Duke Nukem Forever

[Art Blade]

So today I thought well, let's give MP a shot. I played a few rounds of DM (death match, everyone kills everyone) and Team DM. There are more MP modes (capture the chick and king of the hill, I believe).

I liked particularly the custom TDM when we all spawned with rail guns and infinite ammo (one shot, one kill -- that mod was known as "instagib" in times of Quake2). Lag is an issue when playing that kind of game so servers with lower pings are better, I need at least something not higher than a ping of 90 to play halfway decent.

However, it was fun, I preferred the Duke Burger map which I already liked in the SP bit of the game. I saw people fly around with jetpacks and I had fun picking them out of the air  :-()

Playing MP online unlocks gazillions of achievements that have no influence on the actual gaming, it's things like changing your looks by adding a hat, different sunglasses and so on and stuff to decorate your apartment with (its already there but still boxed, gaining XP rids those items of their boxes). Fun :)

[smg id=3470 type=link align=center width=500 caption="DNF MP 001"]
[smg id=3471 type=link align=center width=500 caption="DNF MP 002"]
[smg id=3472 type=link align=center width=500 caption="DNF MP 003"]

[Binnatics]

That MP looks brilliant. I was hoping for a cool MP mode on the game, it should be fantastic since the game is over the top and NOT taking itself serious. I don't like the MP shooters like Crysis 2 and CoD. To much real warfare for me. Think I'm going to enjoy thisone.

I had a hard time playing the pool as well, D_B. Had the same problem with the only option to shoot HARD, like you metioned. But it fits in the game perfectly; Duke-style  ^-^
I found out that you can hit the cueball allmost anytime, when it's in full action. So running around the table and preventing it from falling into any pocket, I managed to finally get the ego boost. I did the poolgame in the titty bar by the way. Had a ard time with airhockey as well, you'll find ou about that later ;)

@ Art: How can you think of crabbing a poopy without using it to smear a guard, or any other figure in the game? You won't get your hands dirty for nothing, ain't ya?  >:D

[Binnatics]

Fragger, I tried to find you at Steam, but you didn't appear in the OWG group. Can you send me alink to your steam account so I can ad you to my friendlist? Btw, join OWG group ;)

[Binnatics]

Every time I find some gas for that damn Big foot that seems to run out of it almost any moment, I think of the wise lines underneath JRD's messages: Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Now "WHY THE HELL" doesn't he take ALL the damn fuel cans with? Didn't the game say Duke can press 600 pounds on the bench press?  >:((

[Art Blade]

What do you expect.. it's Duke. Big Balls and Baby Brains.  :-()

[Art Blade]

Today I decided to host a game just like the one I liked so much yesterday, a TeamDukeMatch with Rail Only (instagib) and the map "cycle" consisted of simply repeating the Duke Burger map over and over again. Great  :-() The Duke Burger map is played when players are in a shrunk condition. So there are eight mini-Dukes running and railing around, with their high-pitched voices commenting all the time, LOL  ^+-+ There are other options than rail only, there is a melee version (fists only) and shotguns only and heavy weapons only and so on. Sounds like a lot of fun  :)

The reason to host a Duke Burger TDM with rail guns only was that a) I couldn't find a server with these settings and b) I hate to play on servers with a very high ping. Hosting a game gives me a ping of like "1"  :-() (rather than joining and getting something between 60 and 160 or more). However, some strange lags happened once and then, even on my end, maybe some general net issues, but mostly it was smooth.

I chose to allow the maximum, 2x4=8 players, on my "server." Then Binnatics popped up on STEAM so I invited him. He reported lags, too, which indeed are annoying when playing a fast-paced instagib game. But we managed, and in general all players were having fun. I had the server up and running for perhaps 10 rounds of Duke Burger, 50 being the winning team score and else a 10-minutes-time limit in case no-one hit it.

This is a score board after one of those matches. Binnatics and I were just getting used to it.. Unfortunately he had to disconnect after a rather short time due to a thunder storm but I kept playing and eventually got really nice scores (like 25 kills with only 7 deaths). I need to do that again :)

[smg id=3474 type=link align=center width=500 caption="DNF MP 004"]

[fragger]

Fragger, I tried to find you at Steam, but you didn't appear in the OWG group. Can you send me alink to your steam account so I can ad you to my friendlist? Btw, join OWG group ;)

I haven't joined the OWG group as yet because every time I log onto Steam I seem to pay for it in some way - like having game updates begin which won't let me play those games until the updates complete, which in turn means that I have to wait hours for said updates to finish due to my crappy net connection :D But I'll have to deal with Steam soon when I get Duke so I'll take the plunge and join the group at that time. I might as well get all my aggravation delivered in one big hit :-() I'll keep you posted :)

