[duke3d.exe]

I had a duke dream when I was a kid, probably more but I remember one where there were 2 doors or perhaps teleports at the end of episode 1, on the battlelord place (where there is an actual teleport hidden, but I didn't knew this back then) and after crossing that I went to some place that looked like a map that could be on episode 2, the weird thing is that there was a new enemy, i saw 2 monsters that looked like a mix of a assault trooper and the hunch of notredame. Somehow I remember looking at a box of a Duke thing in a shop (like the box of Duke x-treme) and there was a screenshot of that new enemy on that map. Im not sure if I dreamed this. It must have been a dream considering these enemies definitely weren't in a commercial release that I know of... and those weren't the gorrillas.

[Aleks]

duke3d.exe, on 10 February 2021 - 07:31 PM, said:

I had a duke dream when I was a kid, probably more but I remember one where there were 2 doors or perhaps teleports at the end of episode 1, on the battlelord place (where there is an actual teleport hidden, but I didn't knew this back then) and after crossing that I went to some place that looked like a map that could be on episode 2, the weird thing is that there was a new enemy, i saw 2 monsters that looked like a mix of a assault trooper and the hunch of notredame. Somehow I remember looking at a box of a Duke thing in a shop (like the box of Duke x-treme) and there was a screenshot of that new enemy on that map. Im not sure if I dreamed this. It must have been a dream considering these enemies definitely weren't in a commercial release that I know of... and those weren't the gorrillas.

This just reminded me of a part of "Duke dream" I had as a kid, it was definitely before 1999-2000, as I specifically remember having that dream while in a summer cottage which my parents sold around that date. I don't really remember much of that dream, besides that I was playing some weird version of Duke (Duke being pretty much the only game I really played back then, so yeah...) where every monster was replaced by something else. I don't remember 90% of that now, but I specifically always remembered that of all things, sentry drones were changed into some weird gargoyle-like monsters. They were super-tall humanoids with wings and 6 hands, their faces didn't have eyes or any features besides large jaws with sharp, blade-like teeth. And they were kinda like all molded from a single piece of plastic or some substance, a bit like Venom from Spider-Man (which is probably where the idea for that dream got into my subconciousness at first, now that I think of it), all in the same ugly, dirty black/navy/gray colour. Again, this is something I remembered quite well, as the next morning I was sculpting all these monsters from plasticine and these were particularly easy

Well, that wasn't really that much Duke related dream, but these things were pretty cool and scary, considering I vividly remember them after so many years!

[OpenMaw]

I just had the pleasure of playing a never-before-released PS2 era N-space produced Duke Nukem game. In my dreams.


So it was molded after TTK/LOTB, but with better graphics.


I started out on a street with an L shape, shooting some "road hog" style pigs. Looking up it appears that a large chunk of LA had collapse into the underground. I was moving passed a building and under two that had smashed into each other creating an impromptu arch, this started me down into a sewer area, with ankle deep water.


Heading straight down a sewer tunnel I arrived at a door required a key. Duke made a quip at this point about looking for the "Downtown ladies."


After climbing around and blasting aerial drones (Think the guys from Quake 2.) I arrived at a neon-lit area with babes wandering around. Scantily clad with guns. You could approach each one and talk to them just like in LOTB. One of them who was standing guard over the area tossed out a keycard and told me to tread carefully.

I decided to explore the Brothel a little more, interacting with the girls. I acquired some pipe bombs and a shotgun. A few of them told me to look for "Brothel Bob." In the next room was the equivalant to a post apoc strip club and bar with some male NPC's hankered down around fires and watching "Brothel Bob" on stage. Brothel Bob being a bikini clad stripper with her hair in a violet colored bob. Approaching and interacting with her she does a special dance and opens a secret path behind her.


Going through the path leads to a small teleporter which teleported me to a large sewer pipe (standing on top of it) as I ran down it I blasted another pig, jumping down inside I secured an assault rifle and some Atomic Health. More drones and pigs began to spawn in and I blasted them. After climbing back out of the pipe and jumping down I realized the pipe ran across above the brothel.


As I jumped down to the ground in front of all the girls, a wall exploded and a small contigent of pigs and drones came flooding out. This time they were backed up by some kind of a porcine themed mecha. The girls immediately started to attack and fight along side me. I used my assault rifle, jumping behind debris and cars to reload, tossing pipe bombs. I saw one of the girls get blasted and obliterated by plasma from the mech. One good pipe bomb and the mech went down.


And then I woke up.

It was set in Los Angeles after the apocalypse. Feeling like a slightly higher res version of LA from TTK and the sunken city from LOTB. Duke was dressed in a long black leather jacket with a tattered pair of jeans and his tank top full of holes. He had black gloves on that were studded and spiked. The game had the fidelity of something like Heavy Metal FAKK 2 or maybe closer to Time Splitters. Definitely better than TTK/LOTB but still recognizably done by the same artists. Duke was more like his old self, less crass and doofy and more gritted teeth and raw.


