[Martin Howe]

As part of a game auto-detection capability that I am working on, I need to be able to detect Duke Nukem 3D V1.4, as there are some subtle differences between V1.4 and V1.5: I seem to remember that this is particularly true of the .CON files. It would also be helpful to have MD5 sums of any files identical to V1.5 in size but that may be different.

This version only exists by upgrading V1.3 using the Plutonium Pack; I only have V1.5 and I imagine most people do also by now. I should really need only the file names and sizes, including the TEN directory if there is one.

Does anybody have on an old hard disk somewhere an old (unmodified) copy of V1.4? Or of the PP and of V1.3, and would be willing to spend a few minutes generating V1.4?

Alternatively, did anybody ever create a "downgrade" patch for V1.5 like the various downgrade patches available for Doom?

Any help would be much appreciated

[TerminX]

What do you need this for? I definitely have a 1.3D and Plutonium Pak disc around, but they're inside boxed retail copies that are physically annoying to get to...

[LeoD]

I think I have this GRP file. (Unintentionally downloaded because someone had bundled it to his mod package for a short time.)
Its size is 44348015 Byte, date is 1996-10-21_14:40. MD5 : c904ffb6a4f3c6080dd1dac31218b25a
Files differing from my Atomic CD version are : DUKE3B.BIN, GAME.CON, USER.CON, and *.DMO.

A file of this size is marked as Atomic Edition (Censored) in grpscan.c but I suspect that to be wrong.
TX, what's that hex number (0xF514A6AC), a CRC?

[Martin Howe]

TerminX, on 08 November 2012 - 06:44 AM, said:

What do you need this for? I definitely have a 1.3D and Plutonium Pak disc around, but they're inside boxed retail copies that are physically annoying to get to...

Quick answer: (spoilered for size/shape of image):

Spoiler

Longer answer, I haven't found a game launcher that works for me yet, nor that handles the games I use. I thought of tinkering with KDX, but that's Doom engine stuff only, and porting it from VB6 to .NET was clearly not going to work.

Since this project will not see the light of day publicly for probably a year, it's not really fair to ask you to dig out some old CDs if it's a real problem for you, but thanks for mentioning it. (I too sometimes would read books I have if only they weren't buried in the garage )

LeoD, on 08 November 2012 - 07:56 AM, said:

I think I have this GRP file. (Unintentionally downloaded because someone had bundled it to his mod package for a short time.)
Its size is 44348015 Byte, date is 1996-10-21_14:40. MD5 : c904ffb6a4f3c6080dd1dac31218b25a
Files differing from my Atomic CD version are : DUKE3B.BIN, GAME.CON, USER.CON, and *.DMO.

A file of this size is marked as Atomic Edition (Censored) in grpscan.c but I suspect that to be wrong.
TX, what's that hex number (0xF514A6AC), a CRC?

Thanks for that - any data on the sizes of the other files? I'll understand if not, but if you know how they differ, I'm guessing you still have them to hand. I am really surprised that DUKE3D.EXE isn't different; were the fixes really in the .CON files only?

[LeoD]

Martin Howe, on 08 November 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

Thanks for that - any data on the sizes of the other files? I'll understand if not, but if you know how they differ, I'm guessing you still have them to hand. I am really surprised that DUKE3D.EXE isn't different; were the fixes really in the .CON files only?

I know they differ because I extracted them from the GRP, which is the only "Plutonium"(?) file I have. I have attached the differing files.
There's something that confuses me, however: These files appear to be from 1996-10-21, My Atomic GRP (1.5?) is from 1996-12-11. But the 3D Realms 2003 source release contains the CONs from October with a GPL header.

Attached File(s)

•  Plutonium_Atomic_diff.zip (61.23K)
  Number of downloads: 303

[TerminX]

That's interesting, I didn't realize there was a CON difference between 1.4 and 1.5. It looks like the differences are pretty minor, there's a fix for the BLIMP sprite respawning and what is probably a crash fix for the Expander in multiplayer.

[Martin Howe]

LeoD, on 08 November 2012 - 01:47 PM, said:

I know they differ because I extracted them from the GRP, which is the only "Plutonium"(?) file I have. I have attached the differing files.

Thanks, that's very helpful. It's fortunate that the GRP files include master copies of the few loose files. (I would have thought the .EXE file probably is different, but not by much).

[Martin Howe]

Well, now I have found a good quality 2nd hand copy of the PP on amazon.co.uk; total came to less than £8 (around $12) Yay!


It will be interesting to have a complete look for myself at everything, not just the CONs. I'll report what I find back here when it arrives and I have looked at it.

[Martin Howe]

Well this sucks. The patcher fails at DUKE3D.GRP saying the contents don't match
This is unmodfied and right off the Kill-A-Ton collection CD DN3DINST folder.

Did anybody else have problems with the Plutonium Pak back in the day?

EDIT: Bloody US-CENTRIC PROGRAMMERS

It's all Joe's fault

All it needed was patch.exe patch1.rtp -notimezonecheck

Onwards we go...

EDIT: OK, results so far. This is 1.5 against 1.4:


Files DEMO1.DMO, DEMO2.DMO, DEMO3.DMO, DN3DHELP.EXE, DUKE3D.EXE, DUKE3D.GRP differ, as you would expect.
File MODEM.PCK differs, though I don't imagine anybody cares about that.

Inside the group file, the only differences other than the demos and DUKE3D.BIN are GAME.CON and USER.CON; the maps, art and so on are identical.

EDIT EDIT:

Well this is interesting. The Nuclear Winter DOS installer doesn't recognise it. Yet the Win32 setup program installs without a complaint!

[Hendricks266]

This is interesting. A while back I tried to install v1.4 using the DOS installer (in DOSBox no less) but I think I failed and ended up using the replacement EXE from 3D Realms' website. After doing that I could detect no changes between v1.4 and v1.5. I will have to give it another shot from scratch.

LeoD, on 08 November 2012 - 01:47 PM, said:

But the 3D Realms 2003 source release contains the CONs from October with a GPL header.

This may have been mentioned before, but the Duke 3D source release is not of the latest v1.5 code. Instead, it comes from some intermediate v1.4-v1.5 version still labeled v1.4. It's better than SW though, which was cobbled together from various beta versions before the multiplayer code got much, if any, work.

[Martin Howe]

I should also add -- for the sake of anybody who still cares -- that all the NW installer does is copy the contents of the GAMEDATA directory into the Duke3D directory. (In fact it whinges if XCOPY.EXE doesn't exist, which is why DOSBoxers have trouble with it.)