[MetHy]

http://www.gog.com/g...page_collection

The first Redneck Rampage is hit or miss depending on the map. Go past that and some of the bullshit the first one has, and you'll find Route 66 and Rides Again which are much better.
I wouldn't call the first RR underrated, not everything about it is brilliant, but Rides Again is probably the most underrated Build game with Exhumed.

The only thing that sucks about RR's visuals are those ugly out of place photo realistic sprites.

But let's get back on topic. Let us dream a little and ask ourselves what would you want to see in this game?

I want to see :
- the same multiplayer orientation as DN3D and Shadow Warrior have. The fact that every map can be played in co-op AND deathmatch influences the way maps are designed even for single player, and is part of the kind of level design you'd expect from those games.
- Voxels. Tons of voxels. Not for weapons, enemies or character, but at least for the rest.
- TROR. see-through water. More amazing effects than Shadow Warrior and Blood combined.
- level editor
- musics should be made available in their normal format as well as in midi, and the player could swap any time between the two

[Steve 64]

It's been along time since I played Redneck Rampage, I love to play that again, I never played it online before would like to though.

[Altered Reality]

oasiz, on 26 July 2015 - 12:49 PM, said:

Making it for DOS would require you to deal with retarded limitations, making it sure that it runs on various hardware configurations that less than .1% of your average gamer owns.

Or you could limit yourself to supporting VESA graphics and standard sound cards of the time, like it was actually done back then.
I agree that some of the very early limitations of MS-DOS are retarded, and the "640 KB of RAM should be enough for everyone" joke keeps getting funnier and funnier... but DOS/4GW was made to solve that very problem, which then would not be an issue.

oasiz, on 26 July 2015 - 12:49 PM, said:

After all this you'd still have to actually make it playable for the rest, safe to assume that dosbox would be used.
As you are already not running it "true to original", what's the point ?

The point is that, if you want, you can dig that old 486/66 out of your garage and run it on that, like you would have done 20 years ago. Or you can choose to run on a modern system, where it will run more smoothly than a fake-retro version would.

oasiz, on 26 July 2015 - 12:49 PM, said:

With dosbox, you have an extra layer on top that requires a ton of extra performance, if lower FPS in something you really want to simulate then you should do it externally and not use 100% host CPU to accomplish that and get varying results per system.

You make it sound like DosBox is some kind of monster program that brings even an i7 to its knees. Fortunately, this is not the case. And I'm not advocating to simulate slowdowns on modern hardware, because slowdowns have always been an inevitable side effect of running a game on insufficient hardware. Purposely simulating them on a machine that can run a DOS program ridiculously fast, even under emulation, would be stupid. You should get slowdowns if you try to run the Bombshell prequel on a 386, and not if you run it on a modern system with DosBox emulating a dynamic core with the maximum number of cycles per millisecond.

oasiz, on 26 July 2015 - 12:49 PM, said:

Why not possibly utilize +10yr worth of "under the hood" bug fixes that don't change the game play experience at all

But wouldn't those fix change the experience, if they allow things that were not possible back then?

oasiz, on 26 July 2015 - 12:49 PM, said:

You're really just artificially limiting yourself by forcing yourself to achieve the same result with worse tools.

Again: would the result really be the same?

oasiz, on 26 July 2015 - 12:49 PM, said:

I'd say that in this case the end result counts the most. Stuff like megaman 9/10 work brilliantly in my opinion, It's still very true to the originals while cutting restrictions just enough to give more artistic freedom. They clearly knew what they wanted to achieve.

Yes, they knew what they wanted to achieve: easy money, by leveraging on feelings of nostalgia (which, by itself, embellishes memories) by selling imitations of NES games that actually look too good to be NES games. The result is to perpetuate false information about what was or wasn't possible back then.

oasiz, on 26 July 2015 - 12:49 PM, said:

NES PPU is very buggy and error prone to program for. With commodore systems you'd be swapping floppies or enjoying long load times, Not to mention that DOS had it's fair share of issues to account for. Replicating some these are features that might have been part of the overall experience but let's be honest, back then such sprite flicker/quirk/load time/etc.. would have been considered undesirable.

