[NNC]

It seems Duke will be the very last game to get it's betas leaked. Maybe we have been begging for it for so long, now Randy and co. are guarding them in a super secret basement under the ocean, lol.

[Perro Seco]

There's a YouTube channel dedicated to Disney stuff who uploaded a french video about a Duke 3D beta because why not.

https://youtu.be/RFCoun-aNuY?t=34

It doesn't show anything new, but I post it here because I've never seen the video before.

Probably related to this.

[ck3D]

Perro Seco, on 05 January 2023 - 03:00 PM, said:

There's a YouTube channel dedicated to Disney stuff who uploaded a french video about a Duke 3D beta because why not.

https://youtu.be/RFCoun-aNuY?t=34

It doesn't show anything new, but I post it here because I've never seen the video before.

Probably related to this.

This is pretty sick, the review actually is really good too, from the title font this looks like something that might have been televised on French channel Canal Plus. Commentary sounds honest and rather well-written, you can tell that person really liked the game.

[OpenMaw]

The Watchtower, on 04 January 2023 - 10:50 PM, said:

Randy and co. are guarding them in a super secret basement under the ocean, lol.

They have nothing to do with it anymore.

[Kristian Joensen]

OpenMaw, on 06 January 2023 - 12:05 PM, said:

They have nothing to do with it anymore.

They have just as much or as little to "do with" Duke as they have with Borderlands. Embracer can step in any moment they like, but they have a tradition of leaving their studios alone and giving them a lot of autonomy. This is not without exceptions, of course, but it is their general line.

[OpenMaw]

Kristian Joensen, on 13 January 2023 - 01:42 AM, said:

They have just as much or as little to "do with" Duke as they have with Borderlands. Embracer can step in any moment they like, but they have a tradition of leaving their studios alone and giving them a lot of autonomy. This is not without exceptions, of course, but it is their general line.

No.


Embracer now owns the rights and has final say. Not Gearbox.

[Kristian Joensen]

OpenMaw, on 13 January 2023 - 05:30 AM, said:

No.


Embracer now owns the rights and has final say. Not Gearbox.

The same is true with Borderlands.

Edit:

It is Embracer that owns Gearbox and Gearbox in turn owns the Duke IP, the Borderlands IP etc. Making Embracer the indirect owner of those assets. Embracer still are the owner and have final say, but in a indirect and not a direct manner.

Edit2:

Embracer bought Gearbox's shares, not (directly) their assets.

Edit3:

Gearbox still exists as a company. Which is also why they can acquire other companies: https://www.gearboxsoftware.com/press_release/the-gearbox-entertainment-company- completes-acquisition-of-lost-boys-interactive/ and https://www.gearboxs...ys-interactive/.

[Phredreeke]

I guess Embracer could look at Gearbox having the Duke IP and say, "you're not doing anything with that, we should let one of our other studios make a game using that IP". Not something I expect to happen though

[Kristian Joensen]

Phredreeke, on 13 January 2023 - 10:07 AM, said:

I guess Embracer could look at Gearbox having the Duke IP and say, "you're not doing anything with that, we should let one of our other studios make a game using that IP". Not something I expect to happen though

Yes, they very much could.

[OpenMaw]

Kristian Joensen, on 13 January 2023 - 09:55 AM, said:

It is Embracer that owns Gearbox and Gearbox in turn owns the Duke IP, the Borderlands IP etc. Making Embracer the indirect owner of those assets. Embracer still are the owner and have final say, but in a indirect and not a direct manner.

When you own a company you own everything they own and have final say over everything they do.

That has already (quietly) happened. Those conversations have already been had, apparently.

[Hendricks266]

Since the thread is already bumped, thanks to Green and Zombie for finding the rest of the missing images in the Wayback Machine.

[Phredreeke]

and thanks to the toilet hobo for the protos

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

TerminX has very recently posted previously unseen source art, WIP textures, and cut weapon sprites for Duke3D on Discord.

He stated that he believes the gun with the round things next to it is an early Devastator.

