Duke Nukem 3D - September 24th

Mr E

Release date finally announced. Hopefully they've improved the graphics and textures for HDTV. Its been a long time since I played this (even longer than the wait for DN4E!) and I'm looking forward to playing it again.

Linky.

blindpilot

Sweet. Always been a big Duke Nukem fan. Lookin forward to that

Captain Chaos

They improved the graphics but its not full screen, looking forward to this one.

Vic Vinegar

"Come get some"

Go on the Duke! this will be really cool. I like the 4 player deathmatch option!

corkstudent

Hopefully they've improved the graphics and textures for HDTV.

Um, PC Monitors have always been HD. I just thought I'd point it out. HD is a big load of fuss over something very simple(and not necessary on smaller screens).

What they might do is introduce texture filtering, so the textures become blurred instead of pixelly, which generally looks better.

Elem

Nice! Shake it baby!

Helix

Mr E wrote: »

Its been a long time since I played this (even longer than the wait for DN4E!) and I'm looking forward to playing it again.

before you spend money on it, may i suggest you play an fps thats more than 10 years old

theyre dreadful. they were great at the time, no doubt about, but the only thing holding them up now is the nostalgia for having not played them in so long

Captain Chaos

Doom, Unreal and Quake and Quake 2 are all over 10 years old and still do the job sure even Half Life in 10 or there abouts, they show how very little FPS games have come in 10 years apart from graphics and lighting effects imo.

tman

corkstudent wrote: »

Um, PC Monitors have always been HD.

Even when they were only capable of CGA/VGA resolutions?
DN3D looked fine at the time, but 17" monitors were considered huge back then... I'd say if I tried to run it today on my 22" monitor today, the 320*240 picture would look like total crap.

Mr E

corkstudent wrote:

Um, PC Monitors have always been HD. I just thought I'd point it out. HD is a big load of fuss over something very simple(and not necessary on smaller screens).

What they might do is introduce texture filtering, so the textures become blurred instead of pixelly, which generally looks better.

The main graphics in DN3D were pretty good for their time. The main problem I remember were very blocky 2D sprites. If they give them a bit of a polish, and do texture filtering on the environments, it could be a pretty good looking update.

Helix wrote: »

before you spend money on it, may i suggest you play an fps thats more than 10 years old. theyre dreadful. they were great at the time, no doubt about, but the only thing holding them up now is the nostalgia for having not played them in so long

Thats what the demo is for, my friend.

tman wrote: »

Even when they were only capable of CGA/VGA resolutions?
DN3D looked fine at the time, but 17" monitors were considered huge back then... I'd say if I tried to run it today on my 22" monitor today, the 320*240 picture would look like total crap.

DN3D was one of the first games to use higher res graphics (I think it even went up to 1024x768 - maybe more). Lots of mods were done over the years too since 3D Realms released the source code so it'll be interesting to see if any of those updates made the XBLA cut.

Helix

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Doom, Unreal and Quake and Quake 2 are all over 10 years old and still do the job sure even Half Life in 10 or there abouts, they show how very little FPS games have come in 10 years apart from graphics and lighting effects imo.

doom and unreal are terrible

i havent played either of the quakes in ages so couldnt comment. halflife is 10 years old, an is a decent game, but it still doesnt really stand up to todays games

fps is a genre that can (and does) age horrifically... see goldeneye

astrofool

tman wrote: »

Even when they were only capable of CGA/VGA resolutions?
DN3D looked fine at the time, but 17" monitors were considered huge back then... I'd say if I tried to run it today on my 22" monitor today, the 320*240 picture would look like total crap.

VGA is 640*480, and was the default res of Windows 95, with 800*600 or 1024*768 being optimal.

14" and 15" screens went up to 800*600 (comfortably, they supported 1024 but were poor at it), while 17" screens default res was 1024*768 which isn't too far below 720p (just the horizontal width not being enough).

1280*1024 was soon the standard res as 19" screens became more popular, I was using a 1600*1200 screen for win 98 (Iiyama Visionmaster Pro), brother still uses it as a second monitor.

Duke should look fine in 4:3 with bars or stretched.

Retr0gamer

Helix wrote: »

doom and unreal are terrible

How dare you. Doom is still a fine and very playable game. Unreal though I do kind of agree. It's crap now but was just as crap when it came out. Quake 1 and 2 have aged pretty badly, especially Quake 2 which was alwyas kind of crap other than the graphics with the over use of coloured lighting look awful. Goldeneye, yep, unplayable mess.

Half-life on the other hand I think still is a great game. It's original setting and use of atmosphere have yet to be replicated or bettered. I'd even go so far as to say it's a better game than it's sequel (once you stop playing at Zen).

Duke Nukem is still actually really playable just like all the other Build engine games and multiplayer is an absolute hoot.

Have to agree with the 'HD revolution' being a load of balls. I remember playing Duke 3D in 1024x768 on a P166.

I hope 3D Realms see fit to release Shadow Warrior on Arcade Live. That game was far superior to Duke 3D in every way and still holds up today. Some multiplayer sessions on live of that would remind me of computer labs in school

astrofool

Unreal was a great single player game to play through, and very subtly done, and had plenty of hours in it. Got very difficult at some pieces, and required too much backtracking at times, but I have to say, when i finished it, I felt I had earnt it.

