[dnskill]

Yep. Q-Studios was like an "Apogee West" and was stationed in Washington state, just like Monolith. So Q-Studios did most of the work and then joined Monolith and finished the game.

[KareBear]

 gerolf, on 03 November 2013 - 08:50 PM, said:

Something tells me Shadow Warrior was scrapped at one point for them to focus on Duke, then the got carried away with Blood and Powerslave but decided to give those to other companies to finish so they could focus on Shadow Warrior?

So maybe Shadow Warrior was started around.. 1994 prior to Lameduke, or maybe they made both and decided to go with Duke first?

They did not have to give Blood and Powerslave to other companies to finish because they were being made by other companies right from the beginning,of the four Build Engine games Apogee/3DRealms initially announced in 1994 all of them except Duke were being done by external teams.They sold off the rights to Blood and Powerslave and were considering cancelling Shadow Warrior but since the developers (Maddin and Norwood) were long time friends of Scott and George they decided to bring it in house and finish it.

[Jimmy]

Apogee/3DR does appear to have had some kind of a hand in an early version of the PC version of Powerslave. The PC Version and the Saturn/Playstation versions are drastically different.

[dnskill]

 KareBear, on 04 November 2013 - 07:22 PM, said:

They did not have to give Blood and Powerslave to other companies to finish because they were being made by other companies right from the beginning,of the four Build Engine games Apogee/3DRealms initially announced in 1994 all of them except Duke were being done by external teams.They sold off the rights to Blood and Powerslave and were considering cancelling Shadow Warrior but since the developers (Maddin and Norwood) were long time friends of Scott and George they decided to bring it in house and finish it.

Thanks for the info, but I agree with Jimmy, Powerslave was at one point going to be a 3DR game.

Also I did correct myself on that point. Q-Studios had always been working on Blood, 3DR was only the publisher with minor say in things, and then they were given to Monolith (I've seen an explanation somewhere on the transfusion forums it had to do with locations because Q-Studios and Monolith are both in WA state, and it seemed logical). Lobotomy or PIE (can't remember which) was working along with 3DR or Powerslave was given to them at an early state. I'm not quite sure which is true, but the PC version was not released first IIRC so Lobotomy and PIE really made Powerslave for the consoles leading me to believe the PC version was an old version of the game that had whatever was going on at 3DR in it and they polished with updated graphics from the PS and Saturn versions. Excuse my rambling on lol

[necroslut]

 gerolf, on 06 November 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

Thanks for the info, but I agree with Jimmy, Powerslave was at one point going to be a 3DR game.

Also I did correct myself on that point. Q-Studios had always been working on Blood, 3DR was only the publisher with minor say in things, and then they were given to Monolith (I've seen an explanation somewhere on the transfusion forums it had to do with locations because Q-Studios and Monolith are both in WA state, and it seemed logical). Lobotomy or PIE (can't remember which) was working along with 3DR or Powerslave was given to them at an early state. I'm not quite sure which is true, but the PC version was not released first IIRC so Lobotomy and PIE really made Powerslave for the consoles leading me to believe the PC version was an old version of the game that had whatever was going on at 3DR in it and they polished with updated graphics from the PS and Saturn versions. Excuse my rambling on lol

The Saturn version was released only a couple of months before the PC version, and the PC version was announced long before. That's not enough time to make all the different content, so most likely they were worked on parallely.
I also wouln't know about taking updated graphics from the console versions, as the PC version has both more graphics and higher resolution art. Everything points to the PC version being the source even though it wasn't released first.

[KareBear]

This video chronicles the development history of Powerslave and explains in detail why the PC and console versions ended up being so dissimilar.

[leilei]

 gerolf, on 06 November 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

so Lobotomy and PIE really made Powerslave for the consoles leading me to believe the PC version was an old version of the game that had whatever was going on at 3DR in it and they polished with updated graphics from the PS and Saturn versions

There's a 1995-dated public beta of Powerslave which kinda disproves the ported-from-consoles theory.

[dnskill]

Right! I forgot about there being a beta of the DOS version. I'm not too big with Powerslave so sorry for my ignorance.

Anyways, here's something I've thought about last night:

The Blood Alpha; the alpha's source doesn't have all the necessary files, and so the alpha release was probably what was sent to Q-Studio employees by the coder to overwrite an older version, which is most likely why files are missing, and it was left in a PC that was being repaired, and it was then leaked.

What do you all think?

More reasons I believe this to be true: In the blood.txt file it mentions some things about enemies that are in the game, the gill beast and Phantasm, stating that the attacks work for the Phantasm but it needs artwork.. In the source files there is AI files but none for the Phantasm. This text file also states that the Axe Zombie has no attack, but in the source files there is a ZOMBIEAI file and when you play the alpha the zombies do indeed attack.

[dnskill]

In speaking of the Blood Alpha, check out this video and see what happened
when I added fake players to this map while holding the attack button.

