[Jimmy]

MusicallyInspired, on 25 July 2020 - 04:20 PM, said:

And we were so close to getting it all. But they had to try and poke the bear and make a dumb top down Duke shooter.

I don't think nu-3DR ever intended on actually releasing anything.

[NNC]

R A D A Я, on 25 July 2020 - 03:04 PM, said:

The careers of the 'leakers' and potential legal action against them? Everyone knows who they are.

I think many people have these betas. Good luck for Randy to find the culprit.

[ck3D]

Gearbox worrying about the beta versions of levels from a released 1996 PC game leaking in 2020 while Nintendo is worrying over something as substantial as the Gigaleak would simultaneously be hilarious and sadly make complete sense. I almost want to see it happen just to see if Randy thinks he's Nintendo (and generally want to see it happen for other reasons too, obviously).

[Jimmy]

The Watchtower, on 25 July 2020 - 11:19 PM, said:

I think many people have these betas. Good luck for Randy to find the culprit.

While this is definitely true, the ones who signed NDAs would be the ones to be punished whether they were responsible in any way or not.

[Tea Monster]

/Defiatron\, on 04 May 2020 - 11:36 PM, said:

I find the biggest disappointment is the lack of MIDIs for the new music.

Is it possible to reverse/re-engineer them from the ogg files?

[MusicallyInspired]

Tea Monster, on 28 July 2020 - 06:47 AM, said:

Is it possible to reverse/re-engineer them from the ogg files?

It's possible but a lot of work for too little gain. And it wouldn't ever be 100% accurate. It'd have to be done entirely manually for best results, to be clear.

[Tea Monster]

Yeah, there are good reasons for doing it straight to ogg. No more "this depends on what sound card you have". I don't know if people even still use Roland kit any more? It's all probably done in something on a PC and output so that what you write is what you hear.

This is ruining it for those who want to have the old Duke experience though.

[Jimmy]

I wouldn't say it's ruining it. The released music is fine, but it's really jarring against the rest of the game's soundtrack, just like everything else about World Tour.

[MusicallyInspired]

Tea Monster, on 28 July 2020 - 05:15 PM, said:

Yeah, there are good reasons for doing it straight to ogg. No more "this depends on what sound card you have". I don't know if people even still use Roland kit any more? It's all probably done in something on a PC and output so that what you write is what you hear.

This is ruining it for those who want to have the old Duke experience though.

This is why I make the SC-55 packs for people who don't have it. The difference here is that I do it solely for the reason that the SC-55 was the way these tracks were meant to be heard. In WT's case, they're already the way they were meant to be heard. (Though I have broken this rule with Heretic and Hexen which were NOT composed with the SC-55).

[Hendricks266]

MusicallyInspired, on 29 July 2020 - 07:44 AM, said:

This is why I make the SC-55 packs for people who don't have it. The difference here is that I do it solely for the reason that the SC-55 was the way these tracks were meant to be heard.

This is true for Bobby's tracks but not for Lee's, right? Lee has shared that he used an RAP-10 on Duke 3D v1.3D (and I assume ROTT) and got an SC-88 for Atomic and Shadow Warrior. https://dleejackson....ory-of-grabbag/

[MusicallyInspired]

The RAP-10 is basically an SCC-1 with only the first 128 patches (so no Roland GS support). And the SCC-1 is just an internal PC ISA card version of the SC-55 itself (like the LAPC-I is to the MT-32). Same sound. (EDIT: Actually, upon further investigation, the RAP-10 is based on the SC-7 module which is identical to the SC-55 except with only the 128 patches and no front LCD displays or controls. So still technically correct, but just an extra step of relation) Check this recording of At Doom's Gate which sounds identical to my Doom music pack. The RAP-10 does have a higher sampling rate (44.1 KHz CD Quality) and slightly higher polypony, but I'm unsure if it simply outputs at that sampling rate while the actual sampling rate for the PCM sample instruments remains the same as the hardware model or not. It might affect things like reverb though. (The CM-500 I've been recording my SC-55 music packs with also outputs to 44.1 KHz, incidentally)

