[Zaxx]

Grand Admiral Thrawn, on 04 March 2018 - 05:08 PM, said:

if anyone else was inclined to they could make a new source port for the game I suppose.

That would be wonderful. I don't use SWP because it's old and I like Redux because it's pretty much the most solid way to play the game these days but obviously there is so much else that could have been done for a proper remaster. Like:

- A classic renderer. I don't like how Build games run in DOSBox, never did and I only prefer Blood with proper 3D rendering because I think there it helps the game mechanics. Duke 3D and SW are best played in software mode, it just looks nicer and it's also more authentic.

- Since Redux uses a 3D renderer I never understood why the devs just left the skyboxes as they were. They are ugly and they look broken so making new, 3D skyboxes should have been a must like it was done for BloodCM / BloodGDX and Duke World Tour. They made nice looking menus and an HD hud that nobody asked for but nope, no new skyboxes. Fixing the skyboxes is clearly a higher priority than some HD stuff, I can't even imagine what could have been the reasoning behind leaving them like that.

- In Redux (and as far as I remember in SWP too) there is no framerate interpolation when you're standing on some surfaces and when you're driving vehicles. Why?

- Redux's engine seems pretty old and there are some bugs in there.

There is only one substantial improvement Redux has over Duke Megaton: the FoV slider, that's awesome to have.

[Avoozl]

To be fair though JonoF's Shadow Warrior port is actually much older than ProASM's SWP and got less as much support it seems. Personally I wouldn't really call the Redux a remake since remakes usually recreate a game from the ground up with new graphics, sounds, music, and a slightly differing plot and gameplay elements.

[Phredreeke]

Yeah, if you're gonna use Polymost then you definitively want to add new skyboxes.

[Zaxx]

Grand Admiral Thrawn, on 04 March 2018 - 06:06 PM, said:

To be fair though JonoF's Shadow Warrior port is actually much older than ProASM's SWP and got less as much support it seems.

Sure but afaik Redux is not JonoF's original port but a modified version of that. It basically has no issues while SWP can be a nightmare to set up if it decides to hate your system. It runs like crap on my current machine, Redux has no such problems.

Anyway now that I'm replaying SW I have to say that out of the big 3 this is the worst Build engine game for me. I'm sure that every weapon has a specific situation where they are useful but I never really bothered to find out about those because the mechanics are just too unusual for me. The SMG's reload animation is a nightmare during a firefight, I never really got the hang of sticky bombs (how to blow up anything with them precisely, really?), I don't know why the shotgun's alternate fire works the way it works (just let me alt-fire directly instead of using that stupid firing mode switch), aiming with the stuff in your inventory is a mess (and really most of the weapons lack aiming precision), you can't use anything for long range until you get the rail gun so overall the weapons are just not very fun. Most of the enemies are bullet sponges, their attacks are weird and too hard to dodge and the bees can just fuck off. The level design, the secrets and the interactivity are excellent but really they have to be so something could save the game from its bad mechanics.

After playing a lot of Blood where everything is slick and smooth it's really hard to adjust to something this janky.

[SonicB00M]

Is there actually a way to mod another HUD into the game (Redux version)? The full HUD is too huge for my taste and the smaller one has too little information (no armor, no collected keys). Something in between would be nice.

[necroslut]

SonicB00M, on 05 March 2018 - 11:22 AM, said:

Is there actually a way to mod another HUD into the game (Redux version)? The full HUD is too huge for my taste and the smaller one has too little information (no armor, no collected keys). Something in between would be nice.

You could change the graphic, but I'm pretty sure you're not gonna be able to change the actual HUD functioning without modifying the source code.

[Hendricks266]

Grand Admiral Thrawn, on 04 March 2018 - 05:08 PM, said:

One thing I forgot to mention is SWP does have a sound issue on newer OS's, it needs to be put on compatibility for windows 7 in order to fix it. Also as I said earlier about using version 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 have the save corruption and crash issue and it's best to use 4.3.0 instead, as I read elsewhere some time ago that the differences of the later versions are only very minor and don't affect gameplay whatsoever, so it's no real loss to go back to 4.3.0. I seem to recall someone else besides the original creator did make a new version of SWP after 4.3.2 but I am not so sure. Anyways the source code to this game was released long ago, if anyone else was inclined to they could make a new source port for the game I suppose.

https://github.com/H...66/SWP/releases

[nietzsche666]

I'm playing the Redux version now. Everything works pretty good, but I'm pretty bothered by the sky being cut off when you raise your pov upwards. It's noticable from the second level on.

I have been looking all over the net for some hints or tutorial how to fix this, but there actually doesn't seem to be one, or I'm just stupid.


I would be glad to implement hires skybox textures I downloaded recently to overcome this, but nothing I tried has been working so far. Does anyone here know if there is a way to play with continuous skies in SWCR?

[MusicallyInspired]

There's no way around it. Not an out-of-the-box solution, anyway. It would never "cut off" in software rendering because it's not true 3D anyway. Redux is rendered in true 3D and so when you look up you're actually tilting the camera (rather than stretching the screen geometry) and since the textures are only so high it repeats in a tiled pattern. This is why games in true 3D utilized skyboxes instead of parallaxed textures. It's just the nature of 3D rendering. I don't know if SW Redux supports skyboxes or not.

[Phredreeke]

What you describe is how Polymost renders parallax skies.

Unfortunately SWCR doesn't support skyboxes (I've tried defining them, and it crashes the game)

[Ninjakitty]

Phredreeke, on 12 October 2018 - 11:28 AM, said:

What you describe is how Polymost renders parallax skies.

Unfortunately SWCR doesn't support skyboxes (I've tried defining them, and it crashes the game)

SWCR used to support 3d stuff like that, but it doesn't anymore and I'm not sure why

[nietzsche666]

Thanks for the info.

Damn, every other 90ies shooter port has proper skies by now, though. I had a similar problem in the new BloodGDX, but I could solve it by exchanging the sky textures.

Everything else about the Classic Redux seems fine. I wish someone would just fix it somehow, it kills the mood to an extent.