[Mblackwell]

The oldest files directly related to Decay are dated 2004, but many go back further still.
Project history:

---

Spoiler

Around 2000, Hudson (AWOL, Aliens, Zombie Crisis, etc) compiled some effects from AWOL and threw together a mini TC called Zombies, using a modified version of the map Domino (by John Henderson). Shortly after release (about 1 year) Hudson asked myself and Kef Nukem (aka Kevin Cools - Secret Base, Borg Nukem, Grins of Divinity, etc) to do a code rewrite and redo all of the art and maps into a TC we called The Genesis Project, where you and an AI team would explore haunted buildings and secret laboratories. Most of the principle code and art were finished but around this time Kef decided to retire from mapping due to life concerns and the project was abandoned.

At the end of 2004 Hudson approached me about the old Genesis Project code and assets and thought he would be able to get enough people together to redevelop it into an entirely new game: Decay. Around this time EDuke32 had gained full support for a lot of nice new features so it became his engine of choice. I went ahead and ported everything he needed, and TerminX (EDuke32, Project X) stepped in and did sounds and code from projects he'd been working on behind the scenes. Hudson put the call out on 3DRealms and joining the project was a relatively massive team including folks like DavoX, Parkar, and Jimbob. Hudson wrote the scenario and principle work on many of the maps was completed by 2006. During that time Hudson had to take a back seat, but TerminX continued coordinating everything and filtering it through Hudson so things were kept together.

Unfortunately by 2007 both Hudson and TerminX couldn't maintain everything due to Real Life^tm so I was forced to step up and move the project in a slightly different direction. The scenario was fleshed out more to get an appropriate scope and levels were compiled from what had been submitted in order to fit this scenario. I rewrote large portions of code to simplify things like the weapons and allow us to get things out of the door faster (in theory). The action was made slightly more old school in order to decrease the amount of work necessary to complete things. Here's a build in the modified Domino from Zombie TC from right before we started adding in models and other fanciness:


By this time Hellbound and Cage were on the project and by themselves contributed a large portion of models and textures. We're forever indebted to you guys. Code was cleaned up and we could finally start adding back in all of the neat effects we wanted and then some. Here's an early image from when these changes were started:

and a video of one of the then in-progress enemies:


Unfortunately life conspired against us around the end of 2007. Nearly every single person on the team got a new job around that time, got engaged, or alternately became unemployed or had a breakup. We kept plugging away wherever possible, and we were able to pick up another mapper (Diehard) to work on the project. Here's a screenshot from around that time period:


In 2008 though, more life circumstances forced everyone to basically halt progress.

in 2009 someone made a mention on Duke4 of Decay and interested exploded! A lot of questions were asked, people wanted to work on it, and by 2010 I was able to get into contact with my old buddy SalaciusCrumb (Starship Troopers, Eye of the Storm, Voices of Authority, etc) and he as well as Mark decided to start mapping, Chicken began working on additional art and models, and I was able to get updated copies of maps from many of the old team's mappers who had in fact done a bit in their spare time.

Around 2011 Mark compiled and began rebuilding and retrofitting all of the maps people had submitted to fit the original scenario in between his other projects. By 2014 he'd had the entire thing fitted with Polymer lights, and we'd done a lot of code and model cleanup between the group with Daedolon joining in initially to look for the big bugs. After Mark released Graveyard he was able to start work on the few remaining pieces needed to finish off the levels.

All of us are grown ups now, with real jobs, lives, significant others, but we all loved Decay so we kept working. Like a zombie Decay has shuffled along, never really dying, one day surprising you with a bite to the leg as it drags itself across the floor.

It's exciting to think that after all of this time...
Decay is available RIGHT NOW.

...stay frosty.







Featuring:
* An original scenario by Hudson!
* SIX brand new levels!
* All new enemies!
* Exciting blood, gore, and debris to satisfy your dark side!
* A new weapon set to let your bring your own brand of zombie justice!
* New sounds and textures!
* Maps covered with things to explore!
* Zombies, Zombies and more Zombies!
* Entirely based on EDuke32's Polymer renderer!
* And much much more!

