An idea to start a “Duke monthly map club” was discussed ironically in the “Duke Nukem is dead” thread and it met with positive response, so I guess it’s time to finally start doing stuff instead of just talking. Since it’s a new month and all, I guess it’s a good time to start with this thing: Duke Map/Mod of the Month Club. Credits to FistMarine for the idea – to better explain what we mean here, I’ll be blatantly ripping basing on the Doom Megawad Club principles, which are listed below:
What’s this thing?
We play through a set of maps/mods during the month, and use this thread to discuss it as we’re still all fresh with our comments/opinions/feelings about the maps.
What’s the purpose?
Basically, there are 4 purposes:
Showcasing some of the older mods/maps to wider public – they definitely deserve the attention!
Getting more people to actually enjoy and appreciate the user content – because let’s be honest, over the past 25 years this was really what kept Duke alive after all.
…and while we’re at it – keeping Duke alive by still enjoying it, as there’s no new games in the franchise on the horizon (and let’s be honest, they wouldn’t be as good as some of this stuff!).
Having a more structurized discussion on maps than what’s going in “Last map you played” thread – which is great, but it’s basically a monologue most of the time.
Can I join?
Sure, as long as you find some spare time during the month to play the stuff that’s on the table!
Warning, the mesh swap isn’t free of bugs, and here’s a list of the currently documented issues:
1) Hair alpha transparencies don’t work, this is because I’m swapping default texture to get duke’s hair in and that doesn’t support alpha transparencies. A very ghettolike way of hacking duke’s hair, unfortunately necessary as otherwise no hair texture loads in for him.
2) His eyes and teeth have the hair texture in as they are not texture mapped by default – this is likely because 2009 duke, much like the 09 edf troopers drew from a pool of generic separate teeth and eye textures. This was likely changed for performance reasons if I had to guess.
3) His left leg bends a bit weirdly in certain animations, this is due to leftlegroll (a bone exclusive to 09 duke) weights not properly mapping to leftleg, so they had to be mapped to leftfoot to work.
4) Lefthandindex2 had to be mapped to lefthandindex3 to get it to work right, so you might notice the finger bending a bit different than what 2009 duke’s left index finger did.
5) No changes were done to multiplayer duke’s textures meaning his textures are currently a jumbled mess. To be fixed later.
6) Glove diff is an original design based off the 09 glove norm and spec – this will be replaced with an accurate recreation in the future.
7) Dismemberment and gibbing works fine, but the stuff that gets spawned is static meshes from retarget. There’s no static mesh equivalent for 2009 which means you get jumbled messes of gibs atm. To be fixed later in the future.
I haven’t done a full run of DNF’s campaign or DLC so I can’t comment if there’s any other issues.
Can you believe it? Duke Nukem 3D was released January 29, 1996–25 years ago to date. Later this year, it’ll also be the 30th anniversary of the Duke Nukem franchise. Time sure does fly! While there have been no official celebrations, the community is pulling through for us as always. Check out this new Grabbag remix by Mike Norvak of Noise Boulder Records:
Then there’s Dzierzan SmoothDuke project, which has been ongoing since last year. He writes: “There has been a topic recently about if there’s any smooth weapons mod for Duke. Apparently there is not. Since I do like SmoothDoom and I have some experience in sprite editing, I decided to give it a shot.” You can check out the thread for all of Dzierzan’s updates, which are looking quite impressive:
Up next, we have Telee’s new map. He writes: “It’s great that the Duke community is still alive all these years later. 🙂 Here’s a peek at a couple levels I’ve been working on for an episode. The first map (plane) is basically 95% complete, sitting at 16,321/16,384 walls so not much more to be done but tweaking and gameplay testing. The second map (airport) is at 9,992 walls, a lot of work done but still much to do (including shading which I’m waiting to tackle until all the architecture is complete). Having a lot of fun with it.” Duke loves to visit the casino site, and we’re sure he’d love to visit this map soon too as soon as it’s done:
There are so many that we can’t list here, but we can’t forget about jimboob’s (AKA jimbob’s) upcoming map, which is looking quite pretty as well:
Deep Freeze is a big mod with its own storyline for Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project (DNMP). At the moment Deep Freeze is still in development. The Early Access version contains 4 levels of the main storyline of the mod (out of 10 planned), and also 17 separate maps from the alpha version. The DNMP level editor (PrismEd) and alpha maps are included with the mod. The mod’s developer, Vitaliy Bondarenko, sends word that he has spent quite a bit of time and effort on this project, and you can show gratitude for his many years of dedication by supporting him through Paypal donations here.
In 2010, 3D Realms sold the Duke Nukem IP to Gearbox, with assurances there were no copyright infringements in the series. Last September, though, Robert (“Bobby”) Prince, a composer and sound designer whose music has appeared in several classic games, including Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, sued Gearbox, alleging he owned the copyright on certain music that was included in 2016’s Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour, a remaster of the game’s most seminal title.
“Prince … asserts that the use of Prince’s music in earlier Duke Nukem video games published by 3D Realms was subject to a license agreement between Prince and 3D Realms,” the suit alleges. “Thus, contrary to the representations and warranties made by 3D Realms in the [asset purchase agreement], Prince alleges that Gearbox does not own the rights to certain music transferred to Gearbox.”
In addition to Apogee, the suit names co-founders Scott Miller and George Broussard as defendants. Neither Miller nor Broussard replied to Digital Trends’ request for comment about the complaint.
One of my favorite Youtube channels, The 8-Bit Guy just visited the same places alongside good ole Joe Siegler of 3D Realms. This was such a bitter-sweat video for me to watch. Every Duke fan should see it:
Former Gearbox employee Gregor Punchatz uploaded a demo reel video and in it you can find Duke Begins footage at 5:56 below; this is a CGI “proof of concept” from the mid-to-late 2000s. Duke Begins was a cancelled video game proposed by developer Gearbox Software. Few details have been shared since its reveal in 2009, though its title carries the implication of a Duke Nukem origin story, illustrating how Duke became the person he is in chronologically later games.
