[Fox]

Tea Monster, on 07 October 2016 - 11:52 PM, said:

I still can't understand how they spent the money on cramming a new renderer into the DN3D code, and then afterwards, couldn't get a creature artist or anyone who can do 8 bit art to work on the art side. Is that what actually happened? The bill for the renderer came in and they were like "Oh Shit, no money left! Give the art contract to your 13 year old daughter with a pirated copy of Photoshop!" Nothing about this makes any sense.

World Tour is a very Gearbox solution to a problem - lots of head scratching and confusion about what went on to arrive at the finished product - like ACM and DNF. Did they give it to the janitor to project manage?

I have very similar concerns about World Tour, but I think you are being too rough here. This is a 20 years old game. The people at Gearbox doesn't get it, that's the problem.

For one, the concept is very strange. Duke Nukem traveling around the world, seriously? But more importantly, it's a concept that's hard to work with. The way the Build engine works makes it silly to make realistic structures. Also, was I the only one who see a similarity with another derivative game based on a similar idea? Not a good sign.



The art doesn't match the original game. The new weapon and boss are sloppy edits. But I don't think it was done by someone's 13 years old daughter. It was created by someone under a contract and without experience for this specific job. Duke Nukem has a pseudo-realistic style that's hard to adapt, even for a professional experienced with texture editing. I remember TX mentioning in the deleted thread that he suggested the artists should put more work on this stuff but they refused. So it seems we are seeing their first attempt with the textures. But this is not just a problem with the artists, but apparently a lack of supervision or quality control.

It's no surprise that the work with the renderer is better than the art. It's something that is not very different from a modern game. Plus Gearbox has an idea how much work it will take and how much it will cost to make a renderer. Not so much with art. They underestimated what it means to make textures for a 20 years old game. As usual, they probably thought that low resolution means low quality. However the original artists even created 3D models to make some of the textures in Duke 3D. Obviously that's not the case here. Gearbox underrated how much work and aptitude it would take to make good textures. But apparently the higher-ups in Gearbox find the result acceptable.

However there are also issues with the renderer. I have never been a big fan of mixing spotlights with sector-based lighting. As much as I would love to have AO in Duke 3D, anyone with basic knowledge about it would know that adding thick borders in corners and halos around objects is precisely what you should not do with AO. It's also blatantly obvious that it's full of glitches and artifacts. So the new renderer is a worthy technical accomplishment, but not properly adjusted (and debugged). The overall result is less of a feature and mostly visual noise.

[PikaCommando]

Fox, on 08 October 2016 - 01:12 AM, said:

I have very similar concerns about World Tour, but I think you are being too rough here. This is a 20 years old game. The people at Gearbox doesn't get it, that's the problem.

For one, the concept is very strange. Duke Nukem traveling around the world, seriously? But more importantly, it's a concept that's hard to work with. The way the Build engine works makes it silly to make realistic structures.

But isn't DN3D noted for its "realistic" structures, such as most levels in Shrapnel City?

[Sledgehammer]

Valhalla, on 07 October 2016 - 08:30 PM, said:

I can think of one remotely possible reason, multiplayer. Since duke nukem 3d isn't coded worth a crap for anything but local area multipayer. (By local I mean a distance of a few US states, or a small country.) Any real latency and it's unplayable.

By that logic Japanese companies shouldn't bother with Western release of fighting games either. I find your statement real funny because most of niche fighting games tend to have shit netcode which is delay-based and you won't have a big luck to play with people outside of your country. Thing is, fighting games have bigger and more healthy playerbase in Japan which is why fighting games with good rollback netcode are still active. And don't tell me that DN3D is worse, you just didn't play Guilty Gear XX AC+R.

Anyway, WT is available on Steam in Japan and it cost like 2000 yen which is roughly 20 bucks. No PS4 version in Asia might be related to lack of translation or physical or likely it's just Gearbox didn't bother with it yet. However, I'm pretty sure they'll bring it to Asia in digital form sooner or later, why wouldn't they if they put it on Steam already. Though if I were them, I'd rather release it on Vita or on PS3. PS4 is really popular only in NA.

[Tea Monster]

If you are the head of a game company and you can find programmers and get the original level designers onboard, you can look through ArtStation and find a pixel artist and put them under contract. Even come here and get talent. It's not an impossible job to make this work.

[Micky C]

PikaCommando, on 08 October 2016 - 01:47 AM, said:

But isn't DN3D noted for its "realistic" structures, such as most levels in Shrapnel City?

DN3D is noted for its realistic settings. I.e cities as opposed to martian bases and hellish landscapes.

It's true that if you ever actually try to replicate a real life building to any real accuracy in build, you're going to have a lot of trouble. However it's not Fox's best point since they're not trying mimic real life buildings in each of these areas, they're simply trying to give the impression of being in the respective locations, just like the original game. We'll have to wait and see how well they pulled it off.

[Valhalla]

I admit, I'm a little excited for tuesday. Not too often do I get to play duke nukem 3d with tons of other players, or even talk about it outside of forums like these. I'm just crossing my fingers that it isn't a totally borked release.

[Lunick]

This warning has been added to the Storepage/Forums now lol

[Micky C]

Anyone know why they went with a desaturated version of the Duke 3D cover for World Tour?

[Daedolon]

Maybe they thought some weird sepia is the new blue/orange.

[PikaCommando]

I think it's for that "anniversary" feel.

[Tea Monster]

Because it would require effort to do anything else.

[Lunick]

I wouldn't be surprised to hear about other lazy things/cut corners this port has.

[Daedolon]

It's not like it could be about distinguishing their release from other releases, considering how other releases don't exist anymore.

[MetHy]

Well I've bought the game already and I'm not the only one here.

