[Lunick]

Svanis, on 25 May 2017 - 03:44 PM, said:

The Debug counter in the 1995 build is just the player's health. In the June 11 1996 proto, you can puke by holding the fire key when dead. I have a bug in the June '96 protos where the weapon sprites don't show, it worked only once. Does anyone know of a fix for this?

Wait for the background demo to show the player's weapons and then start the game.

[The Kins]

Svanis, on 25 May 2017 - 03:44 PM, said:

The Debug counter in the 1995 build is just the player's health. In the June 11 1996 proto, you can puke by holding the fire key when dead. I have a bug in the June '96 protos where the weapon sprites don't show, it worked only once. Does anyone know of a fix for this?

The weapon sprites tend to not show if you start the game when the attract mode demo is using an external camera.

[MetHy]

I think the "screenlock" key works too. It un/hides weapons.

[Romulus]

MetHy, on 26 May 2017 - 12:22 AM, said:

I think the "screenlock" key works too. It un/hides weapons.

This actually makes sense. There is an option for Holstering the weapon, Scroll Lock is the key the function is attached to.

[LeoTCK]

Not sue if it was mentioned but there was an error in the bat file, the level selection in the early 95 alpha was switched around, when you select Joe it plays e1l3 etc instead.

[TerminX]

Mentioned this on Discord earlier, but I've found an additional working prototype, this one dated 8/96. We'll do what needs to be done to get it released.

[Jimmy]

Thanks, Robman.

[Hendricks266]

LeoTCK, on 26 May 2017 - 09:59 AM, said:

Not sue if it was mentioned but there was an error in the bat file, the level selection in the early 95 alpha was switched around, when you select Joe it plays e1l3 etc instead.

I've noted it for the next round.

[TerminX]

Hendricks266, on 26 May 2017 - 11:32 AM, said:

I've noted it for the next round.

Round 2... fight!

[LeoTCK]

It seems that the beta that cannot be run really should have the crossbow and that claw thing that the player uses, that wrist blade. I can't wait until that gets bypassed.

I also noticed that many maps like Garden.map and whirl.map in the release-version were started originally by Eric Reuter but he wasn't credited for them in the released game. Did they lose track of what was made by whom?

[Jimmy]

3D Realms just didn't care. If you weren't with the company at the time of release they just wouldn't credit you.

[LeoTCK]

Well, with him it was that during the switch to the more Duke like game he wasn't there initially but then came back to create some additional levels and for those he got credited. So its weird he didnt get credited for his old work that was still used.

[LeoTCK]

Alright so what are the maps in the late 1996 beta? I go from airport to yamato, seems to follow just like I made the map list in the other beta..but where does it go next?

EDIT: I confirmed that at least $dozer and $plax1 are there. I tried all the levelnames from the early 1996 version and none of it worked.
$volcano is there as well.

[LeoTCK]

Okay so the late 96 beta also has $huge.map apart from the ones I listed.

I know that the 97 beta has much more maps including the old ones, by viewing the grp file seems to confirm it but I can't switch to it. I must have extracted the files at some point and launched them as usermaps. But I don't remember what I used to do so...

[PikaCommando]

They just got done documenting the second 1995 build on TCRF.

Is the boat level here the same as the one seen in one of the 1996 builds' demos? Here it's E1L1, but the early 1996 builds have the player start out on ground already instead of approaching the island by boat. Would be interesting if we have a 1994 E1L1/lvl1-1 to compare as well.

Also, it looks like the player's underwater sprite in the early 1996 build is different? Normally he's a shirtless hooded ninja on ground, but becomes a green-skinned clothed ninja when underwater.

[LeoTCK]

Yes E1L1 became OPEN/SCENE/BOAT1 and later WHIRL.

So many different versions. In most e1l1 the boat itself is already trap. Btw I extracted stuff from the later GRP files using KEXTRACT at the very least. You can put some maps between versions too and many of them were identical in the 96 build but the ones with "!" were later worked on ones for example like $plax1 is same in early 96 build like in the second one but !plax1 is different and more closer to final or the plax1 in the very late 96 build...

[Svanis]

In the June 11th build, if you do ALT+I when holding the silenced UZI, you get akimbo. Not sure if a bug or not. Also alt fire modes work for several weapons throughout the protoypes, the shotgun has a plasma-rifle like sec. fire in the same build. I'm sure you already know but still throwing it out there.

In the January 15 prototype, if you switch weapons while the foot sprite is on the screen after kicking, it stays there so you can do some Mighty Foot fun.

I also found this curiousity from 1994: http://www.ibiblio.o...oks/shadow.html

I'm still unsure how you guys load the other maps?

[LeoTCK]

The akimbo you get also in the other 96 version if you do swall for example. It seems to be intentional and goes away after one clip is empty, i think originally you were supposed to get an item or second one that lasted a limited amount of time perhaps? So you wouldnt get too powerful or something. And you wouldnt waste clips on the other gun.