[Mikko Pekkola]

Does anybody have anymore of Duke Nukem 3D beta footage in any screenshots, magazine scans or videos? and how about any footage of Shadow Warrior beta in any screenshots, videos or any magazine scans?

I'm so much interested.

[Fox]

VRam of Duke Nukem Total Meltdown



What you are seeing here is the tileset that is present in that E1L1.pmp file (distorted and with wrong palette). On the top left there are temporary spaces for the whole screen and player view. There is another temporary space used for sprites missing from this set (in this case it shows the dukecar / pistol reloading).

Edit:



It has been a very long time since last time I saw this screen. It's just lovely how it fails to display the player name.

[MrFlibble]

A little thing just caught my attention in the Powerslave beta demo. There's a section in the first level (which might have been recycled in the full game in a later level, although I'm not sure about it right now) where there's a "true room over room" effect in the form of two walkways that the player can go both over and under:
http://youtu.be/S53QcaMdnRI?t=5m18s

While a similarly working bridge in E1L1 of Duke3D was apparently accomplished by using a separate quasi-3D object (I forgot the proper terminology for that though; or was it just composed of sprites?), these walkways seem to be a part of the level's architecture, as in Shadow Warrior (e.g. the beams under the Dojo's roof in level 4). Can anyone tell if this is the same trick in Powerslave, only used a couple of years earlier? Why wasn't it used in other Build games?

[Fox]

Shadow Warrior uses room over room, which is made of one sector on top of another. Powerslave and Duke 3D use flat sprites.

[MrFlibble]

So the walkways in the beta demo level are sprites too?

[Fox]

Looks like so looking at these stretched textures. I don't see why assume it would be anything else.

[Daedolon]

They are sprites as expected. Sorry about the palette, I don't know how to create palette.dat files. Second screen from the full game so the sprite is a bit different.





Powerslave also uses a different scale, similar to Shadow Warrior or Redneck Rampage, pretty apparent in Mapster32 as the maps seem too large for Duke.

[MetHy]

KareBear, on 07 November 2013 - 02:45 AM, said:

This video chronicles the development history of Powerslave and explains in detail why the PC and console versions ended up being so dissimilar.

Every time I hear about it, I find all the aspects of about the console versions of Powerslave very exgerated and the PC version very underrated. This guy in the video even goes claiming the game was revolutionnary for having even "RPG elements" just because you could get upgrades to your lifebar (literaly the only RPG element that only occurs a few times). The whole exploration and adventure aspect is greatly exgerrated as well, it's not like Metroid Prime at all where everything is a one huge world, in Powerslave it's still several relatively small levels that you choose to go back to on the world map, and unlocking new areas when going back to those works pretty much like you got a key and remembered where to use it, except it's in another level rather than the same one. It's that simple and greatly exagerrted by everybody who compares it to Metroid Prime.

Meanwhile, the PC version of Powerslave has some of the greatest (if not the greatest) "unrealistic FPS level design so characteristic of the early to mid 90's " I have ever seen, and for that alone, makes it a much better game. Sadly the gameplay is only okay because of the enemy AI that's not very interesting and the slow strafing. Had the game got better strafing and better enemy AI it would be a masterpiece, it would be better than Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

Still I recommend to anyone who hasn't yet, to go play Powerslave on PC. It's incredible how underrated it is : you've all played Duke3D, SW, Blood, Redneck Rampage, because you love the build enigne, but I know for sure not many have played Powerslave and you're missing on fantastic and incredibly smart level design.

[Daedolon]

The level design in PowerSlave is very much inspired by DOOM and is generally pretty fucking awesome. I just looked at all the maps in Mapster32 and they look amazingly detailed in 2D mode.

[MrFlibble]

Daedolon, on 19 January 2014 - 12:10 PM, said:

They are sprites as expected. Sorry about the palette, I don't know how to create palette.dat files. Second screen from the full game so the sprite is a bit different.

capt0000.png

capt0001.png

Powerslave also uses a different scale, similar to Shadow Warrior or Redneck Rampage, pretty apparent in Mapster32 as the maps seem too large for Duke.

Cool, thanks for checking that! It looks pretty awesome, those stone bridges seem indistinguishable from the regular level architecture

MetHy, on 19 January 2014 - 01:30 PM, said:

Meanwhile, the PC version of Powerslave has some of the greatest (if not the greatest) "unrealistic FPS level design so characteristic of the early to mid 90's " I have ever seen, and for that alone, makes it a much better game. Sadly the gameplay is only okay because of the enemy AI that's not very interesting and the slow strafing. Had the game got better strafing and better enemy AI it would be a masterpiece, it would be better than Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

I agree, the levels in the game are very detailed and nicely done. Even the first level of the full game alone feels like a complete adventure on its own. Honestly I've hardly played past level four, and later levels seemed a bit repetitive to me, but none the less I'd say Powerslave has exemplary level design on the whole. Barring some engine limitations (which mostly concern level geometry), one could say that quite a few of the more recent games haven't surpassed Powerslave in this respect.