As an aside I also had a dream that was an entire remake of 2001 a Space Odyssey, of sorts. It was not quite the same story, but it had a similar scope, including a huge mission into space, a global meltdown, finding an ancient undiscovered sentient race in the amazon jungles, an international cast... Okay, i'm getting off course. This is what happens when chronic pain forces your brain to run away.

[Outtagum]

OpenMaw, on 23 February 2021 - 05:09 AM, said:

she does a special dance and opens a secret path behind her

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[necroslut]

I had a dream that Hendricks was leaving all EDuke32 development, and EDuke32 was dropping non-widescreen support.

[High Treason]

OpenMaw, on 23 February 2021 - 05:09 AM, said:

As an aside I also had a dream that was an entire remake of 2001 a Space Odyssey, of sorts. It was not quite the same story, but it had a similar scope, including a huge mission into space, a global meltdown, finding an ancient undiscovered sentient race in the amazon jungles, an international cast... Okay, i'm getting off course. This is what happens when chronic pain forces your brain to run away.

Slightly derailing here, but I'll put it back on the tracks, bare with me.

Have you ever had that phenomena where you fall asleep watching something and it changes? Like you're watching a movie and when you fall asleep, the movie carries on and you end up getting your own personal version of it? I've experienced this before and have talked to other people who have, it can be really fun.
A few years ago, I was at someone's house and fell asleep on their sofa watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This is a film I've seen plenty of times, but it didn't seem that far out of place when the dialog was a little different, nothing too major but this does tend towards another phenomena I'll get onto shortly. Anyway, the movie went off the rails with Raoul and Dr. Gonzo going to a fairground, where Gonzo threatened a ride operator while Raoul walked around in the middle of the operating ride in the background, moving in that distinct, spaced out way he does. Without any real explanation, they were suddenly on bumper cars, but Gonzo got dragged off in the background, kicking and screaming about being an attorney, all without Raoul noticing. The camera changed to this wide angle look from somewhere around the steering wheel, focused on Raoul's face as he laughed and shifted his cigarette holder around in his mouth, but quickly stopped laughing as the music went all wonky and the lights started to streak, his eyes darting around with a look of paranoia behind his aviators. The scene started to blur as a crashing and screaming sound echoed loudly, then the screen went black. Within seconds he was waking up in the middle of the desert, still sat in the bumper car, rocking back and forth like a kid and wrenching the wheel around mumbling "C'mon, c'mon, you fucking bastard." as he tried to make it go, seemingly unaware that it wouldn't work without electricity from the ceiling, a ceiling which was miles away.
Raoul then walked back to Las Vegas, meeting up with Gonzo and finding that they had been kicked out of their hotel. They went to another hotel which had a lot of pink neon lights in its entrance and smashed glass all over the floor. At the front desk, the hotel staff refused to let them in, saying something about him crashing a bumper car through the front window the night before and that they had been kicked out of their room, even though we never saw them in this hotel. Gonzo started placing stacks of money and drugs on the desk, but the receptionist seemed unimpressed by this and ignored him. Meanwhile Raoul, swaying on his feet, began talking to them in a mildly threatening manner, mostly quiet but yelling some words as he wandered around;
"So there's no room at the inn, huh? That old chestnut. Jesus Christ, man, what does a man have to do to get a room in this city? We just want some sleep, man. Big story. BIG story." He stared for a moment, "I see how it is. It's a SET UP! Big story. Need some sleep man."
Then his narration took over as the camera swayed around, that low wide angle view again, changing from him to the hotel man and Gonzo freaking out and trying to stab himself in the background.
'People in Vegas are a different breed, they don't have decency like you or me. Everything costs money. There's no basic amenities, no human decency, they'll squeeze you dry and leave you in the desert wondering what just happened.'
Then went back to talking to the hotel man, wandering aimlessly.
"So you won't give us a room, huh? HUH!? What about the room? WHAT ABOUT THE ROOM FOR CHRIST SAKE! THE ROOM! GET SOME SLEEP. Tired. Tired. Big story."
As he talked, he wandered towards one of the walls full of pink neons and placed his hands on them.
"Seems to me... that the answer is obvious... there's only one thing for it..."
Then he started pulling at the tubes until they cracked, one after another, narrating;
'He was uncompromising, stern as stone, uncaring. I always hated Vegas. The people. There's no reasoning with them. In another town this might have worked, but not here, not with a dusty old suit like that, he'd seen it all.'
Around this point, I woke up and said aloud to the person next to me; "Isn't this the part where he breaks the lights? I wonder how he got the bumper car out into the desert." to which they replied, sounding worried, "Umm... yeah, it's that part. I guess he drove it out there somehow."
- The movie was at that part where they get kicked out of some show or other.
Hey, his name is Duke.


Now that dialog thing. Sometimes I dream I'm watching a film, but in this case when I've not fallen asleep watching it. Everything is normal, the film is 1:1 as it is in real life, but just one line will be wrong - not completely wrong, just different, and it pisses me off immensely, a full blown irrational rage. For example, I had one in the late 90s about that crappy Borrowers movie, where a character says "This is the Spiller Expressway. And this, is the Spiller Express." which I thought of just seconds ahead of him saying it, only for him to say "This is the Spiller Expressway. And the Spiller Express, is what this is."
I yelled angrily, wanting to punch something. This happens from time to time and I don't know why. It's so annoying. It's like my brain just does it to spite me, as it seems to do with a few other things in dreams sometimes.


