[Fox]

Tea Monster, on 17 September 2016 - 12:06 AM, said:

The reason I pre-ordered is that they got Levelord, Blum and Jackson back to make a new episode of Duke. I can't believe that there is any debate about this being a wonderful thing. If they even hinted at this a year or so ago, you guys would have dismissed it as a wild pipe-dream. 'Never gonna happen, not never'. Well it is and I'm excited. I'll quite happily put my hand up and declare myself to be a Levelord fanboy.

The new episode is the real selling point. But it doesn't justify the $20 price, especially when they are throwing away the add-ons. Especially with a weird concept like that. Duke traveling around the globe, whose idea was that? What about more space maps?

[Lunick]

To be clear, Randy thinks the episode itself is $20 and everything else is a bonus

[TheZombieKiller]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, not even nostalgia or the fact that some of the original devs are working on it could coax me into paying $20 for JUST the new episode. Especially considering there really doesn't seem to be much new aside from the maps, even the textures are mostly reused.

If this was a PC version of HTTKC + the WT episode? $20 done deal. I'd even pay as much as $30-$40 for that.

[HiPolyBash]

Lunick, on 17 September 2016 - 03:03 AM, said:

To be clear, Randy thinks the episode itself is $20 and everything else is a bonus

Randy's a fuckhead.

[Micky C]

Ah it's a celebration and not a cash-grab. Glad he cleared that up. And wow, he's chucking in the first 4 episodes for free? So generous.

So he's basically saying we're paying $20 for DLC of a 20 year old game. At least it won't have micro transactions...?

[Player Lin]

After read that Randy's tweet, I'm just speechless.

[LkMax]

It's just a celebration of that game that he removed from every possible store where it was available, but the original episodes are "bonuses" of course.

[MusicallyInspired]

To be fair, guys, the developers need to be paid.

[Jimmy]

HiPolyBash, on 05 September 2016 - 06:31 PM, said:

They did it for Total Meltdown on the PlayStation.

The Total Meltdown sprites are not higher resolution. They're of a comparable size. However, they were exported into their own palettes, and stayed truer to the models in colour. Thats all. They weren't even polished like the original game's sprites and they look much worse.

[Zurix]

it cool site
Happy Year Duke Nukem in advance xD

[DukeNukem64]

I have bought Duke3D 3 times now. I will skip this for now.. if it goes on sale for 3-4$ and people recommend it i might buy it. It's hard to live as a student these days..

[Kyanos]

Did Randy just confirm the Atomic Edition is freeware?

[Danukem]

MetHy, on 16 September 2016 - 04:36 AM, said:

Yeah usermaps can be great, but they're an entire different category. I don't know why so few people see that.

You are sort of right and sort of not. Here's how I would put it: While user maps can be just as good (or even better in some cases) than official maps, user maps are not made to any consistent standards. In general, while it's pretty easy to find user maps that look good, it's much more difficult to find ones that adhere to professional standards when it comes to flow, gameplay, and other aspects of the game.

Examples of flaws that are common in user maps but rare in official maps:

• Cramped areas or areas full of blocking decorative sprites made to a "realistic" scale that is not suited to Duke 3D physics
  
• Making the player hunt for well-hidden buttons or keycards in order to progress
  
• Making a switch or button open a distant door that the player can't see and no screen showing where it is, so the player has hunt randomly to progress
  
• Making progress depend on destroying a crack and then giving the player just one pipebomb to do it, so if he accidentally destroys it on the ground or uses it in the wrong place, then he is stuck
  
• Not implementing difficulty settings with tagged enemies, or doing a poor job of it
  
• Making ammo too scarce for the number of enemies
  
• Using one-sided buttons/switches (so they are invisible) with a different texture underneath that is not normally a switch, just to be different (with the result that the player may not know it is a switch and get stuck)
  
• Making elaborate sprite constructions as a subtitute for new art, which can look good in some cases but always fails in an HRP and often glitches with different renderers

[Mike Norvak]

Drek, on 17 September 2016 - 02:55 PM, said:

Did Randy just confirm the Atomic Edition is freeware?

It seems. At least we can take that comment as a legal argument... Lol

[Micky C]

MusicallyInspired, on 17 September 2016 - 08:27 AM, said:

To be fair, guys, the developers need to be paid.

Sure, but you have to wonder how much the people who are actually making the content are getting paid, and how much goes straight to Gearbox's coffers.

