[Mr. Tibbs]

The Game Informer Show spent around 6 minutes discussing Ion Maiden and the current state of 3DR (at the 45:30 mark) in their latest episode.

[MrFlibble]

I haven't had the time to check out the game on hard difficulty. However I had a thought, what if, in the street area at the GDF HQ, instead of climbing the ladder and sniping the bad guys with the revolver, I would take cover behind cars and slowly approach the turret at the entrance, like in those old cop movies with street fights among impromptu barricades made of cars? (e.g. Predator 2)

And this made me think, will the be NPC allies in the game, a la NAM etc.?

[KareBear]

Are there any plans to add sprites for dropped SMG 9000 magazines like there are for spent shell casings or the ability to restore health by drinking water from broken fire hydrants like in Duke 3D?

[Micky C]

Now that there are some commercial resources behind eduke32, is there any chance of getting someone to finish polymer? I know dynamic lighting (at least as part of the level lighting) wouldn't fit Ion Maiden, but I recall people saying that Polymer would be faster than Polymost when finished. Plus an optimized Polymer would be useful for other projects.

[Mark]

Its been brought up multiple times about people willing to contribute money to get someone to finish optimizing Polymer and it never went anywhere past posts of " Great idea, I would help pay for that".

EDIT: Actually there were more replies. Like the code was so messed up nobody really wanted to tackle it.

[Micky C]

Mark., on 10 March 2018 - 05:30 PM, said:

Its been brought up multiple times about people willing to contribute money to get someone to finish optimizing Polymer and it never went anywhere past posts of " Great idea, I would help pay for that".

EDIT: Actually there were more replies. Like the code was so messed up nobody really wanted to tackle it.

This isn't about people donating a few bucks. 3DR has many full time people at their disposal for example. Give me some credit; I wouldn't bring it up unless something had changed.

[Lunick]

Micky C, on 10 March 2018 - 05:15 PM, said:

Now that there are some commercial resources behind eduke32...

Are you saying you know how much money the game has made, 30% of what goes to Valve, the amount that goes to 3D Realms and the amount split between Voidpoint and the people contracted to work on it?

[Forge]

Lunick, on 10 March 2018 - 09:06 PM, said:

Are you saying you know how much money the game has made, 30% of what goes to Valve, the amount that goes to 3D Realms and the amount split between Voidpoint and the people contracted to work on it?

after taxes?

[Micky C]

Lunick, on 10 March 2018 - 09:06 PM, said:

Are you saying you know how much money the game has made, 30% of what goes to Valve, the amount that goes to 3D Realms and the amount split between Voidpoint and the people contracted to work on it?

I'm saying Fred said there'd be multiplayer, so I'd assumed that 3DR was investing into that at least. They're clearly investing resources into the art assets. Since performance of the game has been so relatively poor, particularly given their low-res nature, it's in their best interests to do what they can to make the game run faster.

[Bloodshot]

Finding this reference has elevated my opinion of the preview campaign from really good to great

[Doom64hunter]

"Where's that big head of yours? Don't answer."

[Mark]

Do you see the back sides of those sprites when you look from the outside?

[Merlijn]

I only just finished the preview campaign today, so I'm a bit late to the party.

I can't add much to what has already been said, but overall it was a great experience!
Really took me back to the 90's and gave me the same feeling I had when playing those old build games for the first time.
I hope the entire game will live up to this.

The level design is fantastic, especially the first map hits the exact balance between linear/unlinear.
It does give you objectives and the need for keycards, but still offers quite a bit of freedom and of course there are secrets everywhere. I still haven't found them all.

Spoiler

I did find the "cops are pigs" one. Holy shit that one requires some clever platforming.

I especially enjoyed the gameplay on the upper level of the GDF building. You can pretty much make your own route through all the offices, the cantina etc.
But since it feels like a real building rather than some kind of maze, it never gets confusing.

On the subject of level design, the shadows and lightning are extremely well done. Best I've seen in the build engine. I think it's worth pointing that out.

As for negatives, my only big issue was the performance. I was playing on a laptop so I played on classic mode. But the framerate still dropped very low at times.
I didn't have this issue with World Tour or Eduke, so it should be possible to fix this.

I also think the enemies can benefit from having a few special moves. In DN3D, most enemies had a few extra tricks up their sleeve which made them more memorable.
For example: the red guys could have a charge attack which they only use at random times and only when they're close enough.

