[MrFlibble]

 Fox, on 21 May 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

I don't know, but I am not particularly a fan of that kind of level because there aren't many details in the streets, just some flat repeated textures all over the place, not to mention that you won't be able to get inside most of the buildings. It turns out Doom II had some levels like that. It's much better to have just one street with lot of stuff.

For some reason I feel nostalgic when looking at those screenies (and playing the large city levels in LameDuke. Maybe it's partially the colours, I like the light red-brown colour of the LameDuke era more than the grey of the full version. BTW, I just remembered that the Freeway secret level in Episode 3 is rather large and spacious, although I still would like intersections, several buildings etc., which is more like a real city, even if there weren't too much detail. I'd say there is some charm in the old games that do go for creating realistic environments yet the limits are still felt, and it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to maintain the illusion of reality

As for Doom II, I remember that the urban levels are rather abstract, like pretty much everything else there. ZPC, on the other hand, has some nice urban areas (infested by weird zombies, no less), but it has a very distinct artistic style courtesy of Aidan Hughes. (ZPC is hard to find these days but one urban level is present in the "mega" demo v1.2.)

[Jimmy]

Freeway is one of the best Duke3D maps.

[MrFlibble]

 High Treason, on 26 April 2012 - 03:41 PM, said:

• 2:05 - That Parallax Sky seems to be like a Day version of the LA one, I think we saw a bit of it in an old screenie. The level is clearly an earlier version of Red Light District which we've seen screenshots of, now we can see the layout much more clearly in the video. If you're quick, you can see the room Duke jumps out of (Blue key was here in final - looks like Duke has a red one) appears to continue through a doorway too so maybe there was more to this building before?

Come to think of it, I don't remember any daylight sky levels in the final version of Duke3D (the closest thing to it is the sunset sky in Rectricted Area). Am I right? If yes, any idea why such a preference for nighttime levels?

[High Treason]

This was something I noticed when mapping, there are no daylight sky textures - some mappers use Tile #199 for a pure color as the tile is a blue square - so palettes can be applied.

The Nintendo 64 version has a day sky though.

[Kathy]

I always thought The Abyss was in clear daylight. Apparently, it wasn't. Probably got it mixed up with some canyon in DNF'98 trailer.

[Hank]

^ The moment you entered a 'skyless' sections of the map, it became dark, and light when you left. The Abyss felt(feels) like daylight. Even with this oddity I think it is one of the best maps from Level Lord.


As High Treason wrote, the first thing you looked for is a half decent sky texture for the daylight.

[Fox]

 High Treason, on 27 May 2012 - 08:24 AM, said:

This was something I noticed when mapping, there are no daylight sky textures - some mappers use Tile #199 for a pure color as the tile is a blue square - so palettes can be applied.

The Nintendo 64 version has a day sky though.

#199 was also used in Total Meltdown level Nightmare Zone.

[MrFlibble]

 Hank, on 27 May 2012 - 10:06 AM, said:

^ The moment you entered a 'skyless' sections of the map, it became dark, and light when you left. The Abyss felt(feels) like daylight. Even with this oddity I think it is one of the best maps from Level Lord.

In fact, I was almost sure Raw Meat is in daylight for presumably the same reason. Outdoor areas that are well lit, and the night sky isn't immediately visible, produce the impression of daytime.

As for the N64 version, I guess they decided that a blue cloudless sky would be more realistic than a black starless sky. I think there's some internal limitation of the N64 version that does not allow normal sky textures. Oh, and BTW, I do like how there's an inaccessible area behind the Innocent sign in level 1 on N64. Makes the level feel more spacious somewhat

[TerminX]

It wasn't a N64 limitation, it was a design choice. There are a lot of really old Duke Nukem 64 preview shots from magazines and whatnot that show the game looking identical to the PC version before they worked on making it unique.

[Hendricks266]

See "Prehistoric Images".

[High Treason]

I wonder what the smooth red lighting is on some of the ones at the bottom of that page... Is it perhaps possible the N64 was supposed to have lighting like the Saturn version at one point but it was removed (probably due to perfomance) I wonder?

Who knows for sure.

[OpenMaw]

 High Treason, on 28 May 2012 - 04:41 PM, said:

I wonder what the smooth red lighting is on some of the ones at the bottom of that page... Is it perhaps possible the N64 was supposed to have lighting like the Saturn version at one point but it was removed (probably due to perfomance) I wonder?

Who knows for sure.

I'd venture to say that was probably the case. Duke Nukem : Zero Hour would go on to have similar lighting effects after all.

[Fox]

 MrFlibble, on 28 May 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

As for the N64 version, I guess they decided that a blue cloudless sky would be more realistic than a black starless sky. I think there's some internal limitation of the N64 version that does not allow normal sky textures. Oh, and BTW, I do like how there's an inaccessible area behind the Innocent sign in level 1 on N64. Makes the level feel more spacious somewhat

I once asked William Beacham (aka Bill Beacham) about it, and he answered that they did it because it looks better.

Also note that the gradient sky you see in the N64 version is also an image (tile #3979 in the Rom). So I am very sure they could have used a paralaxed sky if they wanted.

[Micky C]

Then again, they also said they set Vegas during the day in DNF because it looked better...

[OpenMaw]

 Micky C, on 28 May 2012 - 07:18 PM, said:

Then again, they also said they set Vegas during the day in DNF because it looked better...

