[oasiz]

OccludeOlga, on 05 January 2020 - 03:04 PM, said:

Yeah making modern games isn't nearly as fun because there's no meaningful limitations anymore. Part of the joy back then was trying to figure out how to sell the desired illusion with limited tools.

Please kill me


No but on a more serious note, while making complex maps with build can some times be like trying to code with only using POKE and PEEK in basic, you can do some pretty crazy shit.
All the "extreme" detail has removed the room for suspension of disbelief on imaginative solutions to many problems and there is less personality and room for imagination. In a sense ,clean middleware has forced the removal sort of "cartoony" elements that helped to add a sense of escapism, personality and comic relief even to more serious games.

[OpenMaw]

On that same note, when we look at maps for Duke 3D as an example, you know every point, sprite, script, was likely done by one, maybe two people at most. It was one persons ideas from beginning to end for the most part. So when we see "You're not supposed to be here!" or "SUYT" or something marked in there, we know it was that one singular designer who came up with that. It's like sharing a joke with a friend in the heat of the moment.

Whereas now if you want to put some kind of a gag into the game it has to go through everyone, is that PC, is that going to offend people? Then it has to be built, the assets created, placed, lit. Checked, rechecked. Ah it's good.... I don't know, but very often when I play a newer shooter that tries to give a wink and a nudge in that way I just feel a dozen sets of fingerprints all over it and it feels less spontaneous and natural. I'm probably sounding like Lars from Metallica right now, but really... I think there's something to do that. When six guys got together and came up with cool shit to make a game out of, that was better. That's why it feels like the smaller games have all the heart. Because they really do, honestly. It's not that AAA game developers, the actual designers, don't love their job or what they're doing... But when you have 60 goddamn animators on a project, and 20 texture artists, and level designers, and then level artists which are a different sub category... How in all of that can there be anything spontaneous or real? I think that's one reason Doom 2016 still managed to strike those tonal chords, id is still a, or at least it was, smaller company. People over there still do multiple jobs and cross pollinate.

Like when someone goes out and makes a game on their own, warts and all you can feel their imprint and style on it. When 600 people make a game it's much harder to feel an identity.


Hey Charlie, here's another question. Duke Nukem Forever circa the trailer. We see Duke's gloves and pants in the trailer. The pants are blue jeans, the gloves are a dark grey with blue highlights, and his nuke logo. At some point it seems that was changed around a bit, his pants become more black military cargo pants as seen here. I'm curious what was going on with Duke, design wise at that point? It seems like you guys had him a little closer to his Duke 3D look initially and then changed him to be a little more... Professional for his military background, I guess?

[PokeThePower]

HorseDongSub69, on 05 January 2020 - 06:31 PM, said:

Oh weird, I didn't know there were 2 John Andersons.

The 3DR John Anderson always stayed out of the limelight. Really wonderful guy, and the map he made to get hired by 3DR absolutely CRUSHED my submission and was a heavy inspiration to invest more time getting better at Quake mapping in my spare time.

Zaxx, on 05 January 2020 - 09:19 PM, said:

I haven't seen this mentioned yet here (maybe I just didn't read back far enough) but yesterday a dude from 3DR had this to say:

Yeah I think that's what Commando Nukem has been trying to emphasize, nothing in the recent releases is new, just more clips from Fred's old stream. I wouldn't be surprised if they really did delete everything after handing off to GBX and wipe their hands clean and move on. Aside from my memories, that's what I did.

oasiz, on 06 January 2020 - 02:04 PM, said:

Please kill me

oasiz, on 06 January 2020 - 02:04 PM, said:

All the "extreme" detail has removed the room for suspension of disbelief...

Yup, my job is no longer to trigger people's imaginations, but to accurately portray. Even games that try to call back to retro styles struggle because the player base is already ruined. They have images in their head and know the retro style is a choice, not an accomplishment, so they don't really project more into the experience (similar to reading a book). It's taken at face value because they (we) know it COULD look more realistic if that was desired.

