[MetHy]

I was replaying the game again, doing it a different way (getting the jetpack in the secret level and see what I can do with it in later levels, I was disappointed) and suddenly I got all sorts of weird glitches.

Some sprites like blood, and the number "8" in the hud, gliched out
http://images.akamai...B6C69E1B0C320D/
http://images.akamai...C21E41E0B6A630/

and then turned to this
http://images.akamai...93F154C1DE6D49/

This is so fucked up. Also notice how the level stats don't fit when using a 4/3 resolution.

BTW - getting back to the final boss: he DOES shoot lava pools around the area; it's just that he never seems to do it properly and it's very rare; and it's like he always aim them far away from the player. I also seemed to notice that the last (couple?) fire sprites of his fire launcher don't seem do any damage?

The more I play this...

[AdrenalinDragon]

I just completed Alien World Order on Come Get Some and it was pretty brutal. Not sure if I'm a fan of them overdoing the minibosses though. I liked Golden Carnage more this time around because of using the Jetpack to skip a large portion of the level. The rewind feature is indeed buggy and it sometimes says I died even though I didn't lol.

High Times and Hollywood Inferno are definitely the worst levels. No complaints with Lee Jackson's music, though. I might increase my rating for Alien World Order to an 8/10, which would put it up to Duke It Out In D.C. territory.

[Doom64hunter]

I feel a lot more could have been done with the concept location-wise. For a World Tour he doesn't really explore a whole lot of the world.

[Lunick]

Doom64hunter, on 14 October 2016 - 03:28 AM, said:

I feel a lot more could have been done with the concept location-wise. For a World Tour he doesn't really explore a whole lot of the world.

It's not just that, there's no reasonable explanation about how he gets to each of these locations.

[Hendricks266]

Like the refrigerator at the start of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, after Duke hits the hookah he imagines the rest of the episode in a vivid drug trip.

[MetHy]

Honeslty what disappointed me the most were France and Russia. They are just random city maps, no monuments or anything. Hell, if you swapped both maps textures (put the Russian textures in the France map and vice versa), it would totally work.

Earlier ITT I was dreaming of a the Champ Elysee and visiting the Arc De Triomphe. I think both would be really awesome to see in Duke, you start the level in the Champ, and then work your way up to inside the Arc de Triomphe; I know it's EXACTLY how it is at the start of Onimusha 3, but it's so damn good I wouldn't mind seeing it redone in Duke too.



Museum inside the Arc:





Bossfight on the rooftop :





Hell, I might as well just DO that map myself one of these days.

[NightFright]

Hendricks266, on 14 October 2016 - 02:10 AM, said:

Don't forget that the GRP contains a "grabbag.voc.ogg" in place of grabbag.mid, and DUKE.RTS is entirely missing.

Added to the report. Thanks for the update!

[Doom64hunter]

Lunick, on 14 October 2016 - 03:34 AM, said:

It's not just that, there's no reasonable explanation about how he gets to each of these locations.

And also no real incentive for him to go to any of these places.

They could've easily done some small story thing like

Quote

One year after the initial invasion, the Alien Bastards are back with a bigger, stronger attack force than ever before, and instead of just attacking the US, they are now coming in worldwide.
And of course Duke's gotta stop them because Lo Wang is on Sabbatical

which would also explain why there's multiple Overlords and Emperors this time around. Just, a small cutscene at the beginning that shows what's going on, like with Episode 4.

Instead we only get "I'm getting too old for this shit" which might be more of a testament to Jon's performance than any real explanation as to why Duke's in Amsterdam. (or anywhere else for that matter)

[MetHy]

The dev commentary explains the story (which yeah, shows that we need them to tell us for us to even know about it), it started as Aliens taking over major monuments and symbols in the world to destroy them.
Which obviously, is a story that doesn't even hold in maps like Paris or France.

[PikaCommando]

I'm just a bit annoyed that they chose Amsterdam instead of (Neo) Tokyo or Vatican City or Venice or NAM or even Greenland, where Duke finds an ice-locked ship and a bespectacled man frozen nearby, to which he says "Time, Dr. Freeman? Is it really that time again?".


Also, does Alien World Order break the Duke Nukem canon? Because now there's multiple Cycloid Emperors (I assume the one in DNF is the same one in DN3D, hence the black eye).

[AdrenalinDragon]

Anyone else get massive lag in the lava pool area on Mirage Barrage? It's weird because when I revisited it in EDuke32 Polymer it was less laggy than World Tour's "True 3D" mode, so I don't know why it's laggier in World Tour than EDuke32.

[Marphy Black]

MetHy, on 14 October 2016 - 12:15 AM, said:

I'm more concerned about why they fucked up the texture beneath. If they changed the mastercard and visa texture to a new one in the art, there is a new reason to edit anything near it in the map.

