#EDUKE32

[thorndvst]

There's a fucking horrible ass area in Duke Nukem 3D—I was playing it a bit yesterday and holy fuck the strip club in level 2 is the most eye-straining bullshit of all time. It has really painful strobe lights that makes it hard to see on top of being a dark area, so you both can't see anything because of dark, forcing you to look closely, but you *also* have horrible flickering lights in that same area so it just hurts, and it's a mandatory area to go into!!! I was playing it through Eduke32 and I'm surprised there's no accessability options to make flashing light effects less bad or even remove them. Does anybody know of anything for this game specifically that might help??

[hydralisk98]

7dfps jam entry's dev diary 0x0, braindump for a non-violent retro toy

Raw brainstorming about making my very own first person game jam entry. (Two-to-four itch games were 2D cool pieces to learn and will continue some with Mosi before actually making more diverse entries engine-wise)

DAY 0x1:

Keywords

Moodboard

Mindmaps

Study some games and make a research document (Table of credits, specifications and all things documentation)

Imagination cardboard tests and writing prompts on paper "thesis"

Tools, game engine & other technological choices and narrow it down to MVP vague specifications

DAY 0x2:

Choose and gather free public domain assets (especially audio & misc multimedia boilerplates)

Engage with 7dfps dev community

Start thinking about how go with the competition, the "requests" and accessibility in mind

Prototype gameplay loops

Playtest by myself and fix issues as they arise

DAY 0x2

Sketch map layouts

Sketch game assets

Summarize engine-related systems

Implement at broader scales

DAY 0x3:

Tinker around with initial game assets

Craft the feature core of my tiny-packed systemic design

Learn the relevant documentation for the project's engine

Take advantage of engine features

Get started with alpha playtesting it to other people and gather the feedback

DAY 0x4:

Beta players' responding and tweaking from feedback

May expand with swappable assets, additional gameplay systems and level scriptables

Open up the infrastructure for modifications (FLOSS repository, website page entry, seek peer-review for technical documentation and all things making it more community-friendly)

DAY 0x5+0x6

Fixing last bugs

Quality of life

Polish

Creative frontend assets

Writing down-to-heart descriptions and tags

Publish

Curate

Promote

Pitch it to my family

Gather reviews data

Respond to comments & reviews

NOTE

Also yes, I thank each one of you so much for sticking by with my 30k+32 posts (99% are reblogs apparently, welp), 310 following comrades and a handful of awesome conversations since I registered back around July 2015. It really make me blush and it motivates my humble brain as to keep going.

\\(^*^)//

[autolenaphilia]

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem 3D, developed by 3D Realms is a showcase for Ken Silverman’s Build engine. It was not the only game to use the Build engine, nor even the first but it was the most popular and successful game to use it. It wasn’t even the first Duke Nukem game, but it’s success overshadowed the two platform games that preceded it.

At the core of Duke Nukem 3D is solid Doom-like “boomer shooter” action. It’s a game about shooting things, more than plot. The plot is, aliens have invaded and kidnapped Earth’s women, and now action hero Duke Nukem must stop them, it doesn’t go any deeper.

And the levels don’t deviate that far from the Doom formula either. Functionally it’s about exploring the often complex and maze-like levels, defeating the enemies, and finding key cards to unlock doors to progress and find the exit to the next level.Duke Nukem 3d also has the episodic structure of the original Doom, so the game is divided into sets of levels. The game originally shipped with three episodes in January 1996, but 3D Realms developed a fourth episode released first as an expansion pack and later bundled with the main game in december as Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition released in December 1996. That’s the version I bought and played for this review, using eduke32.

Duke Nukem 3D massively expanded on the Doom formula in ways that were very innovative for the time, and allowed it to compete successfully with ID Software’s own Quake, released that year, despite that game featuring actual 3D.

The Build engine wasn’t real 3D, in that it couldn’t do proper “room-over-room”, which is the hallmark of true 3D. Instead it was 2.5D, like the Doom engine that inspired it. In such an enginethe level designer can’t create a house with two floors, one floor over the other, or a platform that the player character can both walk on and walk under. Things can have different elevations, but the engine can’t actually handle all three dimensions fully.