Attached File(s)

•  dishes.png (96.23K)
  Number of downloads: 29
•  door.png (12.24K)
  Number of downloads: 28
•  door2.png (18.12K)
  Number of downloads: 35
•  kick1.png (9.82K)
  Number of downloads: 28
•  kick2.png (8.86K)
  Number of downloads: 41
•  laserchainsaw.png (18.83K)
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•  manhole.png (15.64K)
  Number of downloads: 10
•  moon.png (19.2K)
  Number of downloads: 10
•  NEWWALL1.gif (10.72K)
  Number of downloads: 15
•  pipes.png (28.19K)
  Number of downloads: 20
•  sandbags.png (15.04K)
  Number of downloads: 25
•  sat.png (8.47K)
  Number of downloads: 25
•  shotgunworld.png (3.58K)
  Number of downloads: 22
•  sink.png (26.21K)
  Number of downloads: 22
•  toilet1.png (28.71K)
  Number of downloads: 42
•  toilet2.png (32.17K)
  Number of downloads: 31
•  tree.png (21.81K)
  Number of downloads: 11
•  tree2.png (39.09K)
  Number of downloads: 17
•  wall1.png (13.7K)
  Number of downloads: 19
•  weapon1 1.png (22.42K)
  Number of downloads: 25
•  weapon1 2.png (14.42K)
  Number of downloads: 20
•  weapon2 1.png (15.17K)
  Number of downloads: 21
•  weapon2 2.png (17.21K)
  Number of downloads: 14
•  weapon2 3.png (14.84K)
  Number of downloads: 10
•  weapon2 4.png (15.17K)
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•  weapon2 5.png (15.47K)
  Number of downloads: 14
•  weapon2 6.png (15.32K)
  Number of downloads: 14

[MusicallyInspired]

Oh wow!

[NNC]

That leg sprite sure looks ugly. I originally thought it's ripped jeans, but it looks more like skin coloured knee protector stuff.

The rest are surely awesome, especially the toilets.

[ck3D]

Yeah, imagine just visiting some random public building on your daily routine, having to go to the bathrooms and boom, suddenly you're not too sure of which dimension you're actually in anymore.

I keep bringing that up on Discord from time to time but I vividly remember someone posted the source photo for one of the Duke 3D building textures on AMC and so as you can imagine a while back, may have been close to two decades ago. I think it was one of the episode 3 'creamy' texture buildings as seen in Freeway and Hotel Hell and the photo was of a real building facade, design looked a bit European. For some reason I have Quakis' name associated to that memory always but I'm not sure if he posted it or just posted in the same thread in general. Always wished I could see that one again, was neat.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

Several bits of Duke Nukem 3D prototype info were dropped on Discord again.

Raw Meat, as of February 1996.

 capt0041.png (172.59K)
Number of downloads: 75


While looking through old Raw Meat revisions, Terminx discovered something interesting regarding Expander and gas can (Flamethrower) ammo. He also shared an old intro area for Raw Meat.

 expander 1.png (38.86K)
Number of downloads: 48

 expander and old raw meat intro 2.png (210.19K)
Number of downloads: 54


Full screenshot of an old Raw Meat starting area:

 capt0042.png (117.87K)
Number of downloads: 45


Back to the Expander and Flamethrower ammo stuff...

 expander 3.png (55.32K)
Number of downloads: 36

 expander 4.png (50.52K)
Number of downloads: 32

 expander 5.png (19.9K)
Number of downloads: 28


He then shared textures for the secret area in Warp Factor that was changed between 1.2 and 1.3D.

1.2:
 capt0043.png (93.58K)
Number of downloads: 67

1.3D:
 capt0044.png (87.78K)
Number of downloads: 49

After that, he shared a prototype version of Warp Factor's secret area. It is from 1995.

 capt0006.png (205.07K)
Number of downloads: 61

 e2l3 secret textures.png (16.81K)
Number of downloads: 27

 capt0007.png (192.51K)
Number of downloads: 26


To top things off, here's a version of Warp Factor's secret area that was made before slopes were implemented into the game. As noted by Terminx, this secret is "long lived".

 capt0008.png (198.29K)
Number of downloads: 63

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

Terminx recently posted a "new" unused Battlelord sprite. It's much larger than the sprites used in the final game.

 image.png (22.74K)
Number of downloads: 45

[Radar]

Appreciate you guys taking the time to use this thread to document the little nuggets of gold that get posted in the Duke4 discord server from time to time.

[NNC]

That Raw Meat starting area (the first screen, not the space station stuff) is equally bad and great. It's bad because it's unpolished (textures are boring and has no shading), but it's also great because it actually reminds me of an actual city level. One of the big mistakes of many Levelord maps that their outside areas look enclosed, and have zero urban environment in them. Even as a kid, I noticed this issue when I started playing episode 3. LA Rumble and Freeway are the only urban atmosphered maps there, and the Levelord leftovers in episode 4 have the same issue. Minor things could have made them much better, of course the short sighted cutting is shipping policy ruined a lot of things.

I still hope one day we will see these betas, especially how dead is the franchise now.

