[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.

[Hendricks266]

Psh, 1280x768.

# define MAXXDIM 7680
# define MAXYDIM 3200

[NNC]

High Treason, on 01 August 2013 - 06:09 AM, said:

As I said a long time ago;


I found my VHS. Volume is a little low, if that really is a problem I can go back and press normalize.

About 14-15 seconds in.

Yeah, I remember that movie, it was scary, early Spielberg style. And remember that exact sound as well, although I think it have been used in other movies with "monster" trucks, like the episode in Knight Rider against Goliath etc.

Just like the Sentry Drone sound, which have been used frequently, the Imp sound is rather similar from Doom, but it's mostly used as a Dragon attack sound. Like this (at 0:20 for example):

[NNC]

MYHOUSE.MAP, on 16 August 2013 - 08:51 PM, said:

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.

Do you know something about the 4th girl from Master Leep's Temple? The one with a red hair... It didn't appear in the final release sadly.

[Jimmy]

She was likely just removed because of nudity/suicide.

[Marphy Black]

There's not a lot of unknown content here, but I came across some nice high quality GameFan Magazine scans of console Duke Nukem game previews.

Duke Nukem 64 Preview
Still featuring a lot of PC graphics, most conspicuously a green Expander.

Second Duke Nukem 64 Preview Pg. 1
Second Duke Nukem 64 Preview Pg. 2
Pretty close to the final, but the Duke Rally screen in Gun Crazy is using the goofy Duke wanted animation and the ID4 movie clip is tinted red rather than blue.

Lobotomy Software Exposed Pg. 1
Lobotomy Software Exposed Pg. 2
Lobotomy Software Exposed: Duke Nukem Saturn Preview Pg. 1
Lobotomy Software Exposed: Duke Nukem Saturn Preview Pg. 2
A really interesting read of the technical challenge behind porting Duke Nukem to the Sega Saturn. Unfortunately, I can't identify any particularly interesting beta differences in the screenshots. However, note the projected release date is May.

Second Duke Nukem Saturn Preview
Still can't see any differences in the screenshots, but the projected release date is now September.

Third Duke Nukem Saturn Preview
The release is now set for October. I didn't realize the Saturn port of Duke 3D had been delayed for so long.

And on a different note, a preview of Duke Nukem 64 from Game Play 64 magazine: Page 1, Page 2. The most interesting bit here would be the SMG concept art, I believe.

Also, a full page French advertisement for Duke It Out in D.C.

And finally, not game-related, but I think this magazine cover art is pretty neat.

[Fox]

Thanks for these, there is a lot going on the Duke Nukem 64 scans. There is a suspiciously small Cycloid Emperor on an unknow level, but it appears to be on a standing pose. An old explosion and old Pistol (even with Dum-dum rounds). And a weird texture (my guess is #382) in Piracy.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

Nancsi, on 21 August 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

Do you know something about the 4th girl from Master Leep's Temple? The one with a red hair... It didn't appear in the final release sadly.

Fun bit of trivia: The artwork for her does not appear in the leaked beta's files, but does in the final game. She was added in the small gap between the beta and the shareware version, but was removed. She was in the game long enough for the artist that made the image of Master Leep and his girls (the one that hides a secret in the third map) to put her in the texture.

[Jblade]

This reminds me of that art tile in Duke of the impaled Women that was never used in the game. I imagine it has a similar story to that artwork, it was made but someone decided it was too graphic/disturbing to use ingame and so it was removed, but not from the art tiles.

[Fox]

She is also coded.

[t800]

Nancsi, on 21 August 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

Do you know something about the 4th girl from Master Leep's Temple? The one with a red hair... It didn't appear in the final release sadly.

Jimmy, on 21 August 2013 - 01:52 PM, said:

She was likely just removed because of nudity/suicide.

NSFW!!!
http://www.spriters-...ar/sheet/24878/

I think they removed her because it clashed too much with overall mood of game (+ being the only girl with fully visible half-nudity in game). I mean seeing innocent girl commiting seppuku right after she notices you...

[High Treason]

I never figured out why the sprite was animated, doesnt look right looping over and over - you'd think the animation should be handled by code or something (to play once and stop when the player can see the sprite) which makes me think that she wasn't around for long at all, makes me ponder if she was ever even placed into a level. Or else they removed it because the looping animation looked silly.

[Jimmy]

I would imagine she would have been placed near Master Leep with the crying girl. In fact, I'm surprised that one made it into the game, I know it's an anime character, but she looks really young.

[Fox]

Japan

Spoiler

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

The Shadow Warrior beta has sprites for an unused green guy in ninja gear that appeared in some 1995-era screenshots. I think I might've found what he was meant to be.

A peek at the source code shows code for an unused enemy, called the Skeleton Priest. The code for him can be found in SKEL.C. Here's a list of his states:

Quote

SKEL_RUN
SKEL_SLASH
SKEL_SPELL
SKEL_PAIN
SKEL_TELEPORT

Now, let's take a look at the green guy.

Hmm, doesn't this look like teleportation?






Wait a minute, one of the Skeleton Priest's states is "SKEL_TELEPORT"! Looks like I'm onto something!

I'm not done yet tho. Look at this image.



There is a blade on his left arm.

However, if you look at this sprite:



You'll see that he's swinging with his left arm! One of the Skeleton Priest's states is "SKEL_SLASH". Looks like the green guy is slashing to me!


Seems to me that the green guy is actually an older, pre-Chuck Jones version of the unused Skeleton Priest enemy. The green guy's animations match up with the states listed in the Skeleton Priest's code. The art showing the green guy blocking is probably the "SKEL_SPELL" animation, since it's the only unique-looking animation that doesn't directly match the Skeleton Priest's unique states.