The dark splotch under the credit card symbols is from the new normalmaps added to the textures. A seemingly unintentional consequence of their presence is that the normalmaps don't account for the varied and often unorthodox ways the tiles were used in the original maps, so they may create strong visual artifacts where there weren't any before.

MetHy, on 14 October 2016 - 12:15 AM, said:

It's been reported ITT they also changed some ceiling textures in the same map so something must have gone wrong in the process.

Some of the original maps have received additional cosmetic modifications to accommodate the new lighting. Just to illustrate this point, here's a clear look at the Rabid Transit change:

[MetHy]

Marphy Black, on 14 October 2016 - 05:56 AM, said:

The dark splotch under the credit card symbols is from the new normalmaps added to the textures. A seemingly unintentional consequence of their presence is that the normalmaps don't account for the varied and often unorthodox ways the tiles were used in the original maps, so they may create strong visual artifacts where there weren't any before.

Right, the texture was misaligned to begin with, they didn't change it, it's just that the normal maps make these kind of issues stick out.

It's kind of a shame that they went their way to add new lights to the old maps, even change some textures and add some nukebuttons (face of death etc), but didn't spend a few more seconds to fix the most obvious texture misalignement. Oh well.

[NightFright]

Why the heck did they mess around with stuff like moving lights to a different place? Just so the new lights can be cast in different places? While I can mildly understand the removal of the red cross from medkits or the credit card logos (even though it remains stupid), this is changing the visual appearance of the levels. In my opinion, this is going too far.

[Daedolon]

Depends who did the changes, imo. AND if they were pressured into it or they legit wanted to do them.

[MetHy]

NightFright, on 14 October 2016 - 06:44 AM, said:

Why the heck did they mess around with stuff like moving lights to a different place? Just so the new lights can be cast in different places? While I can mildly understand the removal of the red cross from medkits or the credit card logos (even though it remains stupid), this is changing the visual appearance of the levels. In my opinion, this is going too far.

Well, if you look at the original screenshot, the placement of the light texture and the shading don't fit at all. In the new version they do. In this case it's not changing the light so they can cast it a different place, but cast it in the same place and change the texture so it fit.

Now - why would they bother to make sure the lights fit in this case, but not in the other cases, I wonder. I already mentionned but in Red Ruckus and Bloody Hell for instance, there are dynamic lights set around lightbulb sprite #979, the sprite can be destroyed but the light remains. Then there are natural cave areas full of dynamic light but no visual cue of what's emitting them.

According to TerminX earlier ITT it's Levelord and Allen Blum which added the dynamic lights to the old maps, so it's safe to say it's also them who took care of any change.
I'd love to see a comparison of their changes by the way, for instance Hollywood Holocaust has 8 more sectors but when playing it I couldn't spot any difference myself.

[Tea Monster]

Did they run out of money or something? I'm trying to make sense of the thinking behind this expansion. Lots of effort on getting level designers, Jackson, and the new renderer. They spent time on getting all the new level art done.

Now we know they went back and tinkered with the old maps to adjust stuff for the lighting.

Then it comes time to getting the monster and the boss and absolutely zero effort expended. None, nada, nyet, zip.

What were they doing during development? I mean, really?

[Marphy Black]

As Hendricks mentioned earlier, here's a complete reference listing of all of the modified World Tour art tiles (right) the alongside the originals (left) for comparison:

Spoiler

It was truly a red cross massacre. And it seems "Discover" was renamed to "Disckver".

Also, I like how the ending of the sentence in the help screen about the free stuff was changed from a full stop to an ellipsis. I guess someone on the World Tour development team was forlorn they didn't receive any freebies.

[NightFright]

It would have been a lot wiser to leave duke3d.grp completely unaltered and use external graphics as overrides. They did it in other cases (maps, sounds, music, tiles009.art and tiles020-22.art,...), anyway. Why not do it consequently?

[Shaq Fu]

I can't believe there are people complaining about two additional lights on a ceiling as "going too far". No wonder why Lee Jackson sounded afraid to read people's thoughts on his music here.

[Jblade]

Lunick, on 13 October 2016 - 09:31 PM, said:

Except Bloody Hell

bit late but Blood Hell does have dev commentary; it's located in a secret area on top of the main big building. You can get to it inside by heading to one of the corner library areas and shooting a small switch on top of the wall.

[PikaCommando]

Is a Secrets Guide for the new episode out already?


How many secrets did you guys find on your first run?

[MetHy]

Nice find James! It doesn't appear in the "devcommentary" folder with all the sound files so it's pretty well hidden.

I found a fun untagged secret message myself

Spoiler

"You're not supposed to be here!" in Tour De Nukem

I wonder if there are more of them.

PikaCommando, on 14 October 2016 - 09:48 AM, said:

Is a Secrets Guide for the new episode out already?


How many secrets did you guys find on your first run?

