So what's up with all the Build games re-releases?

[673fb1db1f09evoodoo47]

interview with the Ion Maiden devs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHQv4mSG7_I

I have to say that I'm not too impressed by the engine side of things - while I'm by no means an expert, if you look like EDuke, sound like EDuke, and play like EDuke, but require 10x the rendering power (and your sw renderer is sometimes faster than your hw renderer), then you are doing something wrong, imho.

[673fb1db1f263ZylonBane]

Doesn't the hardware renderer do a lot of really high-end stuff compared to the software renderer?

Edit: Watched the video, he does mention that the Polymer renderer stopped development before they'd gotten to performance optimization.

[673fb1db1f4b9voodoo47]

it depends - hw rendering can be really bad if you try to make it do things it wasn't designed to do, afaik. and that's most likely what is going on here - in its core, Build is a sw engine, and some things simply don't translate well into hw, so you either sacrifice precision, or performance. they seem to be going with the latter, and are focusing at making the hw renderer replicate the looks of the sw renderer perfectly, which results in losing a lot of performance. and while this might score them extra points with a few purists, being able to run the game properly on any pc is more important, if you ask me - EDuke and SWP run on my potato netbook with very little trouble, and while I'm aware they aren't pixel perfect, I simply don't care - being able to play is more important than replicating everything with 100% precision.

but what do I know, weird thing hiding in the basement, never accomplishing anything that would really matter.


also, looks like the original DNF might not be lost.. forever.


//yeah, but Polymost (the original opengl renderer), while not as feature-rich, was much faster, and sufficient as long as you just wanted to run the original assets without any extra effects. and lets be honest, do we really need bloom, dynamic lights and shadows in a Build game?

[673fb1db1f959JDoran]

...also, looks like the original DNF might not be lost.. forever.

Wow! That would be fantastic, if the 2001/2002 build was patched up and released. That was a fascinating read, too. Thanks for the link.

If they'd have finished and released (commercially) the 2001/2002 version of DNF, then even if it was less than stellar, it would still have been much, much better than the rubbish they finally gave us in 2011, and by now we'd probably have had at least two more (hopefully good) post DNF sequels. Instead another popular franchise was killed off by bad decisions and substandard final results.

Releasing a fixed 2001/2002 build now won't fix any of that, of course, but it will still be very welcome to those of us who still love the good DN games. And if the release of that build then turns out to be the final ever chapter in the Duke Nukem story, it will be a much better ending than if we just had the 2011 game.

[673fb1db1fabfvoodoo47]

no doubt it would be an interesting ride, especially if they released everything as-is and let the community finish the job (assuming that the 2001/2002 build really is nearly complete). an early 2000 style half-lifesque FPS with Duke is something I wouldn't mind.

funnily enough, I've stumbled upon a HL Duke mod some time ago, and it felt more like DNF than the actual DNF 2011;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jvT5yeC0Zs

[673fb1db1fc26icemann]

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148686

[673fb1db1fd7bJDoran]

I've been meaning to try the fan-made mod Duke Nukem Forever 2013, for Duke Nukem 3D, for a long time, as by all accounts  it's really good, and does a good job of building upon what was promised and shown in the early (good!) videos and screenshots.

It's available from:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-nukem-forever

[673fb1db1fe5aicemann]

Now that's just awesome.

[673fb1db1ff56voodoo47]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZMAaWC1vqU

not going to say no to exploding monsters into chunky giblets or kicking their heads off.

[673fb1db2020dJDoran]

Kaiser, the absolute genius who ported Doom 64 (the N64 game) and Exhumedd/Powerslave (the Playstation version of the game) to the PC with amazing accuracy and quality, as Doom 64 Ex, and Powerslave EX, and then was hired by Night Dive Studios and produced the equally amazing ports of Turok and Turok 2, has made a small but very interesting post on his Twitter account.

See, as you might be aware, his fantastic, free port of Powerslave (Powerslave EX) was taken down shortly after release. It's still available via fans who downloaded it and keep it available for others (for example, from here), but officially it was no longer available.

And now, Kaiser has posted "Powerslave EX revival not far..." (here) and linked to a brief article saying that Night Dive Studios has trademarked the names Powerslave and Exhumed (Exhumed being, of course, the European name of the game, since apparently the name Powerslave, which was OK in America, was already copyrighted in Europe). There's no further information at the moment, but surely it can't mean anything other than that a now-legal port of Powerslave is soon to be available to us?

[673fb1db2031fvoodoo47]

was aware of everything mentioned in the first two paragraphs. and yeah, a proper/legal release of Powerslave/Exhumed would be nice, as the game is on my play-once-I'm-done-duct-taping-my-life list.

not really a Build Engine game, but why not - modified the topic name slightly.

