[Jimmy]

That's a very early design of the Assault Trooper, I didn't even know that got past concept art.
Seen here:

Spoiler

Those are likely just the renders that got scaled down into sprites.

[Fox]

These models are not scaled down, look closely.

It's still possible that the Liztroop didn't made it on sprites, but at least they created a model.

[Jimmy]

I know they're not, that's why I said they were probably the renders that got scaled down into sprites.

[t800]

I know that maybe I will sound childishly naive, but I just dont understand why old alpha versions (made between lameduke and 0.99) cant be released to public. When 3d Realms in 1996 released lameduke, it was all right. But now it is impossible? I am not well acquainted in questions of who has rights to them. Gearbox, probably? But why cant they release them? I cant imagine how would that damage sales of DNF or commercial use of Duke IP. What is the point in holding such old alpha testing verions trapped in old dusty hard disks? They cant harm anyone.

Some of you consider effort in search for these versions futile - "They are probably lost, damaged, in unplayable state, etc."
I DO believe that these old versions are still stored somewhere safely (3drealms seemed to me like company that backed up all its important data, even old alpha testing versions of ther games).
Unplayble state - possible, but that still doesnt diminish thier significance. Even if they were impossible to play or even run in dosbox, I wouldnt mind because their geatest importance is in thier data - maps, sprites, etc. that still could be harvested from them.

It would be symbolical gift for all Dukers if anyone holding their rights would release them in 2016 - on 20th Anniversary Of Duke Nukem 3D.

Well, it is time to get back to dreaming. *sigh*

EDIT: I am interested in your opinions. What do you think are the main reasons why holders of rights dont want to release these alphas?

[Jimmy]

It's primarily just laziness. Not wanting to bother.

[Fox]

It's also reasonable to say that they may not even have it anymore. I don't think that in 90's developers had the insight of saving the BETA or ALPHA releases for future generations.

[Fox]

For the sake of it, when I stalked contacted Will Beacham (who worked on the maps of Duke Nukem 64) a few years ago, these are the messages I got from him:

Spoiler

Quote

Yes, I am. Who are you?

Quote

Heh…. That screenshot of the Dukeburger loading bay does indeed bring back memories – I spent a long time changing the strip club into that scene to avoid offending Nintendo. That was a LONG time ago though, so I’m not sure what useful information I can give you.

Quote

No, afraid not – it was my first project at Eurocom and I left there some years ago, so any assets are long gone.

Quote

Kev is in Australia now – we worked together for a long time before we’d had enough of Eurocom. I strongly doubt he’s got any assets though – developers generally don’t keep things like that themselves, they’re the property of the company.

Good luck with the project though. Glad you liked it – it was a blast to work on, especially when I was just starting out in the industry.

Quote

1 - We used Build to make the maps, yes. (We actually used it to make maps for Duke Nukem: Zero Hour too, although with custom functionality added by our coders).

2 – No. Well, I didn’t anyway, and I’m not aware that Kev did. We weren’t making new maps for the most part after all, but basing them on existing ones - although we did edit them to make them look better (e.g. added content beyond the dead-end walls in the streets), add a lot of secret areas, tweak enemy spawn points to keep things interesting, and rework areas to meet Nintendo approval standards.

3 – All games need more time.

Quote

We didn't worry about monster spawn points linked to the babes since we
weren't going to trigger them.

I can't remember why we didn't spawn in monsters after you rescued a
babe - it would have made a nice risk / reward mechanic. We probably
wanted to reinforce the idea that it was a positive thing to do (rather
than killing strippers) to keep Nintendo happy, if we really thought
about it at all.

[MrFlibble]

Regarding recent controversy with the pre-release shot of Duke3D, here are some more mag scans with shots, some of which have a similar HUD design:
http://www.oldgames....bur-51/page/18/
http://www.oldgames....bur-51/page/19/

BTW, the same shot as in Mikko Pekkola's post is seen on the first page (left column).

[TerminX]

Well, I'll be damned. Nice find!

[Fox]

Interesting that there are pictures of Seweeney and Sewers.

In case nobody noticed, you can see an Enforcer using the flamethrower, and the fire is being displayed on top of the player weapon.

