[oasiz]

I actually found this about a month ago but I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere so I might just as well paste it here.

Lameduke has intermission screens between levels, you actually need to disable the developer mode in game to get these.

While many have seen these at some point, the EP1 and EP2 screens actually blend together seamlessly!



This makes me wonder if they intended for the screen to scroll between episodes or during the episode itself.
While the level order is very WIP obviously, this screen could tie in the sudden shift from space levels to the city levels during EP1.

(For reference, I made a annotated playtrough recently of the whole game in HERE, Similar to the 0.99 comparison I did).
Looking at the ingame level screenshots, U.S. bank tower is visible in the intermission screen along with being present in E1L6-8.

It's getting clear however that after space they had planned a trip to L.A. , My theory is that E1 was to be fully in space and E2 would be as-is until L4's end (Random streets of L.A.) as it seems to end in a location that would take you to E1L5's subway. This would make the most sense as the first half of E2 is in L.A as is the second half of E1.
After this a more coherent story exists:
EP1 Starts where DN2 left off, in a space station.
EP2 Duke teleports in to L.A. from space. (End of EP1 is rather vague)
EP3 Duke is captured(?), Takes a ship ride to some rocky underwater base.
EP4 Unrelated ,just two tech demos/testmaps & one DM map.

Although, a lot of this will probably be a lot more clear once the missing beta builds get released eventually

[Daedolon]

In Duke3D, tile #4181 can be broken (into #4203) by throwing a Pipebomb at it, but tile #4199 will not break in similar fashion.

[Fox]

I guess the purpose of having a replica is to have one unbreakable?

[Fox]

The lrwbup patch for Last Reacion & Water Bases says the following:

Quote

The Drone 2.5 art was updated (it was very ugly).

But the new boss has the same art, any idea what this means? Did they forget to update the art?

[NNC]

Fox, on 25 June 2014 - 05:23 AM, said:

The lrwbup patch for Last Reacion & Water Bases says the following:

But the new boss has the same art, any idea what this means? Did they forget to update the art?

Yeah, I noticed the same thing... Probably it's the updated version, as it looks fine.

It's interesting however, that those alien rat like things look very ugly when they have normal size, and they look somewhat similar to the Drone boss.

[Marphy Black]

Perkristian, the guy who sifted through many sound libraries to create his high-res Doom sound effects pack, has just released a similar pack for Duke 3D of 55 sounds he was able to find in their original high quality format:
http://www.doomworld...-sound-effects/

It's not in mod format yet, though. Any takers?

[Hendricks266]

Quote

This is awesome, thanks!

I encoded all the WAVs in your pack as FLAC (and fixed the capitalization on one file) so that EDuke32 can open them properly.

http://hendricks266....fx_20140627.zip

At present, we don't have any code to look for "flyby.flac" before "flyby.voc", for example, like we do for the MIDI music, so using this in-game would take either a def file or a CON file, neither of which has an efficient method of loading as a mutator without creating an ugly batch file to use command line parameters. Watch the SVN log and our synthesis build system in the coming days for streamlined loading support for this pack and packs like it.

EDIT: If you want to use it now, I wrote a def-generating bash script to make the appropriate defs. First, download the zip I linked above and put it in a subfolder of your EDuke32 folder named autoload. Then, download this def file and put it in your EDuke32 folder. Next, you have two options. You can rename "pk_duke3d_sfx_20140627.def" to "duke3d.def" if you are using no other music, HRP, or other types of packs. Or, run EDuke32 with the following command line parameters (either manually or from a batch file):

eduke32.exe -mh pk_duke3d_sfx_20140627.def

EDIT: It seems EDuke32 currently has a bug that treats all FLAC sound effects as infinitely looping tracks. Sorry about that... I'll fix it when I add the voc-->flac replacement code.

[LeoD]

Hendricks266, on 27 June 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

[..]

Ummh, complicated. Converted to VOC. Drop into autoload. No HRP, DEFs, or anything needed.

[Hendricks266]

VOC sucks!

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Hendricks266, on 27 June 2014 - 10:28 AM, said:

VOC sucks!

THANK YOU. I am SO glad someone else has FINALLY had the balls to say this.

[Fox]

https://web.archive....lish_index.html

Does anyone has a working copy of the old LR&WB website?