[673fb1db2045fJDoran]

The PC version of Powerslave is a build game, apparently much more of an FPS and less of a Metroidvania/adventure/platformer hybid than the Playstation/Sega Saturn versions, and also supposedly not nearly as good as those consoles' versions. I don't know how popular Powerslave PC (the original 1990's game I mean, not the recent Powerslave EX port) was, but I'm guessing not very (or it was just very unknown), since you never seem to see it mentioned whenever Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior 3D, or Blood are mentioned.

[673fb1db205a0voodoo47]

*checks stuff* well what do you know, it actually is. missed that somehow, and never would have guessed.

[673fb1db206d8JDoran]

I'm a genius! Actually, I'm a fat lazy idiot, who only found out it was a build game a short while back, but let me have my moment of fame, eh?

It might have been this video that informed me of the fact, it's a look at the three different original versions of the game (PC, Sega Saturn, and Playstation), along with a brief look at the now removed PC fan remake, Powerslave EX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCsO8O4W4Fw

[673fb1db207f4voodoo47]

pretty sure I've seen that video, but the bit about the game using the Build engine for the pc version escaped my attention, it seems (the console versions use a different engine, I remember that, as they used it to port Quake to the Saturn).

skimming through the video, I can now see the game indeed has a somewhat Build-y feeling to it - though definitely much less than say, Redneck Rampage.

[673fb1db208fbvoodoo47]

Ion Maiden is on sale on GOG, if 10% off can sway you into the purchase.. I'll wait until it hits ten bucks.

[673fb1db20a37Join2]

Important to note it's basically early access. Myself I'll wait for the full game.

[673fb1db20baavoodoo47]

aand it looks like a Kex based Blood port is coming sometime soonish. I certainly won't mind, BloodCM, while better than nothing, is not quite there. seems like NDS will have access to the source code, so there's a good chance this will finally be the Blood source port we have been waiting for all those years. //nope, they are going with reverse engineering. guess we'll see how that goes. //ok, this is basically just BloodEx going official. so it should be very ok.

[673fb1db20dd4voodoo47]

so yeah, Blood2, now on GOG for a buck and half, making it almost worth buying. after about a hour, I can safely say it's just as bad as I remember - the worst parts being the inconsistent damage, enemy AI, and inability to blow things up in a satisfying way (fixing these would yield an alright game). see the video if you are interested in details;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_cHAtwr8_U

I'll also comment on the technical side of things - the GOG build works decently, even though the engine (D3D/directx6) is on its last legs (new OSes and gpus don't do dx6/7 too well), and I had a bit of trouble forcing it to run accelerated on my primary screen, it kept switching to sw and to the secondary output as soon as I tried to change something in the ingame video menu. fortunately, this can be fixed by using the external config utility, and not touching the ingame menu ever again. bad news is that the engine seems to be 16bit only, probably making things look even worse (will check with a voodoo2/3 later). also, you will have to use a modified exe (same guy who made the DGVoodoo wrapper) if you want to run the game in a resolution higher than 1000 vertical pixels.

so, is this salvageable? probably yes (would like to see a giant update like the Daikatana patch 1.3, which actually makes the game playable), but not without shedding bloody tears. some modding tools seem to exist, maybe I'll have a look sometime next year - the game would play two times better with just some tweaks to the damage system, and with the completely broken and annoying civilians completely removed.

[673fb1db210edTaxAkla]

@boodoo47 You really should play with the Extra Crispy Mod. The author fixed most of the problems with the gameplay (better AI, no civilians, weapons rebalanced).
The characters were rebalanced too. Ishmael start with the Doll and the Ball and has lots of magic and low bullet limit. Gabriella don't have magic at all and can support lots of damage and start with heavy weapons. The expansion weapons were added to the vanilla campaign. It is a well better experience than the original.
And has perfect widescreen support.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/blood-2-the-chosen-extra-crispy

[673fb1db21232voodoo47]

was just about to post that after a second round of googling, it seems like fixup/overhaul mods actually do exist, and yeah, Extra Crispy seems to be the one to go with - thanks.

//the changes are good, but it made the already not too great FPS drop down even further - apparently, a 10 year old machine is not going to cut it (and unfortunately, the higher res assets are not optional, it seems). can't have it all, I suppose.

[673fb1db2132avoodoo47]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLgUAb88QVE
yes.

[673fb1db21472voodoo47]

NBlood 1.0 is out.

//no problems with rooms over rooms which is nice, but the mouse sensitivity slider needs to allow way higher sensitivity, the current max is maybe two thirds of what I'm accustomed to. also, put together a compatible version of the hires skies as well.

[673fb1db21750JDoran]

NBlood 1.0 is out.

//no problems with rooms over rooms which is nice, but the mouse sensitivity slider needs to allow way higher sensitivity, the current max is maybe two thirds of what I'm accustomed to. also, put together a compatible version of the hires skies as well.

Thanks for letting us know about the new port, I'll give it a go tonight.