[neoacix]

I just thought about it today.... what new Duke game would I like to have.

For full satisfaction my expectations would be something like this:
Take the Atomontage engine, give the Player the ability to pick up almost everything he could carry as a weapon,
put him in the right dukish environment, put in some good physics, puzzles, story and voila: There is the new Duke!

This would be a revelation in games with the right attitude and something I would spend more money on then I ever spend the last decade on games.
But I guess, I'm just dreaming again....

[PsychoGoatee]

neoacix, on 07 September 2016 - 01:03 PM, said:

I just thought about it today.... what new Duke game would I like to have.

For full satisfaction my expectations would be something like this:
Take the Atomontage engine, give the Player the ability to pick up almost everything he could carry as a weapon,
put him in the right dukish environment, put in some good physics, puzzles, story and voila: There is the new Duke!

This would be a revelation in games with the right attitude and something I would spend more money on then I ever spend the last decade on games.
But I guess, I'm just dreaming again....

In DNF you can pick up some random objects and use them as a weapon, throwing trophies, weights etc. One game I loved for that kind of thing was Hitman Absolution, in that one in particular he can literally kill people with anything he picks up. A plunger, a paperweight, all sorts of ridiculous stuff, pretty awesome.

[HulkNukem]

Half-Life 2/Source engine also can do mirrors and some nice reflections, however they never seem to implement them into their games. Its obvious why Half-Life wouldn't as they don't want to ever actually show Gordon to keep the illusion YOU are Gordon, but with how nice the water in HL2 looked at the time it was jarring to not also see yourself in them.
I've made a few custom maps that used mirrors and they always looked so cool, it was more for messing around in Garry's Mod though.

[necroslut]

Kathy, on 07 September 2016 - 12:05 PM, said:

Duke 3d spoiled mirrors for me forever. Too many times was I let down my more recent games.

Duke 3D spoiled first person shooters for me.

[neoacix]

PsychoGoatee, on 07 September 2016 - 01:09 PM, said:

In DNF you can pick up some random objects and use them as a weapon, throwing trophies, weights etc. One game I loved for that kind of thing was Hitman Absolution, in that one in particular he can literally kill people with anything he picks up. A plunger, a paperweight, all sorts of ridiculous stuff, pretty awesome.

Yeah, but the point is... in DNF they are all dedicated objects and they do prescripted damage to the enemy.
Atomontage has a total different approach. The engine is atom/voxel based and can deliver a quite realistic physic reaction to every action you make.
Since almost everything (the engine can also handle polygons) is build out of atoms with own physic properties, the possibilities are virtually endless.
It's just basicly reassembles reality.
The creator of the engine is even planning to implement things like electricity, fluid simulation and so on.

Conclusion: VR maybe seen as the next gaming revolution. But I think the real revolution will be a game based on atoms.
And I would like this game to be DUKE!

[----]

Kathy, on 07 September 2016 - 12:05 PM, said:

Duke 3d spoiled mirrors for me forever.

And toilets ...

[MusicallyInspired]

Mr. Tibbs, on 07 September 2016 - 12:49 PM, said:

Deus Ex (2000) had some pretty nice mirrors!

I meant since Prey, really I guess. Deus Ex was 6 years before that. I was trying to think of the latest games that did. I was going to say Doom 3 but then remembered that Prey was newer. I totally phrased it incorrectly, though. I didn't mean to imply that Prey was the only game that did it that I knew of. I forgot about DNF too. It's clear it's not a common choice in game development, though. The new Doom doesn't even have reflections, which is somewhat surprising.

[Loke]

MusicallyInspired, on 07 September 2016 - 04:00 PM, said:

I meant since Prey, really I guess. Deus Ex was 6 years before that. I was trying to think of the latest games that did. I was going to say Doom 3 but then remembered that Prey was newer. I totally phrased it incorrectly, though. I didn't mean to imply that Prey was the only game that did it that I knew of. I forgot about DNF too. It's clear it's not a common choice in game development, though. The new Doom doesn't even have reflections, which is somewhat surprising.

Uncharted 4 has a working mirror.

