- For the Duke Nukem Forever enemy, see Assault Trooper (DNF).
The Assault Trooper, also known as the Predator Trooper or Lizard Trooper, is the most common enemy in Duke Nukem 3D and appears on almost every level. It is first encountered on Hollywood Holocaust.
Appearance[]
The Assault Trooper is modeled on a humanoid lizard, with pale brown skin and black stripes. The top of its head is shaped like a brain. Each hand has three large fingers, and each foot has three large splayed toes. It has sharp canine- and incisor-teeth and always seems to be snarling angrily with its mouth open. It wields light green armor around its torso, a jetpack on its back, and a laser blaster in its right hand.
Combat analysis[]
The Assault Troopers are armed with a single laser blaster, which inflicts little damage. Their low health means that they can be killed by 5 Pistol shots or 1 Shotgun round. They are also not particularly fast.
They make up for their lack of agility with vertical maneuverability. With their jetpacks, they are able to fly anywhere, but in practice, they will only do so if the player is above them. While all Assault Troopers have jetpacks, none will ever drop one for the player to pick up.
Upon being killed, there is a 37.5% chance of the Assault Trooper dropping a Pistol clip (containing 12 rounds).
Except for explosions, there is a 12.5% chance that the Assault Trooper will not die immediately when killed but will instead drop to its hands and knees and clutch at its throat, gagging. It will die with a howl a couple of seconds later, unless the player shoots it again. If it dies this way, there is a 25% chance that it has not actually died but is instead playing dead. If it is playing dead, it will shortly return to full health and begin attacking the player again.
There are two ways of making sure an Assault Trooper will not revive itself after playing dead. The first way is to shoot it while it is kneeling and gagging. The second way is to blow up its corpse.
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In ports and expansions[]
- See also: Assault Trooper in other games
- In the expansion pack Duke Caribbean: Life's A Beach, the Assault Trooper wears a white suit.
- In the expansion pack Duke: Nuclear Winter, the Assault Trooper wears a red Santa hat.
- In Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown there exist a third variant of the Assault Trooper and Assault Captain. It wears a dark blue suit and has as much health as a Pig Cop, but it is otherwise identical to the Assault Trooper.
- In Duke Nukem 64, the Assault Trooper is drawn differently, has blue armor, and is identical in appearance to the Assault Captain. Its laser blaster shot has also been redrawn.
Trivia[]
- The Assault Trooper is the only enemy to appear in every level of the PC version, except for the Dukematch levels and Freeway.
- The December 1994 prototype featured two similar enemies, the Trooper and the Captain. Although neither resembles the Assault Trooper, the Troopers in LameDuke were redesigned in the 1995 prototypes according to official concept art, and according to the concept art, the Troopers' helmets concealed humanoid lizard heads. Furthermore, the concept art actually shows a humanoid lizard more closely resembling the Firefly Trooper's sprite, which was accidentally leaked on the back cover of the 1996 Duke Nukem 3D Screensaver & Entertainment Pack and suggests this may have been a scrapped graphic for the Assault Trooper.
- The Assault Trooper sprites have blue armor in the game's files, but when loaded into the game, they are set to green (palette 22). This is likely due to a change of mind by the creators after the sprites had already been created, since it is much easier to change the palette afterwards than to recolor all the sprites.
- The sprite with blue armor could be found in the original Duke Nukem 3D box art, as well as several pre-release screenshots.
- Note that several ports of Duke Nukem 3D feature Assault Troopers with blue armor (see above).
- A common bug can cause a shrunken enemy to behave like a normal (unshrunken) enemy.
- The bug occurs when the enemy flinches after being shot in its shrunken state.
- The lasers that the Assault Trooper fires can reflect off mirrors.
- The Assault Trooper will sometimes drop a Pistol clip when killed, even though its weapon is a laser blaster.
- An unused tile (1705) shows a map mode view (top view) of the Assault Trooper. This is likely a remnant from an abandoned plan to make the enemies appear in the map mode view.
- An unused aiming animation not seen in the final version of the game is present in the art files. However, it was used in the Sega Saturn port of Duke Nukem 3D.
- The Assault Trooper resembles the Predator (from the movie of the same name), which may have been its inspiration. This may also explain why official 3D Realms documentation sometimes refers to it as the "Predator Trooper."
- Despite being among the weakest enemies encountered in the game, the Assault Trooper is the most versatile, as it can open doors, fly using its jetpack, move freely underwater, and play dead.
- It is one of the only enemies that can swim underwater (i.e., move horizontally and vertically), as others will simply walk along the floor. Other enemies that can move freely underwater include the Assault Captain, the Assault Commander, the Octabrain, the Recon Patrol Vehicle, the Sentry Drone, and the Shark.
- The Assault Trooper's design was modeled on a humanoid lizard, but it is commonly mistaken for a cat. In fact, the developers at MachineWorks Northwest, which obtained a third-party license to develop Duke Nukem Mobile 3D, named it "Catguy" in the game's files because they could not tell what it was supposed to be.
See also[]
- Assault Captain, a stronger version of the Assault Trooper with red armor and the ability to teleport
- Assault General, an alternate version of the Assault Trooper found only in the PlayStation port