Commando Nukem, on 06 January 2020 - 02:35 PM, said:

Hey Charlie, here's another question. Duke Nukem Forever circa the trailer. We see Duke's gloves and pants in the trailer. The pants are blue jeans, the gloves are a dark grey with blue highlights, and his nuke logo. At some point it seems that was changed around a bit, his pants become more black military cargo pants as seen here. I'm curious what was going on with Duke, design wise at that point? It seems like you guys had him a little closer to his Duke 3D look initially and then changed him to be a little more... Professional for his military background, I guess?

We went through so many Duke iterations it's impossible to even remember the order anymore. There's the ones where his eyes are nuke logos, there's Nega Duke, etc. There was almost no time during development we weren't trying out different Duke styles.

[Aristotle Gumball]

Commando Nukem, on 06 January 2020 - 02:35 PM, said:

On that same note, when we look at maps for Duke 3D as an example, you know every point, sprite, script, was likely done by one, maybe two people at most. It was one persons ideas from beginning to end for the most part. So when we see "You're not supposed to be here!" or "SUYT" or something marked in there, we know it was that one singular designer who came up with that. It's like sharing a joke with a friend in the heat of the moment.

You've hit on a big reason why I still play these games. It feels like you're listening to your favorite band's recording and it feels very personal that way. The intellectual labor of just a few individuals and their sense of humor vs a faceless committee.

[ck3D]

Mass production vs. art. Both sides of the coin are in play in literally every creative field, along with the endless dilemma for authors that comes with it. Some great posts just above - wow.

[Kerr Avon]

Commando Nukem, on 04 January 2020 - 05:54 PM, said:

...Duke Nukem movie...

Oh, that might have been fantastic. Granted, most game to movies end up terrible, but that's all the more season to have made a DN3D film. It could have potentially made a great feel-good action comedy, with Duke taking on an alien invasion single-handedly, using just his courage and the weapons he finds (and not using his brain much). It wouldn't have needed too large a budget, it wouldn't have needed to have been Shakespeare, it wouldn't have tried to make any social observations or comments on the failings of the human soul, and the makers needn't worried about being short-listed for the Oscars. Just get people who understood and loved films like the Evil Dead films, Shaun of the Dead, They Live!, even Monty Python's Life of Brian (for the slightly surreal humour), and who weren't interested in winning an Oscar or making the Next Big Thing, and instead just wanted to make a great science-fiction action comedy that would really appeal to both themselves and their potential fan-base (us, basically).

[Kerr Avon]

Commando Nukem, on 05 January 2020 - 05:24 AM, said:

That's the kinda shit I miss from those days. Seeing the creative and interesting ways developers would make things happen.

Yes. Back when an AAA game could have a sense of humour, a sense of scale that wasn't done via the "Let's make it look and play like an interactive movie" method (which most gamers hate, BTW), games tried to have their own identities, and the developers weren't too bound by the limits of the initial design documents. Though you do have to wonder how much of today's modern "Just do it the way we agreed, don't bother experimenting with any new ideas, OK?" management style of stamping out creativity is down to the lessons that DNF's doomed development history taught other developers.

knopparp, on 05 January 2020 - 06:59 AM, said:

This version of the game seriously needs to find its way onto the internet.

Yep. For it's historical value, and to please hardcore fans who just want anything Duke related, and in the small but wonderful chance that it can be made into some sort of playable game. Being able to play if finally would be amazing. And might take away the still lingering disappoints of the 2011 version.

ryche, on 05 January 2020 - 07:07 AM, said:

It was due to a military move. I was allowed only so much weight and just had a new born with all her stuff to move so we cleaned out what we didn’t “need”. Like I said, I regret getting rid of some of those issues. But they’d probably be collecting dust here too.

Can you not find scans of the magazines to download? Not as good as the real thing to most people, aside from being able to store many of them on DVD-R on on your hard drive), but better than nothing.

oasiz, on 06 January 2020 - 02:04 PM, said:

All the "extreme" detail has removed the room for suspension of disbelief on imaginative solutions to many problems and there is less personality and room for imagination. In a sense ,clean middleware has forced the removal sort of "cartoony" elements that helped to add a sense of escapism, personality and comic relief even to more serious games.