[Trebor_UK]

Shaq Fu, on 07 September 2016 - 08:29 AM, said:

Based Randy Pitchford protecting his team's hard work from thieving opportunists.



Jokes aside, this is actually legitimately incredible.

It is, I'm glad it's going well for tx. However would it be rude to ask, what is tx's disability?

[Fox]

https://forums.duke4...637#entry142637

[Kathy]

HulkNukem, on 07 September 2016 - 01:15 PM, said:

Its obvious why Half-Life wouldn't as they don't want to ever actually show Gordon to keep the illusion YOU are Gordon

Indeed.

[MusicallyInspired]

In-game. Box doesn't count.

[cybdmn]

Shaq Fu, on 07 September 2016 - 08:29 AM, said:

Based Randy Pitchford protecting his team's hard work from thieving opportunists.

I was totally neutral about that. I just wrote about the possibilities i can think of.

[PikaCommando]

Kathy, on 07 September 2016 - 08:13 PM, said:

Indeed.

Who wouldn't want to be that handsome and intelligent bastard?

[MetHy]

I just realized that world's tour rating warning says "USE OF DRUG", I'm pretty sure this is new for DN3D (unless steroids count...) and my assumption about weed in Amsterdam should be correct. I wonder if Duke is going to "use" it and have some effect, like in MRCK's map Happy Hangover...

[Player Lin]

Well, I can't think what I would say something very, very wrong to them if Gearbox guys didn't treat TX good... Still, aside from those hate-complaints shit, good to heard they're nice to you, TX.

HulkNukem, on 07 September 2016 - 01:15 PM, said:

Half-Life 2/Source engine also can do mirrors and some nice reflections, however they never seem to implement them into their games. Its obvious why Half-Life wouldn't as they don't want to ever actually show Gordon to keep the illusion YOU are Gordon, but with how nice the water in HL2 looked at the time it was jarring to not also see yourself in them.

At least in HL1, the third person view can see Gordon himself, but not at all of HL2 series, there is NO 3rd models for him except shitloads of non-official ones.

TheZombieKiller, on 07 September 2016 - 05:05 AM, said:

I'm fairly certain it was mentioned that the Atomic GRP is freely available from Archive.org

I check it today, no...I didn't found any Atomic one, only 1.3d ones. I don't know if I mis-look or something...

Also, it may won't last forever, since it still possible get DMCA-ed if the copyright holder(s) wants.

[Richard Shead]

Daedolon, on 07 September 2016 - 12:52 PM, said:

Tomb Raider.

PsychoGoatee, on 07 September 2016 - 12:57 PM, said:

Duke Nukem Forever, No One Lives Forever, Doom 3, a bunch others too, but more rare than we'd like.

And Postal 2!

[Kathy]

MusicallyInspired, on 07 September 2016 - 08:50 PM, said:

In-game. Box doesn't count.

Gordon Freeman still has a face. He always did. Mirror or no mirror won't change this perception really.

[HulkNukem]

Kathy, on 08 September 2016 - 07:03 AM, said:

Gordon Freeman still has a face. He always did. Mirror or no mirror won't change this perception really.

That doesn't change the fact Valve didn't make a model or show Gordon in game because they want YOU to be Gordon.
They've also explicitly said this is also why he doesn't talk, unlike with Chell who they said just straight up refuses to talk.

[Kathy]

Then why is he on the box? Even on Steam.

[PikaCommando]

Kathy, on 08 September 2016 - 07:56 AM, said:

Then why is he on the box? Even on Steam.

Brand recognition.

[----]

Kathy, on 08 September 2016 - 07:56 AM, said:

Then why is he on the box? Even on Steam.

Valve didn't want that. Sierra wanted them to do so. Later that character had been established.

[Marphy Black]

fuegerstef, on 08 September 2016 - 08:13 AM, said:

Valve didn't want that. Sierra wanted them to do so. Later that character had been established.

It was actually the opposite. Sierra's marketing created the original Half-Life cover art without Gordon, but Valve was very adamant on putting him on it in order to present a recognizable character to the buyer.

[HulkNukem]

Kathy, on 08 September 2016 - 07:56 AM, said:

Then why is he on the box? Even on Steam.