Of course those effects would have been undesirable, but a faithful documentation of the past must necessarily include what was bad about it, otherwise, it's not documenting the past at all. It'd be like presenting a Flintstones theme park ride as a documentary about the Paleolithic.

And now it's my turn for a rant, directed to the person who accused me of incoherence because I talked about "worshipping a past that never was" while managing a DNF museum site. Actually, this person called it a "historical DNF fan site", which is wrong. As its title says, that site is museum, and it's meant to document as precisely as possible what actually happened in the past of DNF, which is why I refused to add my "Duke 1998 proofs of concept" to it.
For further information about the purpose of that site, I recommend that person to read my interventions in this thread in the 3DRealms forum.

[Radar]

Altered Reality, on 27 July 2015 - 08:55 AM, said:

words

I get how you're nostalgic. Maybe others here have the same experience, perhaps even you: I used to run a DOS compatible OS into 2008 until I finally decided to learn how to use a source port. I played DOS Duke for years. There's nothing cool about it, just retro-tinkering and nostalgia. I look forward to the future, and I love the concept of a new build game being sold with modern features like TROR and extended limits and modern OS compatibility.

By the way, I really like your historical DNF fan site.

[Mark]

A few years ago I started work on an HRP for Redneck. I looked at so many of the stock textures and said "hey those are great as-is. No need to change." So I concentrated on some of the uglier, blockier ones and turning pickups into models. I'll get back to it someday. My favorites are the old faded or painted woods and the old worn brick and morter stuff. Along with the walls that have "built-in" light glow on them.

[Striker]

Altered Reality, on 27 July 2015 - 08:55 AM, said:

Inane, illogical, nostalgia-rose-tinted, bullshit.

Oh sorry, for a moment there, I thought I was reading posts from HighTreason.

Being a documentation of the past isn't even the point of something like this. In a case like this, there is no past to document. The point is to make something fun and retro, on an engine that 3DR was well known for using, running on a modern system. Why the hell would anyone in their right mind, make something like this in DOS in this day and age? One, not many people still have their old DOS hardware... I'm luckily one of the people who still do, but, I rarely use it because I can play most of the same games without the nightmares of DOS memory management and other BS. I only use it to play Blood nowadays because DOSBox is a pile of trash when it comes to playing it smoothly. (I'm talking 60fps smooth.)

Second, DOSBox is slow as molasses on anything lower than a 2ghz system, so a lot of laptops and netbooks are out of the question. Ports like XDuke, JFDuke3D, and EDuke32 still run blazingly fast on such systems. Hell, I can still run some builds of EDuke32 perfectly on my Pentium 2-based Windows 98 machine at 800x600 with no slowdown. Even on my 4ghz Quad-Core I still can't run Blood or SW at 1024x768 like I can when I run natively.

Third, if they're going to use something like JFDuke3D, that still remains within most reasonable limits of build engine games of the time. But even then, 3DR was constantly improving the Build Engine during that era... chances are, this will turn out like what the build engine could have been if 3DR stuck with it into the 00's.

Look, as much as I like gaming's past as well, there's times where things weren't so good. It's a big reason why I'm working on bringing my favorite games (Terminal Velocity, Fury3, and Hellbender) into the future to avoid a lot of the crappy things about that time period.

The following isn't aimed at anyone in particular:

The DarkVoid thing... While it couldn't have run on the NES, it could easily have been done on the Famicom (Which, as a Japanese company, Capcom was aiming for), which supported expansion chips for sound, memory, and graphics, allowing the system to nearly reach 16-bit quality. The NES only supported basic memory mapper chips for carts.

Feast your ears on this awesome shit just to hear what the Famicom was capable of with said enhancement chips:

[Tea Monster]

Who nowadays (apart from 1/4 of the people on the forum) actually run DOS? I used to love DOS, but once I never again had to futz around with memory settings and soundblaster lines, then I never looked back. Altered Reality obviously never had to arse around with IRQ settings to get his soundcard to work with his modem.

I look back fondly on Windows 3.11, but I am so thankfull that I don't have to use it any more. The future is that way =======>

[Altered Reality]

Sgt. Rarity, on 27 July 2015 - 09:31 AM, said:

I get how you're nostalgic.