[Binnatics]

Good to hear you're about to join us soon Fragger, we had lots of fun yesterday in the burgershot like Art just described. The lagging was quite annoying though, but I think it's a serverproblem or mayybe a game-problem somehow. My ping was quite good when connecting to Art Blade, somewhere around 60. If I play other games a ping of 100 is far enough to join smoothly. I hope they get that issue fixed soon, because the game is worth playing online. I've seen gus flying with a jetpack as well, Guess they got it through XP bonuses or so. That should be great. Love the combi of weapons and backpacks or whatever extra functions. They allways seem to bind together in a massive killing combo. Hope to find out soon :)

[Art Blade]

Those jetpacks are part of the map just like other power-ups, everyone can use them. Usually they're located in areas that aren't easily accessible. :)

Today I hosted several games. One was lagging quite badly, so I quit the server and started a new one which was smooth. The next one had like one or two lags but else it was smooth. Same with servers I joined, sometimes they lag, sometimes they don't.

We had some fun again playing a few matches of "capture the babe" and when Binnatics hosted a public game for 4x2, we quickly had a full house. That is what I think is amazing, whenever we hosted public games, they actually were almost immediately joined by random players and quickly the teams were maxed out. I don't think I ever saw that in any other game.  :)

[Binnatics]

I was surprised by the number of online players as well. I only experienced that in great titles like CoD, Crysis 2, GTA IV and Bioshock 2. Maybe this is a great title then, dispite of the bad reviews ;)

Anyhow, the game offers a lot of fun in MP. I can imagine the players love to join.
One of the things I really liked is when you play capter the babe you grab her Dukestyle over the shoulder, and the babe comments silly things like "oops, I think I lost some pee" and "are you two doing everything together?" (when you bring the babe back home where the other babe is waiting). She also tries to break free, that's when you have to spank her to get her quiet. "oooh, I like that"  :-()

There's a load of different weapons and power-ups available. Once you know where to find these in the map, you're one step ahead.

[Art Blade]

Hehe, the comments of the Babe are funny indeed  :) After you grabbed her and while you are carrying her to the other base she tries to be as annoying as possible, particularly by waving her hand in your face (you really see about nothing but her hand blocking your view) which is when you are allowed to spank her so she stops doing that  :-D

The loading screen stated something along the line of "Capture The Babe is like capture the flag, only the flag has boobs." (And talks) ^+-+

[Binnatics]

Just started an insane playthrough; now that's where the fun starts. Pig-cops are super-challenging enemies now. You need to shoot them twice with the shotgun, and they kill you in 2 good punches. Together with these aliencaptains with them jetpacks you'll find yourlesf in a rage of a fight; the first real confrontation with them you'll get in the level the ladykiller part 2. You'll need good skills to survive, and when you do, that's when these over the top "Duke-sayings" start to make sense.
I love the action. Stay tuned, I'll keep posting insanity :P

Oh, and the bosses are usually harder to kill because they just die half as easy as on hard. You'll need a truckload of explosives to get them under. But that's not too much of a challenge. It just takes more time :)

Edit: And I forgot to mention; there are more enemies. If first spawned only 2 waves of enemies, there will be 3 or 4 waves now. So if you finally think you're through, watch your back. There's another pig coming :)

[Art Blade]

Whoa, that's insane  :-() I don't enjoy insanity in SP. However, keep us posted up, it is still interesting to read about your adventures :)

It's something else if you need good skills to survive when playing against high-ranking humans in a MP match, that's close to insane sometimes, too :)

Speaking of rankings, I had a bad experience with some kind of bug or glitch. Yesterday I realised that my global ranking wasn't right. I used to be level 25 with some 117,000+ XP points but the leader board stated that I was level 24 with exactly 110,000 XP. Just like that. No sync problems with STEAM that I was aware of, no prompt to have STEAM recover anything, nothing, just like that, out of the blue. My personal stats and achievements, however, are still correct. All that got screwed up is the leader board. I googled the issue and found other players reporting the same issues, some of them had it worse, like having lost everything, or the leader board ranking had been reset from 26 or 35 to 1 (!). It is annoying, given that you spend quite some time getting there, and it is different if you enter a game and see a newbie with level 1 on the score board while in reality it is a high-ranking player of 35. In my case I keep gaining XP and levelling up, but it is 7,000 XP short of what I actually have, so it's kind of understatement.  :(

Make backups of your STEAM data to be able to manually restore what you got:

HD:\Steam\userdata\<random number>\57900\*.*

There are 314 MP achievements, they include stuff that allow you to customise your character. The title for example is an achievement you get after 1,000 rail gun kills, the hat (a traffic cone) after winning 25 team games with the highest score of all players, the goggles after shooting an enemy with a rail gun while you're being launched from a jump pad. The shirt is for playing two hours of Duke Match. There are more gimmicks, like I have different shirts, goggles, hats and titles. The appearance tells you what kind of player you're looking at, at least you recognise the features and know how to get those. Here's me:

[smg id=3479 type=link align=center width=500 caption="DNF MP 005"]

[Art Blade]

I just found a player who was level "0" and ranked almost 70,000 -- so there are actually a lot of people playing DNF MP :) and I'm now ranked #492. With that broken leader board, however. There must be a few more who think "I would have been higher in those rankings if that bug hadn't screwed it."