[Marphy Black]

This is more of a curiosity than anything, but while browsing through a June 1998 issue of Computer Gaming World, I noticed that one of the backpage ads featured a listing for Duke Nukem Forever. Of course, since DNF was a long ways away from having box art back then, the company simply mocked up their own in an amusing fashion:



They also managed to spell "sequel" and the actual name "Nukem" wrong.

[Fox]

I just realized that train sectors are hard-coded to delete enemies it ran over. Theorically if could prevent a Usermap from being completed if a big boss is hit by a train.

[MetHy]

Out of curiosity, what exactly the version of the Build Engine used for Powerslave did not have compared to the version(s) used for DN3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior?

Actually ; any way to know what are the main differences (if any) between versions of the Build Engine every commercial game used?
I do mean differences on the engine side, not on the games side; so SW's RoR would not count for instance.

[High Treason]

PowerSlave, LameDuke and I think Tekwar use Version 5.

Version 5 does not have slopes (Added 08/29/1995), uses a less well organized cache system, textured automap not implemented.

You can almost figure it out from the change log here; http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm

Duke, Redneck, SW and even Blood use Version 7... Though Blood was heavily modified with things like the QSystem (Replacing tags and such) how many of those alterations were technically engine-side and game-side is unknown to me and only a round estimate could be determined by looking at the source from the Alpha.

[TerminX]

I think Powerslave is version 6.

[MetHy]

Interesting read. Is it still true today that the Build Engine is the engine with the most commercial games released?

I'm very surprised to see that slopes were added that late... which should mean that any slope DN3D has were added during the last months of development.

It would be interesting to learn more about Blood's modified version of the engine, too.
Edit : nvm, deleted my other question since I found the answer to it

[High Treason]

Think about it, LameDuke doesn't have any slopes and the final Derelict has very few. The 0.99 Beta has a few (Such as in the church in E1L3) that aren't in the final suggesting they went nuts with it when it was first implemented.

Blood is rather complicated, I am not sure I should post links to the Alpha for you to go and dig through it yourself as it may violate forum policies and I am still prohibited from sending PMs (Can this not be changed?) - Blood Wiki has a page on the Alpha at least

If you can get your hands on it there is some documentation included for XSystem (What I called QSystem before, handles Effects), QAV (Animated tiles - they are a single tile in Build/Artedit, a bit like Smacker), Smacker support for cutscenes (May not be with the Alpha, but the final used this) and all manner of things as well as a lot of maps.

One small paragraph;

Quote

XSectors, XWalls, and XSprites
The XSystem is based on extending the three simple object types used in the Build engine: sectors, walls, and sprites. The extensions to these are referred to as XSectors, XWalls, and XSprites, or collectively as XObjects. Internally, the XSystem manages a list of each of each XObject and maintains links between its related object. The links are stored in the extra field, which you cannot edit in MapEdit, but can view with the Tab key in 2D mode.

Apparently this thing does use existing properties in Build then (Note, uses the Extra field to store "links") but allowed very complex control over things, for example what I remember (From the final, Alpha is a little less complex) is, you can set a Sector Type - ALT+F5 (ALT+F6 for sprites), maybe a Sliding Sector. That sector could move on it's own (Slide Sector) or else you could press K on a wall or sprite (Makes it purple) to affect that if it was inside that sector (Slide Marked) and hitting K again would reverse the direction for that one (Green).

Tags were instead TxID and RxID (F10 to find next free, first 100 reserved), Transmit and Recieve on different tags, you can select what triggers them/responds to them, different speed, waveforms and delays for On and Off, different starting state. Can set height for Z Motion Sector/Sprite (F3/F4. F2 to change current state). Can change how the player triggers any of these (Set switches to only respond to guns or whatever) and a lighting/panning system so you can make any sector flicker, fade or whatever in different waveforms, panning acts like Conveyers and can drag the player if the Drag box is ticked.

The RoR system deserves a mention (Sprite Type 6 & 7) because it was very easy to implement, requiring only setting a matching Data 1 field, sector height didn't have to be correct but it was very touch about drawing multiple sectors.


Incidentally, I got started with Build mostly by using Mapedit. Blood uses a different map format it seems, whether they are just compressed/encrypted or actually do differ I do not know.

Quick edit: Found a reference to Dark Forces when it was talking about voiceovers and a note about a moving platform "Like in ShadowWarrior" in the XSystem doc. Also this;

Quote

Rachel

She will appear, walk towards her target location (a marker sprite), and then disappear. Any actions you wish her to perform should be accomplished with the initial trigger.

