Duke Nukem 3D
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Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by 3D Realms. The game (version 1.3d) was released on 29th January 1996 for the PC, and was later ported to a number of consoles. The game features Duke Nukem, a character who previously starred in the platform games Duke Nukem I and Duke Nukem II (also published by Apogee Software). Duke is voiced by Jon St. John.
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[edit] Synopsis
- "Murderous aliens have landed in futuristic Los Angeles, and humans suddenly find themselves atop the endangered species list. The odds are a million-to-one, just the way Duke likes it!"
The player takes on the role of Duke Nukem, an imperious action hero, and fights through 28 levels spread across 3 episodes. An upgrade was released, called the Plutonium PAK, which added a fourth episode with 11 levels, some new enemies, and a new weapon. The player encounters a host of enemies, and can combat them with a range of weaponry.
Duke Nukem 3D is set "sometime in the early 21st century", in a variety of locations including a morally corrupt Los Angeles and various space and lunar stations. The premise is that a genetically modified race of aliens has invaded Earth at some time during the events of Duke Nukem II, while Duke was away from the Earth fighting the Rigelatins. Upon Duke's return, he is shot down, and then discovers that most humans have disappeared - the only humans left are women, either trapped in slime or kept around for the aliens' diversions. Civilisation has all but vanished, and pornography becomes the only form of entertainment left.
The player fights their way through the levels, killing aliens on the way, in order to reach several "boss" enemies that are much tougher than the rest, and who seem to control and direct the alien invasion. As well as combat, the player must solve several puzzles to progress, which take a variety of forms. Some puzzles lead to secret levels.
[edit] Gameplay
[edit] Level design
The levels of Duke Nukem 3D depict many and varying locations, both indoors and outdoors, from city streets and military bases to deserts and flooded cities, from space stations to Japanese villas. The levels were designed to be fairly non-linear, such that air vents, back doors and sewers provide several routes through the levels. This non-linearity also helps support multiplayer gaming, as many of the levels would then also be suitable for Dukematch.
Each level is filled with objects for the player to interact with. Such objects include light switches, drinking fountains, strippers, surveillance screens, bins, toilets, pool tables, telephones, explosive barrels, fire hydrants and a photocopier. Several of these objects perform multiple functions, e.g. the toilet can be used as one (and will recover a little of the player's health), and can also be smashed to produce a jet of water from which the player can drink to also restore health. Many of these objects do little more than provide a small diversion, e.g. tipping a stripper provokes a humorous quote from Duke and sometimes also a provocative reveal from the dancer.
The level designs are highly praised, as the realistic location designs were not readily found in other games available at the time. Duke Nukem 3D uses many vivid colours in its levels, such as multicoloured disco lights, a property that contemporary games often lacked.
There are four episodes in Duke Nukem 3D:
- L.A. Meltdown: Set in Los Angeles, this episode starts in a run-down area of the city before travelling to a prison, a toxic waste dump and a canyon.
- Lunar Apocalypse: Set on a variety of space stations and moon bases, and even an alien spaceship.
- Shrapnel City: Set back on Earth, and features a range of locations, including a bank, a movie set, a subway and a football stadium.
- The Birth: Available only in the Atomic Edition of the game. This episode features locations such as a fast food restaurant, a post office, an amusement park and Area 51.
[edit] Weapons and equipment
Duke Nukem 3D includes a range of weapons, some of which remain unique to the Duke Nukem series even today. They range from the Mighty Boot, a basic melee attack, to a pistol, a chaingun cannon (similar to a Nordenfelt gun), pipebombs, and weapons that shrink and freeze enemies. Four of the 11 weapons in the game fire explosive rockets or explode themselves.
The Mighty Boot is able to be used even while another weapon is currently selected - it is not necessary to manually switch between the two. Due to the existence of the "quick-kick" button, in the original 1.3d version of the game, it was possible to kick with both feet at once (by having the selected weapon be the Mighty Boot). Further, since kicking didn't hinder the player's movement, this resulted in a rather peculiar sight. The bug that allowed the Mighty Boot and the "quick-kick" to be used at the same time was corrected for the Atomic Edition.
In addition to the weapons, Duke's inventory contained a series of items that could be picked up and carried around during play. These items include:
- Portable Medkit: Used to heal the player whenever they choose to.
- Steroids: Used to increase the player's speed.
- Night Vision Goggles: Used to see better in dark areas.
- Holoduke: Projects a hologram of Duke that distracts enemies.
- Protective Boots: Allows the player to traverse dangerous terrain, such as toxic or superheated floors.
- Scuba Gear: Allows the player to breathe underwater.
- Jetpack: Duke's signature item. Allows the player to fly freely around the environment, often to reach otherwise inaccessible hidden areas.
