if they wanted.

[Micky C]

Then again, they also said they set Vegas during the day in DNF because it looked better...

[OpenMaw]

Micky C, on 28 May 2012 - 07:18 PM, said:

Then again, they also said they set Vegas during the day in DNF because it looked better...

Even though all it did was reveal low res, shitty looking sky boxes.

It actually looked better at night. We saw what it looked like at night thanks to all the leaked stuff in 2009/2010.

[KareBear]

I have read recently that Duke 64 does not use the build engine is that correct?

[Hendricks266]

No, Duke 64 definitely uses BUILD, but probably not the original classic renderer. Where did you find this information so it can be corrected?

[Plagman]

The core engine code might still be BUILD, but the renderer is custom and doesn't support any of the cooler BUILD features, which forced them to edit a lot of the levels.

[MrFlibble]

 Fox, on 28 May 2012 - 07:06 PM, said:

I once asked William Beacham (aka Bill Beacham) about it, and he answered that they did it because it looks better.

Also note that the gradient sky you see in the N64 version is also an image (tile #3979 in the Rom). So I am very sure they could have used a paralaxed sky if they wanted.

Ahh, I didn't know that. I think I've read in some FAQ (possibly at GameFAQs) that the lack of parallaxed skies in the N64 version was due to a technological limitation of the port's engine. Since it seemed a sound explanation to me, I never questioned it.

Today I've been looking through the pre-release shots from the official 3D Realms' preview packages for Duke3D, and what caught my attention is that even though in most of the old shots where the HUD has red lights/buttons on the sides those lights are "on", there's one shot where they're both "off", and another one where only one light is "on". Is there any reliable information as of what purpose did they actually serve? I almost thought that it could be some kind of damage direction indicator, or enemy indicator, but those are just wild (and probably incorrect) guesses.