[Altered Reality]

HulkNukem, on 23 July 2016 - 05:04 PM, said:

Not a knockoff though, a new original IP using one of the older engines, limitations and all.
Something like the Bombshell prequel except for early polygonal models and low res textures!

"Limitations and all" isn't too sound a decision unless you want something that runs in DosBox. For example, the original Quake2 and Unreal engines you get off the CD don't support widescreen resolutions, and attempting to render Unreal (without updating it first) with any API but Glide will only result in failure (the game will either crash, or the graphics will glitch up so bad that the game will be unplayable, so much for "graphics don't matter"). Have you ever read my guide on how to run SiN (which never received source ports) in widescreen and stereoscopy? It involves hacking the executable.
At the very least, a modern Quake2-based game should be based on KMQuake2, while an Unreal 1-based game should be based on the latest release of v227.

[Moggimus]

Altered Reality, on 23 July 2016 - 05:29 PM, said:

For example, the original Quake2 and Unreal engines you get off the CD don't support widescreen resolutions, and attempting to render Unreal (without updating it first) with any API but Glide will only result in failure (the game will either crash, or the graphics will glitch up so bad that the game will be unplayable, so much for "graphics don't matter").

I've been running Unreal in widescreen 1920x1080 with no problems for many years now using the OldUnreal patch: http://oldunreal.com...ealpatches.html

[Richard Shead]

Altered Reality, on 23 July 2016 - 03:58 PM, said:

Something like this?

Is that from the Unreal 1 version of your old mod The Fourth Coming? I remember back when you used to call yourself "Devil Master" while you were building a parody of DNF on the Quake 2 engine, before switching to Unreal. Then you changed its/your name and utilized the Prey editor(idtech4). Good stuff, and good times!

[deuxsonic]

The issue is that the source for the first Unreal (Unreal engine 1-3 really) were never released to the public. The people at OldUnreal developing those patches are the only ones other than Epic that have the Unreal engine 1 source. An idTech 2 game on the other hand you would have the source for no matter what port you built your game on. Since Build-engine games are wrapped up in licensing stupidity, I'd probably use the source from a port of one of the idTech games to make a game instead since it would be all GPL.

[HulkNukem]

Altered Reality, on 23 July 2016 - 05:29 PM, said:

"Limitations and all" isn't too sound a decision unless you want something that runs in DosBox. For example, the original Quake2 and Unreal engines you get off the CD don't support widescreen resolutions, and attempting to render Unreal (without updating it first) with any API but Glide will only result in failure (the game will either crash, or the graphics will glitch up so bad that the game will be unplayable, so much for "graphics don't matter"). Have you ever read my guide on how to run SiN (which never received source ports) in widescreen and stereoscopy? It involves hacking the executable.
At the very least, a modern Quake2-based game should be based on KMQuake2, while an Unreal 1-based game should be based on the latest release of v227.

Limitations more in not letting yourself get carried away with features not available at the time and less about actual tech limitations; modern hardware would have to be supported, but you shouldn't be using some high fidelity assets with an over abundance of models in every room. Part of the charm for me about these older games is the blocky environments that are still eye candy and inspired looking. You could make a full episode for something like Quake before you could finish a single level for something like Counter Strike: GO

[deuxsonic]

DNF parody using ZDOOM.

[Altered Reality]

Duke Rocks, on 23 July 2016 - 05:44 PM, said:

Is that from the Unreal 1 version of your old mod The Fourth Coming?

It's using assets from The Fourth Coming, yes, but it's from an experiment I'm doing with Unreal v227 (the OldUnreal version): I want to see how large I can make a sandbox map. The original The Fourth Coming maps (or better, the little I did with them) were much closer to Duke3D in style because it was the only editing style I knew. Instead, one of the directives I imposed myself for this project is "do not imitate Duke3D".

moggimus, on 23 July 2016 - 05:44 PM, said:

I've been running Unreal in widescreen 1920x1080 with no problems for many years now using the OldUnreal patch: http://oldunreal.com...ealpatches.html

Me too, which is why I wrote "without updating it first". And I even mentioned v227.

