[Cage]

@Fox

This is an amazing find!!!

From my own research I've divided Duke's development into few significant stages we know about/seen:

In general:

• lameduke
  
• duke beta from the .pcx screenshots presspacks (jumpsuit troopers etc.)
  
• late beta - double barrel shotgun pigcops, generally looking very close to final
  
• The close final betas (0.99 and later?) with available executables (minor differences)

It seems, that the shot from the page you've posted actually fall between phases 1 & 2 (closer to 2 I guess but still) so it's kinda transitional:

• both the kick from final duke and the wrench/taser from lameduke appear, with kick looking different - #2 features either the final kick graphic or a close variant
  
• Lameduke pistol but #2 pigcops - #2 screenshots feature the final pistol
  
• Lameduke rocketlauncher, but seems to me that it might be the cleaned up version from phase #2 (dithered color gradients etc.) - the scan is grainy, so I'm guessing
  
• Barcode still visible on the hand - #2 removed the barcode
  
• A hud which is seen nowhere else! However it seems close in design to Lameduke's and close in color scheme to #2 hud

I've sandwiched the scanned shots between the #2 shots to demonstrate

[Gambini]

Aren´t those the frames for when it´s shitting?

Lol I was accidentally looking at the wrong page and didn´t realize it was a year old:

gerolf, on 06 November 2012 - 02:31 PM, said:

In other news...



Are these frames ever actually seen in the game? If so, what are the used for, and if not, what were they meant to be used for?

It looks like he's either looking down, or he's about to kill himself?

[Fox]

Here is a comparison of how the XBLA title screen and background match with the classic title screen:



Also it seems that the classic screen aspect ratio has not been corrected. That's something the HRP should workaround.

[Mikko Pekkola]

I once tried to find some scans of PC Powerplay with more Duke Nukem 3D stuff, but couldn't find any.

Any idea where to find them?

[MrFlibble]

Mikko Pekkola, on 24 May 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

PC Powerplay

You can download entire issues here but the collection is not complete yet.

There are other gaming magazines with possibly interesting stuff on that website though.

[Mikko Pekkola]

Cool, thanks

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

After doing some research, I think I know where the majority of Lameduke's crashes come from; the pistol's laser sight. In certain maps, like E4L3, the laser pointer effect stays on walls when you move around, even if you can't see it. Eventually, the game crashes because there's way too many instances of the laser pointer effect "drawn" in the map. If you swap to another weapon as soon as a map starts, it will never crash. I've ran laps in crash-happy maps without problems when I didn't run around with the pistol out.

[Hendricks266]

^Add that to wikis like TCRF.

[Fox]

[High Treason]

Isn't that from the manual? (I misplaced mine sometime around 1997) good find.

[Fox]

Yes, that's from the manual.

===//===//===

state bossdyingstate
  ifaction ABOSS1DEAD break
  ifactioncount 5 { iffloordistl 8 cstat 0 activate 6666 sound THUD action ABOSS1DEAD }
  spawn FRAMEEFFECT1
ends

In the early v0.99 the Battlelord would serve as an activator with lo-tag 6666 upon death. This is very similar to Doom - in fact, Doom use a tag 666 to execute certain functions in the map.

[Jimmy]

Wow that looks like shit.

[Minigunner]

Apparently, some Lameduke-era textures that made it into Duke3D weren't edited for the final palette.
A couple examples:



Lameduke ------ Duke3d
Funnily enough, simply shifting the pale-tan range 4 values brighter would have made the poster look better:

[NNC]

Too bad, that this "Byte nite" pic didn't make into the final release, it looks cool.

[Jimmy]

It's a parody of Fright Night for those uninitiated with 80's schlock cheese goodness.

I wouldn't say it was paletted wrong, LameDuke essentially just has an alternate colour scheme, these were just straight converted. LD had two brown swatches, and Duke3D has one brown swatch and one tan swatch.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Jimmy, on 04 June 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

80's schlock cheese goodness.

[Minigunner]

Jimmy, on 04 June 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

I wouldn't say it was paletted wrong, LameDuke essentially just has an alternate colour scheme, these were just straight converted. LD had two brown swatches, and Duke3D has one brown swatch and one tan swatch.

Well, that's exactly what I meant.

[leilei]

Hendricks266, on 15 January 2013 - 01:25 PM, said:

At some point I'm going to write a program that automatically analyzes GRPs for differences, including in-depth comparisons of any ART and CON contained within.

In the meantime, one could use Fart on the art files and some diff program (I use WinDiff because it's already there with the vc6 installation \o/)

[Hendricks266]

I did something similar, though my tool of choice for the ART files was an oldass DOS16 program called ART2BMP. Thanks for linking me to something with source.

[leilei]

I used to work with ART2BMP but it was way too buggy. IIRC it's the one with that engrished 'cunt' message isn't it?

Also Digest makes art files. Classy names aren't they? Not to mention the audio library that Duke3D uses is ASS....