[Jimmy]

Very nice! I have some of those screenshots in better quality, and they've been available for ages, but some of those shots are new. Thanks!

[MrFlibble]

What keeps me wondering about Duke3D is that I can't remember a single level that would use pushable blocks. It's such a notable feature in Powerslave for example (and generally an improvement over other 2.5D engines that was added in Build), and it allows for some nice puzzles and level design, but somehow it seems to me that it was left unused (or underused) in the most well-known Build game.

Am I wrong here?

[Micky C]

There were a lot of cool cut features in Duke 3D, such as a lot of levels (some of them came back in The Birth), and items such as the Spacesuit that allows you to walk in a vacuum (and jump around in low grav!!!). One early magazine even mentioned being able to break windows in space then all the enemies get sucked out and killed, which sounds pretty neat. So considering all the stuff they cut, I'm not surprised if they didn't have time to code in a feature such as that.

Another problem is that players might use the objects in ways that were not originally intended, and they could cheat and skip parts of levels.Oh wait what am I thinking? This is Duke 3D not DNF. In Duke 3D there was nothing wrong with having the ability to skip parts of levels say with the jetpack, and of course back then the levels were actually good enough enough that you wouldn't want to skip parts in the first place. DNF on the other hand... (Seriously though it probably might have led to extra blocking of walls or something)

Mappers these days are free to use the feature in DukePlus though.

[KareBear]

MrFlibble, on 14 October 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

What keeps me wondering about Duke3D is that I can't remember a single level that would use pushable blocks. It's such a notable feature in Powerslave for example (and generally an improvement over other 2.5D engines that was added in Build), and it allows for some nice puzzles and level design, but somehow it seems to me that it was left unused (or underused) in the most well-known Build game.

Am I wrong here?

I noticed that too while playing Powerslave/Exhumed recently.Its pretty jarring considering the rest of the game (the control scheme for example) is so archaic compared to the "Big Four" Build games.

[t800]

I heard some rumors about textured automap (second mode of map). It was supposed to display not only player but also monsters and pickups, so the game could be played in almost three ways - from fps and tps view and up-down view from map. Maybe they found it too unpractical for gameplay, or were too lazy to do sprites for all enemies from top-down view. One reason or another they sadly decided to scrape it. Pity, I would like to try another original way how to play Duke. Surprisingly no modders ever tried to implement this function in their projects as far as I know.

Source of information: http://dukenukem.wik...used_data_(DN3D)

EDIT: Question adressed to experienced modders (CON coders) and/or EDuke32 developers - is it possible in Eduke32 to do such a thing?

[Jimmy]

MrFlibble, on 14 October 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

What keeps me wondering about Duke3D is that I can't remember a single level that would use pushable blocks. It's such a notable feature in Powerslave for example (and generally an improvement over other 2.5D engines that was added in Build), and it allows for some nice puzzles and level design, but somehow it seems to me that it was left unused (or underused) in the most well-known Build game.

Am I wrong here?

Pushable blocks really don't fit with the run and gun theme of Duke. It works for Powerslave though.

t800, on 14 October 2012 - 06:01 AM, said:

I heard some rumors about textured automap (second mode of map). It was supposed to display not only player but also monsters and pickups, so the game could be played in almost three ways - from fps and tps view and up-down view from map. Maybe they found it too unpractical for gameplay, or were too lazy to do sprites for all enemies from top-down view. One reason or another they sadly decided to scrape it. Pity, I would like to try another original way how to play Duke. Surprisingly no modders ever tried to implement this function in their projects as far as I know.

Source of information: http://dukenukem.wik...used_data_(DN3D)

EDIT: Question adressed to experienced modders (CON coders) and/or EDuke32 developers - is it possible in Eduke32 to do such a thing?

Yeah, some of the graphics were left in the game, like top-down views of most of the 1.3d aliens. Mods like Nuclear Showdown and AMC TC have implemented similar features, but not as far as showing aliens on the map.

[TerminX]

My old "Project X" TC had implemented the top down views for the enemies in-game through the use of floor aligned sprites that weren't visible outside of map mode.

[Jimmy]

Oh, cool. I never noticed that. In that case, it means it's very possible in EDuke32, hahah.

[Fox]

There is also a second style of icons, which would display Duke's face (2452) of a skull for enemies (2453).

