[Hendricks266]

Fox tried it and the overclocking feature solves the performance issues.

[Zaxx]

Hendricks266, on 13 March 2018 - 05:52 PM, said:

Fox tried it and the overclocking feature solves the performance issues.

Yep, just saw it on Youtube too. I edited my last post with the video but I'll just post it again here because it's really interesting to see the PSX version like this (and not broken like most games with the OC):

[Phredreeke]

Makes me wonder what other Build games would have been like had they been ported to consoles.

[NNC]

Zaxx, on 13 March 2018 - 12:19 PM, said:

I don't know what the huge fuss is about when it comes to Nightmare Zone: sure, it's a frustrating one but I could get through it in 30 minutes without much of a problem, it's just annoying and a bad way to start out the episode (I'm sure it was terrible on the PSX though but hey, that's why we have this nice little "PC port" now). The rest of the episode is pretty freakin' cool in my book.

I played it twice now, managed to get through in 19 minutes. I know the layout from start to finish despite playing the map maybe 3 times before.

I actually think the last 3 maps are not as good as the first 3. Ministry of Fear looks great, and has a great concept, but way too short, and that CyberKeef was a joke, the animation is terrible.

[Zaxx]

Nancsi, on 13 March 2018 - 07:09 PM, said:

I played it twice now, managed to get through in 19 minutes. I know the layout from start to finish despite playing the map maybe 3 times before.

I actually think the last 3 maps are not as good as the first 3. Ministry of Fear looks great, and has a great concept, but way too short, and that CyberKeef was a joke, the animation is terrible.

To me Gates Motel and Duke Royale are the best maps of the episode. Gates Motel really nails that Resident Evil vibe, the place really feels like the Spencer Mansion at times with its layout and its gameplay, I love that it ends with you going to an underground "lab" just like in RE1 and the references are nice too (favourite: you can find Duke's head in a box ).

Duke Royale is again a great reference-driven level, it really maxes out on Tarantino movies and again the layout is superb. I love Duke maps where you're constantly switching between the inside and the outside and here you have a lot to explore, it's like a little metroidvania hub with places to unlock. The end fight is also pretty epic with the bar shootout followed by a nice little "invasion" of the streets.

As for the rest, I dunno. Nightmare Zone feels like an interesting level, guess it will be more enjoyable on subsequent playthroughs with knowing where the traps are and finding more secrets (I only found 2 or 3 the first time around).

Trackside Tragedy starts nicely with the place gradually opening up but by the end walking those long distances becomes a bit tedious. More steroids would have been nice because it really feels like you're supposed to breeze through the racetrack with steroids but there's just not enough of them.

Alien Randezvous is the weakest of the bunch to me. I like monster arena levels but not in Duke 3D, I think that stuff just doesn't work with all the hitscan enemies the game has. Would be a cool Doom map though.

Ministry of Fear is pretty nice with the changing music and all but the layout is just not very interesting. It has headbanging aliens / zombies though which is always a plus in my book and I liked that they tried to get some level variety into the bossfight: at first it seems like a simple arena but then you're like "Oh, I can blow up that wall, what's behind that?". They could have done more with that (and less with the drones, seriously! ) but it was fun, it's not just a simple "okay, I'll strafe and blow up the big guy with the Devestator" bossfight like what you get in the original 3 episodes.

And yeah, poor CyberKeef looked like he could fall apart any second with those weird animations.

Edit: Oh and there's one thing that's inexcusable: the CyberKeef cutscene. No humiliating execution? Duke was really nice that day compared to his usual self.

[NNC]

Zaxx, on 13 March 2018 - 08:11 PM, said:

To me Gates Motel and Duke Royale are the best maps of the episode. Gates Motel really nails that Resident Evil vibe, the place really feels like the Spencer Mansion at times with its layout and its gameplay, I love that it ends with you going to an underground "lab" just like in RE1 and the references are nice too (favourite: you can find Duke's head in a box ).

Duke Royale is again a great reference-driven level, it really maxes out on Tarantino movies and again the layout is superb. I love Duke maps where you're constantly switching between the inside and the outside and here you have a lot to explore, it's like a little metroidvania hub with places to unlock. The end fight is also pretty epic with the bar shootout followed by a nice little "invasion" of the streets.