[PokeThePower]

deuxsonic, on 23 July 2016 - 09:32 AM, said:

How did the good pigcop work? They just make pig noises. Did duke have some kind of translator built into his James Bond gadget sunglasses?

Honestly at the time he was just a driver of the PMPN8EZ car as you approached the Slick Willy. Which really required you to play your way through a motel inspired by John Carptenter's Vampires before going down a dark desert road to reach the secluded Slick Willy club which was a gigantic mix of real clubs, Dusk Till Dawn, and pure fantasy.

So real answer, he didn't work. He was a good idea that had a placeholder that was never finished. Like most of the game.

Jblade, on 23 July 2016 - 11:56 AM, said:

This is what I'd like to know as well, even if it was after you left Weider I'm curious what your thoughts on the reason for the switch to day was.

I'm willing to be wrong on this, but as far as I can tell it's because they had X number of lights allowed and could never get the strip to look right at night with the shipping rendering engine.

So they opted for one giant sunlight in the morning.

Which... if they had played on the feeling of emerging into Vegas in the morning after a night of bad decisions, bad money spent, bad women receiving said money, etc... it might have been workable.

But it would have required working with the Walk of Shame theme and playing around with the idea that even Duke Nukem wakes up in the morning and questions his choices the previous night.

It's why the game should have never left the lightmap setup... because lightmaps do night much much better.

deuxsonic, on 23 July 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

I guarantee you one day that stuff leaks. There is more than one copy of it and something with that level of interest isn't going to stay buried.

I'm not as confident as you. I think aside from the stuff Joe/Fred/officialdom have... there is a very low probability of leakage.

I literally *can't* leak anything because I have nothing to leak. I don't even have archived emails or images much less build snapshots.

PikaCommando, on 23 July 2016 - 09:06 AM, said:

Who would be the final boss?

While I was there I don't think this was ever locked down. There was always a theoretical Octa-King. There was also a Nega-Duke. Some great Nega-Duke wallpapers were generated by Matt Wood (at Valve for a long time now... I think you have him to thank for most of the good qualities of Half Life's Dog character).

At one point I had built a gigantic space ship interior where it was hinted that the aliens had stolen all the major metropolitan cities by literally ripping them out of the ground and they were all housed in a giant hanger. So in that hanger you could see the skylines of New York, Vegas, Hong Kong, etc... (none of them were properly represented, just prototyped)... and you found yourself taking control of a gigantic robot that helped manage these cities and move them around. The fight was a Rock'm Sock'm Robot fight with you in control of one of the city sized robots in order to... I dunno... I guess teleport them back to earth so Duke could pick which ladies to have sex with.

[deuxsonic]

Well it makes me think of how ages after it was shelved, Wanton Destruction was found and similar things have happened with other games and early builds and whatnot. If there's some early stuff on some disk somewhere and someone finds it and they have the urge that every person has, "hey guys look what I found!" I didn't mean like 100% of everything ever unreleased but maybe some interesting stuff that the public has never seen. I'm not looking for a mythical old version of DNF that I know doesn't exist. Just having some data files or something and digging around in them and seeing some things would interest me. With how many times development was restarted, there must be a mountain of stuff that people never saw that even some morsels of would be interesting to someone who tries to remember how everything was way back in the mid-late 90's when it all started. Maybe it's a special case, but it seems like a lot of games I have I have also eventually gotten to see early work and builds. An example would be the tech demos of Unreal from like 1995.

[PokeThePower]

deuxsonic, on 30 July 2016 - 09:21 PM, said:

Well it makes me think of how ages after it was shelved, Wanton Destruction was found...

Yeah, but nobody legally cared if Wanton Destruction leaked.

deuxsonic, on 30 July 2016 - 09:21 PM, said:

....and similar things have happened with other games and early builds and whatnot.

It might happen... but I'm not holding my breath. It's a pretty toxic set of data and anyone who leaks it... unless they are insanely good at data parsing... will give themselves away. Which is why I'm skeptical of it emerging unless it comes from officialdom.