On a tangent to that thought, I've always thought that there was something missing or 'off' about the buildings in many first or third person games made since the mid/late 2000's or so. I couldn't place it, but then someone else summed it up in a sentence; [words to the effect of] "Realistic buildings in modern games look boring, unless there's a unique or catchy art style involved". And it's so true. In real life, I never consider if a building looks boring or not (though I do notice particularly note-worthy or unusual buildings), but in games, for some reason, a normal building on a good engine seems dull and un-enticing, as though it's missing something that it doesn't have (at least visually) in real life.

[OpenMaw]

You know what they often don't have?

Shit happening.Very few FPS games with a lot of building structures are actually doing anything with them other than building walls.

If you look at Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior would be a really good example for the time too, as well as SiN. Structures and buildings that were trying for realism basically went halfway, and then let the level design over-ride realism where necessary.

That was one of the reasons Half-Life 2 tried to at least use a visual look that wasn't normal for cities. Instead of the original New York setting they went with the Eastern Post- USSR bombed out look. Gave it some character.

[Zaxx]

Commando Nukem, on 07 January 2020 - 08:13 PM, said:

That was one of the reasons Half-Life 2 tried to at least use a visual look that wasn't normal for cities. Instead of the original New York setting they went with the Eastern Post- USSR bombed out look. Gave it some character.

That's a great point and as someone who grew up in a place that used to look like that I always had a special appreciation for HL2. I think that back in the day the boring "US city" setting made a bit more sense though simply because that was just easier to translate visually. You put in a simple shape, put some windows on it and there, American skycraper, meanwhile for example this is how the building Valve based on HL2's train station looks like:

The game doesn't really do it justice, no? Even in 2004 a lot of stuff had to be simplified because old buildings are just more complex and I feel that's why we haven't seen many shooters that take place in Europe for example. I still remember when I first played the Berlin map in No One Lives Forever as a kid and I was like "nah, that's not how Berlin looks like" because the buildings looked like boxes. When I played Wolf TNO that's when I felt that yeah, this is Berlin, they seemingly even researched Nazi architecture / city planning and it was just fucking great.

Also: Europe has thousands of years of history so naturally any European setting will work well in creating atmosphere because the old shit has character compared to the new shit and places like the US really didn't spend all that much time in the period of the old shit.

And for something completely different: compared to stuff like Duke or Half-Life 2 what I really miss from today's shooters is just how dynamic the old stuff was. Duke 3D had interactivity, destructible walls and environmental objects, stuff that just made the gameplay feel more alive while HL2's interactivity was 10 steps above that with all the physics manipulation going on. I want another FPS where I can kill people by shooting them with a toilet.

I'm replaying all the HL2 stuff with MMod these days and sometimes I'm just amazed at how dynamic the game feels like and simply the amount of crazy shit you can do is insane:

A 15 year old game, people and nothing really managed to come close in this aspect ever since it came out. It's insane, the game industry sucks.

[OpenMaw]

OccludeOlga, on 06 January 2020 - 09:09 PM, said:

We went through so many Duke iterations it's impossible to even remember the order anymore. There's the ones where his eyes are nuke logos, there's Nega Duke, etc. There was almost no time during development we weren't trying out different Duke styles.

What was the target/main resolution for textures in the DNF 99-2002 era? They look very crisp, if I had to guess 256x256 or so?

[ck3D]

^^ Always thought one of the reasons why the Roch maps ever got so popular is that they were amongst the first to successfully recreate European-looking environments in Duke 3D, thereby directly hitting the right notes for the European audience (all the while remaining classic enough in looks not to lose the Duke feel for the rest of the world, thanks to relying on the stock tiles etc.). If you live in an old city/country and haven't seen much of the rest of the world with your own eyes yet, you can only relate to skyscrapers so much. In a way, Roch kind of helped port the Duke universe over a more universal scope of familiarity for players worldwide, which would also explain the abundance of European user map releases in the early to mid 00's. Those maps were essentially a demo that credible European cities were designable in that game.