Except the Build engine allowed the devs to fake room-over-room with various means. The basis o this trick is that two different sectors or rooms could overlap on the map, as long as they weren’t seen at the same time. Using portals to other sectors and seamless teleports of the player, including on stairs, it could fake 3D space. And this is used to great effect in Duke Nukem 3D. The level cans often feel like true 3D, and knowing that it really isn’t only makes the design more impressive.

The Build engine also allowed for basically all of its levels to be modified on-the-fly, which is also exploited very well in Duke Nukem 3D. Years before Red Faction, you could destroy parts of the environment to proceed, like blow a hole in the wall to create a new path (often marked by Zelda-esque cracks in the wall), or blow up entire buildings to proceed, both to find secrets and as part of required progression through the levels.

In addition, Duke Nukem 3D had a more realistic level design that earlier FPS games. Both Doom games were fairly abstract mazes, even when Doom II tried to depict cities on Earth it was more a suggestion than anything meaningfully detailed. Even Quake, which came out after Duke Nukem 3D and was actually 3D used a Doomesque abstract level design. But Duke Nukem 3D succeded at depicting realistic locations more so than anything that came before it. You get a cinema, a bookstore, a bank, a hotel and a subway station. Like they are not entirely realistic, but there are clear representations of real-life things and realistic enough to work. It does indulge in Doom-like space techbases in episode 2, but otherwise the settings are more realistic

Duke could do a lot more than most FPS protags bar maybe the System Shock hacker (who also had a true 3D engine to work with). You can put on scuba gear and go swimming (going from the surface to underwater is maybe one of the more obvious teleports, but still pretty seamless.). You can find a jetpack and fly around the level and find secrets. You find a shrinker weapon that can shrink even the toughest non-boss enemy to a harmless tiny creature that Duke just steps on with his boots. And you can be shrunk yourself and go through tiny crawlspaces. Also Duke could talk, and specific situations triggered situation-appropriate oneliners, impressive for 1996.

There are some problems. Gameplay-wise, the levels can be very maze-like, and it can be confusing and frustrating to find your way. There are also some really dumb switch puzzles which give you 3-4 on/off switches and it’s just inputting combinations, bruteforcing the puzzle, until you find the right one, a waste of time. But overall the level design holds up, how the levels twist in on themselves is sometimes really fun and engaging to find out.

Of course, maze-like level design and dumb puzzles isn’t the whole extent of Duke Nukem 3D’s problems. Let’s talk about the babes for a minute, the portrayal of women in this game.

Of course the traditional defense of Duke Nukem is that it’s all a joke. And yeah, Duke himself definitely is meant as a joke, a parody of 80s bodybuilder action heroes, complete with one-liners stolen from other movies. He’s an obvious example of 90s-era irony. And some of the humor works. My favorite joke in the game is that Duke leaves each level by finding and hitting the level’s self-destruct button. It’s bombastic on a literal level, but a subtle enough comment on the violent destruction of action movie heroism that it’s still funny. Way less subtle, but still fun is the fact that one of the most common enemies are pig cops, once human cops who have been turned into literal anthropomorphic pigs.

Still the joke doesn’t go far enough to truly subvert the macho misogyny of Duke. If Duke views women as sex objects, the game doesn’t contradict him on that point. Women in this game exist literally to be sexy décor scattered around the levels, and not much else. The sexy scantily clad women in this game are silly, but they are probably meant to also be unironically titillating.

Still, again it’s not too bad. Duke is played with enough self-aware humor to not be totally obnoxious, helped by Jon St. John’s charismatic and rightfully iconic voice acting. And the sexy ladies are so silly that it takes the edge out of the offensiveness. Strippers continuing their dancing oblivious while an alien invasion is literally going on around them are just too silly. The game overall is so light on plot that both the babes and Duke as a character only appear occasionally. It’s a game focused on the gameplay, and the gameplay is good.