Download Now

README:

------------------------------------
------------------------------------
-            DECAY                 -
------------------------------------
------------------------------------
(c) 2015 Thought Process.

Some content may be subject to claims by
other copyright holders. Please contact
us via   www.duke4.net   if you were not
properly credited. Thank you!


VERSION 1.0
--------------
If you do NOT see this version posted in the main menu
you are running an incorrect version, possibly from a
save file.


REQUIREMENTS
--------------

* EDuke32 revision 5293 (included - Windows & Linux [Ubuntu 15.04] 64bit versions)
    http://dukeworld.duke4.net/eduke32/synthesis/20150711-5293/

* DUKE3D.GRP 

* System Requirements
    OS: Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10; Ubuntu 14.04, 15.04
    CPU: Intel Core2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2
         Recommended: Intel Core i3, AMD Phenom 2 X4
    RAM: 4GB
    GPU: GTX 9800 or above
         Recommended: 750Ti or above
         Note: AMD is unsupported, but may still function.
    HDD Space: 400MB (+cache)
    
* Polymer renderer

GENERAL INFORMATION
----------------------
DECAY is a stand alone release and should be installed in its own
folder. It does not support being run as a "mod" to vanilla Duke/EDuke32
and does not support any custom scripts.

* INSTALLATION
    Extract the game contents into its own folder.
    Copy DUKE3D.GRP into the folder.

* PLAYING
    Run EDuke32.
    Select your screen resolution.
    Make sure the Polymer setting is checked!

* AUTOSAVES
    When entering a level you will see the text "GAME SAVED" in the
    upper left corner of the screen. These saves will appear in the
    last slot and overwrite any previous save.
    WARNING: If you Quick Save, it will overwrite the last save. This
    applies to Manual Saves or the Autosave.
    
* WEAPONS
    A small arsenal will be available to you as you explore the world
    of DECAY.

    - PIPE (Slot 1):  A simple metal steam pipe.

    - 9MM PISTOL (Slot 2):  A basic semi auto pistol. This gun has a full
                            15 shots before it will automatically reload.

    - 12-GAUGE SHOTGUN (Slot 3):  Rip into zombies. A bit of a nasty spread but
                                  devastating at close range. Stores 8 rounds.
    
    - .357 MAGNUM REVOLVER (Slot 4):  Stunningly accurate with a fast rate of fire
                                      but only 6 catridges before a reload.

    - HAND GRENADE (Slot 6):  A simple frag grenade that will just as soon blow up
                              in your face as actually kill a zombie. You might
                              see the occasional giant crack in the wall that needs
                              some friendly help however.

    - M4 RIFLE (Slot 7):  This rifle is powerful and holds 30 rounds. Unfortunately
                          it's locked to 3 Round Burst Fire so beware of quickly
                          draining them all. Also includes an M203 GRENADE LAUNCHER
                          (PRESS SLOT 7 TO TOGGLE) but rounds for the grenade launcher
                          are few and far between.

    - DUAL AUTO-GLOCKS (Slot 8):  Sloppy, but you can get off 30 rounds (15 in each gun)
                                  before the magazines need to be changed.

    - BITCHIN CHAINSAW (Slot 0):  Actually not so bitchin, since it overheats quickly
                                  and slows you down when you use it. Fortunately it
                                  provides the beautiful thrill of tearing into the
                                  undead. Used wisely she'll be your best friend.
                                  
* BASIC GAMEPLAY
    - Explore and find a way to safety!
    - Things may change as you explore a level so be observant.
    - The need for key cards (usually well lit) will occasionally
      impeded your progress.
    - Conserve your ammo! Killing an undead may only take 2 rounds
      to the forehead, but 5 or more to the chest.
    - RUN! Sometimes if you are overwhelmed the only real option is
      to run away. It's better than being eaten!