Those tools were developed for Dave3D, and i'm still bitter about that project's forced demise

[Jimmy]

Dude, I would just go ahead and ramp up production again. They really have no grounds to stop you.

[Cage]

I'm surprised nobody compared the palettes yet Since the press release middle-beta screenshots are paletted .pcx (IIRC) files, you can extract a palette out of them.

Here's an animated PNG if your browser supports it:


And individual files:

[leilei]

Which part of 95 is the transitional beta from? Early (space jetpack dudes) or later (censored calendar chick on building)?

Glad they changed that row of blues into navy blue, it gives the game more identity.

Jimmy, on 04 June 2013 - 07:44 PM, said:

Dude, I would just go ahead and ramp up production again. They really have no grounds to stop you.

I could've wrote to the FSF about being denied to use GPL source code after Siegler's "You may not use our source in that way" message in a 3DR PM and cause a big fallout, but I decided to play it safe and stop what I was doing. My original PM to Siegler was actually inquiring about using only the color palette for a completely-from-scratch media project. On a forum fostering development of BasedDirectlyOffDuke3DData standalone games you'd think this would be at the least, acceptable...

Of course i'm not stopping anyone from forking what was done and carry along the "dave" theme where it's just low quality SuspiciouslySimilar stuff (i.e. no movie oneliners, weaksauce wooden character, very cheesy CGI sprites). I was also going to do the same with SW's source but style-swapping and gender-swapping everything to avoid possible confusion. There could still be wrath from them as if they patented the videogame strip club...

If I can't use their "source" it's not stopping me from using id's source to build a similar game

[Nukeaholic]

Either way it would be nice to see Dave3D back in production. I don't know what the hell 3D Realms were thinking to shut down the project. That's a waste of very good resources. Was it a one man project may I ask?

[Cage]

leilei, on 06 June 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

Which part of 95 is the transitional beta from? Early (space jetpack dudes) or later (censored calendar chick on building)?

I took the palette from a screenshot with the jetpack dudes and unfinished recon cars manned by liztroops. Funny thing - the screen with the calendar chick on the wall uses the beta pal I've listed, however, you can find screenshot with the jetpack troopers using the final pal (attached)

I don't think there were any more versions of the palette, correct me if I'm wrong

Attached File(s)

•  D3d36.png (17.21K)
  Number of downloads: 1006

[Minigunner]

Cage, on 05 June 2013 - 01:17 AM, said:

Spoiler

I'm surprised nobody compared the palettes yet Since the press release middle-beta screenshots are paletted .pcx (IIRC) files, you can extract a palette out of them.

Here's an animated PNG if your browser supports it:


And individual files:

I took the time to compare the palettes in all the screenshots, then extract all the unique ones I found. I included palettes which only had a different background color, as well as ones that were brighter. I left out the two palettes that had their values stretched to 255.

[Fox]

More models, shitty scan

[MrFlibble]

I've got a question to the tech savvy guys here about the DOS Build games (hope this isn't a wrong place to ask!). The SVGA modes for most of the games have a choice between 640x400 and 640x480 (IIRC Powerslave only has 640x400 which is still disguised as 640x480 in the setup programme, but later games all have both modes). What I'm interested in is how the engine handles the 640x480 mode. In the 640x400 mode, the entire output is stretched by the hardware. In the 640x480 mode, on the other hand, I assume that the game engine does the stretching to maintain aspect correction. Does it stretch the entire screen, or does it scale individual components of the image (sprites, textures, HUD) separately?

Also, am I right that the 640x400 mode is less system-intensive for the lack of internal scaling procedures? Or is this whole speculation just off the track?

[Fox]

I think that the renderer is too simplistic to scale components individually.

[Helixhorned]

MrFlibble, on 15 June 2013 - 05:17 PM, said:

I've got a question to the tech savvy guys here about the DOS Build games (...). The SVGA modes for most of the games have a choice between 640x400 and 640x480 (...). What I'm interested in is how the engine handles the 640x480 mode. In the 640x400 mode, the entire output is stretched by the hardware. In the 640x480 mode, on the other hand, I assume that the game engine does the stretching to maintain aspect correction. Does it stretch the entire screen, or does it scale individual components of the image (sprites, textures, HUD) separately?

There's no special logic for drawing the scene with different aspect ratios at all. The engine maintains a variable yxaspect which finds its way into the various rendering routines.

The key idea to keep in mind is that rendering proceeds in a "reverse" fashion: for each pixel on the screen^[1], you calculate coordinates for the texture you want to map, so it's just a question of a multiplication somewhere in the data flow chain. Ken had an informative post about that on the JonoF forums when they were online, maybe it has survived somehow?

Edit: by the way, you can check out the effects of yxaspect interactively in Mapster32. When a.m32 is loaded, the keys [8] and [9] will "slide" it smoothly in 3D mode. Keys [7] and [0] change the related viewingrange variable.

^[1]More exactly, for that portion which was determined as necessary to be covered, of course.