[Art Blade]

Just found this, the DN oldsters may watch it for nostalgic, the DN youngsters for educational reasons. It is the original DN3D, the source for the revived Hollywood level available in DNF MP.

Duke Nukem 3D Walkthrough Episode 1: Hollywood Holocaust

[Binnatics]

Now that I've seen this movie, I'm sure no mouse-aiming was introduced there yet, am I right? The camera looks down or up only when you shoot an enemy that's on a different altitude. Does anyone remember: What was the first game where mouse-aiming was introduced? Was in counterstrike maybe?

hmm, just googled: There have been some experimental games using the mouse for a half-way free aiming device, but not very succesfull. The first major game that made mouse-aiming popular was Quake. Check it out if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_look

Nice to know, ain't it? So Duke must have been the last major title without free aiming. 1996 was the Quake introduction, so that's where keyboard-aiming stopped.

[fragger]

Quake was the first game I can remember using the mouse to look up and down with. I believe you could still look up and down in Duke3D, but only with keyboard. So you may be right, Binn :)

I also believe that Quake was the first fully 3D shooter, i.e. not like earlier shooters such as Doom and Duke3D where 2D animated sprites were utilised for the bad guys, pickups and pieces of level dressing - like you see in that clip. Everything in Quake was three-dimensional.

I do remember that Duke3D came out just as the much anticipated and greatly-hyped Quake was nearing release. There was a level in Duke3D where right at the beginning the screen would shake as though there was an earth tremor, which would prompt Duke to remark, "I ain't afraid of no Quake" :-D

Incidentally, the "2½D" technique of incorporating 2D sprites within the three-dimensional environment is still alive and well - even in FC2, if you look closely at the glades of grass, the fires and the "billboard" trees on top of the hills that you can't climb. It's a great resource-saver and looks just fine in the right circumstances.

[Binnatics]

You're right fragger, in the wiki article I read they mentioned indeed that quake was the first real-deal 3D designed game.
And I also dicovered those 2D images in Farcry. You can use them in the editor: they're called "fake mountain woulds" and you can plant them on a mountain that's far away. You wouldn't know when in-game. But when you use the editor, you can see very clear the 2D property's of the used trees.
I think I do remember the 2D aspects of Doom. I've played that game for years I guess, and sometimes when you got stuck in a place or when you were downed, they walked over you and you could see they were just moving 2D images.  ^-^

[fragger]

Especially when the bad guys got up close to you and all the pixels they were composed of were greatly enlarged - it was like fighting swarms of moving coloured squares :)

I'm still waiting for my copy of Duke, which should have arrived by now according to the bloke in the shop. I'm going to have to go back there, kick a$$ and chew bubble gum - and I'm all out of gum >:D

[Binnatics]

Haha, that line would open doors overthere :)
Hope you get the copy soon :)

[Art Blade]

Good luck, fragger  :)

[JRD]

I'm still waiting for my copy of Duke, which should have arrived by now according to the bloke in the shop. I'm going to have to go back there, kick a$$ and chew bubble gum - and I'm all out of gum >:D

Good luck, fragger  :)

Hah... you mean good luck bloke in the shop!  >:D

[Art Blade]

No.. I already regarded that one as a goner, anyway.  :-()

[fragger]

 :-D

[fragger]

I had to go into town anyway yesterday so I dropped in to the game shop and asked if my copy of Duke had arrived. The guy in there said it had, and before I could ask "Well, why didn't you ring me and tell me?" he opened up a drawer, removed a copy of Duke and placed it on the counter in front of me - a console version. When I told him no, it was the PC version I wanted, he said words to the effect of "Oh, sorry about that" before informing me that the PC ones were still on order, and that he'd call me when it came in (gee, when did I hear that before?)

There is another gaming shop in town and a couple of the department store chain outlets sell games, but there wasn't a Duke to be had in any of them.

So... still waiting... >:((

When I do finally get the game, first thing I'm gonna do is use the shrink gun on that shop dude and feed him to the dog.