And damn, the name of the game "Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour", I know it's been pointed out in some videos already but I just realized it's a terrible name. The "20th Anniversary" mention is just too much, besides they're almost a year late on that.

World Tour would have sufficed. Couldn't even get the name right.

If it turns out really wrong, maybe we could have a community project that intends to fix and improve what can be fixed? I could participate with wall/sector shading in stuff like this, perhaps even make a "no polymer lights" versions that doesn't look like it's not shaded at all (although for some other, more detailed, areas, it gets more complicated to achieve classic style shading when the map wasn't built with it in mind to begin with)... that is if other people are interested in fixing stuff like artifacts on textures/sprites and fix the glitchy behaviour of the Firefly. Also things like mod the original health kits back in, have widescreen stuff that doesn't look like shit, make sure the sounds don't sound like ass, perhaps even try to make the new JSJ quotes sound more like they're from 1996 (and even offer the possibility to switch back to the original sounds when it's not new ones), etc, etc etc

The goal wouldn't exactly be to fix their shit and do it for free for them just to "show them", but rather to bring it to a standard we think the game deserves and make it more enjoyable to play for ourselves. Hence why there would be no reason for it to be compatible with their port and it would be for EDuke32, which for instance, has true widescreen support unlike theirs.

I don't know, maybe I'm talking too soon and most of that will be fixed in the final release, but there is just too much wrong in what we've seen so far and I for one would like to enjoy the new levels.

Maybe this sounds a bit egomaniac, I mean talking about "fixing shading in Levelord and A. Blum maps" sounds like I'm trying to say I'm a better mapper than them (which I'm definitely not), I'm just saying from what we've seen so far shading in many areas isn't on par with the original game's, and the rest of what I've mentionned (and probably more) should be no debate.

My point is, I'm sure we're going to see all kinds of mods pop in to "fix this", "fix that", and perhaps we could centralize it all instead of having it be spread out.

[Fox]

Lunick, on 08 October 2016 - 03:19 AM, said:

This warning has been added to the Storepage/Forums now lol

BOOH!

[Daedolon]

I'm sure a lot of people will go in and start fixing stuff before they've even beaten the game, a thread dedicated to it could go a long way.

We'll have to see how badly they fucked everything up.

[December Man]

Lunick, on 08 October 2016 - 03:19 AM, said:

This warning has been added to the Storepage/Forums now lol

It's probably a warning concerning the Steam forums for World Tour not World Tour itself. They are a literal dumpster fire ever since they were conceived.

[Lunick]

December Man, on 08 October 2016 - 05:10 AM, said:

It's probably a warning concerning the Steam forums for World Tour not World Tour itself. They are a literal dumpster fire ever since they were conceived.

The game page has one too

[Daedolon]

Lol @ "memes".

[HiPolyBash]

Tea Monster, on 07 October 2016 - 11:52 PM, said:

Did they give it to the janitor to project manage?

[PsychoGoatee]

Valhalla, on 08 October 2016 - 02:57 AM, said:

I admit, I'm a little excited for tuesday. Not too often do I get to play duke nukem 3d with tons of other players, or even talk about it outside of forums like these. I'm just crossing my fingers that it isn't a totally borked release.

Hell yeah, I'm very very pumped. New Duke content, and by these original badasses, I can't wait.

Daedolon, on 08 October 2016 - 05:23 AM, said:

Lol @ "memes".

The user chosen tags system on steam is often pretty hilarious/dumb, the game might be called a gardening simulator in a couple months.

[duke a number1]

I am scared that gearbox wont release any other Duke games after this one.


Or maybe at the end there will be a message saying, "Duke 5 Coming to kick ass" That would be cool

[Tea Monster]

duke a number1, on 08 October 2016 - 02:32 PM, said:

I am scared that gearbox wont release any other Duke games after this one.


Or maybe at the end there will be a message saying, "Duke 5 Coming to kick ass" That would be cool

Maybe, after this one, we won't want another one till the IP changes hands again.

[Sledgehammer]

There are two things I really want: Time to Kill and Zero Hour ports. Can't say that Gearbox is able to handle these though.

[HiPolyBash]

Sledgehammer, on 09 October 2016 - 12:02 AM, said:

There are two things I really want: Time to Kill and Zero Hour ports. Can't say that Gearbox is able to handle these though.

This is two things I do want! It looked like Interceptor was going to do Time To Kill before the lawsuit so hopefully Gearbox looks at it and Zero Hour

[Sledgehammer]

And hopefully they won't screw them either.

[Valhalla]

HiPolyBash, on 09 October 2016 - 12:16 AM, said:

This is two things I do want! It looked like Interceptor was going to do Time To Kill before the lawsuit so hopefully Gearbox looks at it and Zero Hour

Eh, both work flawlessly on a emulator even on a very old pc. But it wouldn't be a bad thing to get an official port.

[MetHy]

Daedolon, on 08 October 2016 - 03:52 AM, said:

Maybe they thought some weird sepia is the new blue/orange.

Check out the new icon logo on Steam.

[HiPolyBash]

Valhalla, on 09 October 2016 - 01:39 AM, said:

Eh, both work flawlessly on a emulator even on a very old pc. But it wouldn't be a bad thing to get an official port.

re-release with options for improved graphics, tweaked gameplay, real official ports on pc would be great. Emulators play like crap without a controller and are really limited as far as what you can do. Real pc release would open it up to modding too.

[necroslut]

HiPolyBash, on 09 October 2016 - 06:00 AM, said:

re-release with options for improved graphics, tweaked gameplay, real official ports on pc would be great. Emulators play like crap without a controller and are really limited as far as what you can do. Real pc release would open it up to modding too.

IMO Zero Hour on emulator with mouse+keyboard plays better than with a controller. Can't say the same for Time To Kill though, but that game never played that well to begin with.