[Mr. Tibbs]

World Tour has sold incredibly poorly on Steam (only 2,300 copies), but I guess that's mostly due to users already owning Megaton and the high price point.

I wonder how the console releases are fairing?

[AdrenalinDragon]

Mr. Tibbs, on 14 October 2016 - 01:01 PM, said:

World Tour has sold incredibly poorly on Steam (only 2,300 copies), but I guess that's mostly due to users already owning Megaton and the high price point.

I wonder how the console releases are fairing?

Unfortunately, people are seeing it as being too expensive for a 20 year old game. They've most likely already owned Megaton and can't really justify spending another $20 just for 8 new maps. Knocking the price down by half might convince more people.

[PsychoGoatee]

Speaking of prices, I was like "huh?" when I saw a Serious Sam pack on steam for $99.99 today. Granted it's every Sam game including a couple sidecrollers.

It does seem to be a niche thing re-selling Duke 3D just a few years after Megaton, but I'm very glad they did it. And judging from comment sections it seems there are PS4 owners etc who missed out on the 360/PS3 version who are happy to be revisiting Duke. And since things like Resident Evil 4 get ported again and again to every system, it's only right that this happens with Duke 3D too. RE4 is also $19.99 on steam at the moment, and while 2005 is newer than 96, it's still pretty vintage at this point, and doesn't have a new episode.

Hopefully they patch some of the quirks (workshop stuff etc), add more options, and this could be a slow and steady seller for them.

Speaking of the world theme and how they did with it, I thought they did well with it myself. I actually didn't even know London had a giant ferris wheel! To be fair, it was built in 1999, that Ferris Wheel is more recent than Duke 3D.

[Evilman]

PsychoGoatee, on 14 October 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

And since things like Resident Evil 4 get ported again and again to every system, it's only right that this happens with Duke 3D too.

In a perfect world, both options would not be right, especially on PC where you can play any game you ever bought, 20 years before or 20 days ago. Consoles are a much different problem (and even there, I don't understand why people need to buy once again a game they already paid when it was released if the result is untouched ((I know it's not exactly the case here) ).

It's not because something sells well every time it gets re-released than others developers should do the same with their old glorys, I honestly see this as a really big problem that exploded when consoles became widely connected (PS3 / Wii / X360). While it is damn cool to be able to buy a game never released in your area before or much cheaper than what it worth today on ebay, there's clearly no valid reason for people to buy two-times the very same product, most people will tell that it's easier to have every game on one system, which is true, but on PC, this argument is absolutely irrelevant. I honestly don't understand people buying "remastered" games on Steam like Darksiders II or Skyrim, goddamnit, especially for this one, what's the point ? Elder Scrolls game always have been widely mods-oriented, modders will always improve everything for these games so what's the point buying a visual upgrade ?

While Duke Nukem (both Megaton or 20th anniversary) runs much better than the original Dos versions on modern systems, paying such a price for a re-release is beyond me. Because clearly, people who will buy this are most certainly people who already played the original longtime ago, this is not meant to gain a lot of new players to experience the game.

I know it will not change anything to point this out, but it's just the way you said it that doesn't feel right to me, even if I know you were not saying that RE4 re-releases are all justified.

[PsychoGoatee]

I think we're both just pointing out some aspects of the game business, it's interesting, I'm not sure what I could've said that wouldn't feel right to you, who knows. In the case of this 20 dollar Duke re-release, it includes a new episode which is one of the best things I've played in years, so that puts it in a more than just re-release category for me.

I do think these games could have a more appealing price to sell better, but I'm sure we'll see sales and price drops later on.

[Evilman]

Yes, I agree this is in a different category than a simple "re-release", even if I still don't think the price is accurate, it's still more interesting than many old titles re-released on steam that are straight install files from the original DVDs. What would have been the best option is a free update for people having Megaton in their steam library (but considering the sale rights were held by a different company it's obviously not possible), or at the very least, some kind of discount for people having Forever or other Gearbox games, but they did absolutely nothing. Bioshock remasters were delivered for free for example, or Titan Quest Anniversary recently, i'm not saying the work they did on the new content doesn't worth a penny as some good work has been done from different artists, but overall I feel the Duke community, which is the main target of this re-release, gets somewhat fucked by Gearbox on too many points...

[CatNapDreams]

Hendricks266, on 13 October 2016 - 01:11 PM, said:

I am still working on my package.

Hendricks266, on 13 October 2016 - 08:18 PM, said:

Don't worry, I'm having plenty of fun working on my package.

Hendricks266, on 14 October 2016 - 01:30 AM, said:

My package is up.

Ok... so I don't know much about moding or whatever all this is about, so basically all I read was "blah, blah, package, blah, blah blah, package..."
Without context, this is SO FUNNY to me.

