[John Brown]

Hello, I'm new here, this mod is the reason I made this account.

I just want to share that someone recommended AMC TC to me some time in late 2016 and I fell in love with it at first sight, and I played it almost nonstop for a good long time. It has problems but there was enough stuff I liked that I remained hooked. I am not exaggerating when I say I am looking forward to Episode 3 as much as or more than any upcoming paid game, with only a few exceptions. I've played through Eps 1 and 2 multiple times (including the second-hardest difficulty to get both secret endings) and all the EDF missions at least once. If you don't mind I'll share some thoughts below.

I am genuinely interested to see where the "main" story with the Beyonders goes. I think the dialogue between James and John is funny, and I like Sangluss's "voice of reason" dialogue as well. I would really like to see a Merlijn-centered level though, and I'm aware that people have come and gone throughout the project's history but I'd like to see a bit more with the other "minor" characters as well (as of now, I have been treating the Snowfall map as "Geoffrey's level", only because there's a poster of his character in one of the residences). The game being hub-based and persistent... I enjoyed that aspect a lot more than I thought. The hub even reminds me of my favorite console peasant FPS of all time, Perfect Dark. I like the variety in weapons everyone gets, I mean, who wouldn't want a belt-fed FG-42 with bayonett?

For my favorite levels... in Ep 1, probably the Rusty Nails one since I liked exploring the ghost town, though the Mikko Sandt level in the mountains had my favorite music track of the first episode. I did also really enjoy the Ganymede base chain of missions. For Ep 2, this is hard because so much of this one was gold to me, but if I absolutely had to pick a favorite, it would be the flying ghost ship with Micky due to how epic it was (I took this level as karma's apology to me for having to play the terrible airship level in Blood 2). The early missions set in Asia were also great, and as far as I'm concerned, the first half of AMC Ep 2 is the real Shadow Warrior 2. Also, the final act on Mars was excellent (and Mikko's level in the TV station also has my favorite music of the episode, the faster paced track once you get to the TV station). Favorite cheesy one-liner is a toss-up between James's "Can we fix it? No, it's fucked!" and Highwire drunkenly singing Korobeiniki.

As for things I didn't like, it's mainly technical issues. I'm aware it's a free mod for a super old game engine, so it didn't bother me too much, but some areas run at pretty dreadful frames. Off the top of my head, the specific areas with the worst performance were the oil rig level in Ep 2, and any room with lots of broken glass on the floor (example, the office suite in the flying ghost ship). Also, I am playing at widescreen resolutions, and on the higher difficulties, the lack of crosshair does make gameplay more annoying as a lot of the weapons are off center (but still playable and beatable). If it matters, I play at 1920x1080, and I'm playing this with an FX-8350 (4.0 GHz), GTX 1060 6GB, and 16 GB of RAM.

I can also see how a lot of people would take issue with the voice acting but I understand you are not professional voice actors and I think the cheesy voices really add to the game's charm.

For "bad" levels, honestly the only one I truly hated was (surprise surprise) the jungle map, but I appreciate the visual splendor and I've beaten it three times, so I learned to tolerate and sometimes actually enjoy it. I do remember not liking some of the EDF missions but I took them as just a bonus.

I did experience some pretty bad bugs though. I've been lurking on this forum for a while so most of what I've experienced has already been posted (example: picking alternate weapons for a character, starting a mission, and having only the default weapons) or already posted and fixed (missing medkit upgrade in the first map). I do want to say that the absolute worst bug I've experienced is when I buy guns from the arms dealer behind the waterfall, and after doing a mission, I'll not only not have the gun I just bought (meaning grinding for cash was for nothing, not a good thing to experience in a game), but I'll randomly have other guns that I for sure did not buy. But the worst thing is this caused me to also lose all the guns I found "in the wild" as pickups (examples, James' Auto 5 shotgun, Zaxtor's Galil, etc). For most of them, I could just replay those maps and re-pick up the guns, but this also made me lose Rusty's special revolver for pistol-dueling his level's boss. To get that one back, I had to edit one of the text files to take away the "honorable duelist" achievement (forgot the exact name) so I could get the boss to drop that weapon again.