It's hard to say whether Duke3D Atomic or SW actually supported the SC-88 in exactly the way Lee was hearing the tracks when he produced them or not but I doubt it. The setup program for Duke3D just lists "Sound Canvas" and no specific model. But Shadow Warrior has redbook CD audio tracks anyway so you can already hear it the way it was meant to be heard as well. I'm sure Lee's work even back then for digital tracks (Atomic Grabbag CD theme and SW's CD tracks) went through production and mastering phases so simply playing the tracks back on an SC-88 wouldn't sound exactly like them. Either way, the SC-55 model and its sound patches were the standard and everything had to be scaled down to support that. The SC-88 has an SC-55 emulation mode as well which I believe sounds almost identical (EDIT: turns out it doesn't sound EXACTLY the same). The SC-88 does have more drum sets which it sounds like Lee used for the Atomic Grabbag CD track.

All in all, I'd say close enough.

EDIT: Listening to this recording of Duke3D tracks on the SC-88 I still say that the SC-55 is the better module to use. All of Bobby's tracks sound way better on it. Alienz, for example, (0:58:26) brutalizes the drum sounds by using one of its own kits whereas the SC-55 version uses a manually adjusted pitch-increased Power Kit sound which sounds so much better for the style. Lee's tracks sound just as good on the SC-55 as the SC-88 so I still consider it standard. I suppose I could acquire an SC-88 and rerecord Lee's tracks with it, but then it'd sound too different from Bobby's tracks. But maybe that's okay. Maybe resequencing the WT soundtrack is also okay. Who knows? There are so many options. For now, I'm sticking with SC-55 because that's what most people who had a synth module for gaming had.

[markanini]

The RAP-10 has slightly brighter/more aggressive drums that sound particularly good on Grabbag. I prefer that track rendered on SC-55 family modules myself. Hear the difference for your self: https://www.wavetabl.../duke-nukem-3d/

[MusicallyInspired]

Most likely a result of having a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz instead of 32 KHz. Higher sampling rate allows for brighter sound (higher frequencies).

[Ninety-Six]

Personally I think Lee's tracks sound better on the 88, Grabbag and Gotham in particular. I myself wouldn't mind the difference in sound as long as they all sound great.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'd consider it, except I don't have an SC-88. I see a couple ST and VL models on ebay but I just spent too much money recently on Space Quest big game boxes. Gonna be a tighter month next month. Wouldn't mind getting an SC-88 though sometime.

[FistMarine]

Alright, I finally started playing Episode 5! But before that, let's clarify some things I said earlier. Turns out, I'm an idiot. Why? Because even though I had DirectX 12 installed (according to Intel Graphics Settings), when I went to install DirectX myself from Microsoft website, I then finally got sound and music working in World Tour! So it doesn't have anything to do with the fact I had WT pirated. The crashes I had before were random and since then, I didn't have any more crashes. I have also done episodes 3 and 4 but since I did first 2 without sound and music, I decided to turn off the sounds and music anyway for episodes 3 and 4 since I didn't enjoy playing the original levels through World Tour that much. The mouse aiming in this port is a bit messy and sometimes I miss my shots and get hit by enemies. To me the best way to play the original 4 episodes is still in DOSBox (versions 1.3D and 1.5, with default keyboard controls) and in EDuke32 (with proper controls and mouse aiming). I only replayed them in this port to see what else they changed and I have noticed a couple more things changed in some levels which I will list down below:

Sharks don't count/add as kills anymore (just like with the eggs, although I had no more missing enemies in E3, I still had some levels in E4 with missing enemies but there were few others that also had for example 70/69 kills, I suspect the slimers are once again the culprit as they eat enemies and cause me to have enemies missed at end of level)
There are also some noticeable map changes in E3L3, E3L7 and E3L8:
E3L3 - pedestal added in the small underwater room that holds yellow card
E3L7 - the area near firetruck has been "finished"
E3L8 - only one atomic health instead of two atomic health pickups

Related to last one, I noticed some levels had a bit different item placement because there were times I expected an item to be there and wasn't. I really wish someone documented all the maps differences at TCRF. The only thing I have seen listed there are the few maps changed between 1.3D and 1.4 which is exactly what I wondered years ago (before the TCRF page was updated with this information) but thankfully someone explained me here the differences. Now it's time for someone to list all the maps changed in World Tour. Yes I realize most maps have lights added and the developer commentary icons but I'd still want to have all differences listed.

