[SixelAlexiS]

Hello!

I want to play Duke Nukem 3D since I never did. I have the "Megaton Edition" on Steam, but the mouse movement is really sh**y, sluggish, lagging and it moves like on a grid, it skip pixel... it's a mess.

So while searching online for a solution (didn't find) I came across of EDuke32, I tried the game with this and... WOW, the mouse movement is perfect, it plays just right.

Now I have some questions (I looked at the Wiki but I still don't get some things):

1- what is the best difficulty to start?
2- what autoaim actually do in this game? It's set on "always" by default...
3- what's the difference of render between "polymer", "polymost" and "classic"? (I saw that polymer add lights but not like in the Eduke homepage - I don't have the "cinema" red light on the palace wall - and seems to have wider FOV)
4- can you select the exact aspect ratio of the game (I play on a 5:4 monitor, full resolution is 1280x1024)?
5- the aim cursor looks squashed from the side, isn't proportioned, is this normal?

That's it for now, thank you for any help!!!

[Phredreeke]

2- My understanding is it adjusts the vertical aim when you fire. If you're playing with mouse you should turn it off. Also makes it next to impossible to shrink mini Battlelords
3- Classic renders the game the way the original DOS version does. Polymost and Polymer are hardware accelerated renderers for the game. Polymost is the fastest but as you noticed Polymer has more features, although it doesn't support the awesome voxel pack

[Danukem]

Phredreeke, on 19 March 2018 - 03:02 AM, said:

2- My understanding is it adjusts the vertical aim when you fire.

Horizontal, too. It's an early example of the feature we now know as "aim assist".

As for difficulty, as a modern player with great mouse support and higher framerate compared with players in the old days, I would say go ahead and play on Come Get Some. That's the difficulty where you encounter all the enemies that were placed in the level, but they don't respawn.

[VGA]

I suggest you play at the normal difficulty, Let's Rock, with autoaim didabled. Also, if the game is smooth with the Polymer renderer, use that, otherwise use Polymost.

Some of the custom maps people have created have lights and are made for the Polymer renderer.

[NightFright]

SixelAlexiS, on 19 March 2018 - 02:52 AM, said:

[...] I don't have the "cinema" red light on the palace wall [...]

Such effects will only be added while using the Polymer renderer in combination with maphacks. These usually come bundled with the HRP (highres pack), but you can also get a much more lightweight version. Here's how:

1) Drop this file (duke3d_maphacks.zip, 1.8 MB) as-is into a subdir in your EDuke32 folder labelled "autoload". Those are the latest maphacks taken from the HRP SVN (r699).
2) Launch EDuke32 and make sure both the Polymer and Enable "autoload" folder checkboxes are ticked.
3) In the ingame menu, make sure that dynamic lights are activated (Display Setup > Polymer Setup > Dynamic Lights: ON).

Please note that Polymer has higher system requirements than the other renderers and may show occasional rendering glitches in some more custom maps you can download, but for the official episodes (or addons) it should be OK. Also don't expect fancy "bling-bling" effects like the one you pointed out in your quote when playing custom maps. These need to be hacked into the maps, and only maphacks for the official maps are really sophisticated with Polymer-specific light definitions. In fact, the maphacks I compiled for you are only covering Duke3D and its three commercial addons. The HRP contains more maphacks, but these usually only take care of sprite alignment for model replacements and wouldn't be interesting for you.

[TheDragonLiner]

I just want to add a small thing a lot of people seem to forget about the auto-aiming feature : it's the fact that if you use the pistol with auto-aim you can freaking snipe everybody from insane distances !

It makes certain maps like LA Rumble kinda easy as long as you don't aim too up or too down to keep it working . Personally even with mouse control I keep auto-aim active just because of that because it makes the pistol (and expander) an excellent longrange hitscan with common ammo >_>
I don't know about you but the bullet spray with the pistol without it is just ridiculous ...

Also it's nice that you can make it so that auto-aiming doesn't apply to projectile weapons because it renders Battlelords likely to be shrunk and you can also try and shoot rockets arround enemies' feet to avoid them dodging ^^

[Steve 64]

Yeah megaton never had the best controls I had to use xpadder to make it good

[Phredreeke]

Polymer can also make the game harder, as enemies don't cast shadows unless there's a spot light

[Forge]

SixelAlexiS, on 19 March 2018 - 02:52 AM, said:

I want to play Duke Nukem 3D since I never did.

Play it close to original the first time, so you get the feel of the original game and how it was intended to be played.
Then mess with polymer, polymost, HRP, and all the other settings and addons.

Quote

1- what is the best difficulty to start?
2- what autoaim actually do in this game? It's set on "always" by default...
3- what's the difference of render between "polymer", "polymost" and "classic"? (I saw that polymer add lights but not like in the Eduke homepage - I don't have the "cinema" red light on the palace wall - and seems to have wider FOV)
4- can you select the exact aspect ratio of the game (I play on a 5:4 monitor, full resolution is 1280x1024)?
5- the aim cursor looks squashed from the side, isn't proportioned, is this normal?

1. Come Get Some, or Let's Rock
2. leave it on - like in the original. For a little extra challenge in later play-throughs turn it off so you actually shoot where you aim - since the mouse works well with this port, it's nice to be able to this effectively.
3. use classic the first time (see nightfright's post about using maphacks for later play-throughs)
4. choose your resolution & turn widescreen mode on or off - best solution off the top of my head
5. see #4. If you use auto-aim, you can remove the crosshair (or adjust its size) from the game options menu

just my opinion.