[oasiz]

I would say it's not driven by short sightedness when the goal is always to ship a game that the audience of the time can enjoy and for the game to have best chances of succeeding.
We wouldn't be here craving for more content if we didn't have a game to fall in love with in the first place. Seems to me that they made the right choices on what the final game should be like as it was very successful rather than yet another forgotten 90s shooter.

I must say that every game will have something changed throughout development and people look a bit too literally to the "cutting is shipping" line.
It's not an automatic indication of "chop x y z due to cost/time". Not all ideas work out in the end due to a myriad of reasons, i.e. design or looking good on paper but just never managing to work in practice.
Just like for the same reasons movies have deleted scenes, for a fan it's often amazing "more of the movie" but might just completely end up throwing off character development or just pad out a scene with a mundane extra scene that hurts pacing of the whole thing, despite having some new lore for a diehard fan. Some years back I spent way too much time going through the entirety of the leaked HL2 content.. it has a lot of parallels to duke3d dev actually.. many familiar locations used to have a lot more "content" until you realize that it ultimately doesn't matter. Best analogue I can think of is like would 4 additional rooms in Hotel hell ultimately have made it a better map or would it just make the layout even more confusing, along with killing the pacing? Instead of 2~3min in-out you now have 2-3 times more of the same..
It has to be fun in the end. But yes, I'm REALLY into d3d beta stuff and I do understand why such a things feel like a treasure

Considering that the game was meant to have urban maps only for one episode (ep2) until quite late in development (with few of them indoors/underground/sewers), to me it sounds like they added more here than took out.
I would put maps like Bank roll and Fahrenheit in the mix as well, also flood zone is basically in the same category except just flooded. Some of these probably have more "urban building exterior" than E1L1
Not to forget Hotel Hell, which even has a street bit.

And before we go to L6, that level is a mess and would have never worked well with Duke's mechanics, even 3DR understood that, which is why the best bits that worked were taken out (bar / cinema) and paired with stub street bits.

And back to "cutting" more in context of EP3.. It's easy to think of some the many teased areas as "The lost cut other half" until you realise that a lot of it was just longer distances between the same key locations and some copypaste to pad things.
It does seem like there were some select changes that could have made some maps better in retrospect but they did do a LOT of grinding to get the maps to where you see them at. Even E1L1 had it's extra street bit cut, probably as it would've just been exactly like E1L2 otherwise. The rooftop never required this change, they could have rotated it if they wanted to keep it.


Anyway.. Hopefully some day we'll have the "larger footprint" maps to play around with. I think many of them will require quite a bit of work to make them more interesting though.

[Radar]

This beta version of Raw Meat shows just how much they learned to utilize the vertical axis by the final game. It looks like an amateur user map with no variation in height. The released game looks good because they didn't take real life locations too literally. IMO the final intro looks much better and I would not call this one a cut.

[NNC]

oasiz, on 23 September 2023 - 10:47 AM, said:

I would say it's not driven by short sightedness when the goal is always to ship a game that the audience of the time can enjoy and for the game to have best chances of succeeding.
We wouldn't be here craving for more content if we didn't have a game to fall in love with in the first place. Seems to me that they made the right choices on what the final game should be like as it was very successful rather than yet another forgotten 90s shooter.

I must say that every game will have something changed throughout development and people look a bit too literally to the "cutting is shipping" line.
It's not an automatic indication of "chop x y z due to cost/time". Not all ideas work out in the end due to a myriad of reasons, i.e. design or looking good on paper but just never managing to work in practice.
Just like for the same reasons movies have deleted scenes, for a fan it's often amazing "more of the movie" but might just completely end up throwing off character development or just pad out a scene with a mundane extra scene that hurts pacing of the whole thing, despite having some new lore for a diehard fan. Some years back I spent way too much time going through the entirety of the leaked HL2 content.. it has a lot of parallels to duke3d dev actually.. many familiar locations used to have a lot more "content" until you realize that it ultimately doesn't matter. Best analogue I can think of is like would 4 additional rooms in Hotel hell ultimately have made it a better map or would it just make the layout even more confusing, along with killing the pacing? Instead of 2~3min in-out you now have 2-3 times more of the same..
It has to be fun in the end. But yes, I'm REALLY into d3d beta stuff and I do understand why such a things feel like a treasure

Considering that the game was meant to have urban maps only for one episode (ep2) until quite late in development (with few of them indoors/underground/sewers), to me it sounds like they added more here than took out.
I would put maps like Bank roll and Fahrenheit in the mix as well, also flood zone is basically in the same category except just flooded. Some of these probably have more "urban building exterior" than E1L1
Not to forget Hotel Hell, which even has a street bit.