Now back on track. For some reason, a lot of the Duke Nukem dreams I had in the 90s had weird crossovers with The Simpsons. I don't know why, because nobody in my house ever watched the show back then. It was never on our TV, I didn't even know the characters' names, aside from maybe Homer and, possibly, Bart. For reasons unknown, Maggie (though I didn't know she was called Maggie at the time) would show up a lot in Duke3D dreams. Usually nothing major, but she'd mess up progress. Two that spring to mind are;
There were these two curved stairways with turrets in the ceiling, which caused me a lot of damage. At the bottom was a small room with a control panel. I managed to make it into the room with almost no health, but Maggie was on the control panel, holding a green and orange raygun looking thing. She sucked her pacifier and lifted the raygun, pointing it at me and pulling the trigger. It made the laser sound from the game and the screen turned red. Strangely with this one, some of the walls used green textures that looked like those in Derilict, but I'd never played or seen the Plutonium Pak at that time - I feel like the dream happened around September/October, judging largely by school things going on at the time I had it, which would mean the dream predated that version of the game. The textures weren't quite the same, but they were very close. It isn't impossible that I could have seen promotional images, or else just dreamed similar textures as they're not exactly complex designs.
The other I remember well was quite similar, in that she was on a control panel and pressed a switch that locked me in a brown metal room, where she could see me through a glass window - or she could have, but she didn't look, in fact I don't think she did it on purpose, was like she didn't know Duke was even there. Actually, in both dreams, it was as though she meant no harm but being a baby, had no awareness of the consequences of what she was doing.
All that said, there were a few Duke dreams with Beavis and Butthead in them too, another show that was never watched in our house.
A part of me is still tempted to try making the maps from these old dreams, combining them as one big incoherent mess, as they were generally small and simple. In my mind, I could knock them out quickly, but I don't think it would be that easy, as I have a vastly different style to the original level designers and most of them looked very E1L1/E1L2, though that first Maggie one was quite E1L6. Weirdly I didn't realize until only recently that a map showed up in both Duke and SW dreams from the 90s, a small section of city that was, really, a pretty accurate adaptation from one to the other. Odds are I'd actually find them difficult to make, despite their simplicity, as I doubt I could emulate 3D Realms' style and would probably give up quickly. I prefer to do my own thing.

[Ninety-Six]

Maybe we should have just a regular dream thread in GenDis just so we can have a place to put the non-Duke dreams. It seems like we all have a bit more we'd like to share beyond just Duke. I mean, I'd be down for that.

[Ninety-Six]

I wish I remembered more of this one but alas all I can recall is the ending.


Whatever happened prior, I can tell you it was sort of an alternate universe DNF (I've had a few of those, actually. I should dig one of them out of the archives one of these days). It played a lot closer to Alien Armageddon and Demon Throne, which, fair enough, I've played a lot of both lately. There was also a bit of classic Doom in there too, somewhere, as well as some Doom Eternal in ways that will be obvious to anyone who's beaten the game but I won't elaborate on here for the sake of those who haven't.

Again, I don't remember much past vague feelings of familiarity. The only thing I remember is the final boss. Duke was on top of a roof of a skyscraper, think kind of like the one he starts on at the very beginning of Manhattan Project, only smaller and boxier, like the size of a living room or so. Whatever city this was (I wanna say probably L.A. despite supposedly being DNF), it was mostly on fire. I remember seeing another skyscraper like a block away that was on fire and partially collapsed.

Duke started behind the stairwell house, one of the few features on this roof. This was in third person with an isometric view, so he was near to the bottom-right of the screen, with the stair house immediately north of him. There was also a radio tower on the northwest side, and then some other structure in the southwest. I don't remember what it was, only that it was square and smaller than the stair house. Skylight or something maybe?


Whatever the case, from the background of this burning city emerged the largest alien ever seen in a Duke game. Despite Duke being at the top of this skyscraper, if this thing stood right next to the building Duke would come up to its crotch, maybe its lower torso at the best estimate. Honestly I'd say it might well have been bigger than Serious Sam's Ugh-Zan III, which otherwise remains the biggest boss (relatively to the player) I've ever fought in a game.

It emerged from the top-right of the screen (northeast of the city), and imagine a liztroop body, given a slightly more metallic blue than the "normal" blue they had, make it a few thousand times bigger, and then stretch it vertically just a little bit so that it looks a bit lankier proportionally. But instead of the normal reptilian-ish head, it was shaped more like the head of a Cycloid, but with the rear part of the head rounded off so it looked more like a football. A closer comparison I guess would by the "Cyclord" enemy from DT; the lone eye was certainly more in that style than the classic Emperor.