Even though all it did was reveal low res, shitty looking sky boxes.

It actually looked better at night. We saw what it looked like at night thanks to all the leaked stuff in 2009/2010.

[KareBear]

I have read recently that Duke 64 does not use the build engine is that correct?

[Hendricks266]

No, Duke 64 definitely uses BUILD, but probably not the original classic renderer. Where did you find this information so it can be corrected?

[Plagman]

The core engine code might still be BUILD, but the renderer is custom and doesn't support any of the cooler BUILD features, which forced them to edit a lot of the levels.

[MrFlibble]

 Fox, on 28 May 2012 - 07:06 PM, said:

I once asked William Beacham (aka Bill Beacham) about it, and he answered that they did it because it looks better.

Also note that the gradient sky you see in the N64 version is also an image (tile #3979 in the Rom). So I am very sure they could have used a paralaxed sky if they wanted.

Ahh, I didn't know that. I think I've read in some FAQ (possibly at GameFAQs) that the lack of parallaxed skies in the N64 version was due to a technological limitation of the port's engine. Since it seemed a sound explanation to me, I never questioned it.

Today I've been looking through the pre-release shots from the official 3D Realms' preview packages for Duke3D, and what caught my attention is that even though in most of the old shots where the HUD has red lights/buttons on the sides those lights are "on", there's one shot where they're both "off", and another one where only one light is "on". Is there any reliable information as of what purpose did they actually serve? I almost thought that it could be some kind of damage direction indicator, or enemy indicator, but those are just wild (and probably incorrect) guesses.

[Fox]

An explanation to why they choose not to use the paralaxed sky is because N64 uses a true 3D rendered engine, just like Polymer. It's not impossible to render the paralaxed skies in a 3D engine, but it will never look perfect.

[KareBear]

Hendricks266, on 29 May 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

No, Duke 64 definitely uses BUILD, but probably not the original classic renderer. Where did you find this information so it can be corrected?

http://ie.ign64.ign....0/150085p1.html

Quote

true 3D polygon engine

http://www.jonof.id....picseen#msg8123

Quote

The N64 port does not use the Build Engine. I was not involved with it.

[Jimmy]

I wouldn't be surprised if Zero Hour used the same engine as Duke64. I read something a while ago where someone said they hacked the BUILD editor for use in their engine.

[Fox]

A while ago I asked William Beacham if they used Build editor for Duke Nukem 64, and this was his answer:

We used Build to make the maps, yes. (We actually used it to make maps for Duke Nukem: Zero Hour too, although with custom functionality added by our coders).

[MrFlibble]

Fox, on 01 June 2012 - 02:54 AM, said:

A while ago I asked William Beacham if they used Build editor for Duke Nukem 64, and this was his answer:

We used Build to make the maps, yes. (We actually used it to make maps for Duke Nukem: Zero Hour too, although with custom functionality added by our coders).

So they converted the Build maps for use with the true 3D DN64 engine? Or was it already outfitted with the Build map format compatibility option?

[Fox]

As far I can tell it's something like Polymer renderer.

[Fox]

Not sure how many people are aware of it, but the code for switches is a little more elaborated than you may expect. Actually you can use switches as wall textures instead of flat sprites and it works perfectly (expect that you can't set it only for multiplayer) and it works even for access switches. The only existing map that uses a wall switch is Dark Side before you enter in the open space area.

Also if you set the lo-tag of a switch to -1 it works as a Nukebutton, just like setting the lo-tag of the sector to -1 ends the level.

[OpenMaw]

Fox, on 17 June 2012 - 01:00 PM, said:

Not sure how many people are aware of it, but the code for switches is a little more elaborated than you may expect. Actually you can use switches as wall textures instead of flat sprites and it works perfectly (expect that you can't set it only for multiplayer) and it works even for access switches. The only existing map that uses a wall switch is Dark Side before you enter in the open space area.

Also if you set the lo-tag of a switch to -1 it works as a Nukebutton, just like setting the lo-tag of the sector to -1 ends the level.

Huh, I never knew that. So all that time I was typing 65535, I could have typed -1?

That's pretty cool, actually. Allows for many different ways to end the level (as long as you make it obvious enough for the player to interact with something)


Something I always found interesting about the Mighty Foot are the changes it went through between various versions. In Duke 0.99 the quick kick lowered your current weapon to kick, taking extra time. But then in Duke 3D 1.3 they made it much, erm, quicker. So quick that if you have the kick selected and use the quick kick at the same time Duke will kick with both feet, and then later they finally fixed it so that only one foot would kick at a time.

It'd be interesting to know if they experimented with any other melee functionality after LameDuke but before 0.99. At one point it looks like the Pistol was going to have unlimited ammo, so perhaps not.

[Fox]

Yes, initially the Freezathrower/Flamethrower would be a "Laser Chainsaw". But I guess you would pick-up that later similar to the Chainsaw in Doom?

[Jimmy]

The unlimited ammo in old huds referred to the kick.

[MrFlibble]

There's some info about the Laser Chainsaw in the Duke Nukem wiki, including the concept art. As for Doom chainsaw analogies, I'm guessing that like with the Shrink Ray being a sort of BFG reference, the Laser Chainsaw could also have been intended for a different role (not just and upgraded close-range weapon.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I remember there's a level in LameDuke where you can find the Sonic Resonator in a secret room but you can't pick it up.