Duke Nukem 3D is ultimately just fun to play. There is some great action here, with a nice weapon and enemy variety to keep you going. And it’s impressive how the game pushes against the technical limitations of its engine.

The best way to play Duke Nukem 3D is buying the Atomic Edition on the obscure but legit digital games store Zoom-Platform, which sells the game without drm and also includes pretty much everything officially released for Duke Nukem3D. This includes all four episodes made by 3D Realms and the official expansions made by other developers. And while you can play the original game by emulating MS-DOS via Dosbox, the best way is probably the eduke32 sourceport which allows you to play the game natively on modern systems.

[meow-77]

every copy of windows should come with eduke32 and prboom-plus

[doom-nerdo-666]

"Today I found out an incredible Duke Nukem 3D custom level that I think it's worth sharing: It's called Memories, made by the veteran Build Engine modder Zykov Eddy. It's inspired by oldschool 90s level design with new gimmicks and experimentation, it's amazing and worth a shot."

"You can get it in the link bellow, it requires the latest version of the Eduke32 source port:"

[thathomestar]

started capturing dopefish footage finally, tried to do duke nukem 3d but amd relive won't pick up either megaton edition or eduke32 so i'll have to just use obs for that one

[steelybel]

any more recs for 32 bit software? somehow fucking EDUKE32 let me down and hasnt been compatible with xp for like nearly a decade - they oughta update their stupid website!

[hydralisk98]

This radiates some strong Doctor Wallace Breen Combine Advisor/Overseer Grub energy. And I am all too content to post a rebel Spirit GIF exactly for such a purposeful reaction. Get baked into some Vortigaunt food, smelly collaborator!

I will bring some bigger toys into the ring than what government boy (aka Gman) is even prepared for!

(Also dearly Valve, cool meta-narrative but when are you gonna fix the situation where us, the community, desires more Half-Life 2 beta-related content & more transparent communications + open sourcing utilities?)

In any case, I will try my hand at bringing some bigger toys into the ring than even what government boy (aka Gman) is even capable to deal with! I got some profound meta lore of my own to unravel (turns out somewhat like Destiny 2 Lightfall story arc because I do enjoy the Witness character alot) and got quite a violently optimistic yet down-to-earth grounded vision to express.

(Too much pessimism and reserve nowadays, let's upgrade the tone and libre quality tooling at once, like how EDUKE32, Ion Fury, Dusk, Kex Quake 1 and Ken Silverman engines' crafting shows)

Helluva Boss is my newest motorcycle of the mind, get blessed by my words or get ready for my own Penance Stare...

source

[duke3dmaps]

Interpolation coming to EDuke32 soon

[inmost-dens]

There’s a new Blood sourceport in town - NBlood. Based off of EDuke32 NBlood features both software and polymost renderers, 1.21 demo support as well as DEF/HRP support.

You can find the thread and download links here.

[mileena--kahnumm]

[RedNeck Rampage Music Intensifies]

[terminusest13]

If you think about it, it would be possible to remake yume nikki in gzdoom

It would be very possible, yes.

In fact, someone’s already worked at recreating Yume Nikki in EDuke32, and has even added a custom campaign.

https://gamejolt.com/games/yume-nikki-3d/18055

[hydralisk98]

I fear sleep tonight so I plan a computation game engine?

Long story cut short, I have recurring nightmares as of the last few nights and get very (innerly) mad at some people in my household for irresponsible behaviors & patterns that trigger that situation in the first place. Very unpleasant.

So instead of being a jerk, I am taking that frustration of the last week and putting it into something more productive. Aka preparing the work for a game engine workflow similar somewhat chronologically from a 2D TEXTMODE tilemap game (think around SG-1000 specifications) and then extruding / developing my own ways towards a customized contemporary mashup between BUILD2 & Qodot. (With a first person dungeon "Gridder" game in-between amongst other things in relative order)

Still gonna make a quick few demo levels in Unity solely for taking advantage of the 'Pixel Crushers' packages in order to then emulate such into Godot / whatever custom engine I go forward to. But it is not the main priority, as really I want to learn how to make much bottom-up and derive my very own workflow into a new "territory" / ecological niche.

