[MetHy]

MrFlibble, on 25 April 2014 - 11:47 AM, said:

BTW guys, I've always wondered, how does the game pick view angles and the time when to switch to the third-person view during demo playback? Does it happen at regular time intervals, or when the player enters specific areas within a level?

It seems to me that the demo of E1L1 in shareware v1.0 switches to the third-person view really a lot, as if it was done intentionally.

It's controlled by the mapper. You can put cameras which sole purpose is for demo recording. When the camera has the player in sight; the demo will use the camera angle. When the player is out of sight of any camera, it will be first person.

[High Treason]

I'm inclined to think it is done on two triggers - distance and whether the camera can see the target (player, probably picks the closest one)... The camera is a sprite, it simply faces the player (again, nearest player?) whenever it's code is active - sometimes during activation you see it swing quickly implying the camera code sleeps if it hasn't been used in a while - unfortunately I'm not good enough at math to explain the formula making the sprite angle change.

[MrFlibble]

Thanks for the explanations! I guess there are quite a few good angles at which the demo cameras were placed in E1L1, so the demo in v1.0 makes an impression of having been created specifically to show off the game and the main character.

[mxrtxn]

Here´s some curious stuff abotu sw:

Shadow Warrior secret messages (you will have to use swghost and swgreed to see them)


2nd level Killing fields.

Throw yourself to the opening at the left after the stone door which is opened with the red key.

At the bottom in one of the walls you will see the message "monkey mappers say hi"




Level 10: Raiders of the Lost Wang

above of one of the waterfalls at the begining. left side of the wood brigde (you´ll have to use swghost and swgreed to fly and comethrough)

You will a message that says "monkeys say what?"





2nd SECRET LEVEL: Auto Maul

Come through the last window, the one near to the gate that leads to the exit ying-yang sign.

behind of one of the cars you find a message that says "Follow me to XXX-Stacy´s", a probable reference to the level of duke nukem atomic.




Martin

P.S. I you have discovered more secret messages in sw post them!

[Marphy Black]

While looking through Shadow Warrior's source code again for the beta thread, I decided delve a little deeper to try and understand a bit of an oddity regarding the Ripper Heart and the Lo Wang clone.

As I'm sure you all know, the Ripper Heart creates a Lo Wang clone who assists you with a railgun before unceremoniously exploding after a short period. However, the way the weapon and clone is defined in the source code suggests a more intriguing intent. For one, the Ripper Heart is internally referred to as the Blood Worm. This includes a death string, indicating the Ripper Heart was originally able to perform actual damage to its targets. Also, the clone is internally named as ZOMBIE. The obvious question here is, "Zombie of what?" Since the clone uses Lo Wang's sprites, is it a zombified version of the player?

Going back to the code, the function used to spawn the Ripper Heart clone is named SpawnZombie2. However, there is an additional unused function apparently intended for a nearly identical purpose simply named SpawnZombie. It is only referenced once (but not actually called) in WEAPON.C in the PlayerCheckDeath function as follows in this excerpt:

PlayerCheckDeath(PLAYERp pp, short Weapon)
    {
    SPRITEp sp = pp->SpriteP;
    USERp u = User[pp->PlayerSprite];
    SPRITEp wp = &sprite[Weapon];
    USERp   wu = User[Weapon];
    int SpawnZombie(PLAYERp pp, short);

This is interesting as it implies the spawning of a zombie does not come directly through the use of a weapon but rather by killing a player with a particular weapon, presumably the Ripper Heart itself. There's also this comment in the unused SpawnZombie function:

//nu->tgt_sp = pp->SpriteP; // Make it target last killed player initially

Hence, I make this hypothesis: The original purpose of the Ripper Heart/Blood Worm was to damage enemies directly, probably by leeching their life force as some early screenshots suggested. If you killed another player with the Ripper Heart, only then would it spawn a zombie player implied to be the resurrected corpse of your foe. This zombie would basically act like the current clone does, but it would initially target the player you just killed when they respawned just to add that extra level of humiliation.