As well as these, there are a number of health-boosting items, and Access Cards that can be used in their corresponding terminals to unlock doors, deactivate forcefields or even demolish buildings.
[edit] Enemies
Duke Nukem 3D features a wide variety of enemies for Duke to fight against. Some of the enemies are aliens (e.g. the Octabrain and the Protector Drone), and others are mutated humans (e.g. the LAPD has been turned into Pig Cops). Some enemies are mechanical and were constructed by humans, but were commandeered by the aliens to work for them (e.g. Turrets and Sentry Drones). There are even sharks in the game, although they are relegated to be the weakest enemy in the game.
These enemies have a wide variety of attack methods, including weapons (shotguns, rocket launchers), psychic attacks, and vicious claws and teeth. Some enemies may have other features too, such as the Assault Trooper's jetpack and the Assault Commander's cloaking device. Different enemies move in different ways, including crawling, walking, running, jumping, hover, flying and swimming.
In addition to the enemies encountered throughout the levels, there are also 4 "boss" enemies, one at the end of each episode. These are:
- The Battlelord, ready and very willing to mow down its foes with a huge chaingun/mortar launcher.
- The Overlord, who is found on the Moon and has two rocket launchers mounted on its back.
- The Cycloid Emperor, found in a football stadium and has mechanical rocket launcher claws for hands.
- The Alien Queen, an underwater creature with a powerful electric attack and the ability to spawn dangerous Protector Drones. Appears only in the Atomic Edition.
[edit] Multiplayer
Duke Nukem 3D supports LAN and modem-based multiplayer games. Multiplayer games could be played using either the IPX network utility Kali or the Total Entertainment Network (TEN) online pay service, the latter of which is no longer available.
Multiplayer games could take place either in the levels from the single player game, or in a few multiplayer-only levels also included with the game. Also, players could create their own levels to play in, both in multiplayer and in single player modes.
The game initially featured two multiplayer game types, with the third included in the Atomic Edition:
- Dukematch: A deathmatch style in which each player has to kill the other players, with the first to gain a certain number of kills being declared the winner.
- Co-operative: The players team up to play through the single player episodes together.
- Duke Tag: Akin to capture the flag.
It is possible for one player to communicate with the others, by typing in messages. The player can choose whether the message is sent to everyone, just their allies, just their enemies, or a specific player. Also, there are 12 in-game taunts that were created for multiplayer play. They can be played by pressing "Alt" + "F1"-"F12" during play.
[edit] Technology
Duke Nukem 3D's graphic engine was a step forward from the Doom engine of 1993, though many of the advanced features of the game had appeared in intervening first-person shooter titles such as Marathon, Star Wars: Dark Forces, and others. While the levels were still defined as 2D maps, the capabilities of Ken Silverman's Build engine allowed more complex levels than Doom. The game supports diagonal slopes in the floors, though this had been seen as early as Ultima Underworld in 1992. It also supports vertical mouse aiming (though aiming up and down distorts the graphics due to a lack of perspective correction), though vertical look had also appeared in Ultima Underworld and full mouse look appeared in Marathon.
While Doom was limited to doors opening and closing only by sliding up and down, the Build engine also included doors/walls that can move sideways. The Doom engine usually only moved a single platform at a time in response to a player event, while the Build scripting system allows a whole string of moving and sliding actions, synchronized with sound effects, to create collapsing buildings, earthquakes, and walls that crumble apart when hit with explosives. One of the more advanced effects that went far beyond the limits of the Doom engine is the horizontal sliding platform that can move the player inside a small sliding room, to create subway cars moving in a timed sequence around a ring-shaped track.
The Build engine solves this problem by allowing multiple overlapping 2D paths to cross through the same 2D location. The key is that while inside one of these spaces, it is not possible to see into the other space, and so the 2.5D engine has no problem rendering one space or the other even though the map data literally shows the two areas to be occupying the same place. Several Duke Nukem 3D maps exploit this engine feature to create bizarre mind-bending maps where multiple large rooms all seem to be occupying one 3D space. One secret level in particular ("Lunatic Fringe" from episode 2, Lunar Apocalypse) has a map where the player can travel 720 degrees around a circle and not cross their path. This would be much more difficult to duplicate with modern true-3D map editors and engines.
To resolve the problem of not having balconies or bridges that the player can walk over or under, instead special objects are used by the Build engine that are not actually part of the flat 2D map design. Instead they are a special type of decorative sprite inserted into the world, similar to the breakable cameras, flowerpots, and lights. These special large sprites allow the player to walk over the object and under it as if it were an actual part of the map, to create the illusion of a true 3D space. However, these special objects have a highly restricted shape, typically as a perfectly square or rectangular non-sloping structure, greatly limiting their usefulness in the map design to simple bridges, balconies, or exposed rectangular air ducts.