Anyway... we are traitors and did pre-order the physical copy from GameStop for the PS4. I watched some videos of it... I am not an expert on Duke Nukem like most here, so from the perspective of a casual Duke Nukem 3D Player, I am pretty sure I will enjoy it enough.

CatNapDreams

[Mblackwell]

I'm converting the new Duke lines to sound similar to the original game's recordings. It'll take me awhile since doing it as a batch process would cause issues but I'll release a pack when I'm done. I'll release the audio files and a con that injects the converted lines in place of the OGG ones in EDuke32.

Don't get too excited yet since I don't have a timeline! Just a heads up.

[Micky C]

Mblackwell, on 14 October 2016 - 04:23 PM, said:

Don't get too excited yet since I don't have a timeline! Just a heads up.

Too late.

[Kathy]

Most of the changes made in tiles reek of GBX lawyers. Looks cowardly and stupid.

[NUKEMDAVE]

[Jimmy]

Showing complete and utter disdain for your audience is the best way to keep them.

[Steve 64]

Funny I can't even comment on it wish I could say on it that I do enjoy playing Duke Nukem 3D but tired of buying the seem game every year , I wish I could buy the spin off games that have been on the shelf since I don't know how long.

[Sem]

Is it just me or did they cut part of the burned sprite underground?

Look on the left the normal burned sprite on a flat surface and on the right, the burned body with a slight part shown off the ledge.

[necroslut]

Demon Duke, on 14 October 2016 - 05:48 PM, said:

Funny I can't even comment on it wish I could say on it that I do enjoy playing Duke Nukem 3D but tired of buying the seem game every year , I wish I could buy the spin off games that have been on the shelf since I don't know how long.

While I'd like to see the spin-off titles re-released too... the new episode, despite its issues, is really a far better thing than a re-release of old console spin-off games that weren't that great to begin with.

[necroslut]

Sem, on 14 October 2016 - 08:13 PM, said:

Is it just me or did they cut part of the burned sprite underground?

Look on the left the normal burned sprite on a flat surface and on the right, the burned body with a slight part shown off the ledge.

Spoiler

Nice find. There's a lot of oddities with the game/con code... The flamethrower, the end boss, lack of new effects, etc. The guy(s) who did the con coding were obviously the weak link of the team.

[Mblackwell]

The liztroop at least is aligned to be partly underground in the tiles. It's probably just a side effect of it. Unless they were silly enough to use cstat 128 on those!

[icecoldduke]

I just bought this, and frankly I'm disappointed . It's sickens me a bit that Gearbox thought this was ok to ship. The audio is just fucking awful. The team only re-did the Duke talk, but not the rest of the sounds? Is it just me or does all of the sound fx, except for Duke talk, sound like a muffled mess? The new lighting does not add any visual benefits what so ever, and in my opinion, looks awful. I'm at a loss for words...

To be clear I don't blame Richard(who I can bet worked his fucking ass off to get this mess to even function), but seriously I'm disappointed . I put in for a refund, sorry Richard .

[Sem]

Mblackwell, on 14 October 2016 - 08:32 PM, said:

The liztroop at least is aligned to be partly underground in the tiles. It's probably just a side effect of it. Unless they were silly enough to use cstat 128 on those!

Hmmm, do you mean when you kill a lizard troop and you get that sprite? I made another test to confirm that, now I killed an octabrain and an enforcer on the same situation with the edges of the picture above.



It's still partially cut!

[Mblackwell]

The sounds are off because they are using poor quality OGG files instead of the originals. 40kbps instead of 96 which I would consider the bare minimum or 160+ which I would consider necessary to preserve the sound integrity. But since voc files are just PCM files and they aren't particularly high quality to begin with they not only don't save themselves anything in terms of space but they degrade the sound quality into something pretty poor (to put it mildly).

[Mblackwell]

Sem, on 14 October 2016 - 08:40 PM, said:

Hmmm, do you mean when you kill a lizard troop and you get that sprite? I made another test to confirm that, now I killed an octabrain and an enforcer on the same situation with the edges of the picture above.



It's still partially cut!

They probably re-aligned it to be sunken into the ground when they realized a rounded bottom made it look like it was floating.

[Sem]

Mblackwell, on 14 October 2016 - 08:45 PM, said:

They probably re-aligned it to be sunken into the ground when they realized a rounded bottom made it look like it was floating.

Hmmm, touche. They do seem to have a round bottom there. To be honest I am a bit curious why they didn't make a soft bottom instead of a rounded one anyway.

If someone has found that sprite, I bet that on the very hidden bottom of that sprite there is a little "fuk u" written there.

