My impressions on 2.15 & Suggestions Thread - Duke Nukem: Alien Armageddon mod for Duke Nukem 3D

Hi Dukeboss and Deeperthought !

I am a french big fan of Duke Nukem since my childhood, I discovered the game back in 2003 when my parents gave me their old Windows 95 for my 10 years old birthday ( they moved on XP in the same time). The game was implemented in the computer right from factory and man this was one hell of a time since then. No matter new gen game releases I was always up for a Duke Nukem playtime, I brought the thing in school to even play it on the classroom and library PCs until my end of studies when I was 22 !

And I wanted to congrats you guys for the amazing work you've done making this great mod : Alien Armageddon. I had the opportunity to discover Shelly in the demo of Ion Maiden that came out in 2018. I have been very enthusiasted by the creation backstory of Shelly that started right after Duke 3D. I was glad that 3DRealms finally made that character come true. When browsing on Youtube I found a review of your Mod and it was a kick in the pants. You had the great idea to make born Beta Shelly as she was intended back in the day and adding it to Duke 3D so the " Cycling could circle " ! Now the game took a whole new dimension and you brought so much freshness to it, never Duke Nukem 3D has been that good and satisfying. You rebalanced the enemy AI, weaponery and ennemy resistance and it is great ! And with all the kinkyness added to the game it is even more cool ! I have to say, the voice actress for Shelly has been perfectly choosen the immersion is total. It's one of the main strengh of the mod, bravo à elle !

After hours of gameplay I have noticed minor things and I had ideas also to improve the experience. Sure it is not a final release and maybe you are working on it. I already know that some stuff I noticed was on it's way to be solved but let's make sure that nothing is missed.

# First, demo recording. Thankfully demos can be deleted in the game folder but as maybe you're aware of, demo does not record properly. Level selection is actually recording beacause puting record on makes it work right in the selection menu which is strange and launching a map just make the game crash. So the demo only records for less than 10 seconds and it makes the main menu jamming between Main and Option after a relaunch and it becomes very unconfortable.

# Second, Hud. Seems that original big Hud does not work anymore. As we scale it we can get at least the squarry yellow style which, with proper scaling, merges really nicely with the sidekick character indicator. But the big one that shows the most informations on inventory flickers a bit but never show up when adjusting. I thought in the first place that it was a rendering issue, I tried classic mod with no widescreen but no luck. I realized next that as inventory is different of original game it has to be Why it does not work anymore. Maybe updating it for the mod purpose would be nice !

# Third, Shelly legs. As Duke, Shelly can change outfits depending our humor. When Duke wears different clothes, when engaging mighty foot we can see different pants color. But it is only when swapping clothes in the player menu. When interacting with the sidekick in game, changing clothes does not change pants color at all especially for Shelly. Worse, when switching, the other character wears an equivalent set of clothes corresponding to the ones choosed for the previous non-played character. So no clothes choosen independently for both characters stays and it is not noticable in First person, I can't Flipflops kick with Duke for exemple or seeing Shelly kicking with a Jean on. I noticed that Life's Beach Duke outfit is available to choose but actually not the Cinematic Bikkini of Shelly, maybe not created already ?

# Fourth, minimap. Sure this thing is quite useful but hey is it necessary to have it permenantly without option to switching it off ? This is the first feature I looked out begining to play the mod, it took me some time to get used to it. I also think that it looks too much " 3Dish" compared to the rest of the game especially for a hud tool. It looks like an " HRP " thing and with the game in it's original graphic style so it is odd.

# Last, no Pipebombs for Shelly. The firing turrets are very interresting but playing for exemple original episodes with Solo Shelly without any pipebombs available is quite tricky ! I always play with both Shelly and Duke but sometimes having to switch for Duke only for it's Pipebombs could be very annoying and I think Shelly needs an equivalent as the " Bowling Bombs " from Ion Maiden for exemple. In weapons inplacements there are often two different guns so Why not turrets and bombs at the same time.

This is all the stuff I remember so far. I have also suggestions for you and most concerns of my personal taste but in a Duke 3D spirit and enthusiasm I think it is good to take.

_ A Coop LAN mod could be a great addition to the game. Now that Shelly is in the party, leaving the other character to AI is a bit of shame over time. Sometimes my girlfriend is borred in her corner and I'd be so proud inviting her playing with me.