(Side-note: It's funny to me how often my Duke dreams, if they have a final boss to them, almost always end up having them either resemble or just outright be the Cycloid Emperor. I guess that just goes to show how much his design sticks with me. Always was my favorite looking boss out of the bunch.)

It began to talk at Duke, with a deep, powerful voice about how strong Duke is, how much of a pain in the ass he's been to them over the years, and how this time he has no chance, etc etc. Usual villain speech. The only thing notable was that there was a bit of self-praise about being the ultimate alien weapon; unstoppable throughout the galaxy. I think this thing was a mutant bio-weapon engineered by the aliens to be their final solution. Don't remember if he was the leader of the aliens turned into one or just a random alien shmuck that got turned into one before the actual leader died. Knowing my dreams he was probably both at different points.


The fight began, with the monster still being several miles away; enough to keep his Colosseum-sized head in frame. He rapidily opened and closed his palms, which I guess represented firing missiles since that's what came out. Well, I say "come out" but they just sort of appeared on either side of the screen. So I guess it was more like he commanded his troops to fire them...?

Whatever the case, Duke had a special weapon. It looked kind of like the machine gun assault rifle thing from Halo (I've never actually played Halo but that general shape), except it was red, translucent, and had a contrasting white wavy texture that sort of spun and darted across the surface. If anyone's ever played Metroid Prime 2 and saw one of the objects that were in "dimensional flux", it looked kind of like that, except it was a gun.

The idea was that the gun wasn't actually real; it was just something for Duke's arms to hold while in reality the gun was basically a laser pointer for offscreen EDF guns. That said, the giant slow-moving bullets that were launched out actually came from the barrel of this fake gun. So we have a final boss that flexes his claws to just spawn missiles out of thin air miles away, and a gun that's supposed to do exactly that instead spawns them in front of itself.

i see nothing wrong with this


So the alien missiles were also slow-moving, but still faster than Duke's bullets. They came two at a time, and always on opposite sides of the screen (left and right). The rooftop was split into two "lanes", and the idea was to switch between the two to dodge the incoming missles. The trick was each lane had a missile go through it; you had to time your movements perfectly to avoid taking damage. Alternatively you could shoot the missiles down at the cost of your ammo. Between volleys was the only chance you had to fire at the alien monster with those same oversized bullets that you couldn't get a refill on, so shooting the missiles themselves was only an emergency action. Luckily the monster wasn't moving so it was easy to line up your shots, but only the eye was vulnerable which was a tiny target despite how large he was since it was so far away.

There was a second phase and maybe even a third but again my memory fails me. I think there was a point where the building was collapsed and Duke somehow had to get over to the monster, either on foot or by air or something. I don't remember.

[Aleks]

Ninety-Six, on 25 March 2021 - 07:29 AM, said:

(Side-note: It's funny to me how often my Duke dreams, if they have a final boss to them, almost always end up having them either resemble or just outright be the Cycloid Emperor. I guess that just goes to show how much his design sticks with me. Always was my favorite looking boss out of the bunch.)

That's an interesting remark. For me it was always Overlord that's been the most scary/forged into memory monster, with its creepy sounds and most notably charging at the player. The thing with Cycloid Emperor is, even if in Stadium he does move around, he stays quite static in most user maps as he requires ST3 to move around and otherwise is pretty much a stayput; Overlord always seemed much more "engaging" in this department for me, also always felt as the most difficult boss from back of my childhood days (Cycloid was pretty easy once I mastered the jetpack + devastator strategy on Stadium, which was pretty soon actually).

[Ninety-Six]

Aleks, on 25 March 2021 - 03:25 PM, said:

That's an interesting remark. For me it was always Overlord that's been the most scary/forged into memory monster, with its creepy sounds and most notably charging at the player. The thing with Cycloid Emperor is, even if in Stadium he does move around, he stays quite static in most user maps as he requires ST3 to move around and otherwise is pretty much a stayput; Overlord always seemed much more "engaging" in this department for me, also always felt as the most difficult boss from back of my childhood days (Cycloid was pretty easy once I mastered the jetpack + devastator strategy on Stadium, which was pretty soon actually).

I always found the Overlord to be the easiest boss in the game, personally (AWO aside). And while the Emperor could be cheesed in Stadium, it's not always true elsewhere. The Overlord is always fought the same way, but if you face a Cycloid without a jetpack, the random deviations of its missiles will wreak havoc, even if it's stationary.


All that aside, I'm just a particular fan of his design. The Overlord is definitely a bit creepier in terms of appearance and sounds, that I won't deny. But in my opinion, I just think the Emperor looks all-around cooler. The much more angular nature of his silhouette, the metallic tri-claws, the hydraulic feet, and his face just has a vibe of badass menace to it. One single red eye and a triangular mouth full of razor sharp teeth. I mean I like all the alien designs, including the bosses, but something about the Cycloid Emperor in particular just gets my inner child all excited to see him in action. Even his name is cool!