Forgive me for being a cheat, but while I was at it, I just... gave myself enough funds to buy all the buyable weapons while I was at it. My in-universe explanation is that one of the Cycloids' captive women was a billionaire and she made a healthy donation to the AMC cause after her rescue. I assure you that I had already bought all the base upgrades and research upgrades with legitimately-earned game money, and I restored the text file afterwards so I had the original amount of money as when I started. My apologies, but I was pretty angry at losing stuff I earned legit (note: still can't buy Mikko's alternate plasma rifle, the one that requires scanning a QR code on the Moon, but I won't lose sleep over it).

Overall this is my favorite Duke mod and honestly my favorite mod in general, and I've played some pretty good standalone mods in my time (STALKER: Call of Chernobyl for example). I am looking forward to Ep 3 (and 4 and 5 eventually) and I just wanted you to know I appreciate all the hard work that went into this mod.

[Jblade]

awesome, thanks for taking the time to share your impressions I think EP3 is the most stable yet, and I'm hoping that the equipment loss bug is gone for good (I haven't had it happen to me whilst testing yet) Budget is earned faster in this episode, since I do feel it was a bit of a grind (the downside is that taking lots of equipment is more expensive) There's maps for both Merlijn and Geoffrey in episode 3 as well Framerate should also be better as well; I've done lots of back end stuff to try and improved performance. Things will never be perfect but I hope it's an improvement over EP2's.

[John Brown]

I'm glad to hear that, the bar is already so high with E1 and 2, I look forward to 3. Also if I may ask, will there be any more, for lack of better term, "temporary" gameplay characters like John Mason? I did like his sections in both E1 and E2, especially with his AA-12 with explosive shells. I would like to see Minerva and/or Jane Ashford too, but if I understand right, the problem is finding voice actresses for them? Whatever you have planned, I look forward to it.

[Jblade]

There's been some reshuffling of that kind of stuff actually - John's no longer in the TC (the maps have been re-worked a bit to accommodate this; 'For Providence' has had the cutscenes re-recorded and written so it feels much more focused) but Snowfall was working on unique maps for certain characters. His Pipedream map is in the mod and the Cultist character has had work done to make his weapons better; I'd love to have more female characters but like you said, the whole VA problem (But a couple of people like Mark have said they may be able to help with some characters so at least the scientists will have some voices rather than being mute) We might even be able to procure a voice for lilith which would be fantastic since I think that's a grave problem with the story on that level where she doesn't have a single line of dialogue.

I did feel a bit bad about removing him but the real life person's just not interested in the mod so it was basically nepotism why he was in there You can still play with his weapons and stuff in usermaps though, but as a generic EAF grunt. Down the line, if Dan/Sebabduke/Batsuey are cool with it I might replace him with AA's Bombshell and maybe even have her as a cameo character (although my AI NPC code is pretty crappy compared to Dan's so we'll just pretend she's feeling kinda lazy when you fight with her)

[TheDragonLiner]

John's no longer in the mod ? That's sad Wouldn't it be possible to keep him as a token/accessory character like the cultist instead ? It's too bad to replace a unique special character with a generic one >_>


BTW reminds me of ME, I created an account on here just in order to report a bug in V1 AMC ^^ 1st bug report out of hundreds !

[John Brown]

Dang, I'm sorry to hear about John but if the real life person is not interested, then fair enough. Shelly would be nice to see (even with Ion Maiden's near universally good reception from what I've seen, I feel like her character needs all the positive rep she can get after Bombshell 2016), but on the subject of old Build Engine female characters, I'd also like to see No Wang if it makes sense for her to be in your story.