_ The mod totally needs features from the game mod " Nuclear Showdown ". If I am correct Deeperthought developped " DukePlus ", an addon that I enjoyed very much a couple of years back with the HRP conversion. And he will see What I am talking about. Nuclear Showdown is a mod released in 2016 and it shares minor features of Dukeplus without the heresy having full 3D effects and models alongside the original graphics of the game if HRP is not installed. Alien Armagedon have some of Dukeplus features too like footsteps, bullet ricochet sounds, sliding kicking ect. But Nuclear Showdown features great stuff too from Dukeplus like reloadable Shotgun for exemple but it has its own charming features too ! Like saving the babes and getting bonuses ( I wondered that thing since 2003 ! The game always had the only solution of killing them with no possibility to release the chicks ). Opening ammo and item boxes to store things in inventory but leaving the empty box on the floor. There's not various death animation or critical hits like in AA but walking on corpses can make the guts and heads flying away like if Duke kicked on it. There's also a backpack to extend inventory ! And there's quite more you should definitly try this out. Sure some stuff are complete trash in this mod and it's shame that the project did not went further. But the main core of it is totally gold and could put Alien Armageddon to an absolute level.

_ Shelly shotgun is inspired from the N64 DN3D Spas 12 but it is not actually the original one. And I think it's an error because the N64 shotgun looks way better than the Spas version you put together. It only needs the Shelly hands on it and if I had the time and modding skill for that I'd definitly doing that for myself. I do not understand Why the Shelly Bazzoka has been 100% ripped from the N64 version but not the shotty. It's a bit sad.

_ I miss the original Duke pistol (And firing sound). You gave a great Deagle for Shelly and the pistol for Duke as impressive details but I'd definitly enjoy an updated version of the original pistol instead. That pistol had an obvious laser sight mount but it was unexpoitable back in 1996. Now it could match so much the laser crosshair you've made for the new Duke handgun. I mean you leaved untouched his shotgun which is great and it's RPG also so Why changing completly the handgun model ? Again I'd mod it myself if I could but I am too noob for that and I am not aware of how the mod is constructed to find and replace the gun. Maybe for future version you could create a folder dedicated to weapons and so making it more conveniant to replace ? Or adding a " Classic armory " version of the mod in the download section so older players of Duke 3d can retrieve their tammed heaters of their young days ? Tripbombs are no longer here also, they were not my style of play but as two weapons can be stored in one category maybe Spidermines can share their inplacement for the old time sake ?

This is all for me for now. I hope you found my review helpful and interresting. This is a great mod with big potential and I dream of an ultimate Duke Nukem mod that got all the stuff that I like in Duke Nukem, plus things that deserved to be in the game or being pushed further from their original aspect because of their time period limitation. And Alien Armageddon is in my opinion this kind of mod that can bring Duke Nukem 3D to its ultimate state that original creators always wondered of.

Good work to you all !

Edited by: TommyBowington

Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate your enthusiasm and recognizing the spirit of Duke 3d we're trying to enhance/explore. I'm the artist, so I can only answer a few of the questions:

2. We did away with the vanilla inventory screen since we're adding several more weapons and they won't register/fit on the vanilla HUD. In 3.0 there will be even more along with upgrades and other features. 3.0 comes out hopefully in the new few months. We're getting close.

3. We're working on it. They will each have more costumes in the future. Caribbean was a rather late game addition to 2.0. I'm hoping to have a bikini Shelly costume in there somewhere too.

5. Shelly's rolly turrets will still target cracks in the wall and blow them up so it isn't game breaking when playing other maps.

As for coop, unfortunately the code for coop in eduke32 has been broken for a while as of late. We would all love to see this feature fixed but it's not up to us.

You're not the first to suggest nuclear showdown features. But that's not up to me since I'm just the artist.

I think you're one of the first to bring up Shelly's shotgun isn't directly from Duke64. I made a decision to not use it cause the quality was rather low. In the future, I plan on updating all the HUD weapons so they all have a consistent resolution and quality to them. The Duke64 RPG shelly uses was just what we had to work with at that point in time. But it will most likely be changed in the future.

Duke's glock will come back in 3.0 but it will be a Glock18 (full auto) in opposed to a Glock17/19 as the original. Also swapping out art textures for HUDs is not very simple. It can be quite complicated when it comes to different resolutions sizes of sprites.

Hello,

Sorry for late response I just totally missed out your reply. I just heard of the space gladiator update and remembered about my post !

Thanks for your response, it is great news ! You inlighted me very well on my questionings. So I'll wait for all of that stuff and I congrat you for your serious work and consideration of it, you have my entire support. I have not noticed a link for it but if you have anything like a Patreon for supporting your work I'd be glad to make a donation so your efforts can be rewarded rightly !