Mosi (TEXTMODE) -> Unity (TILEMAP) -> Maze Wars-like (Futuristic Gridder) -> Raycaster (Rise of Triad / OpenAleph) -> DOOM-clone (Xngine TheElderScrolls Daggerfall) -> EDUKE32-tier (Blood) -> Quake 1 (Ironwail sourceport) -> Quake 2 [...] -> Red Eclipse (Tesseract / Lobster)

I have yet to design specific aesthetic assets, themes, mechanics, level modules, layouts and a couple more things but hopefully I get the studying and iterating going as to reach that level of great versatile optimal toybox editor tools but yk, that's a decent starting point. But I am most likely gonna emulate "Red Eclipse" / "Quake 1" mechanically with a very... soft warm NPR aesthetic and a handful of content editing arrangements along the way. Definitely taking hints from existing tutorials I curate and gonna expand onto my own specifications for a truly empowering experience for dirt-cheap hardware.

[carrollstreetstation]

WW2GI and the saving private ryan TC for duke nukem 3D: a level-by-level breakdown

EPISODE 1: D-DAY

the first half of the game starts off with a bang as you're dropped right into it with the omaha beach landings; from there you'll go on through the hedgerows and villages of normandy, killing nazis left and right and dying... again... and again... and again. according to the credits, we can thank tuoma "tuco" korva and lado "icebreaker" crnologar for the level design, but i've no way of telling you who did which.

E1L1: d-day what's more iconic in united states military history during WW2 than omaha beach? this recreation of the bloody battle might not be as lethal as the real thing, but it sure is nearly as nightmarish. the game throws you in deep real fast and you're forced to learn, through trial and error, the basics of the game, all the while random explosions and bullets out of nowhere will cut your gameplay short. you'd think they'd at least give us some basic training... even medal of honor frontline was more forgiving.

E1L2: atlantic wall omaha beach, part 2. you're alone for this one, you and several dozen enemy troops as you work your way through a complex of shattered bunkers and rail lines. not much sense to the layout on this one, though cool carnage as a row of parked trucks are annihilated in an artillery explosion -- along with all the nazi goons hiding behind them.

E1L3: defend you meet up with some friendlies just in time for a panicked radio message -- a squad is pinned down under enemy fire and need help. working your way through a flooded village and a forest infested with nazis, you eventually come upon the squad, hiding in some foxholes as a couple dozen enemy mysteriously teleport in by a hedgerow on the far end of the field. aside from some extra ammo, you also get access to an artillery strike via radio and a mortar launcher. hold out long enough and a gate will open with reinforcements behind, and the exit beyond.

E1L4: hunt for the 88s jesus christ. if you managed to get through the d-day map without getting too frustrated you may wind up throwing in the towel on this one, an extremely dark night mission in the woods where the enemy can see you but you can't see them, and they always have insanely good aim. the one thing it has going for it is a pretty cool scripted sequence where you and a squad of guys traverse a bit of forest, exchanging some bad banter -- very cool for the build engine! and then they all die in an ambush, leaving you to play audie murphy -- again.

E1L5: finding private mccurkee first of all, lol. second of all, this mission is actually almost fun. a ruined little town teeming with enemy, you'll have an opportunity to use a rifle to pop enemies from a distance, which will be useful as there's plenty of snipers. a mortar team will make your life hell near the end. it's fun working your way through the ruined buildings and finding ways to climb up into otherwise inaccessible rooms.

E1L6: saving private mccurkee did you like e1l5? how would you like to do it again, only this time in reverse, in the dark, and with an NPC in tow that you have to babysit -- assuming he doesn't get his dumb ass stuck in the foxhole right at the beginning of the level and then you don't notice he's done it so you save your game like a dumbass and now you have to noclip through the gate at the end because the idiot doesn't know how to climb?

yeah. i didn't like e1l6.