As for the rest, I dunno. Nightmare Zone feels like an interesting level, guess it will be more enjoyable on subsequent playthroughs with knowing where the traps are and finding more secrets (I only found 2 or 3 the first time around).

Trackside Tragedy starts nicely with the place gradually opening up but by the end walking those long distances becomes a bit tedious. More steroids would have been nice because it really feels like you're supposed to breeze through the racetrack with steroids but there's just not enough of them.

Alien Randezvous is the weakest of the bunch to me. I like monster arena levels but not in Duke 3D, I think that stuff just doesn't work with all the hitscan enemies the game has. Would be a cool Doom map though.

Ministry of Fear is pretty nice with the changing music and all but the layout is just not very interesting. It has headbanging aliens / zombies though which is always a plus in my book and I liked that they tried to get some level variety into the bossfight: at first it seems like a simple arena but then you're like "Oh, I can blow up that wall, what's behind that?". They could have done more with that (and less with the drones, seriously! ) but it was fun, it's not just a simple "okay, I'll strafe and blow up the big guy with the Devestator" bossfight like what you get in the original 3 episodes.

And yeah, poor CyberKeef looked like he could fall apart any second with those weird animations.

Edit: Oh and there's one thing that's inexcusable: the CyberKeef cutscene. No humiliating execution? Duke was really nice that day compared to his usual self.

I like Ministry of Fear because along with Trackside Tragedy, it's a very avantgarde looking map, with interesting textures, lots of cyclers (the whole episode used cyclers a lot, which made the levels a lot better), you don't see these kind of levels too often for this game. Indeed it's a bit too short, especially compared to the others, I would have added more areas to explore before you go to that poor excuse of a boss.

Alien Rendezvous was the level where I feel MetHy's low tier usermap comment is valid. It's just really a usermap, you can safely put the map in your standard EDuke32 directory and get the same experience. No special textures, no references, basically that simple Tiberius Station texture was used in the entire level, WAY TOO MANY ENFORCERS, and of course Battlelords (it's the ultimate hitscan galore level), and the lack of ambient sounds really hurts this time as the music isn't dominating in this level. I think they should have used it for the secret level instead of Faces of Death. In Doom standards it would be ranked with levels like Suburbs which is not a compliment.

The levelorder btw. should have been this:

1. Duke Royale
2. Trackside Tragedy
3. Gates Motel
4. Nightmare Zone
5. Ministry of Fear
6. Alien Rendezvous (secret level)

DR is an ideal opening map, NZ is something that would work much better as the penultimate level of the game, like Dark Side/Derelict.

[Fox]

Zaxx, on 13 March 2018 - 05:51 PM, said:

It would be interesting to have a look at the original game with the EPSXE emulator and overclocking the emulated PSX's CPU. I'm pretty much sure that a 4x overclock would get to the smooth 60 fps.

I use an option called "Use Frame skipping" in ePSXe with a framerate limit of 60 fps. It plays perfectly smoothly.

[Mav3r1ck]

Nightmare Zone was a pain in the arse to complete. My issue is that after getting beyond the four doors that are triggered by the little squares with the bloody footprints on the ground. I didn't know what to do afterwards.

The level itself get's a lot easier after getting the blue keycard. After getting into the large area surrounding the pool room. There is a small pool of water near the entrance to that area. You jump into it and you'll find one of three switches. The other two can be found in the pool room under the water. Where you'll find a submerged turret gun and some slimer eggs.

What transparency do the explosion effects use?

[enderandrew]

Fox, on 13 March 2018 - 11:30 PM, said:

I use an option called "Use Frame skipping" in ePSXe with a framerate limit of 60 fps. It plays perfectly smoothly.

Frame skipping is somewhat cheating. Instead of rendering all frames at full speed, it skips frames and doesn't render them to try and keep up.

[Fox]

Mav3r1ck, on 14 March 2018 - 03:01 AM, said:

What transparency do the explosion effects use?

Additive.

[Forge]

enderandrew, on 14 March 2018 - 06:45 AM, said:

Frame skipping is somewhat cheating.

[Mav3r1ck]

Fox, on 14 March 2018 - 08:15 AM, said:

Additive.

I thought that was what I was seeing. I've modded my Duke 3D to have translucent explosions but they don't have the addictive properties. What do I need to add in the game.con to get addictive translucent explosions if you don't mind me asking?

