This was going to be my masterpiece. A survival horror TC which completely broke any and all dependence on Duke Nukem 3D's files. This was achieved and the project was around 85-90% complete, requiring only some code to be finished (mostly for cutscenes) and some 3D character models which I had no chance of ever getting because finding someone to make them would be impossible. Unfortunately, the drive went corrupt and so did the backups, so what we have here is a mere shadow of what once was. I bodged the camera system to be semi-functional but the inventory, stalkers, doors, pretty much all gameplay is completely gone and the map versions seem old - try Newboard, autosave_playtest and stuff like that for the latest surviving version, some 200 or so revisions from where I had gotten to. You will still need Duke's GRP to run it because the independence is lost and I had to patch it up to run from Duke's CONs and stuff again just for this.
Link: https://www.mediafir...7vx5ma7z1m7ia7f (160MB - 7-Zip Archive)
To run
Barely anything works. But to start it up just put it in a directory and place a Duke3D.grp in with it. Use the included EDuke32 version (it may not work with newer versions) and start the game as usual. Select New Game and User Map and then pick one of the maps, I recommend Newboard.map, have not looked at all of them but they're all old and I imagine they go right back to the start, test.map seems to have the earliest designs in from when the game used Duke's texture set. You'll have to hit F7 to make the camera system "work" as most of that code is missing and EVENTS.CON (Once a very large file) is a last minute bode I did to restore partial functionality.
What once was
Loudmoor Reunion was meant to be a survival horror game styled after those on the PlayStation 2, games like Demento and Project Zero. Whilst I've lost the script for it the basic gist was you played as Eileen (Place-holder'd by the current crappy model) who was driving somewhere (School reunion or something I seem to remember) when her car broke down. She walked up to an old mansion and found it was owned by someone she went to school with, but the phones didn't work and then weird stuff started happening. In short, there were more people from her school days around and they wanted her dead or mutilated in some way, I seem to think you had the option to rescue the one of them that was good. The last stalker was some guy who'd had a crush on her, he had gone insane and turned to the occult and could use attacks unique to him, the AI in the Exterminate joke I released was a prototype for it (Using Daleks in place of stalkers) and it advanced much further from there, but the build I have here doesn't appear to work at all and the map with all the waypoints is gone. Interestingly, the AI had to teleport up the last step of the stairway. You can see pieces of story and game mechanics in the tiles\textboxes directory, these give you an indicator of how things worked such as story, inventory and objects you could interact with. The inventory system was triggered by pressing I and then hitting a number which corresponded to the item on the screen, this code is also gone. Items appeared as little glinting stars like in most Survival Horror titles, but they one changed size when you were further way and were forced in code to appear semi-transparent at full brightness. I also think the visibility for the levels used to be different at one point, but can't remember.
In the last revision before the corruption this was very near completion and was fully functional aside from cutscenes and voices. Every piece of code tied in to other code and it was awesome, everything served its purpose, puzzles worked and the panic system made Eileen hard to control as her vision went nuts (constantly changing FOV, forcing her to run and randomly budging the angle a little) and it ran on a modified build of EDuke32 which loaded a map instead of showing the menu, which forced a custom menu (also lost) to display. Unfortunately this has all gone and all you can do now is walk around the map. You should hit F7 to change to the camera system, the game used to do this itself and even switched to first person for some segments like if you approached the front gate. Some cameras have lost their functionality either due to the file being corrupted or missing entirely, having to be rebuilt from older backups. At one time there was a camera which could track height/distance as well as left/right and it was a bitch to code, not sure how I figured out the math on that one and I can't do it again. Cameras, doors, items and near enough everything could interact at one time too, such as if you triggered something, the camera would show it or if you used an item in the right place it made things happen (like unlocking a door or starting an engine).
I would love to have completed this, a large part of me would still like to, but I don't think it's going to happen by now. The whole thing is quite depressing, almost three years of work went in and it is now reduced to a version close to where I was after only six months of work. It pisses me off to be honest.
You will need god mode and probably no clip to get around the doors, i made a last second attempt to bodge them into opening at all, but after like a year or more away from CON I am rusty and can't be bothered to make them work,. so they go mental instead. You can probably bodge them more reliably by adding ifhitspace somewhere, but there's not much point. Here are some very,
very old test videos of the game and an early version of the AI from before the corruption and prior to many of the mechanics being implemented;
https://www.youtube....h?v=GFywx4VzL24
https://www.youtube....h?v=03UM7dkz330
https://www.youtube....h?v=njSeHbt9aPA
https://www.youtube....h?v=AtwAT3W6364
I may have a recording from when the inventory, first puzzles and early stalker AI was implemented, but I suspect it is gone along with my old logo and other things from that time. You can also clearly see differences from code that is now missing, most noticeable is Eileen walked more slowly. The third video is significant because it comes from a version of the AI which followed more than one path and tried to figure out how to get to the player faster by using a "Room ID" but I was stood too far away for it to move into its second mode - leave the track and kill the player. Apparently teleports didn't exist yet or this was STALKER1, only STALKER4 could teleport and only STALKER3 and 4 could use projectile/vector weapons, the first two just walked around (the first just did a lap regardless of your Room ID) and could kick and punch. This AI also branched to another project I have completely lost - Super Meme Kart, but nothing more but maybe one file, if I am lucky, still exists.
This isn't to say there won't be a survival horror project from me ever again on this engine as it is something I would very much like to do, but I don't think I could bare to work on this one again. Maybe some day, something else will appear, though I don't imagine it would look much like this one and would probably be much smaller and would use classic art... Another issue because I still wouldn't have character art. But anyway, I'm afraid Loudmoor was simply too ambitious, and for whatever reason, it clearly wasn't meant to be.
Help
I'm hoping they are not all visible at once. That would be a framerate killer. If it doesn't break the flow or mess with a grand view it would help greatly to make those 4 areas into separate maps or have ceiling doors with autoclose for isolation. Thats what I did.
Duke4.net
DNF #1
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