E1L7: mop up the final mission of the d-day episode is a mercifully daytime shootout across a semi-detatched military complex in which you shoot a bunch of nazis, blow up some tanks, dodge some artillery fire and, in the end, lay waste to a small, fenced-in compound guarded by SS, who distinguish themselves from regular grunts by their distinctive black uniforms and red nazi armbands. just hanging around them lowers your morale; ignoring the fact that the morale system makes no sense, this does amusingly give rise to the idea that the SS are so evil that they can sap you on a psychic level.

i mean, that's true of nazis today.

final thoughts: not a good first half. maybe three or four of the levels are salvageable; the rest are unmitigated shit, especially e1l4. while this is very likely the first-ever WW2 FPS to feature the omaha beach landings and the normandy invasion at large, it's a novelty at best, an exercise in frustration that shows the limits both of the engine and the designers' talents.

EPISODE 2: FRANCE

not sure what exactly distinguishes this episode from the previous, except that it's perhaps a continuation of the battle of normandy? who knows. regardless, it's another 7 levels of this shit, because they couldn't see what they did in episode 1 and think "we've done enough damage."

E2L1: hell from above a much more sensible first level, this is essentially a sweep-and-clear mission as you work your way (alone, of course) through a cute little village along a river. lots of wide open space means little cover for you, but it also makes combat a bit of a turkey shoot (especially with auto-aim on.) oddly you get tons of MP40 ammo -- even maxing it out -- before you ever actually get the MP40.

E2L2: seaside sweep a quick jaunt through a seaport. lots of nazis, and lots of BAR ammo to perforate them with. would actually be a decent level if not for an issue i ran into -- i don't know if it's endemic to the game or if it's a bug introduced by eduke32 -- that placed two very large wall texture sprites in the map that blocked my view of the final building, forcing me to god mode just to be able to approach the place.

E2L3: under fire similar to "defend" from the first episode, the first half of this mission involves you facing off against endlessly respawning waves of germans until such time that you're called to retreat through the village, which is swarming with germans. clear your way through it and you're treated to a grisly scene of SS troops forming a firing squad to execute captured allied prisoners. definitely feels like a precursor to the early call of duty levels. it's not *too* bad a level i guess.

E2L4: paperwork it's time to attack an SS-occupied chateau in this quick little mission. it starts off surprisingly easy with a short, linear path that takes you through some countryside. a heavily fortified bridge serves as the main defense of the chateau and every window bristles with guns. get inside the chateau walls and it's wall-to-wall SS, draining your morale with every burst of their MP40s and having the infuriating tendency to have your shots (especially your BAR) go right through them.

E2L5: railroad typhoon you've been tasked with rescuing a bunch of captured allied troops who've been put on a train, which means storming a trainyard. it's mostly wide open spaces here, though there is a cool part in a connecting tunnel where you're checking train cars. the trainyard itself is comparatively vast, and enemy fire comes from all directions. relatively fun map.

E2L6: a game of bridge like the name suggests, the key feature of this level is a bridge, currently occupied by a tank and a large contingent of nazis. to get there you'll have to fight your way through the town; across the river are rows of windows from which the enemy shoots at you (a common feature in this episode that i'm starting to suspect may be a favorite feature of one of the mappers.)

E2L7: urban rush the finale of WW2GI involves fighting your way through a massive urban area to rescue a captured general. this is probably the largest level in the episode; with an enemy around every corner. while it's otherwise an interesting, intense level (a small legion of semi-invincible SS notwithstanding) there's a frustrating bit where you must go through a no-man's-land of sorts that's constantly being bombarded by artillery.

final thoughts: a significantly better second half, but the problem is, that's not saying much. it still suffers from issues endemic to the game, like the insane reaction times of the enemy, the massive damage they do to you, and so on. however, the gameplay is much more straightforward for the most part, with no NPCs to babysit, no weird trial-and-error "wtf do i do next" issues, just pure nazi slaughter. now if only the game didn't suck.