[Fox]

You will have to add blending tables to the game before you can use them in maps / con.

[Polunka]

Btw, not sure if you're gonna fix this (since it's really minor problem) but it would be nice if Duke said lines like, "Squeal, piggy, squeal!" and "Making bacon!", only in case the player blows up Pig Cops (I was just playing through Freeway and noticed that he says those lines even when blowing up, say, Octas or Enforcers, making them sound like nonsense and out of context).

[Mav3r1ck]

Polunka, on 15 March 2018 - 02:05 AM, said:

Btw, not sure if you're gonna fix this (since it's really minor problem) but it would be nice if Duke said lines like, "Squeal, piggy, squeal!" and "Making bacon!", only in case the player blows up Pig Cops (I was just playing through Freeway and noticed that he says those lines even when blowing up, say, Octas or Enforcers, making them sound like nonsense and out of context).

I was thinking that modifying the game.con to where Duke will only say this to Pig type enemies instead of it being a regular thing he says when blowing up and enemy. The idea would come from when Duke says a unique line when killing a boss enemy. Most notable is when killing a Battlelord Sentry and Duke says "Die, you son of a bitch!", after they are killed each time.

I understand that work is being done to make this available for older ports. Will you also include a unique version with the bugs fixed?

[Polunka]

Mav3r1ck, on 15 March 2018 - 03:10 AM, said:

I understand that work is being done to make this available for older ports. Will you also include a unique version with the bugs fixed?

Well, I hope Fox will release separate fixed versions of the CON files someday, if he ever wishes to.

[NNC]

A couple of things I noted during my playthrough:

1. Duke Royale has a part you can easily stuck. It's the warehouse and elevator area with the blue keydoors. If you don't have the blue key or jetpack, it's a dead end, so this must have been fixed somehow. I checked the area with Mapster, no way out.

2. The new episode is not only using atomic textures, but using them in their original slots, which means they had the atomic version when they made this game. I'm not sure if there were limitations, but they should have used them with full function, maybe even The Birth episode. Tanks and other functional sprites however are not working. Newbeast art is the only one with replacement, partly with Battlelord sprites (which weren't used in the game) and partly with the Cyberkeef sprites.

3. Mapster animation is weird for some active sprites. For example the Battlelord switches between 40:40 and 64:64 repeat values, but others like the pigcopdive are also strange.

4. There are a lot of missing sound effects. Not just ingame, but somehow the new episode is very skimpy of sounds, both doors and ambience. Also it seems there are some strange dysfunction sometimes. When you open for example the safe in Duke Royale, the sound doesn't stop. I don't think it should have happened with the original code.

[Malgon]

Managed to get through this in about 5 hours last night (not including the secret level). I found some of them to have weird kind of layouts with little regard to flow and just not being very intuitive to navigate. I guess the hunting for the obscurely hidden key cards really contributed to this feeling. There was quite a bit of abuse too with the use of enforcers, and I constantly had to spam saves throughout (my fault for playing on Come Get Some, but still the balance didn't feel quite right). I did think that Gates Motel was the strongest level though, as the atmosphere and music was really nice, with plenty of great references, although I do have to admit it's the only time I really got stuck while trying to find the blue key. (Fox mentioned the switch that unlocks the door, which I had pressed but I never actually tried the door again before looking up a walkthrough). Duke Royale had lots of great references too, and I do agree with Nancsi that it would have been the best map to open with. If I had to rank the levels, they'd probably be something like this:

Gates Motel
Duke Royale
Ministry of Fear, Alien Rendezvous, Trackside Tragedy
Nightmare Zone

While I think the level quality is debatable, there was some nice areas in places. I have to make mention of how hilariously bad CyberKeef's dance move/attack animation was though!

Anyway, after all that it is great that we are finally able play through this episode on PC after so many years, so a serious thank you to everyone involved for all of your hard work and effort in putting this together. Well done guys.

[Fox]

Nancsi, on 16 March 2018 - 12:49 AM, said:

2. The new episode is not only using atomic textures, but using them in their original slots, which means they had the atomic version when they made this game. I'm not sure if there were limitations, but they should have used them with full function, maybe even The Birth episode.