Oh and also for some stupid reason, I died two more times in E3L4 because I jumped to get those tripmines and instead I got squashed inside walls??? Probably has to do with the fact that the earthquake got triggered and sectors overlapped and squashed me, not sure why. You can see the exact location where I got squashed in the screenshot below. As bonus, another screenshot shows a misaligned texture in E3L7 which I'm sure it didn't happen in the DOS versions 1.3D and 1.4/1.5.

Regarding the Dark Side wall texture, this is strange but it may have to do with the fact if you save game, quit game and continue later in E2L8, the texture may be glitched, which means you have to do the level in one go to not have the glitch occurring. It's not just that particular texture, even when riding a train, you will notice some parts are glitched too. What's funny is this bug may have also been happening in Megaton Edition. I remember reading the Megaton topic many years ago (when I was lurking on the forum) and noticed someone mentioning this glitch happening in megaton as well. I will have to test later in DOS versions as well when I get around to replaying all 4 episodes in CGS in Pistol Starting each level.

I also managed to die once more in Derelict because I wanted to grab that atomic health and was crushed after I grabbed it and was going back. I'm ashamed to admit I have died more on Let's Rock than I have died on Come Get Some. How? In summer 2015 when I last played Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition (in DOSBox) I did all episodes and EVEN the expansions (DC, Caribbean, NW) without dying once! (though I didn't do the extra levels E1L7 and E1L8 as I didn't know the command line parameters to access them back then). Now I died 4 fucking times while playing this shitty-ass WT port on the Let's Rock difficulty. How lame is that? Although to be fair, I only died by getting crushed which is instant death and very unpredictable due to the glitchy nature of BUILD engine and I don't usually die in Duke3D these days as the enemies themselves are predictable and easily dealt with but sometimes do quite a bit of damage on me and even if I'm low on health, I have medkit and there's usually health nearby that can save my ass. Oh and screw those random explosions happening in my face, nearly killed me in 2-3 levels! (though that was my bad that I exploded some canisters and didn't expect those explosions coming RIGHT in my face where I was standing, even if I was a few meters away). Don't ask why I'm complaining, I don't care. I felt the need to rant a bit as I admit I get frustrated sometimes when dying in video games due to unfairness, glitchyness and bullshit that shouldn't have killed me in first place as I'm always careful and checking corners when playing. I even remember most of enemies placed in level so I know most of time what weapon to use against what enemy and so on. It's just that...I feel like sometimes it is luck based if you can make it out alive in certain levels.

I also learned a new lesson: Don't play on easier skill levels and instead play on Come Get Some as the game is meant to. Because from my playing so far on Let's Rock (I normally play Duke3D on CGS and I know most people do that as well), there was barely any difference between the two skills. If I'm not mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong), enemies that are scripted to spawn (if you touch a certain sector, kill a babe or finding them inside trash cans) will always spawn regardless of whatever skill level you are playing. Even if you play on lowest skill setting (which is usually Piece of Cake, though a Skill 0 also exists which can also remove all enemies from level), the spawned enemies are unaffected. It doesn't matter if you have half of the initial enemies to kill, Duke3D is full of scripted enemies spawning, which is one of reasons why is much tougher than Doom is. That and the BUILD engine randomness. This is just my opinion. Though the Doom games also have their own bullshit mostly in form of the RNG.

Oh and I forgot to talk about E5. So far I liked the first level. I have seen it on YouTube before and while I had to look out for the secret at beginning (i tried pressing on the differently colored wall, turns out it was an elevator and had to press in other direction), I remembered the other secrets just from what I watched years ago. A bit sad I waited 4 years to play E5 and back then I got spoiled a bit from those videos. But hey, better late than never!

I will play the rest levels later. I think the new levels and new music are top notch! I know there may be few people who don't like E5 but to me the new levels are great. It's only the WT port that sucks and the fact the expansions are missing. I mean I wasn't a huge fan of Megaton either but I can understand why people prefer Megaton over WT, mostly because of having more content.