Ask Valve that, they are the ones that said all that in interviews and such

[Zummone]

Marphy Black, on 05 September 2016 - 01:33 PM, said:

Duke's original lines definitely existed in very high quality format, and they were used in the development of Total Meltdown:

Jimmy Gnosis, on 05 September 2016 - 05:06 PM, said:

I guess it all comes down to your definition of "very high quality." Sounds pretty low quality to me still. I have long thought that the muffled bassy tones in the original files have had more to do with cheap recording equipment probably meant for AM/FM radio production.

Just sharing some useless piece of trivia to clear doubts.

Probably anyone that has fiddled with Duke3D's assets knows the digital audio part is made of uncompressed 8-bit PCM files with a sample rate of 8KHz, which I think was the industry minimum at the time for VOCs. It's also the smallest bitrate setting Windows' sound recorder will allow you to resample, try doing that to any recording and it'll basically be just as muffled as Duke3D's files. Also I think Duke's voice clips from the 2013 DNF mod were treated this way to make him sound as close to his 3D performance? I don't think there's anything wrong with any cheap recording equipment worthy of name that would make sound his lines this bad, not to mention the sound effects which are taken from various libraries also didn't sound like that when chosen for the role, if most games like DOOM are of any indication.

Now, I haven't heard of any PS1 games which legit used 8-bit audio, and certainly not using the sound processor, which only supports 16-bit AFAIK, same with the DAC. Having fiddled with the prebaked levels using utilities such as PSound I could discover the fact that the actual sounds from Duke3D (they HAVE to be the same takes, and PS1 was the first actual console port so it makes perfect sense) are sampled at 11KHz 16-bit. Which are more than double the size of the PC release when uncompressed, and inherently "higher fidelity". Unfortunately, sound quality is debatable, since PS1 internally decompresses sounds from their lossy compressed assets, using a custom format that gets decoded using ADPCM algorithms. Each 16-bit sample gets turned into a 4bit pseudo value which will then be shifted into another pseudo 16-bit value at the time of decompression.

Now, those lines Marphy Black posted are from FMVs, so there's enough evidence to believe it uses XA, which is quite literally ADPCM streamed from the sector buffer that won't ever come near RAM or Sound RAM, and because of that, it has to be correctly timed to the drive's spinning velocity, that's why all XA audio data must be sampled in either 18900Hz or 37800Hz, and since there weren't really any space constraints, we can assume they used the highest rate, 37800Hz 16-bit. Which, even though compressed, make the audible Duke lines definitely stomp the original PC release as far as fidelity/quality goes. Presumably, industry standards in 1995 for audio recording was CD quality, as in 44100Hz 16-bit, so those PS1 FMVs would be dangerously close to the source material. If the newborn 3DR is not in possession of such assets, then whoever took GT Interactive's archives and didn't trash any hdd (presumably some Atari employee) will probably have them, along with Chuck's models (I wish) and Blood's source code.

---------------------- /trivia ---------------------------

Now, back on topic, I'm kinda glad that from what I've seen, this re-release doesn't really align with something I would actually spend money on, much less 20 bucks. So I'm actually supportive of MetHy's stance, this is far from a definitive version of the Duke3D I always loved and enjoyed from back in the DOS days (sorry for the shameless BJ, but in a perfect world there would be a fully optimized Windows HTTKC that can run as good as the DOS version through VDM, and have every graphical/audio option you could think of, including SC-88Pro and OPL3).
The real reason I'm glad I don't want to buy this is that I don't have the platform/hardware that fits any of the minimum requirements, so hurray for toasters legitimately running 1996 games (unless of course you could extract the data and make a new GRP out of it, but all signs from TerminX point towards this not being feasible, probably because there aren't unadulterated assets anymore? If the original audio files were mass compressed in mp3/ogg because of engine limitations, that would explain them sounding terrible).

Spoiler

Who am I kidding, if someone had a copy and invited me over I would devastate the new episode, know every nook and cranny of each map and even dnclip to see if there's still a SUYT or AHB sign, listen religiously to every new LJ's track and try to let my brain separate Randy's babblings from all the hard data I want to hear from the original 1.3D team.