Of course, this limits the zombie strictly to multiplayer-only Wangbang modes. There don't appear to be any obvious remnants in the source code which indicate how the Ripper Heart would have performed as an actual damage-dealing weapon. In the leaked 0.90 beta, the Ripper Heart is powered by "Deathcoils" and fires a projectile which briefly stuns enemies but doesn't seem to damage them, hence evidently coming from a later stage of development.

Also, looking at the zombie's code, an #if'd out section in its action states reveals the clone was supposed to have a larger, more varied arsenal beyond the railgun:

    #if 0
    {sg_ZombieUzi},
    {1024},
    {sg_ZombieUzi, sg_ZombieRocket, sg_ZombieGrenade, sg_ZombieNuke},
    {400, 750, 1000, 1024},
    #endif
    {sg_ZombieRail},
    {1024},
    {sg_ZombieRail},
    {1024},

The notion of a Lo Wang clone using grenade launchers and nukes is definitely amusing. There's also more unused code here which indicates the clone was able to use flash bombs as well.

[Jblade]

Pretty great detective work there! The zombie functionality sounds really cool, infact if it were to of resurrected ANY enemy it had killed would of been even cooler. as it stands the ripper heart's a pretty funny weapon, but always felt slightly gimmicky to me in SP. The amount of stuff they must of planned/cut probably dwarfs Duke Nukem's easily (btw, I remember reading in an old preview the missile launcher was going to have a multi-missile mode, which is supported by both the counter and also the front of the sprite has about 10 missiles poking out - have you seen any remnants of that in the code?)

[Jimmy]

Was talking in the #EDuke32 IRC channel, got on the subject of the stock footage 3DR used to create effects in Duke3D.

Source for the Duke3D/Blood/Nuclear SW explosion.
Source of SW's gas/smoke puff.
Source for Octabrain mindblast.
Source of some of the Duke3D/Blood/SW fire sprites.
I believe Fate or another Build game might have used this explosion.
You can see a very small preview for the Blood explosion on this page. This is also the page where you can buy the VFX compilation disk.

[Fox]

The videos in the first video are cropped, which is just silly. The second one seems good.

[Jimmy]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the deal is with that. I've never seen it without the clipping, so I'm assuming that 3DR drew the rest of the sprite.

[Minigunner]

Fox, on 26 April 2014 - 03:04 PM, said:

Too bad it's cropped for widescreen, that was totally fail.

Only the previews are cropped, actually.
However, they didn't have the camera far enough/zoomed-out enough for the mushroom-cloud, so the top was out-of-view.

[Marphy Black]

James, on 26 April 2014 - 02:29 PM, said:

btw, I remember reading in an old preview the missile launcher was going to have a multi-missile mode, which is supported by both the counter and also the front of the sprite has about 10 missiles poking out - have you seen any remnants of that in the code?

I can't find anything that would specifically support this idea. There are three defined rocket types, and they're all accounted for by what's in the finished game. However, it does look like the heat-seeker card was a late addition.

Since I just happen to be looking at the pickups in the source code, I found that there's an entry for the spinning scrolls you find scattered around the older 0.90 beta levels. In the code, they're called Spells. When you pick one up, you're supposed to be granted a random powerup (the effect, not the inventory item itself), but it seems most of these items were cut. They include the following:
- Icon of Flight: Missing sprite. Equivalent to Jetpack?
- EnvironSuit Skin: Sprite. Equivalent to Protective Boots?
- Strength: Missing sprite. No idea what this could have been.
- Cloak Device: Sprite. Became the Smoke Bomb.
- Oxygen: Missing sprite. Equivalent to Scuba Gear?
- Night Vision: Survived into final game.

Also, I came across another interesting cut feature in WEAPON.C and JWEAPON.C:

SpawnNuclearExp(SHORT Weapon)
{
...