[High Treason]

I noticed when scanning the ad in the Terminal Velocity box that this shot has a different movie title in it, "Slashmaster II" as opposed to "Bleach Blonde Biker Bimbos".



Never seen anyone point this out before. I'm sure there's a proper version of that image somewhere, if someone wants to link it.

[Jinroh]

Wow that's really interesting HT, good eye.

[Hendricks266]

I remember seeing that and thinking "What a boring title."

[Daedolon]

I really like how the theatre looks, though, and sector LARD car? Cool.

[Gambini]

Daedolon, on 18 October 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

I really like how the theatre looks, though, and sector LARD car? Cool.

You wouldn´t believe that when I got the game back in 1996, and then saw that shot in some magazine (presumably an old magazine) It drove me crazy, because I thought the police car was there and that I had to cheat somehow to make it spawn. I had null access to any kind of information, due to the lack of internet and my very limited english. So, I began to play with the game launch parameters thinking that would do the trick. I remember that at some point I read "coop" somewhere but didn´t realize that cop and coop weren´t the same thing. Then, tried all possible ways to make that "coop" thing work in the game... Thinking that it would change the E1L1 map by one with the police car included.

I completely forgot about that pathetic and irrelevant evening of launching duke3d.exe a thousand times, till today, when I see that image for second time, 16 years later.

[dnskill]

Was stalking this thread again when I watched this video for the billionth time... sorry to reply to an older post, but..

High Treason said:

http://www.youtube.c...GjXzFwCs#t=121s

In the part where you see the Pig Cops.. look REALLY closely, don't they look like they walk differently? They also look like they shoot differently so I think this version shown has the Pigs with the double barrel shotgun, which are not as cool as the really old ones IMHO.. but still.. Somebody HAD this version outside of 3DR!!

[Jimmy]

That video is so strange, because it was done sometime after the plutonium pak was released and I've never seen more footage from that era of the game before. No idea where it even comes from.

[High Treason]

I'm glad you brought that up, think I'll start composing that letter (forgot about this) to the TV station it was broadcasted on, apparently they still have the rights to the show but it's long since dead, they may, however, have something in the archive, even if it was just the footage from the video, it'd be nice.

I'll just be happy to get a response of "No!" though, my letters to big companies usually result in no response at all.

There's definitely something odd with those pigcops, I did notice it at the time. They did have several revisions as time went on though.

There's a croatian bloke on YouTube going around saying he has an older beta, but I'm not inclined to believe him as he went silent when I asked for a link.

[dnskill]

Yeah, Romero even mentions the Atomic Edition.. That's what confuses me..

A. 3DR's sent this footage to the studio, why? The only theory is that they recorded this stuff, and didn't record anything from the retail (I find this total BS, but you never know).. Example, Blood. There's a lot of pre-release footage from Monolith floating around (go to the post mortem forums and see for yourself, it's not the alpha either, it's a later build). So maybe 3DR was just being lazy and sent in old stock footage... or they made a mistake, didn't mean to send old footage?

B. The studio didn't want to purchase Duke Nukem 3d, and so 3DR gave them an older version instead? Or maybe again, 3DR made a mistake, and sent the wrong version? (This means the studio had a copy of this version, and somebody played it in order to make the footage).

C. Who the fuck knows!!!

I'd love for you to write to them High Treason, maybe show us what you wish to send out (in the same fashion Hendricks did), before sending it? I wouldn't believe the Croatian, because he may not know how to speak English well, and could be talking about Lameduke, or he's just lying.. I always dreamed I'd go to some old computer store, and the owner is like "psst, I've got Duke Nukem stuff" and then I get every single build of Duke Nukem, but that will never happen lol.

EDIT: Excuse if this post sounded like rambling, I just got finished watching a movie, and I'm trying to get my mind off of it >_>

EDIT2: Maybe, just maybe... Someone could try contacting Scott Miller instead of Joe about the alphas/betas? He has the higher position anyways. He has a Facebook and accepts request.

[Jimmy]

No surprise about Blood, though. They really tried to hype that game, and that was right when computers were just good enough to play short crappy videos and you could get video games on television.

[dnskill]

Hmm, yeah never thought about that