[t800]

CryptKiller, on 16 August 2013 - 03:36 AM, said:

Another ad from CGW:

Wow, what a fabulous looking promotional material for Shadow Warrior. Not often we get to see any, so this got me very curious. Could you tell us your sources? Or do you have more forgotten/little known advertisings for Build games? Specifically this advertisiment is from what year?

(Sorry, had to use that image in qoutation again, it doesnt deserve to get hidden after only one reply. )

[TerminX]

That one is pretty cool. That was originally going to be the box art for SW, but it was rejected for some reason or another... maybe because it more closely depicts the earlier version of the game shown in those screenshots than it does the final game.

[Jimmy]

Yeah, it appears that the Zilla storyline got jammed in there near the end of the development cycle. The Serpent God was supposed to be the original boss it seems to me.

[t800]

 Jimmy, on 16 August 2013 - 09:37 AM, said:

Yeah, it appears that the Zilla storyline got jammed in there near the end of the development cycle. The Serpent God was supposed to be the original boss it seems to me.

Dont have source for this claim, but I read somewhere at this forum some time ago, that original plot was you being genetically altered superhuman ninja fighting some cult on island which is attempting to aweken demonic forces. I am actually glad they scrapped it for mission of vengeance against Zilla.

EDIT: BTW I noticed that searching for alpha/beta info of SW got much more complicated after reboot was announced.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

 t800, on 16 August 2013 - 10:09 AM, said:

Dont have source for this claim, but I read somewhere at this forum some time ago, that original plot was you being genetically altered superhuman ninja fighting some cult on island which is attempting to aweken demonic forces. I am actually glad they scrapped it for mission of vengeance against Zilla.

http://web.archive.o...com/catalog/sw/

Quote

You are a member of a secret Japanese mercenary team, trained in the use of several exotic weapons and in the stealth arts of the ninja. Your body has been augmented with state of the art nano-tech biomedical enhancements. Your senses, strength, agility, and stamina are greatly boosted. You are a lethal weapon.

The mage Kirin, your ancient ancestor of 1000 years, has risen from the dead on a remote island, given life once again by forces not understood today. Kirin now has an army of cult followers spread over many small islands to do his bidding. Some were once human... some never were.

If they are not stopped, evil will spread across the planet. It is your task to stop the Kirin and his army.

When hi-tech meets magic-tech... gibs fly!

[Kathy]

edit [meh]

[CryptKiller]

t800, on 16 August 2013 - 08:25 AM, said:

Could you tell us your sources? Or do you have more forgotten/little known advertisings for Build games? Specifically this advertisiment is from what year?

Glad you liked it! Sadly, I don't have any more, and this one I found in issue #140 (March 1996) of Computer Gaming World. In same issue there's also four pages big Duke3D ad which part of I've posted earlier.
I'm mowing through my collection of scanned magazines from the 1995-1996 (UK, US and Polish ones), looking for ads or previews of Build games. If I'll find anything remotely interesting, will post it here.

[edit]
Thought to myself: "Huh, I wonder if there were some ads for Powerslave or Exhumed". Lo and behold, in very next issue of CGW (April 1996):



I've cropped the most interesting for us thing - screenshots! Sadly they look a bit crap and not that different from released version:

[Jblade]

These are amazing, thanks for posting them That SW artwork is very cool, but ultimately looking at it makes me think more of Witchaven and Capstone games rather than a 3DRealms one, so they went with the right decision to change the boxart to Lo Wang and a Guardian. Too bad we never got a LameShadowWarrior, seeing an early beta version would be really really cool.

Also the proportions on that Powerslave dude are proper fucked, the finished artwork is way cooler (but it's interesting to see regardless though)

[CryptKiller]

James, on 16 August 2013 - 12:31 PM, said:

Also the proportions on that Powerslave dude are proper fucked

Haha, yeah, the Powerslaver is a pro tennis player. Or so he tells everyone.

Just found an older variation of that 4-page-long Duke3D ad, in CGW November 1995, issue #136. Here we go with the interesting stuff!



Interesting there's no Duke in this ad! Maybe the iconic image wasn't done at this point? Also I think one of the shots below is new?
(the not posted 2 pages of this ad are the Nuke emblem and some marketing yada-yada about engine etc. may post it later if anyone cares)

Also, remember that page which I posted yesterday? It's also in this variation, but screens are moved and one is replaced with this:



Similar to the later one, it's nearly the same scene, but done bit differently (mainly the plasma gun). Huh.

[Fox]

What I find more interesting is that they updated the enemy sprites in the picture on the left:

[CryptKiller]

So it seems some of the scenes were recreated for screenshot purposes on different builds of the game. I wonder why not just make new ones, but take additional effort to remake those screens? Mysteries, mysteries...

[Minigunner]

Depends. There are plenty of playable areas (even maps sometimes) that got scrapped in post-LameDuke development.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

It's not like screenshots haven't been reused and remade in pre-release screenshots before...