//  if (pp->NightVision)
//      {
//      SetFadeAmt(pp, -300, 1); // Idiot had night vision on in nuke flash
//      PlayerUpdateHealth(pp,-25);  // Just burned your eyes out of their sockets!
//      }

PlayerInitFlashBomb(PLAYERp pp)
{
...

//              if(hu->PlayerP->NightVision)
//              {
//                  SetFadeAmt(hu->PlayerP, -200, 1); // Got him with night vision on!
//                  PlayerUpdateHealth(hu->PlayerP, -15); // Hurt eyes

If you had your night vision goggles enabled while you got flash bombed or saw a nuclear explosion, you were supposed to take damage due to blinding your eyes.

[NNC]

Darkus, on 23 April 2014 - 10:40 AM, said:

Here's the original demos from Duke Nukem 3D V1.3D registered:



And also from the registered Atomic Edition (V1.5):

The Dark Side demo is such a great memory, I remember when I first saw it, it felt so awesome and exciting. Yay, new monsters, yay, space station, and a f*cking metro in there. The Freeway demo also had me remember, I always envisaged a demo play on that level, and again, it was a watermark of new levels to play.

[Plagman]

Yeah that Darkside demo is iconic. In fact it's how most people got introduced to the game, since they had the demo loop on computers at tons of retail stores.

[Lunick]

I have missed seeing that Dark Side demo. Someone remake it

[Jblade]

Quote

I can't find anything that would specifically support this idea. There are three defined rocket types, and they're all accounted for by what's in the finished game. However, it does look like the heat-seeker card was a late addition.

It must not of even made it that far then, I can't find the link but I definitely remember reading they planned for a multi-missile mode. It was in that old Q&A with George before the game got rebooted with Lo Wang in it. Just found the line that described what they had planned for it on SW central:

Quote

We decided to try a rail gun as in Eraser. Look pretty cool, but still working on art for the gun and the smoke effect. Will be hard to pull off well. Current weapons lineup: Sword, shurikens (will likely be dropped in favor of high tech fun weapon), 4 barrell riot chotgun, Rocket launcher with single/mass firings and possibly a heat seeker option, grenade launcher, sticky proximety mines that stick to walls, floors ceiling and go off when something is near, and a few more weapons we are working on.

I'm going to take a guess and say they decided to go with a Nuke instead of the mass-firing mode as a high-powered attack. The latter would of been cool, but I think the Nuke was a good choice and one of the things everybody remembers about SW (not to mention a bit more balanced due to the Nuke being hidden)

Neat info about the flashbang + Nuke, that seems like a typical cool idea but I wonder why they removed it. Does the flashbang accomplish anything in singleplayer? I know it can blind you if you're facing it but I've never noticed it having any effect on enemies (nor the Stealth bomb, but that gives you a super-charged punching attack so it still has utility in SP)

[NNC]

Plagman, on 26 April 2014 - 07:45 PM, said:

Yeah that Darkside demo is iconic. In fact it's how most people got introduced to the game, since they had the demo loop on computers at tons of retail stores.

It's also a well put together gameplay, except for the last moments when the player was clearly tanking (should have ended there like th V1.5 demos)... I for example always fascinated how he explodes that wall next to the opening station with throwing the pipebomb into the shuttle itself. I tried it all the times when I played DS, and only succeeded twice out of 100 or so.

[MrFlibble]

James, on 26 April 2014 - 11:44 PM, said:

I've never noticed it having any effect on enemies (nor the Stealth bomb, but that gives you a super-charged punching attack so it still has utility in SP)

IIRC the smoke bomb does work kinda similar to partial invisibility in Doom, i.e. the monsters either miss you more and/or attack you less frequently. They also seem to tend to run away when the player who is using the smoke bomb and the fists approaches them.

[Micky C]

I also recall the enemies attacking less frequently when using the smoke bomb, so it's not completely useless.

