Oh, yeah! Complete with core gameplay elements [that] have to glow for anyone to pick them out from background noise. 🤣

this remake looks so good, captures the original... duke forever was crap

I was worried at first that this was going to be another Commander Keen remake disaster.

treeman wrote:

this remake looks so good, captures the original... duke forever was crap

I basically consider Serious Sam to be the true Duke3D sequel. Or maybe Duke3D is the prequel to Serious Sam... Making the choice of engine here suitably on point.

Strangely I fired up Serious Sam Fusion Beta last night as it just appeared in my Steam library for no reason. I started playing SS1HD and...wow it is really, really good. Nice graphics, punchy fast-placed shooting action. Kind of like a mix between original doom and duke3d. I played SS back in the day but don't remember it being this good, they have done a very good job with the remaster. I think it will be my current "modern PC" game for a while 😁

Unfortunately this mod overall feels very mishmashed and still require a lot of polish. The shooting part, AI behavior and movement are bad and in desperate need of balancing.

were to hire these people, and more like them, and get them either fully remake Duke Nukem 3D and expand it further

This mod was made by one person, which is impressive, but it shows.

Admittedly I only watched the video and haven't played the mod myself, but I got the impression that it generally misses, rather than manages to capture the gameplay flow of the original Duke3D, especially concerning combat.

xjas wrote:

I basically consider Serious Sam to be the true Duke3D sequel. Or maybe Duke3D is the prequel to Serious Sam...

I only played the original First and Second encounter (and not entirely through), as well as a demo of Serious Sam 2, and frankly I do not find much similarity between these games and Duke3D, apart from the badass protagonist quipping one-liners, and a certain selection of weapons available to the player. Duke3D puts as much emphasis on exploration as on combat, whereas Serious Sam is more about fighting large waves of enemies in big arenas, something that was not very technologically feasible with the Build engine in 1996.

treeman wrote:

this remake looks so good, captures the original... duke forever was crap

The same people who made DN3D also made DNF, which is baffling as the former game is so innovative and imaginative, whereas the latter is so generic and bland.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Unfortunately this mod overall feels very mishmashed and still require a lot of polish. The shooting part, AI behavior and movement are bad and in desperate need of balancing.

were to hire these people, and more like them, and get them either fully remake Duke Nukem 3D and expand it further

This mod was made by one person, which is impressive, but it shows.

Admittedly I only played it briefly (I didn't even have time to get to the second level, I was more interested in exploring the new areas!) but I thought it was great. Not too polished maybe, but nothing I thought was actually bad.

And in this argument (lots of static detail vs much less detail but what there is is actually interactive) I prefer the latter. In Deus Ex, the laborities are almost bare, whereas in Deus EX: Human Revolution they have all sorts of machines and stuff to do with research and testing. But bein able to open the few cupboard doors in the Deus Ex labs, being able to pickup and drop the microscopes, and being able to actually just move stuff in those labs adds a feeling of immersion that I don't get in DX:HR's beautiful, very detailed, but non-interactive world. Even though I don't actually interact with these things when I replay (for the millionth time) Deus Ex; just knowing that the objects can be interacted with makes the world feel more real.

dr_st wrote:

Oh, yeah! Complete with core gameplay elements [that] have to glow for anyone to pick them out from background noise. 🤣

I always think of that viewpoint in terms of Deus Ex (2000) versus Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011). In Deus Ex, the rooms, laborities, offices, etc, are almost empty, due to the game engine's limitations, whereas in Deus Ex, the rooms are stuffed full of all the things you'd expect to find in those sorts of rooms. So the 2011 game does look much better in that regard, but in the 2011 game almost all of it is just window dressing, because you can't interact with over 99.9% of the things you see in the room. Whereas in the 2000 game, you can interact with almost all of the few things in the room.

Deus Ex (2000):

Want to use the computer? View the holographic projecter? Pick up the soft drink can and drink from it? Move the chair or flag? Yes, you can do all those things.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011):

Want to pick up any of the books? Search the contents of the boxes that are near the big screen? Use the mini-screens to look through new data?

Sorry, it's all just fixed graphical detail, and not able to be interacted with.

I don't see much appeal is this. Certainly not in the pace, which doesn't even approximate the original unless you play the video at 2x speed. The aliens' combat moves actually look like they're taking place in a jar of syrup.

MrFlibble wrote:

xjas wrote:

I basically consider Serious Sam to be the true Duke3D sequel. Or maybe Duke3D is the prequel to Serious Sam...

I only played the original First and Second encounter (and not entirely through), as well as a demo of Serious Sam 2, and frankly I do not find much similarity between these games and Duke3D, apart from the badass protagonist quipping one-liners, and a certain selection of weapons available to the player. Duke3D puts as much emphasis on exploration as on combat, whereas Serious Sam is more about fighting large waves of enemies in big arenas, something that was not very technologically feasible with the Build engine in 1996.