[edit] LameDuke
LameDuke is an early beta version of Duke Nukem 3D, which was released by 3D Realms as a "bonus" one year after the release of the official version. It has been released as is, with no support, and is currently available to download from the 3D Realms FTP.
LameDuke features four episodes: Mrr Caliber, Mission Cockroach, Suck Hole and Hard Landing. Some weapons were removed and/or altered from the original versions.
[edit] Plutonium PAK & Atomic Edition
Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition (v1.4) was released in November 1996 as an upgraded version of the game. There was also an update patch known as the Plutonium PAK that upgraded v1.3d of the game to v1.4. The Atomic Edition introduces a new fourth episode, The Birth, with 11 new levels, a new weapon, the Microwave Expander, and three new enemies: the Pig Cop Tank, the Protector Drone, and the fourth episode's "boss", the Alien Queen.
The Atomic Edition also includes several improvements to the scripting language, such as allowing new enemies and items to be created without having to overwrite the existing ones. Another new feature of the Atomic Edition are the computer-controlled bots that allow fake multiplayer games to be played ("fake" because there are no other human players). These bots are capable of putting up a decent fight, and can be useful for testing a user-made map to see how well it plays in multiplayer mode.
In December 1996 another patch, this one unnamed, was released to upgrade v1.4 of the game to v1.5. The game is still called the Atomic Edition after this. This patch fixes a few more bugs in the game.
[edit] Expansion packs & add-ons
Three official expansion packs have been created for Duke Nukem 3D.
- Duke's well-earned vacation has been interrupted by another alien invasion. Armed with a host of exotic weapons, Duke kicks ass once again, tourist-style.
- Aliens have kidnapped the President! But have no fear, Mr. Clinton, Duke's on his way to save you! Duke explores a number of famous Washington D.C. landmarks, shoving freedom and justice down the aliens' throats as he goes.
- Aliens have invaded Santa's grotto, and it's up to Duke to rescue the jolly fat man. Facing down snowmen and evil elves will be a tough challenge, but the real question is: have you been naughty or nice?
Also, several add-on packs have been made for Duke Nukem 3D:
- An add-on developed by Sunstorm Interactive, containing 50 levels and various utilities. It has sometimes been criticized for its many technical problems.
- A product called Duke!ZONE was once sold by WizardWorks, which contained over 500 levels made by fans of Duke Nukem 3D. WizardWorks later created an add-on called Duke!ZONE II, which contained three episodes of its own design.
[edit] Console ports
A port is a version of a game that has been made playable in a different format (i.e. from PC to console, or from DOS to Windows/Linux). Usually there will be few or no differences between the original game and its ports, although differences may exist because of differing capabilities of the new systems. It is also possible for the game being ported to be altered either in a small way (e.g. different artwork) or a large way (e.g. altered level layouts, different weapons/items). Duke Nukem 3D has been ported to 6 consoles:
- The PlayStation port of the game. It plays just as the original, and includes the original 3 episodes, plus one new episode exclusive to this port: Episode 4: Plug 'N' Pray.
- The Nintendo 64 port of the game. It varies a lot from the original game, relatively speaking, with many of the levels being changed for various reason (e.g. removing strip bars and replacing them with gun shops in an attempt to make the game less explicit). It also features a new set of weapons, and some new enemies. Finally, it includes a fully 3D rendered model of the Cycloid Emperor.
- The Sega Saturn port of the game, ported by Lobotomy Software and published by Sega. It is the only console port to feature real 3D worlds, a result of Lobotomy's SlaveDriver engine which the port uses. It features online gaming by utilising the Sega NetLink, it supports the console's analog pad, and it features a hidden multiplayer mini-game called Death Tank Zwei.
- Duke Nukem 3D (Sega Mega Drive version)
- A little-known port of the game, as it was released only in Brazil for the Sega Mega Drive. It is a much simplified version of the game, going so far as to only include a highly simplified version of the second episode, Lunar Apocalypse.
- Duke Nukem 3D (for Xbox Live Arcade)
- A port for the Xbox 360, released in the Xbox Live Arcade. It features on-line multiplayer support (both Dukematch and Co-op modes), and its own achievements.
- Duke Nukem 3D (for Game.com)
[edit] High Resolution Pack
- Main article: High Resolution Pack
This pack contains replacements to the existing artwork of Duke Nukem 3D, in the form of high-resolution artwork. This includes replacing many sprites with proper 3D models, and the rest of the sprites and tiles with high-resolution counterparts. It is an ongoing project, and is entirely fanbase-driven.
[edit] Credits
- Game engine creator
- President of 3D Realms, level creator
- Level creator
- Level creator
- Level creator
- Level creator
[edit] External links