According to a magazine with a pre-release version it would include all levels of the Atomic Edition plus the new exclusive ones, so I presume they had it planned. It wasn't because of storage space, since 20% of the data in the CD is filler. But they were heavily limited by the assets they could have loaded in the memory for each individual levels, which may have been a greater problem in The Birth levels, since they uses more textures, sounds, enemies, etc.

[Mav3r1ck]

Discussing the compatibility with this TC and older ports reminded me of something. The XDuke port supports WAV and OGG files and I've modded it with TM music and sounds. So far all the additional sounds and music work. However, the problem I'm having is trying get the BONUS music played at the end of the level score screen and the BARMUSIC played in Red Light District to work. I tried to get the TM versions of BONUS and BARMUSIC to play in the game after adding them in but I hear nothing.

I understand that it's an older port. Any ideas to what I could be doing wrong?

[NNC]

Fox, on 16 March 2018 - 03:04 AM, said:

According to a magazine with a pre-release version it would include all levels of the Atomic Edition plus the new exclusive ones, so I presume they had it planned. It wasn't because of storage space, since 20% of the data in the CD is filler. But they were heavily limited by the assets they could have loaded in the memory for each individual levels, which may have been a greater problem in The Birth levels, since they uses more textures, sounds, enemies, etc.

Probably that's the reason. However I'm not sure if the individual levels use more textures than the ones from the 3 classic episodes, since the vast majority of the atomic textures are one level specific stuff. The same goes to sounds. There are new sounds, but they are level specific, and levels don't have to use every other sounds like the various amience stuff from E2.

Monsters... I don't know. Newbeasts and Tanks are there, but Drones are almost non existent, and Commanders are very rare too.

[Fox]

Mav3r1ck, on 16 March 2018 - 03:38 AM, said:

Discussing the compatibility with this TC and older ports reminded me of something. The XDuke port supports WAV and OGG files and I've modded it with TM music and sounds. So far all the additional sounds and music work. However, the problem I'm having is trying get the BONUS music played at the end of the level score screen and the BARMUSIC played in Red Light District to work. I tried to get the TM versions of BONUS and BARMUSIC to play in the game after adding them in but I hear nothing.

I understand that it's an older port. Any ideas to what I could be doing wrong?

This versions uses a SECTOREFFECTOR to play BARMUSIC, you won't be able to make it work on other ports.

[nukemania]

Fox, on 16 March 2018 - 03:04 AM, said:

According to a magazine with a pre-release version it would include all levels of the Atomic Edition plus the new exclusive ones, so I presume they had it planned. It wasn't because of storage space, since 20% of the data in the CD is filler. But they were heavily limited by the assets they could have loaded in the memory for each individual levels, which may have been a greater problem in The Birth levels, since they uses more textures, sounds, enemies, etc.

Oh, that damn prototype of TMD, if it's the same one I'm thinking of. Never had any luck finding out who was the buyer of one of the copies.

[Lunick]

Fox, on 16 March 2018 - 03:04 AM, said:

According to a magazine with a pre-release version it would include all levels of the Atomic Edition plus the new exclusive ones, so I presume they had it planned. It wasn't because of storage space, since 20% of the data in the CD is filler. But they were heavily limited by the assets they could have loaded in the memory for each individual levels, which may have been a greater problem in The Birth levels, since they uses more textures, sounds, enemies, etc.

Are those Mancar2.map screenshots I see again

[Mav3r1ck]

Fox, on 14 March 2018 - 01:01 PM, said:

You will have to add blending tables to the game before you can use them in maps / con.

I know it's a late reply to this post. What modding tools would you suggest I used to do this?

[Fox]

Mav3r1ck, on 17 March 2018 - 12:52 AM, said:

I know it's a late reply to this post. What modding tools would you suggest I used to do this?

You use this syntax to import a blend table:

https://forums.duke4...post__p__290598

[Fox]

v1.0.3 should fix the cracking noise in the XA music files:

http://www.moddb.com...n-tc-v103-patch

[NNC]

Lunick, on 16 March 2018 - 07:52 PM, said:

Are those Mancar2.map screenshots I see again

I don't know how that crappy multiplayer level screen ended up on the magazines. It had a different author too.

[Fox]

It's not just the magazine, it's actually in that PSX beta.

[NNC]

Fox, on 17 March 2018 - 05:21 AM, said:

It's not just the magazine, it's actually in that PSX beta.

Strange, I don't know how it got there.