I was thinking more in terms of tone & characterization rather than gameplay or level design. Duke 1 & 2 were very cheeky send-ups of the Ahnold-style action movies that were popular at the time. The character was never meant to be taken seriously. Duke 3D stuffed the character right into your face, but still managed to maintain a sense of humor and parody. Duke Forever played him completely straight and you end up role-playing as a dumb-as-rocks meathead living out his own low-IQ fantasy. No thanks.

Serious Sam (note: I've only played the first game) brought back the cheek and silliness, managed to make their macho one-liner-spouting character come across as witty and likeable while not beating you over the head with him, and made for a far more engaging game.

The first Serious Sam, incidentally, is one of the few video games that's objectively better on console than on PC. On the PC, the game was basically sold in two separate episodes; Serious Sam: The First Encounter, and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, and after this came the official sequel, Serious Sam 2.

Whereas on the XBox (the only official port) both the first and second encounters are all in the one XBox game. That by itself doesn't make it better, of course, just more convenient for the customer, but the XBox version has the two huge advantages of:

1. On the PC, you don't get the chainsaw until the Second Encounter, whereas on the XBox version, you get the chainsaw during the First Encounter too, which is great because chainsawing melee-only enemies is really fun, and

2. The XBox version of the game, unlike the PC version and unlike almost all first person shooters, has a system of lives and a scoring system, in the same way that most old arcade games have. This should be terrible in a first person shooter, yet somehow it works in this game and is *hugely* enjoyable. You can of course gain extra lives as you progress through the game, and even the checkpoint saving system (which isn't what you'd call popular in other first person shooter games) adds to the experience of playing this game.

I was really disappointed when I bought the Serious Sam Collection for the XBox 360 (which also contains Serious Sam 2, Serious Sam 3, and the 2D side-scroller Serious Sam Double D XXL) which has the HD version of Serious Sam, because it was a HD version of the PC games, not the XBox one, so no Chainsaw in the First Encounter, and no lives/score system in either Encounter. Oh well.

Duke3D to me was about the Heretic-ish weapons/items variety in somewhat realistic environments. Protagonist with a mouth does not a spiritual sequel make, and every Duke3D level remake in some other game i've ever seen overdo the smutty aspect than anything else as there's fans that think Duke3D is nothing more than a swear man going to babbys first virtual stripper

leileilol wrote:

Duke3D to me was about the Heretic-ish weapons/items variety in somewhat realistic environments. Protagonist with a mouth does not a spiritual sequel make, and every Duke3D level remake in some other game i've ever seen overdo the smutty aspect than anything else as there's fans that think Duke3D is nothing more than a swear man going to babbys first virtual stripper

There's endless debate on the 'net about what makes a Duke game a 'Duke' game. Like you I don't care about 'adult' things like swearing and (extrememely low-rez, 2D) semi-nudity, and to me Duke was done best in the N64 game Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (not to be confused with the totally different fan-made mod of the same name, made for the PC version of the game). DN:ZH is a great game, a third person shooter, though you can play it in first person mode using a cheat or an unlockable option. It was released roughly the same time as the Playstation game Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, but though it does have similarities (both are third person shooters where you have to go to different times and places through history to stop time-travelling aliens) Zero Hour is a shooter with almost no platforming, whereas Time to Kill is much more of a Tomb Raider game than a shooter, with lots of climbing and jumping around. Zero Hour is much better than Time to Kill, and it's a shame it was N64 only, as I think lots of Duke Nukem 3D fans would have loved it, all the more so since it was by far the closest thing to a good sequel that DN3D would ever get 😠

Anyway, the game DN: Zero Hour was censored because it was published on a Nintendo console. So no swearing or sexual references, no alcohol in game, nothing that could be taken as blasphemous or anything. It still had Duke's enthusiastic quotes, though now with searing or sexual content, the same unrealistic action hero in a B-movie feel of DN3D, the same adverts mocking popular culture of the day, etc, but with the overt possibly offensive stuff toned down. It did still have things in there that some people could complain about, but usually too subtle for kids or some people to realise. For example, the advertising boards said things like "Call lesbo plumbers - we lick the opposition", the shops had names like "The Family Jewels" for a jewel shop, and when you enter the wild west town, you see a sign saying "Dry Town by order of Ted Nindo", the joke of course being that the game was dry (contained no references to alcohol) by order of Nintendo. One of the people who worked on the game said that they used to add more obvious euphemisms to the game builds when they sent them to Nintendo, so Nintendo would only spot the obvious ones and miss the more subtle ones.

Kerr Avon wrote:

There's endless debate on the 'net about what makes a Duke game a 'Duke' game. Like you I don't care about 'adult' things like swearing and (extrememely low-rez, 2D) semi-nudity, and to me Duke was done best in the N64 game Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (not to be confused with the totally different fan-made mod of the same name, made for the PC version of the game).

I've also heard praise for ZH from people at Duke4.net, and it appears that this game also uses the Build engine? Pity it was never ported to PCs.

A big while ago I played the demo of Manhattan Project and generally had a favourable impression, although I'm not sure I'd be willing to play the entire thing through.