[mxrtxn]

Shadow Warrior misterious non-official secret area (Level 18)

This unused secret area I first discovered using the swghost mode on Level 18 Floating Fortess

There are some items in the red chamber nevetheless there was no way to get them without using cheats...
Well that chamber is connected to the secret place. First you gotta open the secret area using the computer:



Now using the railgun you shoot to the red chamber exactly where the yellow aim is pointing. Shoot and you will hear a sound and see that a new opening just opened in the secret area:



once you enter the red chamber get out quick! your heatlh will drop quickly, return crouching

Here´s a view inside the red chamber



P.S. This secret passage IS NOT even listed in the official secret areas thread of the 3DRealms site:

http://www.3drealms....w/secret18.html

Martin

[Marphy Black]

Great find! This isn't mentioned in the official strategy guide book either. Looking into it further, it seems the button for that secret panel is actually this nuke symbol above the power switch. The railgun just happens to trigger it with its splash damage. Also, you can't get trapped in the red chamber as this switch can open up the panel from the inside.

[Jimmy]

[Daedolon]

No cheating on my watch.

[OpenMaw]

Got a misc topic question.

Duke Nukem Advance. On several occasions i've heard that DNA was changed around/due to September 11th.

Question: What was changed, exactly? Was it simply a matter of toning the violence down from a M to an T? Or was the city location originally going to be New York? I've tried to find details on this, but I haven't been able to turn up any information on this beyond "Things changed after 9/11" and as a result the game was improved and had multiplayer added.


EDIT: M and T were backwards... Brain fart.

[Jblade]

...holy shit that game is 12 years old already, that makes me feel really fucking old. I remember getting it on my GBA (the first model) and loving it to bits. As a side note, was the Golden deagle ever located in game, or just via the cheat code? I've looked high and low and never found an answer.

[OpenMaw]

It's been a long time since I actually played it, but I swear the "special" variants of the guns were found within the game or were unlocked by doing certain things. Like the quad cannon.

[Jblade]

Nah the quad cannon was definitely in the base game, it was just the Gold Deagle that I never saw. It probably is just a cheat only weapon, since it did as much damage as a shotgun blast whilst still only using pistol ammo.

[MrFlibble]

In order not to flood the beta thread with off-topic material, I'll just put this here:

Yause, on 18 April 2014 - 06:13 PM, said:

https://groups.googl...e3d/-G79G_vryJg (old 3DR interview with Geoff Keighley)

JIC, here's the original page of this interview (Wayback Machine copy). It was published on Oct 28, 1996, according to this page.

[MrFlibble]

This is from the Doom corner thread discussion but I suppose it belongs here.

Cage, on 03 May 2014 - 12:17 AM, said:

Comparison:


Take note the recon car is scaled differently in Duke3d sprite - I suspect those sprites were rendered in standard 4:3 resultion and this one was scaled to work better in 320x200 which isn't 4:3

Fox, on 07 May 2014 - 06:20 PM, said:

Compare the Octabrain colors to this image:

The PC version sprites were definitely created with the 4:3 aspect ratio in mind - that is, they are all shrunk down vertically a bit (I don't know the proper term for this) so that they are stretched back to their intended dimensions when a 320x200 image is displayed on a 4:3 screen.

However I'm not sure what happens to the PS version of the game, since the sprites that you have provided except the RPV have the same proportions as the PC version ones. Moreover, the game appears to be more or less identical to the PC version in this video, however in this one the monster sprites seem to get stretched vertically even further compared to their PC counterparts. I can't tell but the second video may be authentic footage of the game being played on the console, while the first one might be recorded from an emulator. I'm not sure in either case though.

[Fox]

Yes, the sprites were created with non-square pixels in mind.

The aspect ratio is fucked up in Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown and Duke Nukem 64, don't bother with it.

[MrFlibble]

Also I've just noticed that in this video the word "Armor" on the HUD is spelled the British way, "Armour", suggesting a UK/European release. Now that's very considerate of the developers to care for such details in overseas releases - I wonder if the same was done for the PC version? I'm only aware of the various censorship-related changes like a non-removable Parental Lock in the Australian (?) version and the infamous darts in the UK Shadow Warrior release.