PLATOON LEADER

platoon leader is a free expansion for WW2GI that adds three more levels to the game and several additional features. two of these, inexplicably, are set during the vietnam war, a throwback to TNT team's earlier outing NAM (which itself was a sequel to their earlier free mod for duke nukem 3D 'platoon,' based on the movie of the same name.) the remaining level, however, is set in the pacific theater of world war 2. the result is that the armory is a mix of WW2 and vietnam war-era weaponry, with the level design such that you won't receive weapons that don't belong in the era you're playing. speaking of level design, no clue who did this one, but i want to punch them.

PLT_E1L1: hill 41 eeeuuugh. you start at the base of a hill. while you have a radio that can call in both a tank assault as well as an air strike, your main strategy is going to be charging up a hill swarming with IJA troops. while the hill is actually rather realistically constructed, with varying slopes and flat planes, this is about the only interesting facet of the level design as the entire hill is covered in invisible land mines and enemy shooting at you. making matters worse is that the game seemingly arbitrarily will declare the mission a failure and cover the screen with a failure notice, forcing you to restart. i even god-moded my way up to the top, killed everything i could, blew up the tunnel entrance, and still failed. this level sucks.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN TC* FOR DUKE NUKEM 3D

"saving private ryan" is a landmark war film that changed how war movies were made and inflamed the imaginations of game designers everywhere. imagine storming omaha beach from the comfort of your own home; imagine fighting through the hedgerows. while the commercial game "WW2GI" was the very first world war II-themed FPS that wasn't wolfenstein with its abstract mazes and mad science, "saving private ryan TC," released a few months after WW2GI (and using some stolen assets from it), was an attempt by a small group of duke 3d fans to recreate their favorite war movie. in this mod for duke nukem 3D are five levels, each one representing a key scene from the film. an archived version of the mod's website lists two people as level designers: jeff (using the name eXtreme-Rush) and jody (using the name kissle.) i couldn't tell you who did which maps, not that it terribly matters.

* note: TC stands for total conversion, an older term for what we'd now simply call a mod

SPRL1: ohmaha beach yes, that's how it's spelled. basically a worse version of ww2gi's d-day map, it can be done in a matter of seconds. once you blow the shingle and get up onto the ridge it's just nazi city in the trenches beyond, and ammo is scarce -- you're better off just running towards the crater with the movie poster in it.

SPRL2: vierville very short little jaunt through a war-torn village, with a squad of useless soldiers following you. the ruined applecart from the movie is here, as is the half-blown out house; a lone enemy up in a tower is easily dispatched, but figuring out how to get past the invisible wall blocking your further progress is tougher.

SPRL3: bunker another short level, a charge up a hill with the enemy already firing at you. the bunker itself with the radar is cool-looking, at least.

SPRL4: the fields basically "bunker" but with tall, semi-transparent grass sprites everywhere. kill all the nazis and then go talk to the US soldiers hiding near the burning halftrack, and you're on to the finale.

SPRL5: last battle probably the closest this thing gets to a real level, and it sucks ass. you'll not hurt for ammo, and health items actually show up here, but the place is teeming with enemy and cover is light. get across the bridge and you're done.

final thoughts: whoof. while it's true they recreated the setpieces, it comes at the expense of gameplay. the levels are, in a word, ugly and simple, with little in the way of anything distinctive. the whole thing can be gotten through in about 10-15 minutes; wouldn't it have been more fun to simply mix the movie's story beats into a broader game that more closely resembles WW2GI? sometimes i wonder what happened to the mod team; it's clear they were young when they made this (weren't we all, back then...) i guess in the end i admire what they were trying to do, and i appreciate that they were young and didn't really think this through. but it just doesn't work.

[vgalmanac]

New at the Video Game Almanac

New from Jake - http://vgalmanac.com/reviews/retro-rated-duke-nukem-64/

Retro Rated: Duke Nukem 64

Few could have predicted a game to rival the likes of id Software’s revolutionary first-person shooter DOOM. In 1996, 3D Realms released the rude ‘n’ crude alien frag-a-thon Duke Nukem 3D to critical acclaim. The game was packed with cheesy one-liners, exciting battles with extra-terrestrial scum...

Read more...

[doom-nerdo-666]

Saw this video of a very elaborate fantasy TC for Duke 3D.