* IF YOU HAVE FREQUENT FRAME DROPS
    Please make sure to assign a key to TOGGLE LIGHTING HACK. Pressing this key
    will enable a feature which disables any lights not in view, so it should
    speed the game up. You may notice an occasional flicker with it enabled.
             ===================================================
            |   A message will appear on screen when this is    |
            |   assigned and you press the key. If it doesn't   |
            |   you may need to reassign it.                    |
             ===================================================

KNOWN BUGS
-------------

* We have noticed the occasional enemy impossibly crossing sector boundaries.
    Unfortunately we have no good explanation and it happens only rarely.

* In two locations in the first map you may notice zombies being unable to
    enter a building, and bullets are unable to exit. This is unfortunately
    due to the level being designed with an older version of the engine so
    tricks were required to create the desired layout.
    
* Occasional visual glitches due to alpha channeled sprites overlapping models.
    This is an engine bug and unfortunately can't be fixed on our end!

* Occasional visual glitches due to overlapping decals.
    This is an engine bug and unfortunately can't be fixed on our end! We've
    worked hard to mitigate this as much as possible.

* Occasional visual glitch where zombie models aren't properly occluded.
    This is an engine bug and unfortunately can't be fixed on our end! We've
    worked hard to mitigate this as much as possible.
    
* Occasional visual glitch where an object disappears from certain angles.
    This is an engine bug and unfortunately can't be fixed on our end! We've
    worked hard to mitigate this as much as possible.

[zykov eddy]

I had a dream about a perfect Duke 3D zombie mod. Now, I feel like this dream is about to come true. I'm a big fan of zombie movies, especially Romero ones, and I just can't wait to play Decay.

[Mblackwell]

zykov eddy, on 26 October 2015 - 06:45 AM, said:

I had a dream about a perfect Duke 3D zombie mod. Now, I feel like this dream is about to come true. I'm a big fan of zombie movies, especially Romero ones, and I just can't wait to play Decay.

Well perfect I'm not sure about, but fun at the very least!

[DavoX]

Fucking awesome! I hope my map can be of use for this! If not it's ok. I'll see how things go for me the next couple months, I'm very busy but I'd like to test!! congrats!!

[Mblackwell]

Don't worry, after you sent the last version of your map to me we incorporated what would fit into the other levels. I didn't want to throw away anyone's hard work if I could help it.

[zykov eddy]

Mblackwell, on 26 October 2015 - 08:32 AM, said:

Well perfect I'm not sure about, but fun at the very least!

Does the project have a "scary" element to it? Like sudden scripted events and creepy ambient sounds

[Simon_Croes]

OMG! Yes! Been following this since it first came to light Looking forward to it!

[Mblackwell]

zykov eddy, on 26 October 2015 - 09:16 AM, said:

Does the project have a "scary" element to it? Like sudden scripted events and creepy ambient sounds

Yes, although it's not strictly horror so it's more unnerving/creepy than anything. The overall tone is dark with a little bit of levity occasionally.

[Mark]

Davox will recognize bits and pieces of his mapping. And for those concerned about any humor in this "scary" game, don't worry,I toned it way down from what I did in Graveyard.

[MetHy]

Very interesting. I remember really liking that one level Decay TC a decade ago.

Some textures look worse than others (like that brown brick texture in the 2nd pic which looks blurry compared to others) and the whole thing looks better when lighting is overdone, though I guess you might have to limit that for framerate issues.

I'm curious as how you handle zombie attacks. In a first person game, having zombies actually bite you in a way that doesn't look stupid seem like a very hard task. Especially with models.
Zombie Crisis got away with it because it were sprites. Half-Life and Left 4 Dead didn't achieve it, they went for scratching instead...

I hope there is dismemberment though I may expecting too much; although that half-zombie crawling under the truck, in the style of the first zombie of Walking Dead, (3rd picture 3rd row) may be a hint of some cool stuff...

[Mblackwell]

Hate to disappoint but no dismemberment. It was originally planned way back when but would have taken up too many resources/time. There's still lots of blood and gore and if you aim at the head/upper body of zombies it makes for quick kills, so at least damage scales a bit even if body parts don't explode off. In general it follows the Romero philosophy of zombies not seeming like a threat and then you make a mistake and suddenly you're surrounded.