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 25 March 2021 - 09:11 PM, said:

I always found the Overlord to be the easiest boss in the game, personally (AWO aside). And while the Emperor could be cheesed in Stadium, it's not always true elsewhere. The Overlord is always fought the same way, but if you face a Cycloid without a jetpack, the random deviations of its missiles will wreak havoc, even if it's stationary.


All that aside, I'm just a particular fan of his design. The Overlord is definitely a bit creepier in terms of appearance and sounds, that I won't deny. But in my opinion, I just think the Emperor looks all-around cooler. The much more angular nature of his silhouette, the metallic tri-claws, the hydraulic feet, and his face just has a vibe of badass menace to it. One single red eye and a triangular mouth full of razor sharp teeth. I mean I like all the alien designs, including the bosses, but something about the Cycloid Emperor in particular just gets my inner child all excited to see him in action. Even his name is cool!

The Cycloid has a design that's very strong and definite for sure, so it's more charismatic. In comparison, the Overlord doesn't really resemble anything particularly recognizable - which is what can make it creepy too and gives it its own character. You get those sharp teeth coming at you before you can even tell if their bearer is supposed to be some kind of dinosaur or frog and next thing you know, it's faster than you could think and you're down unless you have good reflexes or are used to the enemy. The hunched back also makes you wonder for a second which part of that big charging blob is humanoid and which part is animal (the answer obviously being none, it's all alien), or can give the impression that it's unnaturally standing up because of its equipement when it really wants to be crawling around in its natural state or something - the whole enemy is a big play on grey areas in the player's mind I feel like and thus deliberately horror-inducing, whereas the other bosses look more explicit in design to me (so cooler, but not nearly as creepy).

I enjoyed reading that dream, it inspired a few ideas.

[Ninety-Six]

Had one a couple nights ago. This one didn't just involve Duke, but Doom, Star Wars, Terminator, Evil Dead, the Genesis Road Rash games, and of all things, Scooby Doo. A little bit of everything.

Now, Duke himself never actually appeared in the dream. DN3D was just more the backdrop for everything else to happen in. Or in other words, almost everything was rendered in the Build engine and DN3D assets.



The dream started with some new scooby reboot show coming out, but unlike most animated reboots this one tried to be good. Lots of throwbacks and fanservice and tributes and etc. while standing on its own two feet and taking things in a new direction that doesn't piss all over the franchise for once.

This is extra funny since I'm not that big of a scooby fan. I liked it well enough as a kid, some of the spinoffs, and adored like two of the animated movies and Mystery Incorporated. But I was never that big of a superfan or anything. Scooby was always one of my "if there's nothing better on" shows. Something to pass the time when I was bored. Granted, it was near the top of that particular hiearchy, but there were still plenty of shows I would have watched over it if given the opportunity.

I'm pretty sure this part of the dream was born from me learning about the incoming existence of the quote-unquote "adult-oriented" show that also got rid of the actual title character because why the hell not. Again, not a super fan or anything, but given how most reboots have gone, especially the *cough* "adult-oriented" ones, i dont exactly expect anything better than maybe a 3-alarm dumpster fire. 2-alarm if I'm being generous.


But I digress. For the show's first episode, I guess Shaggy was going off on his own for whatever reason. I don't remember much, but I think the crew was setting up camp near what looked like a roman aqueduct in some hilly forest. Shaggy went up to some cabin in the woods where he met, of all people, Ash Williams. I would like to take this moment to point out I have unfortunately never managed to catch an evil dead movie in my life. I just know of him thanks to cultural osmosis, especially in our neck of the woods where just about every FPS had some Evil Dead DNA in it somewhere.

I guess I knew this was to be the start of Shaggy's evolution into the meme god he is. I think I remember being slightly disappointed by the show giving into the meme, but I wasn't exactly surprised. Also, somehow, Shaggy was to simultaneously learn from Ash Williams, but to also become the actual Ash Williams once he was done with his "training." Not like as an impersonator or successor, but as the actual Ash Williams. Somehow. Dreams, man.

This is where the Build parts come in. I remember the interior of the cabin being rendered in Roch-style. I remember this one room in particular, being a rather small rectangle, with two doors facing each other on one end of the room. Lining the walls were bookshelves (using the very same bookshelf texture from Duke), some on the floor in a bit of a mess alongside a few beer bottles. In the back was a single lounge chair, made out of the typical brown squares and wood panel sprites as armrests. Between the two doors was a small computer desk, build out of wooden sprites and then typical DN3D PC builds. Though if I remember right, the sector-made PC stood atop the desk sprites that were suspended over the floor. That's highly illegal I believe.

Behind the computer was a large window (had a very large +-shaped pane built, again, with sprites) that I distinctly recall opening up to a view of a city rooftop near a highway tunnel (so either the tunnel and roadway were suspended off the ground, or the building was very short and on a lower plane). You could see the 4-fan vent box, the road, and I think even the Town East Towers sign over the tunnel's mouth. Again, rendered using typical DN3D textures. I even remember the sky had the blank and untextured pale blue ceiling you sometimes see, and the highway tunnel was built out of the same greyish-beige bricks seen on buildings like the one at the end of E3L11.