No, you don't. I want historical accuracy to destroy nostalgia.

[DavoX]

Altered Reality, on 27 July 2015 - 11:16 AM, said:

No, you don't. I want historical accuracy to destroy nostalgia.

That's funny coming from a guy with your nickname

[Radar]

Altered Reality, on 27 July 2015 - 11:16 AM, said:

No, you don't. I want historical accuracy to destroy nostalgia.

Your historical DNF fan site is nice.

[Altered Reality]

StrikerMan780, on 27 July 2015 - 10:30 AM, said:

Why the hell would anyone in their right mind, make something like this in DOS in this day and age?

But then again, why would anyone in their right mind use Build to make a commercial game that looks retro, if the end result is still not accurate to the time period? If they don't want to be accurate, the Unreal Engine 4 is -------> that way.

StrikerMan780, on 27 July 2015 - 10:30 AM, said:

Second, DOSBox is slow as molasses on anything lower than a 2ghz system, so a lot of laptops and netbooks are out of the question.

Wow, is DosBox 0.74 that much slower than DosBox 0.72? I have tried the latter to run the shareware version of Duke3D on a risible machine (a 1.83 GHz laptop with Windows XP I had bought 10 years ago) and the only slowdowns I get happen during certain colored screen flashes, like Duke getting hurt or picking up an item.

StrikerMan780, on 27 July 2015 - 10:30 AM, said:

Look, as much as I like gaming's past as well, there's times where things weren't so good.

Precisely. I completely agree with this, which is why I consider it so important to have a historical memory of the bad things of the past as well: so that nobody will believe his skewed, rose-tinted version of the past to coincide with factual history.
I'm all about embracing the future of gaming: in fact, I play most of my PC games in HD and 3D with a head-mounted display. That's why I want people to have a realistic view of the past: so that they won't diss the potential of the present and the promises of the future in the name of something they believe to be the past, but actually never existed in that shape or form.

Tea Monster, on 27 July 2015 - 10:44 AM, said:

Who nowadays (apart from 1/4 of the people on the forum) actually run DOS? I used to love DOS, but once I never again had to futz around with memory settings and soundblaster lines, then I never looked back. Altered Reality obviously never had to arse around with IRQ settings to get his soundcard to work with his modem.

Fortunately, I didn't, because all modem-related stuff I did in the 1990s, I did with Windows 95. I was used to set IRQ and DMA parameters in MS-DOS games, but I don't miss those times, just like a historian does not miss the time period he studies.

Tea Monster, on 27 July 2015 - 10:44 AM, said:

I look back fondly on Windows 3.11

I don't. I look at it with the same mindset as an archaeologist who looks at an antique papyrus: to examine it, but without any kind of nostalgic feeling for the time it belongs to. In the same way, just like an archaeologist would despise a trader who sells blatantly fake papyruses while trying to convince people that they are 100% faithful to the original, I despise fake retro games that are only sold to make easy money off nostalgics.

[TerminX]

It runs on EDuke32. Just because somebody wants to paint a piece in the style of the masters of the renaissance doesn't mean they need to produce historically accurate paints and an antique canvas to do so.

[Striker]

TerminX gets the point I was trying to make.

[Mark]

And there you have it folks. No more comments needed until the first teaser comes out. Everyone back to their corner until the bell rings for the next round.

[MetHy]

I hope every level is playable from a pistol start.

[Malgon]

I don't know if it has been said about the level progression and whether it is going to be just a single run of levels or broken into episodes, but either way there must be a Duke 3D style cutscene in there somewhere.

[Radar]

Tea Monster, on 28 July 2015 - 11:29 AM, said:

In complete seriousness - Terminx and co will have to get their act together if they are going to sell this game on EDuke32. If there are glitches with TROR, the renderer won't work on half the cards out there and you need an i7 to play your DOS era shooter, then the new 3DR is going to have to hire an army of tech support gurus. This is why Megaton went with the port that they did. Having all this stuff that sort of works when it wants to is great for a free port, but once you start charging money and selling to the technically illiterate populace on Steam, then it's a different story.