[Zaxx]

Yeah, I remember the Roch series being great fun too (I've not seen those maps in ages though, gotta revisit some day to see how they hold up), it's just that it would have been amazing if he used custom textures instead of the base Duke 3D stuff but I know that's not realistic criticism, especially not in the days those maps were made.

The partially European setting is why I like the 5th episode in Duke World Tour too, I don't think the maps are particularly fantastic but the "Duke goes around the world" concept was a moment when I shouted "FINALLY!!!". I just remember being baffled when I was playing DNF and almost a third of the game took place at the Hoover Dam and I just didn't understand what the appeal was. It's just a dam, I didn't care for it at all and it was just an example to the tunnel vision of American filmmakers and game developers ("yeah, the aliens only attack the US, who cares about the rest of the world?"). You know, I'm sure that for American people the Hoover Dam is an interesting thing but literally nobody else would ever be interested in going there in a videogame.

[ck3D]

Interestingly, for one as a European I loved the Hoover Dam... in the DNF 2013 Duke 3D mod; I think it's one of my favorite user maps made for that game.



Wouldn't be surprised if in the actual DNF it was boring as shit though. Personally I'm pretty convinced most every scenery can be taken and reinterpreted into an interesting video game experience (especially such impressive real-life structures as the Hoover Dam), it's just that execution is everything. One can't just rely on aesthetics for good level design and expect it to magically work.

Also had Pascal used custom art, I'm sure the impact of his maps would have been a lot weaker. They wouldn't have been as much of a display of the core possibilities of Duke 3D design and instead would have felt more like a splendid one-off TC thing, at least I remember what a lot of people found interesting at the time was how they relied on nothing but the stock art to reinvent urban looks in Duke 3D, leading to them trying to do the same thing with their own personally familiar environments. Custom art might have looked better or opened different doors, but for one I'm kind of happy Pascal took a raw approach.

I also appreciated the Duke goes around the world theme of WT but honestly the only memorable moment in that episode for me is the SF map. Despite being enjoyable, the other city maps are mostly interchangeable, just with different textures and the Moscow level is just an excuse for another hi-tech base. The theme had a lot of potential, but I feel like it was tackled with no sincere ambition and overly relied on gimmicks to disguise classic levels that wouldn't even need the costume to be functional, instead of seriously considering the architecture of the locations the player visits.

[Zaxx]

Yep, World Tour sure had quite a bit of "See this nice location we have here? Okay so now we enter the dark, boring underground facility!", that's partially why I think that the level design itself is not that amazing, it's just finally some variety in the setting.

And I agree with you on the Hoover Dam in DNF 2013: a dam or a bridge is a setting that I feel generally lends itself well to FPS level design, it was just jarring to see how much time DNF wastes on the dam compared to more interesting locations even if you stick to the US in the whole game. As a 30 minute long "filler" section with some cool map layout it's totally fine.

[OpenMaw]

Zaxx, on 08 January 2020 - 01:33 AM, said:

Yep, World Tour sure had quite a bit of "See this nice location we have here? Okay so now we enter the dark, boring underground facility!", that's partially why I think that the level design itself is not that amazing, it's just finally some variety in the setting.

And I agree with you on the Hoover Dam in DNF 2013: a dam or a bridge is a setting that I feel generally lends itself well to FPS level design, it was just jarring to see how much time DNF wastes on the dam compared to more interesting locations even if you stick to the US in the whole game. As a 30 minute long "filler" section with some cool map layout it's totally fine.

The Hoover Dam is one of those early-stage hiccups for DNF. One of the key reasons for the upgrade to Unreal was that George didn't think they could do the Dam justice on Quake tech. Which is technically untrue - Half-Life and Sin both took shots at dams. There's a usermap for Quake based on a Dam Would sacrifices have to be made? Yes, but it was entirely doable, I think.