The stuff between Shaggy and Ash played out really fast; so fast I'm not entirely sure if it even played out at all or if I was just given the knowledge of the result. What I know is that Ash was against taking on any sort of protege, trying to put on a tough guy attitude about working alone (though I think he was faking it), not having the time to do it, and also just plain being a bad teacher. Didn't want to watch over someone and get them killed because he wasn't paying attention.

However, their conversation was interrupted, because the zombie apocalypse started. Ash had to go into action and wasn't able to refuse Shaggy's help. The zombie apocalypse then became the Robot apocalypse for no reason at all, T-1000s and all.

As Shaggy and Ash went on to battle Skynet (what a magical sentence), their roles started to shift. At times Shaggy would become the mentor and I would be his tutlege, and at other times it would Ash and I. During one of the latter instances, I was sent back to the cabin from before to get Ash some of the beer he left behind. I went to the same room as before, now with more books and empty bottles on the floor. Several of the books were now tinted red and jutting out from the shelves at various locations throughout the room. Of course, they weren't single books, but groups of 3 or 4 of them because Build engine. For whatever reason, I had to "unlock" the door leading to the beer, and I had to do this by pressing use on the books. But only some of the books, for you see this was actually a cleverly disguised typical 4-5 button combination puzzle. Every time I pressed on a book to activate the switch, it would slide back into the shelf. I remember thinking to myself, "this is just a button puzzle but man this is actually a really clever application of it. I wonder why I haven't seen this done more often?"

With the beer secured, I got on the motorcycle I now suddenly had to rev up and return to Ash. This is where the Road Rash part comes in, as all the Evil Terminated stuff gets put on hold for a while. For those who never played, they're illegal street racing games for the old Genesis where you raced motorcycles on various backroads throughout California (in the first game, the US in 2, and the World in 3, but this dream only cared about the California part). One of these was Palm Desert, and I think I was choosing to race that particular track. However, unlike in the original game where you just selected it on the menu, here I had to drive to it open-world style. And just like before, this was all still being rendered in the DN3D engine, Abyss textures and all (but with the 2D sprite of your biker on top of it).

One part I remember in vivid detail for whatever reason was this small canyon road that formed a really blocky U-shape around this rather uniquely-shaped house. It was a two-story stack, but it was purposefully misaligned so that the upper story formed an overhang above the ground floor, and obviously the ground floor had a short roof on the opposite side. All corners of the house were supported by metal beams at the corners, and honestly the more I describe this the more I become convinced I have actually seen this building in a user map before. It's way too clear in my head. I wanna say it's something from one of the Oostrum brothers, but don't quote me on that.

Anyway. This building was surrounded by a wooden fence (of the completely obscuring kind, of course), and I think there was an entrance at the upper left of the "U". I think I had to go here first before I could race the track. I remember walking through the desert yard and having to get past two mean dogs. I went inside, but instead of using the door like a sane person I had to drop into the "garage" from a hole in the roof of the exposed lower floor half of the building. The inside was just pure wood texture, with one wooden rectangular box on one corner which I'm sure had that one drunk elf sprite from Nuclear Winter on it. I think she was supposed to be Natasha from the game. In fact the whole room might have been lifted from NW; I'm not entirely certain and would need to check.

Whatever happened next is foggy. I vaguely remember something about getting everyone to start the race, and then the whole group driving off to the start line before we get interrupted halfway there because, oh yeah! The whole robot apocalypse thing is going on.


It's even foggier from there. In fact I think my brain skipped over that whole section to bring us to the climax. Now we're at the final "level." Ash is there, and so am I, and sometimes I just replace him. This is where the Star Wars comes in, and by Star Wars I specifically mean the Duke Forces mod. If you've never played, DF has a lineup of maps (including user maps) that have their textures swapped for Star Wars ones, and of course Star Wars enemies. But in the most ironic twist, there was exactly no Star Wars elements in this part of the dream. It was still Terminators. But the whole part of Duke Forces that applies here is how it converts existing maps into Star Wars themed maps. Except here in the dream it converted it to like an arctic Terminator warehouse, instead of it being a UAC facility because I knew this to originally be a Doom map.

Just so we're all on the same page here: I was playing Duke Forces, a mod that takes Duke maps and makes them Star Wars, except in the dream it took a Doom map and converted it into a Terminator map. We all got that? Good, neither do I.


At this point in the "story," Skynet had already destroyed the world more or less. Humanity had been made extinct except for Ash and myself, and like one or two other people that phased in and out of existence as per the dream's whims. A lot of the world had been frozen over for the machines' sake for whatever reason, and we had come to this old warehouse because before Skynet exterminated humanity some big tech company had developed a really powerful gun. It was like a suped-up version of the classic plasma rifle that looked like the M16 from Powerslave if it ate a Super Mushroom for whatever reason. We also knew that a kaiju-sized version of the T-1000 was also in this facility near the back on a giant freight elevator, and it was going to be our final boss for the evening. Our objective was to get the gun, and then kill the super terminator.