[TerminX]

I didn't write any of the code and I don't make any money from sales from this.

[icecoldduke]

Mblackwell, on 14 October 2016 - 08:44 PM, said:

The sounds are off because they are using poor quality OGG files instead of the originals. 40kbps instead of 96 which I would consider the bare minimum or 160+ which I would consider necessary to preserve the sound integrity. But since voc files are just PCM files and they aren't particularly high quality to begin with they not only don't save themselves anything in terms of space but they degrade the sound quality into something pretty poor (to put it mildly).

The technical reason is completely irrelevant. Gearbox let this game out of the door with shitty audio, shitty graphics, shitty gameplay. No FOV slider either(really?) Fucking so annoyed...some one give me $33,000(4 months salary) and I'll finish up PolymerNG. The game industry is good at spending money; might as well spend it on making a product people will actually enjoy when it ships.

TerminX, on 14 October 2016 - 08:51 PM, said:

I didn't write any of the code and I don't make any money from sales from this.

Even so I do feel bad for bashing something you worked on. .

[PsychoGoatee]

Mblackwell, on 14 October 2016 - 08:44 PM, said:

The sounds are off because they are using poor quality OGG files instead of the originals. 40kbps instead of 96 which I would consider the bare minimum or 160+ which I would consider necessary to preserve the sound integrity. But since voc files are just PCM files and they aren't particularly high quality to begin with they not only don't save themselves anything in terms of space but they degrade the sound quality into something pretty poor (to put it mildly).

I use a pistol.voc sound in World Tour (a Duke 64 one, from one of Sixy Four's map releases), renamed it to pistol.ogg and World Tour reads it fine. Not to excuse Gearbox here, but a package to fix all the sounds could be applied to World Tour pretty easily it seems, since the audio files are all loose in a folder. So at least it's fixable/moddable by fans, if somebody puts that together. (I tried, grpX doesn't work for me on Win10).


Just beat L.A. Meltdown again, good times. Been a few years, I had to look at Joe's walkthrough for one of the Abyss puzzles, I didn't notice the uppermost hand symbol in the shrinker puzzle room. In case anybody was wondering, the secret exit to Faces of Death is

Spoiler

In the room before the fight with Battlelord, press on the walls

Faces of Death was also pretty fun to play single player, hadn't done that before. Good thing I had plenty of rockets.

[Jimmy]

It's because the way the art was made doesn't look right in a 2.5D game. So instead of making a new asset, they just dropped it into the ground. Again, it's clear that the people who worked on this underestimated the immense work these classic FPSes required.

[Forge]

TerminX, on 14 October 2016 - 08:51 PM, said:

I didn't write any of the code and I don't make any money from sales from this.

I'd be quick to disassociate my name from this game too considering the way people are picking it apart.

[PsychoGoatee]

It's 72% positive on Steam, doing okay mostly reviews wise (Destructoid gave it an 8.5 anyway), the reception overall doesn't seem too poor. Personally I'd love to be associated with it, how do I get my name in those credits? If it had a kickstarter I could've been in the credits.

That said, sure, there are things to fix. But for me it plays great, looks great, I can do whatever to the sound files, new episode is a triumph (admittedly other than the final boss), other than Doom and Overwatch this is the best thing this year for me. And in some ways it's my favorite thing in gaming overall of the year. Those seven awesome maps may be just a few hours of gameplay, but hey a few hours won Lord of the Rings some Oscars one time.

I internet translated a couple of the French jokes on posters in Tour De Nukem, they say "Large Wig Beer!" and "Lacking brassiere"!

[----]

PsychoGoatee, on 14 October 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

I actually didn't even know London had a giant ferris wheel! To be fair, it was built in 1999, that Ferris Wheel is more recent than Duke 3D.

"I didn't know London doesn't have any street lights at all" was my first thought entering that map ...

EDIT:
And instead of a teleporter in the green policebox they should have done this portal-thing* in a blue police box. You know, it's bigger on the inside.


*) don't know the correct build engine-term for that

[icecoldduke]

PsychoGoatee, on 14 October 2016 - 09:00 PM, said:

I use a pistol.voc sound in World Tour (a Duke 64 one, from one of Sixy Four's map releases), renamed it to pistol.ogg and World Tour reads it fine. Not to excuse Gearbox here, but a package to fix all the sounds could be applied to World Tour pretty easily it seems, since the audio files are all loose in a folder. So at least it's fixable/moddable by fans, if somebody puts that together. (I tried, grpX doesn't work for me on Win10).

My point is, you as the consumer should not be required to fix fucks up, that should have been fixed by the developers. Releasing a game with even decent quality sound is the sole responsibility of the fucking developer....period.