Also, another question, is there a complete list of secrets for episode 2? Last time I checked the wiki, it had all of them for episode 1 but not 2. I remember finding most (but not all) of the E1 and 2 secrets on my own, and for E2 in particular, in more than half of the maps, I did find all of them, but I had considerably less luck in the side missions (eg. oil rig, the one in South America, etc). For my personal goal, if I can find at least half of the secrets in a usermap (for Duke, or Doom, or Shadow Warrior or anything) on my own without a guide, that's good enough for me. But the allure of 100% is always there.

[Jblade]

I was thinking of at least referring to Lo Wang's sister, but again one of those 'no VA' things plus I would of wanted an asian VA for her as well.

The wiki badly needs updating, one day it will have a complete list of secrets and stuff.

[Mark]

A first draft of some test lines I made up for a different project. Unfortunately it wasn't exactly what they wanted.
This is the same girl I mentioned earlier. I've been trying to contact her for the last week or so about doing the other voice we talked about.

Attached File(s)

•  jessica voice test 1.mp3 (306.12K)
  Number of downloads: 422

[Jblade]

it's hard to hear what she sounds like, I definitely wouldn't go for the caricatured Mr. Yunioshi style accent for her

[Mark]

That style is what was asked for originally in the other project so I went with it. Also this was her first take recording on the lines. The annunciation could have been approved with practice. When I get her here to record a few more lines for my project I'll have her try a couple of LoWang lines in a more conventional Chinese voice.

[Phredreeke]

Maybe this is answered elsewhere, but who made the hub levels?

[Jblade]

If you mean the AMC base levels, it's a combination of people. Highwire made the upstairs ground building and I made the underground facility - everybody but Merlijn made their own rooms for the map (that's been fixed of sorts in EP3 - and Micky's done something impressive that I won't spoil )

[Micky C]

 Jblade, on 27 September 2018 - 09:50 PM, said:

If you mean the AMC base levels, it's a combination of people. Highwire made the upstairs ground building and I made the underground facility - everybody but Merlijn made their own rooms for the map (that's been fixed of sorts in EP3 - and Micky's done something impressive that I won't spoil )

Only 1?

I think they already know about my room (the glorified storage closet) next to the labs, released for episode 2, but thanks for the compliment.

[John Brown]

Odd question for you, but with the release coming up soon (I hope; no rush though), I'm planning on doing a big epic replay of Eps 1 and 2 to get hyped. Should I wait for Ep 3 to drop since it includes lots of improvements to the existing episodes?

[Jblade]

 John Brown, on 03 November 2018 - 07:48 AM, said:

Odd question for you, but with the release coming up soon (I hope; no rush though), I'm planning on doing a big epic replay of Eps 1 and 2 to get hyped. Should I wait for Ep 3 to drop since it includes lots of improvements to the existing episodes?

Hmm...that's a good question - the changes aren't massive (apart from Abyss being changed so that you gain access to normal weapons to make playing it with different characters worthwhile) but it's all stuff that improves the experience. A lot of cutscenes have also been polished and improved as well (and I re-recorded most of my voice overs to suit the story better) I'd probably hold off for now unless time is at a premium towards the end of the year since the changes does make everything more seamless and EP3 is best experienced with the last 2 eps relatively fresh on the brain.

[John Brown]

 Jblade, on 03 November 2018 - 08:47 AM, said:

Hmm...that's a good question - the changes aren't massive (apart from Abyss being changed so that you gain access to normal weapons to make playing it with different characters worthwhile) but it's all stuff that improves the experience. A lot of cutscenes have also been polished and improved as well (and I re-recorded most of my voice overs to suit the story better) I'd probably hold off for now unless time is at a premium towards the end of the year since the changes does make everything more seamless and EP3 is best experienced with the last 2 eps relatively fresh on the brain.

Thank you, I'll wait for Ep 3's release then. I'm doing NaNoWriMo again anyway, and having one less distraction would be advantageous to me.

[TheDragonLiner]

Hello !