While I can appreciate that the new episode itself is a big deal, they also did things like develop the new renderer. Why should they be paid more for recreating something that already exists? It probably would have been far easier and cheaper to do something like bring Icecoldduke on board and pay him full time to finish polymerNG, and use eduke32. You can't really go "sure I gave you the same product that's already out there, but for no reason I made it myself the hard way, therefore you must pay me extra". Of course the reason why they're doing it themselves is so they can keep a larger proportion of the royalties, which is pretty much the dictionary definition of cash grab.

The other thing that makes it an (annoying) cash grab is the fact that it's the only way to get Duke 3D. If you only wanted to get the base Duke 3D game, you'd only have to spring for the $6 version on GOG. Now, your only legal way is to spring for more than 3x that amount whether you want the new content or not.

[HiPolyBash]

Jimmy Gnosis, on 17 September 2016 - 08:58 AM, said:

The Total Meltdown sprites are not higher resolution. They're of a comparable size. However, they were exported into their own palettes, and stayed truer to the models in colour. Thats all. They weren't even polished like the original game's sprites and they look much worse.

Total Meltdown was advertised as having rerendered sprites and they clearly look different so yes, they did indeed do it before though not in higher resolution so it mustn't be that hard to do it again at a higher resolution.

[gemeaux333]

On steam, World TOur and Megaton Edition are 2 separate games !

[Micky C]

But you can no longer buy Megaton edition, which is the problem.

HiPolyBash, on 17 September 2016 - 06:43 PM, said:

Total Meltdown was advertised as having rerendered sprites and they clearly look different so yes, they did indeed do it before though not in higher resolution so it mustn't be that hard to do it again at a higher resolution.

It's been stated several times that after the sprites were rendered from the models, they had lots of touch-ups done by hand to make them look good. Even if they had easy access to the original models to render, I doubt they have the time or technical skills needed to do a good job of touching up any higher res sprites.

[DNSkill]

t800, on 17 September 2016 - 01:04 AM, said:

What sprites were improved in Doom BFG?

Nothing was improved in Doom BFG Edition in terms of the original games, besides the menu picture being a different image, and the medikits and berserk pack had been censored to show pill icons instead of red crosses.

Also in the BFG Edition, the secret Wolfenstein 3d levels of Doom II were censored to not have Nazi symbols or SS soldiers.

Regarding Randy's tweet.. Fuck him. This is a complete bullshit port of DN3D. $20 isn't much to me, if it included everything in HTTK Edition. $20 for a single episode? Fuck off. Why not make this episode compatible with eDuke32 or even DOS and release it for $10 at the most, and you can provide your own copy of Duke?

[HiPolyBash]

Micky C, on 17 September 2016 - 07:31 PM, said:

It's been stated several times that after the sprites were rendered from the models, they had lots of touch-ups done by hand to make them look good. Even if they had easy access to the original models to render, I doubt they have the time or technical skills needed to do a good job of touching up any higher res sprites.

I'm just saying they rendered them out again in the past so if they really wanted to I'm sure they could again. Though if they were really going to make an effort they would have done a real remake in UE4.

[Micky C]

HiPolyBash, on 17 September 2016 - 09:07 PM, said:

I'm just saying they rendered them out again in the past so if they really wanted to I'm sure they could again. Though if they were really going to make an effort they would have done a real remake in UE4.

Keep in mind when they re-rendered the sprites for total meltdown, the original game had only been released about a year earlier. We're now more than 20 years down the track, and the key issue is (assuming the models still exist after all the transfers between computers and companies over the years) actually knowing where they are. Plus there's the issue of whether they're in a format that is compatible with software on modern computers, which was also not an issue at the time of Total Meltdown.

If the models do exist, it'd be much more interesting to see if they could rig them to be in-game models, rather than simply creating higher-res sprites.

[Jimmy]

What Micky said. The Total Meltdown sprites are a novelty. They look bad. They are not higher resolution. And like Micky said, they were made sometime between 1.3Ds release and it's own release. 3D Realms was still actively developing the game at that time. The developer of Total Meltdown did a sloppy slapped together job on the sprites. If you read my original post my point was that finding, rigging, rendering, and touching up high res sprites from the source models would be an incredible job on its own. This is undeniable and I'm not sure what you're trying to argue at this point. That it's possible? Well no shit, Sherlock.

[NightFright]

The big prize question is this:

Provided it's technically possible, would Gearbox allow EDuke32 to support World Tour so you can run it with "our" port instead of theirs? And: Would the EDuke32 implement such support if permission was given?