And before we go to L6, that level is a mess and would have never worked well with Duke's mechanics, even 3DR understood that, which is why the best bits that worked were taken out (bar / cinema) and paired with stub street bits.

And back to "cutting" more in context of EP3.. It's easy to think of some the many teased areas as "The lost cut other half" until you realise that a lot of it was just longer distances between the same key locations and some copypaste to pad things.
It does seem like there were some select changes that could have made some maps better in retrospect but they did do a LOT of grinding to get the maps to where you see them at. Even E1L1 had it's extra street bit cut, probably as it would've just been exactly like E1L2 otherwise. The rooftop never required this change, they could have rotated it if they wanted to keep it.


Anyway.. Hopefully some day we'll have the "larger footprint" maps to play around with. I think many of them will require quite a bit of work to make them more interesting though.

I know what you are saying, but you have to admit the areas in most E3/E4 cities are too enclosed and claustrophobic to be properly have the urban/conceptual grandness feel. Talking about Raw Meat, an open parking area with some scrapers to the left of the starting rooftop area would have done wonders to the map, giving it a true context. Pigsty is another map where the streets are lazy and there is a reason that as a kid I thought it's a pig's roar sound instead of a car crash. And others too, Rabid Transit was also a huge missed opportunity. And these were mostly there originally, they were just removing some good stuff along with the unneeded stuff.

[NNC]

A little bit offtopic, those who had been digging in the betas, what was the reason (and the time) of sentry drones' almost removal in episode 4? Was that related to the issues with the Win95 systems that often crashed the game with the sped up humming sound or simply they forgot that? Something that puzzles me since 1997. XXX Stacy looks like a level that should have been using it extensively, but it was changed in the end. Just a minor thing, but it interests me.

[DNSkill]

It seems many aren't aware that the v0.99 maps seem to run just fine in EDuke32. The exception is Toxic Dump and The Abyss. You'll either need to edit the maps a bit or use noclip. You can beat Toxic Dump as-is, but you don't start in the submarine. The shrinker ray does not work, but it seems it wasn't yet implemented as something mandatory because the door that usually requires a switch seems to open anyways once the red key is used. The Abyss, you will have to noclip or fix the shrinker ray there as well, but you can at least shoot through and cause the canyon to collapse first. I imagine some of the other beta maps from V1.2 and older would run just as well.

I do recall TX showing older betas running via EDuke32, so maybe this is part of that implementation.

[oasiz]

The Watchtower, on 23 September 2023 - 12:12 PM, said:

I know what you are saying, but you have to admit the areas in most E3/E4 cities are too enclosed and claustrophobic to be properly have the urban/conceptual grandness feel. Talking about Raw Meat, an open parking area with some scrapers to the left of the starting rooftop area would have done wonders to the map, giving it a true context. Pigsty is another map where the streets are lazy and there is a reason that as a kid I thought it's a pig's roar sound instead of a car crash. And others too, Rabid Transit was also a huge missed opportunity. And these were mostly there originally, they were just removing some good stuff along with the unneeded stuff.

I get it yeah..
I think in the case of raw meat it doesn't even attempt to be anything else than a courtyard though. Bank roll is the one with actual street bits in the usual d3d fashion.

RT I think was always the same it was in LD. I don't believe there ever was an outdoor area even planned?

But anyway, EP3 was mostly just stuff put together in a matter of months so it's no surprise that a lot of it changed around quite a bit. It's distinct from EP1 and I'm glad it's not just more chopped off L6 street bits curving around.
I do however think that if I were to describe the most urban maps in the game, I'd pick EP3 easily.
You're literally traversing across urban areas of L.A. through a subway and even a helicopter. I don't know how much more urban that this can you get.
It's different enough and works on it's own, It's just Allen's and Richard's own artistic takes on what an 3D downtown L.A. could be on a videogame. It's not like there was much reference material to go on.
Then again, I'm in the camp who never found the "world just ends" stuff off putting either. I always liked how d3d did things.

EP4 doesn't have a single "taller building" map besides pigsty. Perhaps that's what makes it feel a bit more generic.

[oasiz]

The Watchtower, on 23 September 2023 - 12:17 PM, said:

A little bit offtopic, those who had been digging in the betas, what was the reason (and the time) of sentry drones' almost removal in episode 4? Was that related to the issues with the Win95 systems that often crashed the game with the sped up humming sound or simply they forgot that? Something that puzzles me since 1997. XXX Stacy looks like a level that should have been using it extensively, but it was changed in the end. Just a minor thing, but it interests me.