[Lunick]

Wait... I never noticed that before :|

[TerminX]

Looks like the crouching Duke in that last shot still has knee pads, but the standing green Duke up on the catwalk doesn't.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

I'm sure that some people have noticed this before, but some of the dead and tortured NPC sprites seen in the final version of Shadow Warrior are based on beta designs for enemies.

Look at these sprites:






All of these are based on the beta, pre-Chuck Jones Coolie sprite seen here:



Both the NPCs and the old Coolie design have the same art style and share a lot of details, such as their shirt color and hat design.








This half-dead NPC:



is based on this design for the enemy ninjas:




Notice that they both have a blue vest, a V shape on their head and wristbands. The sprites aren't exactly the same, but they're so close I think the half-dead NPC is a touched up enemy ninja sprite.






One more thing. Look at this guy:



Not much right? However, if you compare him with the old enemy ninja design...



They both have a V shape on their head. I suspect this was based on the old enemy ninja sprite as well. Perhaps it was an earlier design that was never shown in screenshots?

All of this means that, technically, some of the old enemy designs seen in beta screenshots were never removed from the final game.

[TerminX]

That's a really cool find!

[Fox]

MYHOUSE.MAP, on 16 August 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

It's not like screenshots haven't been reused and remade in pre-release screenshots before...

Spoiler

Also:

[CryptKiller]

Three pages long "sneak peek" at Duke Nukem 3D, Computer Gaming World #132. Hopefully it wasn't posted here before.

p. 1 p. 2 p. 3

I won't post images here as I'm pretty sure they're too big. The screenshots aren't that exciting, to be honest, but there's artwork of original Enforcer with black/red armor and the text itself mentions some pretty interesting things like flashlight and laser sword.

[Stabs]

Not really duke related but still build based, rather interesting to note in the beta version of blood its assets that contain a monster that was the plasma packs boss and some other monster that never made the final cut like the demon plants, pretty sure it was time constraints as they had no coding at least they didn't purposely withhold it and charge $5 for it, oh how expansion packs have changed.

[TerminX]

I'm pretty sure that art was originally used for the player's "beast mode" powerup that was cut from the game... you'd activate the powerup and turn into that thing.

I always found it interesting that the art present in Blood was nearly finalized over a year before release, whereas Duke and Shadow Warrior were still in flux even a couple months before release... for example, the enemy sprites in the Duke 0.99 beta from a couple weeks before 1.0 shareware were unfinished, etc.

[Stabs]

yeah i remember seeing it way before blood was even known, its strange how art like that gets unused given the limited time, resources needed and limited team members they had back then, even a stack of maps that never made the final game, some nearly complete that could easily pass as secret levels.

[Fox]

 CryptKiller, on 18 August 2013 - 08:39 AM, said:

I won't post images here as I'm pretty sure they're too big. The screenshots aren't that exciting, to be honest, but there's artwork of original Enforcer with black/red armor and the text itself mentions some pretty interesting things like flashlight and laser sword.

Though it is a laser chainsaw, not sword. But if they made such a confusion, I suppose it already existed in the game.

[CryptKiller]

That was my first thought, too, but the article specifically tells

Quote

Other cool weapons the designers are playing around with include the concept of a laser sword akin to the ones in the Star Wars movies, which didn't make it into Dark Forces

I guess they ditched the lightsaber-thingy and went with laser chainsaw for some time, until finally dropping melee weapons besides kick?

Another fun tidbit from the article:

Quote

I saw Duke in several incarnations over the course of it's development, from pre-alpha to near-beta, and the game was never quite done.

As for mid-1995, 3D Realms still didn't nail what exactly Duke3D was going to be?

[OpenMaw]

Not all that surprising for back then. Six months was a lot more time to change and work on things than it is today.

[Cage]

Those ShadowWarrior findings are really cool!

 Fox, on 16 August 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

What I find more interesting is that they updated the enemy sprites in the picture on the left:

My theory is that some of those shots are mockups made in build - they've just did a new screenshot once they replaced the jumpsuit trooper art with the current one.

[Fox]

I prefer Duke D.C. mock-ups, there is an Overlord half the shots, and you can still see the Sector Effectors.

[OpenMaw]

 Cage, on 18 August 2013 - 11:26 PM, said:

Those ShadowWarrior findings are really cool!



My theory is that some of those shots are mockups made in build - they've just did a new screenshot once they replaced the jumpsuit trooper art with the current one.

No need to theorise. Joe Siegler has said that's exactly what they did. He was personally responsible for some of the Duke3D mockups.

[t800]

 CryptKiller, on 18 August 2013 - 08:39 AM, said:

Three pages long "sneak peek" at Duke Nukem 3D, Computer Gaming World #132. Hopefully it wasn't posted here before.

p. 1 p. 2 p. 3

This one thing intrigued me from 3rd scanned page:


Question for Build engine gurus: is it really at least hypothetically possible from technical stand-point of Build engine renderer to manage to render game in such a big screen resolution? Those scans are from 1995 btw, so it was written in time when Build engine was still greatly developing and yet had to reach its full potential, so is it just some made-up blabbering statement for advertising purposes only?

[TerminX]

Yeah, it's possible. I've run Blood in DOSBox at a higher resolution than that.