Here :

http://steamcommunit...s/?id=779347398

I found 2/3rd of the secrets myself, most of them on the first run. Levelord maps are the hardest to find (Bloody Hell for instance), but most secrets are pretty lame honestly. Like the dozen of exploding cracks "secrets"...

Spoiler

The secret "rest areas", places with alcohol/food sprites etc, are fun, but they lack a real gameplay related reward. The one in Tour De Nukem pissed me off because it's very easy to kill yourself because of the fall when exiting it.

[AdrenalinDragon]

Jblade, on 14 October 2016 - 09:36 AM, said:

bit late but Blood Hell does have dev commentary; it's located in a secret area on top of the main big building. You can get to it inside by heading to one of the corner library areas and shooting a small switch on top of the wall.

Was there a Steam update or something? Bloody Hell has commentary icons in the outside area now.

[Fox]

Marphy Black, on 14 October 2016 - 08:24 AM, said:

As Hendricks mentioned earlier, here's a complete reference listing of all of the modified World Tour art tiles (right) the alongside the originals (left) for comparison:

Spoiler

It was truly a red cross massacre. And it seems "Discover" was renamed to "Disckver".

Also, I like how the ending of the sentence in the help screen about the free stuff was changed from a full stop to an ellipsis. I guess someone on the World Tour development team was forlorn they didn't receive any freebies.

[Hendricks266]

There is one difference between the TILES009.ART in the folder and the one in the GRP: the bottom Chaingun sprite has some of the empty space at the top filled in with a few rows of pixels from the top pieces, to avoid the texture filtering seam.

I didn't notice that they removed the erroneous fullbright pink pixels from the skycar. Interesting.

[MetHy]

AdrenalinDragon, on 14 October 2016 - 10:09 AM, said:

Was there a Steam update or something? Bloody Hell has commentary icons in the outside area now.

Okay ; I understand now, it's all a misunderstading. The E5L3 (Bloody Hell) dev commentary tracks are stored in the "E5L02" folder and named "Commentary_E5L02[...]"

[Merlijn]

MetHy, on 13 October 2016 - 02:19 PM, said:

I think the Incinerator is cool... except for all the little things which make it not cool. Setting lava pools as traps is the most effective way to use the weapon, but they seem kind of glitched: for instance sometimes enemies flying ABOVE them, like Sentry Drones, will get damaged for no apparent reasons. Also, on mini-bosses like Overlord, the Overlord makes sound and spawns blood like it's taking damage, except I swear to god it's like he's not taking any or it's VERY VERY little.
Then, there is the fact that every burnt corpse is the same sprite. The burning kind of suck, just spawning small fire all around the body with a red palette... If you compare this to how Blood handles its fire weapons, like how most enemies have their own dedicated burning animations or burnt corpses (even rats!), the Incinerator is just a quick hack job in comparison, and Blood was Build from 1997, there is no excuse.

The "episode5boss" (which seem to be its name according to the con file) would be a lot better if he had a 2nd attack for when the player is out of reach; just having him throw the same kind of fireballs the Incinerator does, spawning pools of lava all around the area, would have made it a lot better while sticking with the theme. The player would have to pay attention to where he walks, since those pool deal insane damage.

Late reaction: I do agree with most of what you say here. The Incinerator could have been a lot better and the effects pale in comparison to Blood.
But purely from a tactical point of view, the weapon does come in handy quite a few times. I especially used it against pig cops and enforcers, because they stop shooting once they start burning.

The boss should definitely have a long range attack. He can't even hurt you if he's not close to you, it's ridicilous.
A shame, since the arena itself could be entertaining. You can actually blow up the hollywood sign bit by bit, which would have been epic during an intense fight.

Quote

Earlier ITT I was dreaming of a the Champ Elysee and visiting the Arc De Triomphe. I think both would be really awesome to see in Duke, you start the level in the Champ, and then work your way up to inside the Arc de Triomphe

That would have been cool to see. But hey, you can always play Roch 7!

[AdrenalinDragon]

After using the Automap cheat, I noticed Prima Arena used to be bigger. Were they left in as an Easter Egg?

[MetHy]

Merlijn, on 14 October 2016 - 12:00 PM, said:

That would have been cool to see. But hey, you can always play Roch 7!

Roch7 is great but its Arc is just a small decoration compared to the real thing (which is really huge) and having an entire map based off it.

AdrenalinDragon, on 14 October 2016 - 12:45 PM, said:

After using the Automap cheat, I noticed Prima Arena used to be bigger. Were they left in as an Easter Egg?

It's mentionned in the dev commentary. At the end of the main corridor indoor on the upper floor, near the switch that opens the doors to the outside. There is a silly dead end made into a secret place where you have to blow up a crack to find armor; the dev commentary mentions this used to connect to the lower floor but he got rid of it because he thought it was too confusing for players in SP.

Would be interesting to reconnect it, I might give it a try. I hadn't checked it in the editor and it's super silly because he left 2 pigcops and a slimer there, meaning you can't get 100% kills in the map.