It also had very good sound effects for the time, being the first proper EAX game.

Retr0gamer

For me it was a prettier quake with awful animation, bland levels and guns so bad it had one that fired explosive snot.

Riesen_Meal

Retr0gamer wrote: »

had one that fired explosive snot

Forgot about that, very true, it was ****!

quad_red

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/257535.html

Mr. K

Really looking forward to this, the multiplayer achievements look rather nasty though.

tman

Fieldog wrote: »

Forgot about that, very true, it was ****!

Ugh, the bio rifle is easily my least favourite weapon in any game ever... God knows why it's still in the UT games
The original Unreal was a typical engine showcase that Epic seem so skilled at making... Superb graphics masking a shallow game.

Helix

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Wow reading that made my skin crawl, some of the best FPS of all time are from ten years or more ago. Considering the tripe that gets thrown at us these days like Haze and generic WW2 shooters Ill take the old stuff anyday thanks.The new stuff is nothing compared to Sin, HL1, Hexen, Heretic, Doom,Strife,Dark Forces,Blood, Blake Stone, System shock etc etc. Just because the might not look the best they still play as good now as they ever did.

Good link for eduke32:http://www.eduke32.com/
Download the high res pack too, it looks great!

they were great, no doubt about it

fact is tho that any of them ive played any time recently have been horribly dated and played like crap

time doesnt lend itself well to fps games imo

Mr E

Official trailer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIEGsfNELSE

Retr0gamer

Helix wrote: »

fact is tho that any of them ive played any time recently have been horribly dated and played like crap

time doesnt lend itself well to fps games imo

Thanks to the wonders of dosbox I recently played through the likes of Blood, Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior and they are still fantastic games. The settings and attention to detail really set them apart from the cookie cutter WW2, modern day or sci-fi dross that we get today. Their sense of humour and the fact that they don't take themselves seriously at all makes them stand out.

As for Doom, I think I'll be playing that in co-op at lans for years to come. The fact is no other game comes close to the intensity of Doom. Most games these days can only handle 5 bad guys on screen at most but nothing has come close to mowing through hundreds of cannon fodder like in Doom. Serious Sam and Painkiller are poor imitations imo with great level design replaced with respawning dumb enemies and arena type dull levels.

SirLemonhead

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Thanks to the wonders of dosbox I recently played through the likes of Blood..

As for Doom, I think I'll be playing that in co-op at lans for years to come. The fact is no other game comes close to the intensity of Doom.

what he said

I still play through Doom and Doom 2 every now and then. They're still as much fun as I remember them when they first came out (I remember buying the doom shareware on 1-2 floppies in a paper sleeve from downstairs in HMV)

High res graphics are overrated :P I still play them in dosbox in all their pixel glory.

I'll have to get Duke3D on the xbox I think, purely because it has co-op over lan. The build games had easily the best multiplayer game experience of their time (and even long after)

pity we're not getting Blood though, the hugely superior game

Mr E

I played the demo of Doom on the xbox last night, and it was still good fun. At 400 points, its pretty damn cheap too. Haven't played it for years, so I might get stuck in again.

Mr E

Time to kick ass and chew gum?

Anyone grabbed it yet?

chavezychavez

Mr E wrote: »

Time to kick ass and chew gum?

I'm all outta gum

Aye, anyone get it yet. Interested to hear what the multiplayer is like.

Remember trying to set multiplayer up for it accross 2 PCs years ago using Null Modem connections. Aggggghhhh, horrible memories flooding back. Fetal position methinks :eek:

tman

Played through the first 2 levels earlier, it's still the same old Nukem fun I fondly remember (played through the first one 3 times to get an achievement)
Controls work very well on the 360's controller, with the melee boot being more useful than I ever remember it (incredible fun too!:p)
The dirty borders are pretty bad, but you get used to them straight away. I'm surprised that they didn't do anything with the speech, it still sounds as grainy as ever...
Can't comment on the multiplayer as my live sub ran out a while ago

Well worth the asking price imo, and of course there's a demo if you need any more help convincing yourself

Mr. K

Yeah, it's exactly as you remember it. I saw a speedrun video of the first level when achievements were first announced and I used what I remembered of that to get the achievement on my first attempt! Which was sweet, but the enemies are pretty tough. A Pig Cop killed me pretty quick in the second level. It's not as easy as Doom!

tman

Yeah, I died a couple of times thanks to their shotguns at point blank range when doing the speed run (no ammo + trying to kick a pig in the head = bad idea)
The rewind feature is pretty damn cool as well, I can see myself using that to redo sections that I wasted too much ammo/health in

Mr. K

Exactly! I assumed that my shotgun would kill the Pig Cops instantly at point blank range, as it was in Doom. It survived and shot me right back, killing me! Glad I'm not the only one!

just played coop today with a guy called roninfirefist (is he on baords??)
any way love the way it has been kept intact. the screen smoothing is a nice addition also. oh and you can unlock artwork. haven't checked out the rewind system yet.