[Zaxx]

Armor shards just got a lot more visible in the beta patch. Performance seems a bit better too along with much smoother mouse movement. Nice!

[Loke]

Zaxx, on 11 March 2018 - 06:29 AM, said:

Armor shards just got a lot more visible in the beta patch. Performance seems a bit better too along with much smoother mouse movement. Nice!

Yup, can confirm. Mouse movement feels great now, very smooth.

[Mike Norvak]

@Micky. Maybe they can invest time and money in polymer once the full Ion Maden is released, using an EDuke32 2.0 aka Polymer sounds like a logical step for the next game. Maybe they can even contract Icecoldduke to do the job. Just speculations.

[Forge]

Quote

beta patch.

How does one get this patch if they own the drm-free version?

There's no updated version at the 3dr site & the maiden.cfg file has checkforupdates set to "1", but the game doesn't check for updates at launch. It doesn't make an attempt to call home & look, according to the log file.

[MusicallyInspired]

Forge, on 11 March 2018 - 08:17 AM, said:

How does one get this patch if they own the drm-free version?

There's no updated version at the 3dr site & the maiden.cfg file has checkforupdates set to "1", but the game doesn't check for updates at launch. It doesn't make an attempt to call home & look, according to the log file.

Does this also apply to the Bombshell bonus download?

[Zaxx]

Forge, on 11 March 2018 - 08:17 AM, said:

How does one get this patch if they own the drm-free version?

There's no updated version at the 3dr site & the maiden.cfg file has checkforupdates set to "1", but the game doesn't check for updates at launch. It doesn't make an attempt to call home & look, according to the log file.

My guess is that it's only there in the Steam version because Steam has a beta feature (in the case of Ion Maiden you just go to properties --> betas and select the branch that's called "testing" from the beta menu) so it was easy to just put it up there.

[Damien_Azreal]

Bloodshot, on 10 March 2018 - 11:50 PM, said:

Finding this reference has elevated my opinion of the preview campaign from really good to great

I was already in love with the game long before I found this. But, it made me just much happier to be playing the game.

[Hawke]

I'm a little late and don't have anything new to add. Nonetheless I have to say fantastic work, the whole thing was great start to finish. Can't wait to see more.

[Sanek]

IM: Preview Campaign Update 1 is LIVE!

They fixed a big number of issues, which is great!
Also, the save format version has been bumped, meaning your old saves will no longer work.

[NightFright]

Now can please someone poke the 3DR guys to update the preview campaign when downloading from their game library, too? I don't like to feel punished for not having bought this on Steam...

[Zaxx]

NightFright, on 12 March 2018 - 07:11 AM, said:

Now can please someone poke the 3DR guys to update the preview campaign when downloading from their game library, too? I don't like to feel punished for not having bought this on Steam...

I remember that one of the patches for ROTT 2013 was so late on GOG that after a few weeks of waiting and not playing (I got a game breaking bug that was fixed in the newer version) I just wrote an e-mail to their support asking for a Steam key (and they sent me one without even asking for some proof of purchase of my GOG copy so at least they are nice ). Stuff like this happens when it comes to games from smaller developers so if it's not an old game I say buy it from Steam and save yourself the trouble.

[NightFright]

If I can prove my purchase from 3DR to some of the IM devs, can I get a Steam key for free maybe?

[Zaxx]

NightFright, on 12 March 2018 - 07:57 AM, said:

If I can prove my purchase from 3DR to some of the IM devs, can I get a Steam key for free maybe?

I'd say it's worth a try though ROTT 2013's support stuff was handled by that crazy dude Dave Oshry, normal people may be more strict.

[Forge]

Hank is asking about the update at the 3dr forum. No response yet.

I'm glad that a larger portion of the funds from my purchase went to support the voidpoint team, but 3dr is moving at the speed of smell.
I'm more than happy with my purchase, but I'm starting to get buyers remorse about where I made said purchase.

Nothing like being three steps behind everyone.
Ah well.
I hope the update, when it comes, includes the the actual "checkforupdates" portion of the executable.

[NightFright]

Tbh I never figured out what the same function was supposed to do in EDuke32. It never pointed me to a newer snapshot.

[gemeaux333]

I wondered, why didn't they use the voxel rendering like in Shadow Warrior ?

[Zaxx]

gemeaux333, on 12 March 2018 - 10:51 AM, said:

I wondered, why didn't they use the voxel rendering like in Shadow Warrior ?

Guess they just figured using higher resolution sprites would give better results than using voxels.