Cage actually did most of the texture work way back in 2008, so most of them are low res by today's standards. Same a lot of misc models including some of the zombies all done by Hellbound, since they needed to run on machines from back then in large numbers. Lighting we're sadly somewhat limited on, although Mark makes clever use of combinations of point lights and the occasional spotlight for mood. I've been working on some dirty hacks to try and get around some of the performance issues but it doesn't help all cases/scenes. Hopefully before release there will be some more performance tweaks to Polymer. But, in general if you have a pretty modern machine you should be able to pull over 60fps.

[PsychoGoatee]

Looks great! Kudos on keeping this undead project...not dead.

[BenPlaysGames]

Wow! looks great! cant wait to play it. Well done.

[Micky C]

Parts of it remind me of Fear's visuals.

[ReaperMan]

Decay will be released by the end of 2015.

[Hendricks266]

Someone shoop MB's face on there, lol.

[OpenMaw]

Has anyone spoken with Hudson lately? Haven't spoken to him since i sold him my Atari Jaguar some years ago.

[Hendricks266]

IIRC he briefly reappeared with regard to an unfinished(?) EDuke 2.0 mod called Night Strike to which I made some changes to get running with EDuke32.

[Mblackwell]

I sent him a video of me playing through a beta version from last month recently but didn't hear anything back. Usually he comments when I update him on Decay (which I have a few times over the years).

[Mark]

The end of your post should be " a few times over the many years".

[lamduck]

This looks impressive! Can't wait to check it out!

[Daedolon]

I talked to him on Facebook recently, he's around, probably dusting off some guns in Destiny.

[Mblackwell]

Once we wrap a few things up here in the next week or two we'll be ready for the first closed beta. For those that participate you'll be playing things that aren't completely finished/finalized but it will be an opportunity for us to look at bugs and decide what's worth fixing or possible to fix by v1.0.

Also worth noting it's about 500MB worth of stuff, and absolutely requires Polymer. You can run in Polymost but it's unsupported and any bugs in that mode will not be fixed.

[blizzart]

If you are looking for beta testers you can count me in.

[Mblackwell]

Mark wanted me to mention that there's a hack included (not enabled by default) that improves performance in Polymer. So people interested in testing that are wondering if they would be on the borderline of being able to run the mod might get relief that way and could still participate. There's currently no way to activate it from the in-game gui or a key press (you set it via the console), and it can introduce some visual glitches since it toggles lights on and off as they move out of view. If you want to test but need to/want to use that setting and you see a light flick on and off here and there that would fall under KNOWN and WONTFIX.

[Striker]

Those weapons... are they HUD Sprites, or are they actual models? If they're not models, I could convert the sources of those models into Polymost/Polymer-compatible MD3s. I can tell they're CS: Source Models, or at least custom ones for it. All I need are links to the models used.

[Mblackwell]

They are sprites. There are no source models for what's in the game, and all of the additional edits including animations and changes to textures were done by hand. It was all finished 6-7 years ago and there's no reason to change it now really. Thanks for the offer though.

[Mblackwell]

ATTENTION! We're getting to beta time!

I would like at least 6 testers (but I'll take what I can get), and I'll send out the first build in about 3 days (the 18th here). Zykov eddy and blizzart have both already volunteered, and if you're available DavoX let me know and I'll add you to the list.

Keep in mind before you volunteer that Decay requires Polymer.

[Rhaisher]

Mblackwell, on 15 November 2015 - 03:43 PM, said:

Keep in mind before you volunteer that Decay requires Polymer.

I did a full playthrough of Duke Nukem Eternity last week and had no issues with Polymer (just a bit of lag in the later levels whenever a big explosion occurred. Nevertheless, it was manageable).
Can I volunteer or only devs can do it? I'm dying to try this out.

[Mblackwell]

As long as you're willing to submit bugs regularly and test new versions all over again then you can do it!