I've never played the console versions, and while from the gameplay videos it's apparent that those are much more fast-paced and action-oriented than the PC version, however even with the true 3D engine (which is quite impressive TBH) the level design looks rather bland and underdetailed.

[Player Lin]

OK, I don't know if someone still had interest about the "updated" version of Lof7P... I've found a copy of that thing(of course, it come from a shovelware disc with shitload of full version games, you know...), and it runs fine on my new system...

This version had 2 new features added, some map fixes and something I don't know and...NO, THIS VERSION STILL HARD AS FU*K...

Warning : Warez in spoiler...check for your own risk.

Spoiler

http://sdrv.ms/1fFfwHm

Yeah, I just use the same directory which I uploaded the MARS 3D shit.
I uploaded the first release(1994/09/26) and the updated (1994/11/01) one, just for some reasons...

0. This version only updated 4 files, it looks like the patch was came with 2 EXE (PATCH75.EXE and PATCHL1A.EXE) and 1 BAT(PATCH.BAT)...
The batch file will delete A, M, T - the 3 L?ART000.DAT files, then run the PATCH75.EXE to create the patched ones, and then run PATCHL1A.EXE to patch L1ART000.DAT...

(Sadly, it looks like patch L1ART000.DAT will changed the timestamp so its time of last change doesn't really the actual date, more like when it was made for the shovelware...)

Other files didn't changed at all...you can check yourself.

1. Oh, now we have the crosshair, thank god...



Well, it helps but still, the game has no autoaim so......

2. A fucking Automap, well, it looks so shitty... and more like the BUILD editor but missing status messages, and it doesn't draw the map if you're moving when automap activated, you have close then re-open it...



Oh, you can use Kp-Enter to activate or deactivate it.

Also, you can open Main Menu in automap, but it will cause display glitch...



It looks like the in-game texts still draw when automap activated...

3. Your screen will go dark and more if your health goes very low, which is very annoying...get killed so often when I'm low of health and can't even see shit...(It should be exist on original version I guess)




4. For some reasons in this version, when I mess around in Setup.exe, I found SB, SB Pro, SB 16 and Adlib setting for Music are doesn't works on my end, give me FM chip ERROR when run the game, but the Sound are fine, I used MIDI for Music and it works...whatever...

Well, it looks like I totally sucked at this shitty game... I use a cheating program to locked the goddamn health value(if you want to know what's the max health...it's 160, and sometimes it only give 100 when you respawn...) to complete levels...

[Hendricks266]

Thanks for sharing!

Man that automap is hilarious.

[Corvin]

Which CD did this "latest" losp come from?

Do you have the original files how they where packaged?

[Player Lin]

Corvin, on 07 February 2014 - 05:00 PM, said:

Which CD did this "latest" losp come from?

Do you have the original files how they where packaged?

Actually the updated Lot7P game should came from some of these illegal shovelware CDs, but many of them just lost by whatever reasons, you know, it's long time ago and not everyone would like to keep them...also copyright problems still exist...

The CD I got this copy of Lot7P, contained many of Chinese games, some DOS/V(Japanese DOS system)games and a little of English games which I never heard at all...not to say, that "installation interface" on the shovelware CD are Chinese too.

Yeah, I still have that ISO file of that shovelware CD, but it's not really useful for you guys at all, unless you're mean something else.
(What files in the shovelware is the same as the one I uploaded so I don't think you needed that shovelware CD, also the patch files already on the package that I uploaded, I just didn't tested at all.)

[Corvin]

Well, if you can post the original files and the patches, that be ideal. I'd like to see what they did and how they did it.

[Player Lin]

Corvin, on 08 February 2014 - 01:24 AM, said:

Well, if you can post the original files and the patches, that be ideal. I'd like to see what they did and how they did it.

I guess you're not check my spoiler tag on original post at all...original version of Lot7P and the patch files are in package of "updated" version of Lot7P, link to the SkyDrive for hosting those files should works, if not just blame your ISP or something.

[Corvin]

Okay, the patches are in the second archive, I guess I didn't look hard enough. Thanks.

[Fox]

A image from Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown with an unknown level.

Spoiler

Edit: IGN pictures are also from an early version.



There is no "T" for the Tripbomb in the HUD and the font is blue like in the PC. Also there are only dark-blue troopers around in the final version.

[Mikko Pekkola]

Take a look at these screenshots





There's exactly something, that looks similar in these two screenshots.

[Besli]

Robert G. Depew did the Duke Nukem II and the Alien Carnage (a.k.a. Halloween Harry) artwork.
I found a blog where you get some nice edition of this artworks:
http://ronniesmithart.com/?p=54

[Lunick]

Hocus Pocus