[NightFright]

I guess ep.5 is mostly OK if you don't try to see it as a coherent episode like the others. It's like a best of, a roadtrip of some sort, with Duke visiting different places and you skip the travelling parts in between. Still doesn't excuse the rather lame flamethrower, the super lame endboss and the lamest-ever "episode" ending screen, though.

My favorite episode is still and shall always be Shrapnel City. It was when the Levelord was at his all-time high.

[NNC]

Episode 4 is no more coherent than episode 5. Randy's three levels had their own The Birth-y universe, in fact these levels ironically inspired Duke mapping more than Blum or LL maps with their more vibrant texturing and wider scale. The rest are either episode 3 rejects or stuff that look like episode 1/2/Lameduke (ie Derelict).

Episode 5 has 4 Levelord maps that are very coherent in their style and narratives (ie Big Bad ending), while Blum kept his original style in his levels except for High Times. The best levels in episode 5 are the outlier ones, that don't really belong to the episode's mainstream facade.

Episode 3 is a very coherent work, but it also lacked novelties and most maps were either nerfed for framerate reasons or glued from multiplayer only arenas. It rarely feels like a singleplayer adventure (Flood Zone, LA Rumble and Freeway are the exceptions), and levels lacked the urban grandness as well. They are also too short. Bank Roll for example can be done easily in 4 minutes.

[NightFright]

Well, Episode 4 is basically a collection of maps that didn't make the cut for the original release, so it's kinda natural they don't feel like a real unit. Maps like "Critical Mass" for example don't really fit in. Anyway, it has a nice atmosphere, kinda weird at times, but enough to make it different from the other three episodes.

[Lunick]

At least Episode 4's maps connected in some way to each other, there's none of that in Episode 5

[Jimmy]

The older I get the more I appreciate Critical Mass, though. What a great map.

[NNC]

Lunick, on 05 August 2020 - 11:33 PM, said:

At least Episode 4's maps connected in some way to each other, there's none of that in Episode 5

There were loose connection between the levels if any. Duke-Burger, Shop-n-Bag and Babe Land are connected (if we consider the security monitor in DB as one), then XXX-Stacy, Critical Mass and Derelict are also connected. The rest are standalone levels, and the three Randy levels even had different theme as well. Of course that's more than what we saw in E5, but on the other hand, E5 had an actual running theme in Levelord's maps that made them recognisable at least.

[NNC]

/Defiatron\, on 06 August 2020 - 12:26 AM, said:

The older I get the more I appreciate Critical Mass, though. What a great map.

I feel the opposite. I loved the map as a kid, blown away by its atmosphere and traps, now I feel it isn't aged that well, and way too short to really excel. Nowadays I consider it more like an atmospheric intro map to Derelict, despite the different author/aesthetics, these two work well together. Playing CM before Derelict is also a must because Derelict doesn't support pistol start (or not to the level it should do), so having some supplies there is very helpful.

[jkas789]

Hi there. I'm kinda new here and though my taste in Duke Nukem and build games level design isn’t as refined as The Watchtower’s, I though I could give what I believe is a more layman’s take on DN3D: 20th AWT.

I have always being a fan of fps games however the only contact I had with build fps games was Blood. First time I played DN3D was the Megaton edition, shortly before it was taken off steam. I instantly fell in love with it, and bought it for the psvita as well (For that portable experience! It really is a nice port, although it chugs like a fat kid on a rally when playing Duke it out in DC). Fast forward World Tour comes out, and I don't buy it because eduke32 (still the best way to play Duke IMO) exists, and IMO it was a little to pricey for a 20 year old game.

It wasn't until this year when it came out on the switch that I finally caved in and bought it on my PC, PS4 and Switch. So I have atm played it 3 times from start to finish on the Come get some difficulty. Now that the history lesson is over, what did I think about World Tour?

I'm not a fan of it. On my switch and ps4 the game runs surprisingly smooth with no noticeable glitches or stutters. Granted I wasn't looking too close but I though they ran fine, and if you are looking for a great portable experience than the switch is a good choice. The PC port however. Oh boy.