I think that whole of the dam just became a bit of an obsession for George. Hence why it becomes half the game it feels like. Of course it has no big pay off as initially intended (The super Battlelord, etc)

[NNC]

Zaxx, on 07 January 2020 - 11:56 PM, said:

Yeah, I remember the Roch series being great fun too (I've not seen those maps in ages though, gotta revisit some day to see how they hold up), it's just that it would have been amazing if he used custom textures instead of the base Duke 3D stuff but I know that's not realistic criticism, especially not in the days those maps were made.

The partially European setting is why I like the 5th episode in Duke World Tour too, I don't think the maps are particularly fantastic but the "Duke goes around the world" concept was a moment when I shouted "FINALLY!!!". I just remember being baffled when I was playing DNF and almost a third of the game took place at the Hoover Dam and I just didn't understand what the appeal was. It's just a dam, I didn't care for it at all and it was just an example to the tunnel vision of American filmmakers and game developers ("yeah, the aliens only attack the US, who cares about the rest of the world?"). You know, I'm sure that for American people the Hoover Dam is an interesting thing but literally nobody else would ever be interested in going there in a videogame.

I'm a huge fan of my old continent's culture and aesthetics, but I'm on the polar opposite side of what you and MRCK have said about leveldesign. I just don't think Duke's (or generally FPS games) atmosphere works well with Europe, since IMHO the old style glitz just doesn't look good in a stylized, game-y format, and this might be the reason why I don't like Roch anymore, and why I prefer Mirage Barrage and Golden Carnage in episode 5, as they have the classic Duke aesthetics (especially the latter). It seems to be one of the reasons why I don't click with usermaps as well, as 90% of them came from Europe, and people here have a different eye when it comes to leveldesign.

[necroslut]

The Watchtower, on 09 January 2020 - 04:06 AM, said:

I'm a huge fan of my old continent's culture and aesthetics, but I'm on the polar opposite side of what you and MRCK have said about leveldesign. I just don't think Duke's (or generally FPS games) atmosphere works well with Europe, since IMHO the old style glitz just doesn't look good in a stylized, game-y format, and this might be the reason why I don't like Roch anymore, and why I prefer Mirage Barrage and Golden Carnage in episode 5, as they have the classic Duke aesthetics (especially the latter). It seems to be one of the reasons why I don't click with usermaps as well, as 90% of them came from Europe, and people here have a different eye when it comes to leveldesign.

I think it can be done well, but this requires both a whole new set of art/textures, as well as probably a different approach to the buildings. I agree that it generally doesn't look good in Duke maps/mods – I always thought Roch, while impressive from a technical perspective, looks quite ugly. There are plenty of 2D games that did classic european architecture well though, and I think it could be done – some of the Tomb Raider games did a decent job IMO.

[NNC]

Btw. I don't think we have missed anything noteworthy with the final version of DNF, as it seems they had all these BS ideas as early as 2001, like adding RPG elements to the game and such. Well, that's not correct, I think the night aesthetics were definitely missing from the final game, ruined daylight Vegas was just as generic place as it can be, but honestly, that's all. The Hoover Dam and even the night Vegas could have been a nice pair of levels in Duke 3D and the Build engine though. We got that fix in Duke 2013 TC as well.

I'm more in favour of getting some Duke3D betas, especially seeing Levelord's levels in episode 4 when he left them and before others started bastardizing them, also seeing those much bigger (and probably much better) versions of some episode 3 levels before the cutting is shipping and framerate sucks policies castrated them.

[NNC]

necroslut, on 09 January 2020 - 04:10 AM, said:

I think it can be done well, but this requires both a whole new set of art/textures, as well as probably a different approach to the buildings. I agree that it generally doesn't look good in Duke maps/mods – I always thought Roch, while impressive from a technical perspective, looks quite ugly. There are plenty of 2D games that did classic european architecture well though, and I think it could be done – some of the Tomb Raider games did a decent job IMO.

I definitely agree with a new texture set but even that only works with modified assets too (ie enemies). For example in episode 5, we had new textures, but original textures and enemies just didn't work with them. Doom also has this problem as some megawads use various flashy texture sets, but the original enemies like the Caco looks as fake in them as a $7 bill.