[Marphy Black]

By any chance, would you know whether or not the actors for General Graves, Gus, and the waitress/door guy/random EDF soldier in the 2001 trailer were intended to be the final voices, or were these all recorded with temporary actors solely for the trailer? I always thought these lines were delivered well, and Graves always struck me as sounding pretty spot on for his role.

[PokeThePower]

Marphy Black, on 30 July 2016 - 09:36 PM, said:

By any chance, would you know whether or not the actors for General Graves, Gus, and the waitress/door guy/random EDF soldier in the 2001 trailer were intended to be the final voices, or were these all recorded with temporary actors solely for the trailer? I always thought these lines were delivered well, and Graves always struck me as sounding pretty spot on for his role.

Honestly I don't remember.

If we had finished the 2001 vision it almost certainly would have been the same voice actors. I do remember us getting in contact with Lani for the trailer and I think she hooked up the rest of the talent, but on that front it's very very possible my memory is wrong.

They all did do a very good job though, agreed.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Wieder, could you give an example of how some non-progression interactivity would have worked in the game? I remember in the weeks leading up to the launch of the 2011 Triptych/Gearbox iteration, Blum and Riegel mentioned on the 2K podcast that they removed stuff like being able to pick up a pencil because it wasn't very "Duke." When you were on the project, was the interactivity centered around rewarding player curiosity rather than playing up the Duke persona?

[PokeThePower]

Mr. Tibbs, on 30 July 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

Wieder, could you give an example of how some non-progression interactivity would have worked in the game?

Basically if I or someone else could figure out how to make it interactive, we did. It's fair to say that the vast majority of "nonsense" interactivity was implemented by me... while more meaningful interactivity that required engineering/art/animation coordination was done by others. We had full body presence very early relative to the industry and a lot of work across all departments went into that.

However the bulk of objects in the world required nothing more than for me to spend 5 years not getting laid because I was too busy making everything I could interactive.

Mr. Tibbs, on 30 July 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

I remember in the weeks leading up to the launch of the 2011 Triptych/Gearbox iteration, Blum and Riegel mentioned on the 2K podcast that they removed stuff like being able to pick up a pencil because it wasn't very "Duke."

The idea of something "not being Duke" regarding interactivity wasn't how my brain worked. Being interactive was what made something "Duke".

Mr. Tibbs, on 30 July 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

When you were on the project, was the interactivity centered around rewarding player curiosity rather than playing up the Duke persona?

Everything that was made interactive did try to tilt toward emphasizing Duke's ego and persona... but if something was just "fidgetable" even if it was abstract... it was tried. A mouse-trap isn't necessarily "duke" but a room full of them that all go off when you trigger the first one is still fun.

I don't consider an achievement for picking up poop or microwaving a rat to be "Duke"... but I did consider the player *discovering* they could pick up the rat... and then remembering they could put popcorn in the microwave... and wondering... "Can I?" to be Duke. Same for poop... it had to be a surprise, not a first level achievement. Fuck that shit. Literally.

[PokeThePower]

I'm about to do something pretty dumb... but here is a series of emails (in the raw... very little editing) I sent to myself a long time ago about how I would "fix" DNF by creating a smallish project built upon the DNF foundation. That's the primary emphasis... in order for it to work it would have had to use DNF as a foundation and treat DNF as something that did happen and take it seriously... but... incoming raw notes... we'll see how well it formats/reads.

Double/triple emphasis... raw notes. Since I don't think I'll ever get the chance to do anything with them professionally... would rather they live on on the community.

Incoming...

[Mr. Tibbs]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's a gaming tragedy we never got to experience those features! They still sound exciting and inspired 15 years later, which sadly speaks to the direction shooters took in the post-Half Life (Sin should've won) and Halo era.

You're a true patriot, Wieder. Thank you for sharing!

[deuxsonic]

Was Duke3d going to have the ability to ride a motorcycle at one point? If it did, then it was scrapped, done again in DNF, and then scrapped again. I'm curious what that would have been like, driving the motorcycle on the highway.