Right out of the bat I couldn't run the damn thing in fullscreen because somehow, every time the intro or outro cinematic for an episode ran it would play a blackscreen and crash. Now I’m not a uber PC gamer master race however the machine I’m using (intel core i7 6700HQ cpu, 16 gb ram, gforce gtx 960m) should be able to run it without problems. So I had to compromise to running it in windowed mode at 1600x900 so that both sound and audio could work.

With that out of the way I have to admit that the playing experience didn’t change that much, sure the lighting was better but overall it was as if I was playing on eduke32. Also sometimes the game see to (strangely) stutter when there were shaking effects on screen. I gotta agree with RunningDuke, there is something weird going on with the aiming in this port. With auto aiming turned off shots that should have hit my enemies seem to randomly miss, even at short range.

The sound design is a mixed bag. I liked the music and sound effects, but Dukes voice is really bad. To the point were I had to turn the legacy duke voice option on. They really should change voice actors for Duke at this point, because Jon St. Jonhn sounds really damn old and tired in this one. His performance was way better in Ion Fury as Dr Heskel than as freaking Duke, his call to fame.

Episode wise 1-4 are all there without any changes I could see, but if they were Im sure I missed them. Regarding episode 5, I (again) have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I really like some maps like High Times and Bloody Hell, but then there is Mirage Barage with its dumb maze (which you can cheese btw) and Red Ruckus which was boring AF. Also the episode feels disjointed, as if someone at Gearbox had found the levels somewhere on the office and decided it was a good idea to bundle them together and call it a day. Even Plug and Pray feels more unified thematically than this.

Finally fuck firefly troopers. Of all the new enemies they could have chosen they add those annoying pieces of alien scum. They are even worse then drones and I swear the hit detection on them is borked to hell.

At this point I’m just waiting for eduke32 to push an update to be able to play episode 5 on PC the way it was meant to without the stopgap. And for gearbox to give a damn and support World Tour as it deserves. Maybe to add community content like Bethesda has done with new Doom ports?

[necroslut]

The Fireflies do suck. Personally I really, really like Red Ruckus though. It's one of those maps I just keep coming back to.

I never really got the bit about changing voice actors. If Gearbox can't direct John, that problem would probably remain even with another VA.

[jkas789]

necroslut, on 08 August 2020 - 07:25 PM, said:

The Fireflies do suck. Personally I really, really like Red Ruckus though. It's one of those maps I just keep coming back to.

I never really got the bit about changing voice actors. If Gearbox can't direct John, that problem would probably remain even with another VA.

I didn't like Red Ruckus. There was just something about the level design and color palette that made me sleepwalk through it. Then again, my taste in Duke Nukem 3D levels is shit. I actually like Penthouse Paradise.

But was it really a problem of Gearbox unable to direct John? As I said, IMO John VA feels really tired, as if he was just going through the paces.

[Jimmy]

The programming on the Firefly and the Incinerator are worse than some things in the pre-release of the game.

[Lunick]

The incinerator is really quite fun tbh, maybe too overpowered against a lot of the lower tier enemies. The Firefly is just a pain in the ass and it's easiest to get rid of them by exploding them with the RPG etc.

[ck3D]

/Defiatron\, on 08 August 2020 - 09:00 PM, said:

The programming on the Firefly and the Incinerator are worse than some things in the pre-release of the game.

Not to mention that dysfunctional last boss - I'm not even into video games all that much and even I can tell releasing something so broken is a fucking joke. It's as though there was zero quality check or even full testing. As though the legacy of Duke 3D didn't warrant even such basic considerations.

[jkas789]

Lunick, on 08 August 2020 - 09:38 PM, said:

The incinerator is really quite fun tbh, maybe too overpowered against a lot of the lower tier enemies. The Firefly is just a pain in the ass and it's easiest to get rid of them by exploding them with the RPG etc.

I agree the incinerator get much more flack than it deserves. My problem with the Firefly is that they can shrink themselves and depending on the amount of action happening on screen (or the background, come to think of it) you can loose sight of them pretty easily.