Stacy predates EP4 dev for sure.
But I have no clue whether it had drones or not in dev.

Perhaps they just realised that they kind of suck.
If there was a crashbug then they would have definitely tried to fix such things instead as the game was already full of those. You don't want support calls.
A documented, easily reproducable crashbug like that is a showstopper for any commercial software.

[oasiz]

DNSKILL5, on 23 September 2023 - 12:55 PM, said:

It seems many aren't aware that the v0.99 maps seem to run just fine in EDuke32. The exception is Toxic Dump and The Abyss. You'll either need to edit the maps a bit or use noclip. You can beat Toxic Dump as-is, but you don't start in the submarine. The shrinker ray does not work, but it seems it wasn't yet implemented as something mandatory because the door that usually requires a switch seems to open anyways once the red key is used. The Abyss, you will have to noclip or fix the shrinker ray there as well, but you can at least shoot through and cause the canyon to collapse first. I imagine some of the other beta maps from V1.2 and older would run just as well.

I do recall TX showing older betas running via EDuke32, so maybe this is part of that implementation.

Tripleposting because I'm a super moderator..

0.99 era maps should work 100% aside from space stuff.
Probably once you go further back then things like multi-floor elevators would be your next concern.

There might be some actors or tile numbers that changed around but nothing that a little bit of m32 scripting couldn't easily fix if the A-B replacements were clear.

Generally you will want to use the .exe to run stuff since the game code has various differences that will change the gameplay feel even compared to original 1.3d release or available shareware.

[NNC]

oasiz, on 23 September 2023 - 01:14 PM, said:

I get it yeah..
I think in the case of raw meat it doesn't even attempt to be anything else than a courtyard though. Bank roll is the one with actual street bits in the usual d3d fashion.

RT I think was always the same it was in LD. I don't believe there ever was an outdoor area even planned?

But anyway, EP3 was mostly just stuff put together in a matter of months so it's no surprise that a lot of it changed around quite a bit. It's distinct from EP1 and I'm glad it's not just more chopped off L6 street bits curving around.
I do however think that if I were to describe the most urban maps in the game, I'd pick EP3 easily.
You're literally traversing across urban areas of L.A. through a subway and even a helicopter. I don't know how much more urban that this can you get.
It's different enough and works on it's own, It's just Allen's and Richard's own artistic takes on what an 3D downtown L.A. could be on a videogame. It's not like there was much reference material to go on.
Then again, I'm in the camp who never found the "world just ends" stuff off putting either. I always liked how d3d did things.

EP4 doesn't have a single "taller building" map besides pigsty. Perhaps that's what makes it feel a bit more generic.

Well, our opinion might differ, I only think LA Rumble and Freeway as the truly urban styled maps in E3. I absolutely love Flood Zone too, but it would be far fetched to call that urban, more like a very well designed abstract level. I actually like Raw Meat too, I was criticising it's outside parts, but the inside has one of the best flows in the game, gotta respect that. The rest of the levels are meh to me, and honestly I was never a fan of Hotel Hell (looks chopped for the worse, and it's progression became completely nonsensical aftet the yellow key), and I've already said stuff about Rabid Transit. Bank Roll might have been great in it's original form, but the final level was really bland and very short sadly (it's over in 4 minutes really). There are some hints of removed areas, like the many unused respawns in the safe room or the red key with the tag (LL liked to tag keys to the corresponding door, even if it doesn't have an effect). I wish we will see that one day.

But to each his own I guess. I wish we would have seen the classic bar from L6, the one in Red Light District is not even close.

[MrFlibble]

Just popping in to say this. I'm not criticising the final design decisions, but I have to say that urban areas indeed have always had a great appeal to me in Duke3D, and the E3 levels mentioned above indeed do the impression of city streets rather poorly, especially when compared to pre-release screenshots and the LameDuke levels. For a certain time, I had this idea of how cool it would be to roam real-life streets in the game -- thankfully there are many user maps that do exactly that, and overall very nicely indeed.

The design of urban areas in the game as it is does not hurt gameplay or immersion, but it does feel cramped quite often, and it's very hard for me not to think (although I might very well be wrong here) that performance concerns were one of the reasons for this state of affairs. I also agree that this mostly relates to E3 levels, I have no problem with E1L1 or E1L2, although the outside areas are also quite limited in scope, they're a huge step above urban stuff from Doom II for example, almost feels like it's a next generation game here really.