[PokeThePower]

Duke Nukem For Real
Note: Seriously raw notes... thus incomprehensible even to me in hindsight is part of the gig. I've done some minor editing but nothing that changes the original stream of consciousness.

Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 3:17 AM

Quote

Duke sees visions of KIA from DNF
"Uhhh... what is this?"
Grandfather from Prey rouses him, but from within dream state. Tells Duke that he's not being himself. Grandfather is called away by Tommy.

Wakes up in a sweat tent in the desert with a hot Native American yoga instructor.

Gets into jeep, turns on radio, hears about Duke saving the world again... but is KIA.

Driving sequence as credits back into Vegas that is in Ruins.

String together DNF content as part of the second invasion intro sequence...
- Duke is flooded out of the Dam... knocked out... Get to Nega Duke section.
- Nega-Duke sequence ends with him teleporting back in time to the start of DNF... it was Nega-Duke who you played in DNF.
- Duke finds out there is an entire clone army being built of him.
- Fight until Duke himself teleports back to the end of DNF... it is just NegaDuke and Duke alone.

Duke walks up to NegaDuke who is unable to defend himself.

NegaDuke says "But... I'm Duke Nukem..."

Duke says "... and I'm coming to get the rest of you clone bastards."

Immediate slam into rock music and real intro.

Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 3:20 AM

Quote

Driving sequence back is VERY easy.

Radio gives back story of what happened in DNF... and environment reveals some of the physical consequences of what happened in DNF. Player can stop/start and get out of car and explore. No other cars or living people on road because of devastation. Perhaps corpses.

Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 3:40 AM

Quote

NegaDuke teleports back, last level is Duke witnessing himself doing the clone stuff from the DNF Add-On (and helping behind the scenes)

"That's more like it" (to indicate the higher quality of the add-on)

Teleports back... finishes the last Clone (except not)... during Credits Bombshell says Duke is needed on the Moonbase to finish the Clones... says he knows, he already beat them, he'll be right there.

Game is focused on fixing core issues in DNF... and paying an amusing but not disrespectful nod to the "problems" in DNF.

- Carry all weapons (use the old dpad navigation we had at one time).
- Have ammo types
- Don't regen Ego when hiding.

- Drink 6 beers for full protection.
- Use cigar as ego regen power-up.
- Get ego for killing and interaction.
- Collect "mementos" as revives when down. Uses them up.
--- THESE CREATE UNIQUE TO DUKE GAMEPLAY

- Don't knock Duke on his ass if a cart tips over.
- Bombshell is a legit character as per the forum post I made... quality female to stand with Duke.

Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 2:03 AM

Quote

Duke's "Legend"
When you die, can choose to take a chunk out of Duke's Legend to respawn at the checkpoint with full health.
Legend is a persistent profile settings.
Can increase Duke's Legend by completing levels or playing multiplayer. Playing multiplayer can not reduce it.
As your Legend reduces, the game world reacts accordingly, with people being more or less excited about you depending on the meter.
33 levels, all seeing eye pyramid, full Legend has Duke sitting on a throne of gold as the capstone.

Innuendo, not vulgar.
Clever, not crass.

About to blow the dam, told about a Duke Nukem convention down river. Told that it's a person on stage talking about a video of an AI playing the game, with the audience watching them talk about the AI playing the game, with the press reporting on the people watching them talk.

"Wipe them out... all of them." "Why?" "They don't have time to play it themselves."

Duke to the female in the sweat tent... "How about a little more soul searching?" "I think we went deep enough... for now."

Duke to Bombshell when telling Duke what he already knows about the invasion...
"I'll be there soon enough. I've already kicked their asses."
"So your ego is now big enough it's kicking the future's ass?"
"Hail to the King, baby."

The original DNF team deserves respect for getting it out. The goal is not to make fun of them, but to course correct the franchise AND take the piss out of the obvious problems. The outcome is to stitch DNF into DNFR (DNF Remake/DN For Real) story in such a way that it becomes a better game via being reframed. Don't avoid the problems, but respect its existence.

Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 2:12 PM

Quote

'Roids for Him... don't explain the joke!

Jetpack always available. Break the 4th wall to explain boundaries. Threaten to delete saves if they break the boundary. "Would you like to know more" introduction... explaining the challenges of jetpacks and showing footage of LK with giant force field.

Negaduke corpse on pool table.

Video of Graves turns on and says he knew when Duke didn't flip him off for telling him to obey the president knew it wasn't the real Duke. Called in Bombshell to look for the real Duke (side game possibility).

Explain that the invasion is "over"... but that all the pregnated corpses are coming to life. The civilians are Liz troopers, EDF are Pig Cops, etc. Media are octobrains. President is Octa-king.

Satellite video of Duke killing Negaduke, but at start they think it's another clone.

Interrupted... "Got you now Nukem... and now we're gonna collapse your ass"... LK starts to fall via controlled demolition... has to grab jetpack and escape.

Give Duke a device that was on Negaduke, allows for teleportation. Each level is based on an "Ego Trauma" moment from DNF or early DNF promotions. GhostTown is a dead Gus, etc. NegaDuke used it to teleport back in time to the start of DNF, but didn't know how to use it for real so was stuck. Duke eventually uses it for real and is how the game moves from level to level.

Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 2:18 PM

Quote

Levels:

Desert Jeep drive intro.
Lady Killer collapse
Slick Willy
Lake Mead boat ride
Train bridge and Sandworm Ghost Town
Ghost Town Underground
Destroy the Dam with Duke on it.
--- OK.. that Hurt (only time show health... only time Duke falls on his ass)
Area 51
Motorcycle back to Vegas
American Caesar's (White House where Caesar's Palace was)... face OctoPresident.
Face off with Negaduke outro.

Usable Equipment
- Beer x6
--- Drink all 6, have a hangover ego effect. Drink one more, hangover goes away.
- Roids
- Cigar
- Jetpack

Throwable Equipment
- Pipebomb
- Tripmine

Weapons
- Mighty Foot (always melee)
- Pistol
- Shotgun
- Ripper
- RPG
- Shrink Ray
- Devastator
- Freeze Ray

Basic gist is NegaDuke got himself stuck in an eternal loop of time warping (referred to as teleport in the notes). Starts from the clone facility on the moon to the KIA moment from DNF, then panic time warps to the start of DNF when confronted by the real Duke, who proceeds to kill the "duplicate" fully looped around NegaDuke. Recently arrived panic NegaDuke fails to bring the device with him when warping to the start of DNF, thus causing NegaDuke to forever repeat DNF and leaving the real Duke with the warping device.

Therefore the character you played in DNF is NegaDuke which is why he's just kinda... "off" and not quite Duke. The bulk of the new game is Duke cleaning up messes ("Ego Traumas") caused during DNF but first order of business winds up getting NegaDuke stuck in a DNF time loop hell.

[PokeThePower]

deuxsonic, on 30 July 2016 - 10:11 PM, said:

Was Duke3d going to have the ability to ride a motorcycle at one point?

Not that I know of but I'm a pretty unreliable witness on that front.

deuxsonic, on 30 July 2016 - 10:11 PM, said:

If it did, then it was scrapped, done again in DNF, and then scrapped again. I'm curious what that would have been like, driving the motorcycle on the highway.

There were a couple of versions in DNF. One was relatively self contained to a "playground" that you can see in the 2001 video. There was another full highway prototyped by Stephen Cole. The DNF Mod for Duke 3D actually captured the intent pretty well considering nobody has ever seen the full highway motorcycle prototype that was done.

Then again, there is only so much you can do with a strip of asphalt and a motorcycle and a keyboard/mouse.

[deuxsonic]

I did think about that: how close the 2013 mod is to what was intended. A lot of things like Slick Willy's and little spots for certain moments in the 2001 trailer are just what was shown and no more, like making a playable version of the trailer in Duke3d with a little bit of extrapolation thown in, but you've said Slick Willy's for example was quite large. The massive opening shot, was that going to be a thing, like going down the whole strip and potentially going in different casinos? A big alien ship with entire cities on board sounds just nuts.