Spoiler

It would suck doing all of this on YouTube.

By the way, since there were some guessings about how the new Firefly enemy will look like, may I advance a theory that is most likely 100% wrong?
We know the new enemy somehow expands itself upon being shot/reaching the player, right? I don't remember which but I read it expands. Now, what enemies emit a glow that is somewhat comparable to the one of fireflies? I can only pick one, it's not spot on but it's definitely "new" if we talk about map inclusion and implementation.



The Organic Turret (ORGANTIC) also looks like a bug, pretty sure I played a couple of FPS with similar looking enemies and they were all bugs. And guess this, the only programmed behavior for this enemy was shrinking after being woken up by sighting the player. It's the polar opposite of how the Firefly behaves, but would you really be surprised if a supposed finalized Organic Turret and the upcoming Firefly were to attack in very similar patterns? To elaborate on this, as far as I can figure, it could be a faster version of the Enforcer's spitting attack (the most bug-like attack), except this time it will actually burn you (enemies will probably give you Incinerator ammo, hence "Fire"). What TerminX said about the prototype assets he shared makes it really unlikely, unless they found a way to fuse the early Liztroop and the above mentioned Organic Turret.

Just my thoughts.

[PsychoGoatee]

Very cool audio info, always good to see in depth info like that. That said, I don't know your specs, but it's possible you'd be able to play the new episode of World Tour by switching it to the classic renderer. We saw in a gameplay video that you can turn off the fancy lighting new renderer and go back to what looks to be the old classic renderer. It's possible you'd have no problem there, even if your PC is well below the minimum specs. Though I guess you'd need at least Windows 7, according to the steam page.

[Hendricks266]

The TM audio files are higher quality not just because of the difference in bit depth from 8-bit to 16-bit (which serves to eliminate quantization noise, and nothing more), but because they also appear not to have been amplified to the point of clipping like the VOCs are.

I'm not sure how exactly the TM audio files are stored on disc with regard to lossiness. The cutscene indeed uses XA, but XA only supports two specific sample rates to my knowledge, which would be incompatible with the sample rates the sounds are at. Nukey would be able to answer. I once spent wasted three days reverse engineering PSound to see how it finds what it does and I wasn't able to understand. It seemed like the program brute force searched for patterns and got lucky.

[Zummone]

PsychoGoatee, on 08 September 2016 - 12:36 PM, said:

Though I guess you'd need at least Windows 7, according to the steam page.

Exactly, and sadly I haven't ever seen Windows 7 in motion for more than a couple minutes. Even though World Tour's relative bloatiness of its classic mode would be far less than current EDuke32 because it doesn't include TROR hacks, I have reasons to think optimization is by far the last of their concerns, and only included the original renderer as a harmless bonus/ammo against nostalgic fans akin to all of the LucasArts remasters. I'm pretty sure this release has a little more buzz going on in its pre-order phase than Megaton ever got.

Hendricks266, on 08 September 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

I'm not sure how exactly the TM audio files are stored on disc with regard to lossiness. The cutscene indeed uses XA, but XA only supports two specific sample rates to my knowledge, which would be incompatible with the sample rates the sounds are at. Nukey would be able to answer.

Assuming I get what you mean (cause I'm thick as a brick), you don't know how to extract the files period. Did you try scanning the whole CD-ROM using what I think is the fourth option? It first needs to be mounted in case it's an image, or have the actual disc inside your drive. You'll also need a working ASPI library file (WNASPI32.dll) to include in the program's directory.

The reason for this is that XA data, along with MDEC movies, is interleaved along the ROM's main binary so that the controller can switch between the two "tracks" at any given time (each track has to be accessed exclusively, so no game-related reads whilst audio plays). Some utilities including PSound and PSXPLAY can definitely pick XA and MDEC from files, but that has to do (I'm guessing) with the disc's TOC correctly addressing the second track's data in a straightforward manner, the lack of doing so being legitimately used as an early anti-crack measure. Also, I think TOC does not address the data-correction sectors in the overall binary which are another level of interleave. The files PSound should spit out will probably have some silence after being finished, needing some basic trim.