I remember the "level" being really short and barely having any enemies in it. The facility was really small, or at least the explorable area was. It was your typical EDF base map, except without the EDF logos, half of it was just whiteness outside between the snow and sky with the occasional white white rock wall and ceiling, and the other half was ruined partially-snowed in metal. Elevators and power didn't work, so going in deep was a no-go. The super weapon was like just one room away from the final boss. I think I had to jump a gap to get to it, and the gun was sitting among an ammo stockpile for it and the other guns I now had (vanilla Duke 3D I think, despite the whole Duke Forces thing).

I went to face the boss, and it was flanked by 4 normal Terminators, before you'd face the thing itself in a relatively cramped arena considering the size of the thing (think Mecha-Duke from the end of Manhattan Project for a size comparison).

I don't remember the fight at all, if the dream even showed it to begin with; I just remember it being easy. I also remember the identity of the final boss changed throughout the fight. Not like, "canonically," but as far as my knowledge of it went. It started as I described: a super-sized Terminator where we were basically just taking it out so we could score something over Skynet since it had basically won at this point. After that, it became skynet, housing its central AI in the machine and we/I was killing it just to avenge humanity. Then finally, Skynet became something else. The grim nature of the battle evolved it into becoming interpreted as like this Lovecraftian entity, far bigger than that metal shell or even the planet. I was still fighting it mostly out of petty revenge, as by this point Ash (and Shaggy) had been deleted from the dream, and Earth was still a frozen wasteland. The metal shell was just a means for it to manifest on Earth, and destroying it wouldn't really accomplish anything. It was the pettiest victory I could have gone for.

After the battle was over, I replayed it again in "vanilla" (so, Doom), and the super Terminator was now just the Icon of Sin fight from Sgt. Mark IV's "the REAL Icon of Sin" mod. Not much else was different, including the area still looking like a frozen EDF Base despite being UAC.


happy end?

[Ninety-Six]

Had a particularly vivid one just now. I wish I remembered it in more detail, but I remember I was playing some kind of map pack. You started the episode out in a graveyard by a church, with the first level centering around those two areas, before moving to the wilds between the church and the town. I think I remember a barn but otherwise out exploring farmland and countryside stuff, before reaching the edge of town to end the level.

For whatever reason the three houses you pass by stick out in my mind really hard. The first was grey and boxy, but there was a little sidewalk/garden path behind the house. I distinctly remember three pig cops along this path, the first right there at the start of the path, and then two more waiting to ambush you at the point where the garden path ends. The next house over was made of brick and looked a bit more detailed, and its exterior wall had a bend in it, with an open back door where the two Pigs were waiting from. You had a choice at that point; the garden path terminated in a small fence gate (made out of two of the stock dark grey door texture, but squished vertically) behind which was a sidewalk that would lead you into a grey stone brick house that had the level exit in it, or you could explore the brick house the two pigs were hiding in.

The level progression here reminds me a lot of the campaigns from the first Left 4 Dead game, bu no this was true Duke 3D with maybe some borrowed textures here and there (I think the houses were sort of "inspired" by the houses seen in the first level of WGRealms). The third level was the town proper, and while I can't remember much of what happened, I do recall the level design starting to fall apart and become frustrating. Cheaply placed enemies, spawning protector drones all around you in a tight space, I remember secrets becoming mandatory for basic progression and those secrets having nothing in the way of distinguishing them from their surroundings...

Apparently though, this episode used sort of a hub system, because I remember being able to backtrack to previous levels to get more stuff. The enemies came back alive but the items you picked up earlier stay picked up. That might be why that garden path is so vivid in my mind; I had to cross through it a lot because the town stage kinda sucked despite looking really nice. The skies for all of these was kind of a white and later light gray cloudy sky, sort of like the first level of DC.


The fourth level was also a town stage, but more of a (small town) downtown area and there were cracks in the earth from the nearby alien ship. The next level had you underground and sort of weaving in and out of hive and rocky areas, before trying to break into the alien ship. I don't think I ever made it inside; the level design remained cheap because the cracks in the floor became a lot bigger and had the purple slime at the bottom of them all. Basic movement around the level had you taking a lot of damage and there were a lot of protector drones on top of that.

[ck3D]

I had a really funky one just two nights ago where I literally dreamed up the entire designing process of a Duke map from start to finish, in detail. Which only felt like a few hours of work, since the plan for the level wasn't exactly ambitious and the layout mostly consisted in sector manipulation in big chunks and assembling layers of SOS and over/underwater sectors with each other to form vertical progression within a pyramidal shape, where the final piece looked something akin to DNA structure. I remember being stoked on the map, saving it then exiting Mapster32 and then I woke up and there really was no map.

First Duke 3D dream in 10+ years too I think.

[Ninety-Six]

I had a short one. The dream took place on Derelict, mostly on the upper decks. However, the surrounding waters and landscape was actually based on Chris Miur's Cruzship. The Valdeez-2 itself was also a bit smaller, more narrow, and more cramped inside. It was reminiscent of the icebreaker ship seen in FM4X's 4th episode.