[Kathy]

Wieder, on 30 July 2016 - 10:02 PM, said:

Basically if I or someone else could figure out how to make it interactive, we did.

That was the game I was waiting for 14 years. The game I never got.

Quote

Being interactive was what made something "Duke".

Indeed.

[TerminX]

deuxsonic, on 30 July 2016 - 10:11 PM, said:

Was Duke3d going to have the ability to ride a motorcycle at one point? If it did, then it was scrapped, done again in DNF, and then scrapped again. I'm curious what that would have been like, driving the motorcycle on the highway.

Yes. It had some art and a couple of test maps made for it. It worked by drawing the screen rotated 90 degrees, so all of the road was actually made out of walls. There were even some vertical loops.

[Micky C]

It's an interesting concept but I can see why it was scrapped then; the level design would be quite restrictive if done like that.

The ebike in the DNF 2013 mod pulled it off really well though.

[PikaCommando]

Wow, what a load.

Hey Wieder, what's the role of that "Vasquez" guy that gives you a ride to the EDF base but gets headshotted later?

[deuxsonic]

TerminX, on 31 July 2016 - 02:21 AM, said:

Yes. It had some art and a couple of test maps made for it. It worked by drawing the screen rotated 90 degrees, so all of the road was actually made out of walls. There were even some vertical loops.

Why did it need to be done in such an odd manner? I thought it worked well in Redneck Rampage Rides Again.

[Richard Shead]

Wieder, on 30 July 2016 - 10:25 PM, said:

Basic gist is NegaDuke got himself stuck in an eternal loop of time warping (referred to as teleport in the notes). Starts from the clone facility on the moon to the KIA moment from DNF, then panic time warps to the start of DNF when confronted by the real Duke, who proceeds to kill the "duplicate" fully looped around NegaDuke. Recently arrived panic NegaDuke fails to bring the device with him when warping to the start of DNF, thus causing NegaDuke to forever repeat DNF and leaving the real Duke with the warping device.

Therefore the character you played in DNF is NegaDuke which is why he's just kinda... "off" and not quite Duke. The bulk of the new game is Duke cleaning up messes ("Ego Traumas") caused during DNF but first order of business winds up getting NegaDuke stuck in a DNF time loop hell.

So the overall plot of DNFR is essentially a satirical metaphor of DNF's development process? Nice. Some of the elements also kinda remind me of the self-aware visions of Postal 3 during the opening coma/nightmare in the newest Postal 2 installment - basically a means of rectifying the failures of a previous game, whilst remaining canon.

[deuxsonic]

It's like the movie Primer. You keep watching it over and over to try and make sense of it.

[PokeThePower]

Duke Rocks, on 31 July 2016 - 05:37 PM, said:

So the overall plot of DNFR is essentially a satirical metaphor of DNF's development process? Nice. Some of the elements also kinda remind me of the self-aware visions of Postal 3 during the opening coma/nightmare in the newest Postal 2 installment - basically a means of rectifying the failures of a previous game, whilst remaining canon.

More or less. Immediately wipe away any canon that the Duke in DNF was actually Duke because it was NegaDuke... a clone that could never be Duke no matter how much it tried.

Then symbolically trap the "Duke" of DNF in its own perpetual panic loop (just like the development process).

Then have the Real Duke proceed to have a real ego, real drinking limits, real cigar smoking, real balls of steel, real one liners... and look for ways to clean up the community traumas (Vegas/3DR Forums) that were left behind by the wannabe clone.

[HulkNukem]

So in Duke Nukem Forever, it turns out once Duke became president, he was actually a clone.
However, the Duke that destroyed all the other clones turns out to also not be the real Duke.



I can dig it.

[Richard Shead]

Is there any chance of this whole concept becoming a reality? It sounds too juicy to ignore, and would be a great method of wrapping the series up nice and neatly. I suppose it depends on whether or not the older builds ever are made public, so the modders can work their magic?