Been a while. So I was wondering about John being out of the mod for Ep3 ... What about the phases where he was supposed to accompany the player and be played as afterwards ? Will he be replaced by a grunt for these phases or will the player be all alone ?

Also will he, at least, be still present in the phone conversations with James ?

[Jblade]

In Providence you play as Sang again at the end, and in Arsia Mons Elevator the backtracking bit has been cut out (it was padding) The phone conversations with him are gone too.

[TheDragonLiner]

 Jblade, on 10 November 2018 - 06:20 AM, said:

In Providence you play as Sang again at the end, and in Arsia Mons Elevator the backtracking bit has been cut out (it was padding) The phone conversations with him are gone too.

So it's really as if he had never existed T_T

Anyway it's your choice and I shall respect it (especially with the reasons you gave a while ago)

[John Brown]

 TheDragonLiner, on 10 November 2018 - 09:56 AM, said:

So it's really as if he had never existed T_T

Anyway it's your choice and I shall respect it (especially with the reasons you gave a while ago)

Time moves on, things change, and we accept it. But John Mason and his 9mm dick will always live on in our hearts.

[Ninety-Six]

So I'm just curious. Who is the AMC team? And I mean dev-wise. Who they are and what they do.


No real reason. As I said, I'm just curious who's all involved in this massive project. I know some people, but not everyone.

[Jblade]

There's me who does everything apart from making music, Micky does a substantial amount of mapping and is also basically second in command as far as PR stuff goes (since he actually likes to advertise the mod whereas I hate everything I do so I don't talk about it much )

Loke's created 6 maps for the mod (3 for both ep2 and ep3) Sang has done parts of maps for various episodes (and a big chunk of an episode 4 one), and Zaxtor has contributed 3 levels as well. Mikko's made maps for ep1 and ep2 (not for ep3 sadly since he was occupied with private matters) Snowfall has done a fair amount of maps as well for ep3 as well as Zeta base for ep2. Rusty Nails did Millhaven but also started another map which will be appearing in episode 4. Geoffrey's main contribution was Megabase, but he also worked on a bunch of MP maps which hopefully one day will see their intended use (as well as some unused Survival stuff). Highwire made his Revolution map, but also contributed a few more unfinished pieces (most notable the base city for Episode 2's intro map) Merlijn's contributed a small part of a map for this episode but we're hoping he'll have time to do a map for ep4. We did have a new mapper Rhaisher who worked on a big addition to the New LA moonbase map (DavoX also started the base of that map as well)

Apart from that, there's been a fair few donations from people like Forge, and Mr Sinister; also unfinished segments by Jenz/Amaka and Mike Von Skellington as well. A whole bunch of sebabduke's awesome artwork is in the mod, and he also kindly made some artwork for us as well.

There's too many voice actors to list and it'll spoil things but the credit maps have a full list of them. Forge is our stalwart beta tester, as well as Somagu who did a massive amount of testing for us as well.

[Ninety-Six]

Danke.


And yeah I figured there were credits but since I was advised to wait until e3 dropped to give this a go, I don't have them on hand.

[Jblade]

just a small heads up, Forge has beta-tested the mod and I'm just waiting for word on the release candidate from other testers - barring any terrible fuckups, early march is looking good for release

[Forge]

Ambitious
Huge
High quality.

[Radar]

Can't wait.

[Mark]

 Jblade, on 20 February 2019 - 11:15 AM, said:

just a small heads up, Forge has beta-tested the mod and I'm just waiting for word on the release candidate from other testers - barring any terrible fuckups, early march is looking good for release

Beware the Ides of March

[Micky C]

 Forge, on 20 February 2019 - 12:24 PM, said:

Ambitious
Huge
High quality.

“This is how I describe the sandwich I made for lunch.”

[John Brown]

Anticipation intensifies.

[Forge]

 Micky C, on 20 February 2019 - 02:39 PM, said:

“This is how I describe the sandwich I made for lunch.”

It was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a sandwich.