I don't think we really know why the Megaton guys went with JFDuke3D, but I think it had everything to do with the netcode. EDuke32 is still better than JFDuke3D in all aspects if you're just playing the original game. I can't get 1920x1080 to work right in Megaton.

IMO the new game doesn't have to use TROR. And if it does, just simple stuff that always renders well is fine too. And if it's retro, I'll live with no polymer.

[Altered Reality]

I just remembered that, in 2000 or so, George said there had been an attempt to develop a Bombshell game with Build after Duke3D. I wonder if anything of that version has been salvaged and we're gonna see it in this version.

[Steve 64]

Sgt. Rarity, on 28 July 2015 - 12:17 PM, said:

I don't think we really know why the Megaton guys went with JFDuke3D, but I think it had everything to do with the netcode. EDuke32 is still better than JFDuke3D in all aspects if you're just playing the original game. I can't get 1920x1080 to work right in Megaton.

IMO the new game doesn't have to use TROR. And if it does, just simple stuff that always renders well is fine too. And if it's retro, I'll live with no polymer.

I agree the netcode for Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition, I really think the devs for megaton did a terrible job at it the online support when it came out was in a unfinished state termit basically brought in 3 to 4 people to fix the coop/mp for the expanions to be honest really see no point in playing online since mp is basically unplayable most of the time it lags badly and crashes I know that I can play this game online

[Radar]

LOL. That is the nature of Duke's sync-locked netcode. You get used to it after awhile. I never played on Megaton much because I didn't like that I couldn't configure my side mouse buttons, but the lag issue wasn't a problem. It was all too familiar to me. I play on Meltdown now.

[Steve 64]

Same it agood place to go if you really like to duke it out

[DustFalcon85]

Off-topic. I missed out on the Redneck Rampage part. :-/

I really loved Redneck Rampage. It's got nice level designs. That game introduced me to the Psychobilly music scene w/ the likes of musicians like Mojo Nixon, The Reverend Horton Heat and the late Country Dick fronted The Beat Farmers.

BTW has anyone played Redneck Deer Huntin? That game take place in the Redneck Rampage universe except it's a hunting simulator on the Build Engine.

Now if Redneck Rampage's source code gets released under GPL.

[MetHy]

I've never played the Hunting game, I wish it was part of GoG's RR pack or was available somewhere... I wonder how it holds up. Its snow level with falling flakes look really cool and so do the sniper rifle.

The funny thing being that I've never seen any of this game textures or sprites re-used in a Build or Doom mod, ever, even though they look pretty good. For instance the animal sprites could come in handy for many modders I'm sure. The game seems very overlooked.

[Daedolon]

Offtopic again, but Redneck Rampage Deer Huntin' taught me how to do slopes properly in build. Xatrix is king.

[PsychoGoatee]

Very fun to see they're doing this, more retro shooters is always nice. That said, if it's genuinely a game and not a short demo length little bonus, I hope it's sold separately. If I get Bombshell I probably wouldn't want to pay for a deluxe version.

My guess is, being that it's a bonus that is buried in a list there and hasn't gotten much of any news, it may end up just being a small little bonus. So keeping expectations down a bit.

[Micky C]

Does it actually say anywhere that it's being sold? Seeing as it's essentially meant to be advertising for Bombshell, it's likely it may be released for free. That'd also avoid the mess of sorting out having to pay all the people who contributed I eduke32 over the years and all the liscences and everything.

[Lunick]

It's going to be included in the Digital Deluxe version of Bombshell, as it is shown in the picture.

[Fox]

It doesn't necessary needs to use Eduke32. Besides Eduke32 IMHO is not polished for a commercial release (pretending Megaton didn't happen).

Edit: Phew, I didn't read TX message.

[Micky C]

Surely the older features are polished enough that there shouldn't be any trouble making a classic game. Yeah the newer stuff like polymer and multiplayer are hanging in the air at the moment but it doesn't sound like they should have any problems with eduke32.

[Radar]

Fox, on 29 July 2015 - 09:27 PM, said:

Besides Eduke32 IMHO is not polished for a commercial release (pretending Megaton didn't happen).

How so? If you're just playing the original game (8-bit renderer, no TROR, no polymer), what does EDuke32 do to provide evidence of an unpolished product?