The level had you boarding the ship from the beach seen in Cruzship, still with the bright landscape contrasting the black waters and dark clouds. Apparently I thought Cruzship was the lameduke version of Derelict, and "remembered" that there was a secret box of rockets if you followed the coast and squished yourself between an invisible wall and the very narrow cliff (the area in question does not exist in Cruzship).


Once boarding the ship, it was very dark and narrow. All the oil barrels had been replaced with barrels made out of walls, making maneuverability even harder. There were no enemies to fight, and in fact Duke had to head down into the engine core (the only time the level went to the lower decks) to start up the power generator. Once doing so and returning back to the upper decks to access the bridge, the enemies populated the ship more like in the actual level.

I woke up about the time I returned to the lower decks.

[hismasterplan]

Had a dream last night that a new Duke game was in development having to do with Gearbox's expansion into Canada. Bethesda got involved.

[Ninety-Six]

hismasterplan, on 02 September 2021 - 03:37 AM, said:

Had a dream last night that a new Duke game was in development having to do with Gearbox's expansion into Canada. Bethesda got involved.

Duke Makes Out in B.C. eh?

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 02 September 2021 - 04:22 AM, said:

Duke Makes Out in B.C. eh?

With a secret level where you launch a Canadian satellite into orbit and as it takes off, it slowly reveals its name: the APOLLO-G33Z.

[screamingahhhhh]

I'm one of those weird type of persons who actually remember my dreams pretty clearly, although i don't remember all of them i do remember the ones that have things i like in them, like a character or series.
as of now i've had like four dreams with duke in em.

the first one i was actually duke, i didn't talk much cause i don't think my subconscious knew how to emulate duke's voice so whenever i spoke i didn't hear it but the other people in my dream did.
for some reason i was investagating this office building? and i had to be stealthly for some damn reason even though i when into the building so the workers knew i was fucking there. anywho i get to this part in the office where i have to drive a small car (like the dumbass car section at the start of DNF) expect i was no in the car but also in it at the same time??? i knew the car existed but it also felt like i was just crawling on all fours making car noises (funny to think about duke's grownass doing that). eventually i made it to the core of this longass office space, i eventually found this file room, where ever the hell i was it was doing shady shit ( i don't actually know what that shit was i just know it was bad) i find the boss lady, who i think was opera??? or at least looked like her, i confronted her but before we actually fought i woke up.

the second one where i was duke wasn't as eventful, i was duke at a mall. Most of the dream was wondering around and looking at shops. I think there was a bubblegum machine there and i was gonna get some but i only had my credit card on hand and i got really sad about that. there was this open store area in the mall and it was kinda like walmart, i got some coffee there and i'm pretty sure i stole it. the checkout was taking too long, i just walked out and nobody caught me. nothing else of intrest really happened, though a funny thing to mention was that i could actually talk and hear myself in this dream, but it was my actual voice, and i was just doing a shitty impression of duke's voice. i think someone in my dream actually said something about me not sounding like duke and i got kinda mad about that.



this other dream i had i had found duke's biography, i couldn't read it though, or if i did i don't remember.
i also think duke may have talked to me before in one of my dreams but i don't remember what he said.

my dreams are always fucked up and weird so it's very likely that i'll have another dream with Mr. Nukem in it.

[necroslut]

I had this dream that Gearbox had finally published pre-release pages on Steam for that rumoured Duke anthology. It was divided into in half a dozen or so volumes, with each volume containing 3 or so games/builds. It was in chronological order, starting with Duke 1, and ending with Duke's Bulletstorm Tour. There were several different DNF builds, listed as separate games/entries. Since it was just pre-release pages there were no screenshots or such, and little in the way of descriptions, and each release used a variant of the same style of vaguely Quake-like minimalist cover art (border and logo in a muted color on black-ish background).

[MrFlibble]

Today I had a fairly complex dream about the DNF leak of all things, but many details escaped me soon after I woke up. The gist of it is that there was a level with a secret room that contained the player character model of Duke and some unspecified goodies -- possibly weapons and/or usable items. The level looked like a lab of sorts, with dark gray metallic walls and not much else, and the room could be peeked into through an unbreakable window. It was thought impossible to get into that room, but someone managed to "hack" into it -- although I cannot tell if this meant hacking a terminal in-game, or editing the game binary or data files -- and took control of the Duke character inside to play around with the items contained in the room.

I probably forgot what happened next but there was another part of the dream still related to DNF which involved what seemed like a highly incomplete/test map with a bridge, which was a driving section. I'm not sure about the vehicle but it seems to have been a monster truck like in the final game (note that I never played DNF nor the leaked builds). The map looked pretty much like a Build engine map and the bridge, which was of suspension type, had the cables as literally two-dimensional sprites. For some reason at first it seemed impossible to traverse the map at all, but then I found that you could drive right on those sprite cables, like you can walk on sprite-thin decorations in Duke3D and Ion Fury.

I know this is all very odd and I think I forgot some details that would make both episodes at least a bit more grounded (like you know, while you're dreaming everything makes sense), but I thought I'd share this here anyway.