Here's an utility which should give you precisely what you want and possibly more.

http://www.zophar.ne...il/psmplay.html

It also needs the WNASPI32.dll library file, and of course you have to provide a mounted/accessible disc. The Winamp-like interface is as obtuse as they get if I recall correctly so keep that in mind when something's not working.

I also don't get how the sounds would be incompatible with the sample rates? XAs can only be played at those two rates and it's their native format, what's the problem?

Hendricks266, on 08 September 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

I once spent wasted three days reverse engineering PSound to see how it finds what it does and I wasn't able to understand. It seemed like the program brute force searched for patterns and got lucky.

Thought so. That also goes for standard VAG audio (the SPU version of XA), I have made lots of tests using official Sony tools such as AIFF2VAG to stress PSound searching routines. Most games which might seem like they'd have all the raw audio data perfectly nice and tidy only output results in PSound as result of the author taking the time to reverse-engineer certain odd cases (like MGS).

If you are legitimately interested and want good documentation on how to access the XA track and decompress it in the most clean way possible check this out:

http://problemkaputt....htm#cdromdrive

I'm no skilled coder so I can't put much of what's written here to test, and at first it looks like it's missing some details like the filtering bits if they're even necessary, and the whole document is a bit rigid, so you're probably going to read it multiple times. If you need some help on the ADPCM decompression (which is almost the same for VAG and XA), I can link/attach AIFF2VAG so you can test results with your own wav files (only mono). It's copyrighted material (albeit from decades ago) so I don't know if it's worth taking the risk putting it here.

[Hendricks266]

Zummone, on 08 September 2016 - 02:34 PM, said:

Assuming I get what you mean (cause I'm thick as a brick), you don't know how to extract the files period.

My bad, I wasn't clear in what I said. I am able to extract all XA files without any trouble, which includes the music and the backing audio for the STR videos.

I don't know how the game sounds are stored in the data. Nukey figured it out and ripped the sounds for us. He doesn't share his process though, because from what I understand it's too complicated and ad hoc for him to be interested in putting the time toward documenting it thoroughly. I'm just happy to have his results.

I suspect the process is done "in software" so to speak, not necessarily by any PlayStation-specific format. However, I may be wrong.

Zummone, on 08 September 2016 - 02:34 PM, said:

I also don't get how the sounds would be incompatible with the sample rates? XAs can only be played at those two rates and it's their native format, what's the problem?

The game sounds are not stored in these two sample rates, which I hypothesize would rule out XA as their format.

[Zummone]

Hendricks266, on 08 September 2016 - 02:53 PM, said:

I don't know how the game sounds are stored in the data. Nukey figured it out and ripped the sounds for us. He doesn't share his process though, because from what I understand it's too complicated and ad hoc for him to be interested in putting the time toward documenting it thoroughly. I'm just happy to have his results.

I suspect the process is done "in software" so to speak, not necessarily by any PlayStation-specific format. However, I may be wrong.

Oh, I see now. I legitimately feel sorry for Nukey if he ever went through the trouble of reverse-engineering the game for you guys, because I distinctly remember accessing all of them (including Duke's voice, they were all definitely 11KHz) by simply scanning the .PMP files using PSound (I don't even think it was the most recent 2.00 version, but if it was maybe you should try that). Here's the most updated version:

http://snailrush.online.fr/
http://snailrush.onl...ound/PSound.zip

I can't test right now because I have no disc drive, but you should give it an honest try. Either it works or I'm a certified schizo. I also remember Total Meltdown having unused wav tracks (PS1 doesn't support straight PCM if not for Red Book audio) inside the root, correct? Most of the time these inclusions are done to fill up blank space so that the disc can still access XA data in a comfortable way (this time I may be talking out my butt).

To be honest it wouldn't make much sense for them to store sounds in a different way than VAGs, which are already a compressed format. Encoding compressed data on the fly sounds crazy, might as well just leave it the way it's supposed to be. I hope it works, even though you already have the files.

EDIT: looks like I had E1L1 in PMP format laying around. I wasn't crazy, everything works out. Maybe it's something to do with different revisions of the game?