Not a difference in the engine or anything, just figured I'd stick it there as it's the first I've heard of any Rachel... Oh, lastly, there was once meant to be a weather system of sorts, some graphics exist for it in either the Alpha or the early Shareware.

[Marphy Black]

I was looking through some old papers and found something interesting I received back in the day, a postcard advertisement for Shadow Warrior that was sent through the mail (the old physical kind). Judging by the text, it was sent in early 1997:


Scans of both sides of the card:



For the record, I'm not sure how 3D Realms or GT Interactive knew my home address.

[MrFlibble]

Marphy Black, on 02 August 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

For the record, I'm not sure how 3D Realms or GT Interactive knew my home address.

Perhaps you ordered something from some shareware vendor and they put you on the mailing list?

Or they were just sending those out to everyone.

[Marphy Black]

I just happened to stumble across a scan of the May 1996 issue of PC Powerplay which features Duke on the cover. The preview inside examines the recently released shareware demo, but I noticed a few of the screenshots depicted older, more interesting builds. Here's the preview in question:



Nothing particularly unseen on the first page, but on the second, there's the Battlelord screenshot seen on some boxes uncropped here to reveal a second Battlelord, a screenshot of Sweeney(?) with the old skybox (similar setup seen in this leaflet), a recreation of a familiar beta screenshot with the final sprites (also seen in this leaflet), and probably the most interesting of the bunch, an inexplicably older screenshot from an unidentified map (also Sweeney?) with the old Pigcops, skybox, and a funky car.

[MrFlibble]

Yay magazine scans!

I wonder if we have asked Frederik about him having found any original copies of pre-release sreenshots that 3DR sent out to magazines (apart from what was included on CDs of other games and publicly downloadable screenshot packs).

[TerminX]

MrFlibble, on 15 August 2014 - 12:43 PM, said:

Yay magazine scans!

I wonder if we have asked Frederik about him having found any original copies of pre-release sreenshots that 3DR sent out to magazines (apart from what was included on CDs of other games and publicly downloadable screenshot packs).

I found the map files containing the dummy scenes those screenshots were faked with, actually.

[The Commander]

Then why haven't you posted them here...

[TerminX]

If we posted everything we've found, this page would be thousands of pages long!

[The Commander]

Your shitty old forum software couldn't even handle 1000 pages...

[Kyanos]

I think this quote may apply here. followed with a WID for good measure

Frederik Schreiber, on 17 April 2014 - 12:31 PM, said:

We have plans in relation to releasing these things in Vanilla, and more Playable states,
as part of the re-lauch of the new 3D Realms website.

Guest appearances with 3D Realms Old-Timers, In-Depth Walkthroughs of the History and Data of these builds, etc.
Exciting times ahead

I couldn't be more excited!

[MrFlibble]

Here's something for a change guys.

Recently I've noticed that MobyGames entries for Duke Nukem II and Duke Nukem 3D have these little bits of information:

Quote

"Duke Nukum II" -- Working title

Quote

"Duke Nukum 3D" -- Working title

While I suppose that the claim for the Duke Nukem II working title is somewhat plausible, based on the information in the Apogee FAQ (specifically, where it is mentioned that the name Duke Nukem was discovered to be not copyrighted during the development of Duke Nukem II), the information for Duke Nukem 3D's working title seems erroneous to me.

A correction would be in order, however I'd like to first get more info from you guys. Is there any evidence to "Duke Nukum 3D" ever being a "working title"? More importantly, is there any positive evidence against this claim?

[Lunick]

MobyGames also think I tested Shadow Warrior when I was 3 years old:

I'm still not quite sure why they haven't fixed that yet as that was supposed to be for the iOS version.

I'd suggest suggesting a correction now if it has no source.

[MrFlibble]

 Lunick, on 30 August 2014 - 03:20 AM, said:

MobyGames also think I tested Shadow Warrior when I was 3 years old:

I'm still not quite sure why they haven't fixed that yet as that was supposed to be for the iOS version.

I'd suggest suggesting a correction now if it has no source.

I think this is an idiosyncrasy of the MobyGames' site engine. You're not listed in the DOS version credits, it's simply that the year displayed on your page is the same as "Combined View" (not platform specific), and apparently it just uses the earliest year of release on file for that.

[Edit] I made a post about your problem in the MG forums, hopefully it's going to be fixed eventually.