And its not plasma rifle, if you mean the riotgun fire. It actually uses the explosive arrows that you'd get in the other.
EDIT: You just load it using -map filename or in the older versions plainly just supply the filename afterwards. Funny that with Unreal it went the other way around and you used to have to do equivalent to -map and then later just the filename was enough of the map after *.exe

[PikaCommando]

Wasn't the Riotgun alt-fire a Rocket Launcher, with the final Rocket Launcher being some sort of BFG that clears the secret with a volley of rockets?

[LeoTCK]

No, it was really the replacement for explosive crossbow. The sounds even match that. It is less strong than the missiles from the missile launcher. In the November 96 beta the missile launcher has normal/heat seeker and the drunken minirocket spread fire that is otherwise default in the 96 protos but being cause of game crashes if it hits enemies.
EDIT: I guess it was all a bit interswapped, the same effect does indeed go for the plain missile launcher in the november version.

[LeoTCK]

PikaCommando, on 27 May 2017 - 02:40 AM, said:

They just got done documenting the second 1995 build on TCRF.

Is the boat level here the same as the one seen in one of the 1996 builds' demos? Here it's E1L1, but the early 1996 builds have the player start out on ground already instead of approaching the island by boat. Would be interesting if we have a 1994 E1L1/lvl1-1 to compare as well.

Also, it looks like the player's underwater sprite in the early 1996 build is different? Normally he's a shirtless hooded ninja on ground, but becomes a green-skinned clothed ninja when underwater.

Can someone upload the two maps converted to format 6 btw? I don't think I have the tool but having the ready maps is a plus anyway.

[PikaCommando]

LeoTCK, on 27 May 2017 - 11:22 AM, said:

Can someone upload the two maps converted to format 6 btw? I don't think I have the tool but having the ready maps is a plus anyway.

I'm not familiar with the tools, but I think I did it right. http://www.mediafire...5V5TOV6MAPS.zip

[Hendricks266]

Just sent this off.

[TerminX]

I still can't believe I managed to find another beta hiding right under our noses.

[Svanis]

I'd love to hear the story! How'd you find it?

[Hendricks266]

Hard drives are messy, and it was just there in a folder called "game", alongside other folders like "MAPS" and "SWRoot".

[Hendricks266]

Hendricks266, on 27 May 2017 - 01:04 PM, said:

Steam is updated.

[PikaCommando]

How odd, it looks like the 1996 builds got worse with time (at least until it reached the near-final version). The first 1996 build is the only one that didn't have that machine gun sound for the Shurikens.

In this build, the only difference I see now is that the Riotgun no longer has the Crossbow/Rocket Launcher alt-fire and that is now implemented as the final's Rocket Launcher (now taking up slot 4) main fire mode and the HUD is messed up.

[High Treason]

OK, I am back from my tampering with the 950908 prototype. I think I've gotten as much as I can from this unless somebody knows a way to get one of those DOSBox builds to work, or else if they know something I could do in Linux with a tool like socat.

The first piece of information I have is that the EXE apparently ends at 120090h and strangely, deleting everything beyond this point doesn't destroy the .EXE but it does yield a different error message, instead complaining about GRAPHICS.DAT which is just... unknown... I'm not a programmer and I definitely don't do assembly.

On the parallel port I can only capture a few pins and it is entirely possible the dongle used the pins differently to most devices. I can't get a straight capture because no tool will capture it and the monitors I can get don't log - which is silly, because the port is much faster than the screen refresh rate.We can, however, look at the signals from D4 D2 D1 and D0 with pretty precise timing which might shed some light as to what is happening, though I doubt it.
 pposc_000.png (676bytes)
Number of downloads: 18


I have enclosed the captured file and the utility here, it was the only thing I could log at all with, everything else just displays on the screen in real time - you know, because you can totally see what's happening on a device at 2500000 times a second, on a display that updates only 72 times per second no less.

Here are the files (Open O1.DAT unless you want to be hardcore and read O2.ASC in Notepad) for looking at this partial log, you'll need to use DOSBox to run the program. It doesn't require a parallel port or any configuration just to look at existing captures;
 PPO.zip (91.46K)
Number of downloads: 2

This is the utility I used;
http://spiro.trikaliotis.net/pposc

I doubt this is of any use at all, but without using expensive scopes and such, which I don't have, I'm not sure there's much more that can be done aside from hoping a skilled cracker is bored some day and decides to try breaking it. I certainly won't be touching it again any time soon because my head hurts from all the time I spent in Linux, damn I forgot what a chore that whole thing was and how slowly it likes to do things. Not a shred of consistency, everything is a damn command line with warping text and everything wants compiling, requiring hunting down specific versions of libraries from years ago of course. Bloody thing. Oh, also, You can actually see a similar waveform if you capture audio in DOSBox from the Covox emulation... Which makes sense, given the Covox was just a DAC plugged into the parallel port in the real world. I also wanted to say to Mark. that I did wonder about that, I wouldn't be surprised if there were cheap dongles that were barely more than loopback devices. I tried setting random pins to High/Low but this affected nothing that i could tell.

[icecoldduke]

Assuming the data is unencrpyted, if you guys have a source drop from that time you could just recompile the exe and hope the data works. Or you could find a exe from around the time and see if it works with the data.

Might be worth trying to make a frankenstein build.