[Lunick]

How are they gonna stop someone running their data somewhere else, encrypt it? I don't think so since they are doing Steam Workshop support as they'd want people making maps and using the extra assets from the new episode.

[spessu_sb]

Micky C, on 17 September 2016 - 06:39 PM, said:

The other thing that makes it an (annoying) cash grab is the fact that it's the only way to get Duke 3D. If you only wanted to get the base Duke 3D game, you'd only have to spring for the $6 version on GOG. Now, your only legal way is to spring for more than 3x that amount whether you want the new content or not.

Or hunt down an old retail copy of the game

Tristan, on 17 September 2016 - 08:51 PM, said:

Nothing was improved in Doom BFG Edition in terms of the original games, besides the menu picture being a different image, and the medikits and berserk pack had been censored to show pill icons instead of red crosses.

For the berserk I could actually see that fit atleast in someways. You swallow a pill which can turn you into a lunatic.

Tristan, on 17 September 2016 - 08:51 PM, said:

Also in the BFG Edition, the secret Wolfenstein 3d levels of Doom II were censored to not have Nazi symbols or SS soldiers.

Wow! For this I'd like to have a personal explanation by Bethesda, what's the deal here? In Wolfenstein The New Order they are perfectly fine showing plenty of swastikas and quite real brutality but when an old classic is talked about, suddenly it's a NONO. Like what the crap rasism towards old games or what..

Tristan, on 17 September 2016 - 08:51 PM, said:

Regarding Randy's tweet.. Fuck him. This is a complete bullshit port of DN3D. $20 isn't much to me, if it included everything in HTTK Edition. $20 for a single episode? Fuck off. Why not make this episode compatible with eDuke32 or even DOS and release it for $10 at the most, and you can provide your own copy of Duke?

With this I will agree fully. I'm not excited to spend 20€ for 8 new maps with inferrior voice acting from JSJ.

[Sledgehammer]

You're expecting too much from people who couldn't even reuse some ready old assets. If Gearbox wanted to treat this re-release with love, they would redo enemy sprites and add new ones for new episode too. I mean look at screenshots alone, do you think these designers are able to remake all the sprites? Gearbox easily could make their version the best Duke Nukem 3D, but I think they just don't care, not even JSJ himself judging by his voice acting. Actually, I'm surprised they even hired Levelord, Allen Blum and Lee Jackson.

What's funny, they could easily justify even bigger price if they redid everything right and people would gladly buy their re-release. I mean people on duke4 alone would spend 30 bucks just for HTTKC + WT episode, imagine what would happen if Gearbox also remade sprites, added new ones, added more weapons, etc. I'd pre-order immediately no matter what price.

By the way, I wonder why they didn't hire TX for this re-release considering they're working with him.

[NightFright]

After all the shit TX went through (even though I probably know almost nothing about it, only what I could read here and in some articles), they could have indeed involved him more. But you heard/read the man, he is a lot better now than before, and it's thanks to Gearbox.

Anyway, if the 20 bucks are only for the new levels, I would have actually preferred they had offered it as an addon for Atomic. I don't need a new menu/message font, an ugly weapons menu, normal maps for low-res textures and lighting that EDuke32 can do at least on the same quality level. And it's indeed absurd buying (almost) the same game again. However, considering what's missing in WT, I need to feel lucky I was one of those who were able to buy Megaton before it vanished.

[termit]

I'm not sure how Gearbox is experienced as a publisher; if I'm not mistaken, they only published two titles so far. But for me, it's obvious that selling game for $20 doesn't guarantee that you will make more money, compared to $10 price tag. We'll see, maybe I'm completely wrong.

[PsychoGoatee]

It'll go down in price in a year or two I'm sure. Most people who would pick it up casually for 10 bucks aren't hardcore fans anyway, they don't need it when it's new. So overall in the long run, I don't think they're losing out by charging 20 to start with, though I think $15 would be an appealing price too. It'll be 5 dollars in steam sale events at some point like most other games.

And steam is all about discounts. Just looking at the front page, there's some game called The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut that started at 44.49 and is now 15.29 (on a deal), came out in November 2015.

[DNSkill]

spessu_sb, on 18 September 2016 - 12:19 AM, said:

Wow! For this I'd like to have a personal explanation by Bethesda, what's the deal here? In Wolfenstein The New Order they are perfectly fine showing plenty of swastikas and quite real brutality but when an old classic is talked about, suddenly it's a NONO. Like what the crap rasism towards old games or what

The reason was so they could sell it in Germany. Doom just recently, as in within the last 5-6 years or so, became legal to sell in Germany.