[necroslut]

The Watchtower, on 09 January 2020 - 04:18 AM, said:

I definitely agree with a new texture set but even that only works with modified assets too (ie enemies). For example in episode 5, we had new textures, but original textures and enemies just didn't work with them. Doom also has this problem as some megawads use various flashy texture sets, but the original enemies like the Caco looks as fake in them as a $7 bill.

When I said "whole new set" I meant like all new assets – a new game, pretty much. I think Mirage Barrage suffered from some of this.

[Mark]

Zaxx, on 07 January 2020 - 10:17 PM, said:

I wonder how many people complained that there was no steam hissing pipe when a radiator was ripped from the floor?

[Tea Monster]

I don't remember anyone thinking that at the time. I think most of us were just hyped on the ultraviolence of being able to headshot enemies with an iron radiator.

[OpenMaw]

Tea Monster, on 09 January 2020 - 09:11 AM, said:

I don't remember anyone thinking that at the time. I think most of us were just hyped on the ultraviolence of being able to headshot enemies with an iron radiator.

All ya gotta do is go watch that first live demonstration that they did with Gabe. The laughter and woops pretty much sum up the excitement.

8:50 mark is just before the magic begins:

[Zaxx]

Duke fans by the time DNF 2001 leaks:

[Radar]

Except instead of Jimmy Hoffa we'll be talking about either Randy or Fredo?

>Hacks 3DR and leaks DNF 2001 to the public
>Decades later in the retirement home:

"Randy was a good man, you know? Had a nice family too, huh? I never wanted it to go that far... I picked the community over them. Fuck 'em."

[Svanis]

I know someone said this before but isn't the 2002 version much further along than 2001, with the switch to the renderer happening around 2003? It would suck if what was released is an earlier build (2001) instead of one with more polish (2002).

Looks to be a nice vibrant game with good graphics for the time, better than say NOLF or SoF:II. The rain effect looks really good. It wasn't long after this and Doom 3 that games started going in that super dark and drab direction as developers wanted to toy with dynamic lighting and shadows. Far Cry maybe an exception.

Anyone knows what the line of text says when Duke is looking at dead EDF soldiers? Is there a pulse scanner in his shades?

[OpenMaw]

Svanis, on 13 January 2020 - 12:00 PM, said:

Anyone knows what the line of text says when Duke is looking at dead EDF soldiers? Is there a pulse scanner in his shades?

If i'm not mistaken is displays their name and other data.

[PokeThePower]

Commando Nukem, on 07 January 2020 - 11:06 PM, said:

What was the target/main resolution for textures in the DNF 99-2002 era? They look very crisp, if I had to guess 256x256 or so?

[Carma]

OccludeOlga, on 13 January 2020 - 08:53 PM, said:

I have been following this forum for over 15 years but never posted anything. That's because my English is terrible. I can read and understand everything you guys say, my problem is writing in English.

But anyway, I find the history of DNF's development fascinating.
I have some questions:

- In 2007 when it was decided to release DNF for consoles as well, they had to cut several portions of the game to run well on the consoles. What portions and segments were cut? It was around this time 3DRealms decided to change the DNF's style from RPG to a more straightforward FPS?

I mean, several scenes that appears in the 2001 trailer also appear in the 2003 and 2006 gameplay videos (Duke on the speedboat, the hologram of the woman dancing in front of the hotel, among others)

But none of these scenes appear in the final game. The scenes in the 2001, 2003 and 2006 videos seem to be from the same game. But the final game does not.
I would like to know which portions, story, segments of the game were cut when they ported the game to the consoles.

- If I remember correctly, Bomshell does not appear in any image or video from 2001 onwards.. She only appears in the 1998 Quake engine trailer.
Did she ever exist in the Unreal engine?
And Gus?

- The final game ends from nothing. Does the game end like this because of the cuts they had to make when porting the game to the consoles?

I wonder how different the game would be if it were released for PC only.

Sorry for my english!

[HulkNukem]

Never apologize for your english; many, MANY people that only speak english as their only language can't even do it correctly.