Get Ready to Duke It Out news

Hello, friends! We're proud to finally release the DUKE IT OUT update! Here's what we've been up to for the last four months.

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First off, the general improvements. We devoted a significant chunk of effort to improving performance on both the DX8 and DX9 renderers. We also enabled high resolution rendering. Overall, you should expect significant increases in performance.

We're also continuing to develop the OpenGL renderer. We squashed a couple of remaining issues with transparency and finished work on particle effects, bringing it closer to parity with the DirectX renderers.

The annoying FellOutofWorld issue, which caused unpredictable prop-on-player violence, is no more. As a side effect, a small bug which prevents movement manifests itself while loading levels from DukeEd. Pausing and unpausing the game fixes it for now; we're working on a permanent fix.

We adjusted the HUD to better match screenshots from 2003. We have also restored the knockback animations for the shotgun and player death. The gib system has been partially restored, as well.

Our single player content received a bit of work, as well. We tweaked the first chapter based on the feedback we received following the First Slice release, as well as fixed a couple of geometry and texture bugs. The Freezer and M16 received new world models and the Duke model received a small facelift.

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The real meat of this update lives in our multiplayer content. To start off: nine new maps.

DM-AbandonedBase by SilverScrub, winner of our Nuclear Winter mapping contest:

DM-Arcade by LiquidOtacon:

DM-BellTollClassic by Keith Schuler and LiquidOtacon:

DM-Buffet by Chewbarta:

DM-iod4ever by StarNukem, a re-imagining of a classic Duke3D map:

DM-Rooftops by LiquidOtacon, made from the Rooftops singleplayer level:

DM-Stadium by LiquidOtacon & Oktober, a reimagining of Stadium as a DM map:

DM-Stalwart51 & DM-Stalwart51XL by Alan Willard and LiquidOtacon, a conversion of a UT99 map centered around Area 51:

Several existing maps received some love and attention as well. BellTollRemix, Boxy, Deck16Classic, EDFStorage, EDFTrainingGrounds, FullHouse, FutureThrill, Gibtown, HollywoodHolocaust and MalevolenceClassic all received tweaks and fixes.

We also balanced the arsenal, most notably the Sniper and the Chainsaw. The latter is finally a viable weapon, while the former will no longer terrorize our internal playtests.

Along with this over 20 New Duke Skins and color variants have been added along with a complete redesign of the Player Setup Window.

Along with these there have also been a number of other enhancements and improvements to the multiplayer as well. Alternative gamemodes have been fixed like Bomb and Team Deathmatch as well as a number of new Mutators to play with as well such as Shotgun Start and Instagib.

We have also been working away at getting in some of the 1998 Asset CD assets into the game along with a few new ones of our own.

These few screenshots don't do justice to the sheer amount of new assets put into the build. A fuller list of them can be found in our Changelog, listed at the bottom of the update along with another article later on detailing the new assets put into the game. But in the mean time, here is a sneak peak at some of the work that's been done on Bombshell too!

We've got some voicelines to show off soon too so be on the look out for a sneak peak at those as well!

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Thanks to the updates from our developers and the behind the scenes magic Valve does, we are proud to say that Steam Deck compatibility is even easier now! Here is the new, easy guide to get all this amazing Duke gaming going on your Deck:

1. Enter desktop mode
2. Use a web browser to download the mod from ModDB
3. Unzip it to whatever location you like on your Steam Deck (SD card or internal is fine)
4. Find DukeForever.exe (Game Folder then System Folder) and right click on it
5. Now click “Add to Steam”
6. Open Steam and go to properties - then under compatibility make sure to select “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” and then choose “Proton Experimental”
7. Then go back to the main page for the game and press play!
8. You can then add custom art, icons and more and we added some here for you to use if you like!
9. Finally we have an official controller layout for the Steam Deck that has been published for awhile but has now been updated - ensure you rename the game from “DukeForever.exe” to “Duke Nukem Forever 2001” so it can be found in the Community Layout tabs

If you have questions on how to add games to steam and custom artwork to Steam please check this link out:

Howtogeek.com

Here is a zip file with various icons, banners, cover art and more you can use with Steam:

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And lastly, we wanted to also wanted to reassure you that though we've been distracted with the Multiplayer update, a good portion of our team has also still been focused on the single player campaign. Here are some screenshots of the WIP stuff our team has been working on for Chapters 1 - 5;

Thank you everyone for being patient as we work away on the project. We are just as dedicated as ever to finishing and working away. We hope that the update was worth the wait! As another gift to the community we plan on open sourcing the project as well to try to encourage everyone to work together. While this isn't quite ready for today's release as planned, we are dedicated to making this a reality. Keep in tune the next couple weeks for that announcement on our Discord.