Captain's Log

Duke Nukem 3D!

Duke Nukem 3D is an excellent game that came out a long long time ago (back when I was still using a 486). It was around at the same time as some other first person shooters (FPSs) like Doom and Wolfenstien, but it preceeded games with true 3D like Quake. There was more up and down movement and firing than in Doom and Wolfenstien, but it was still 2.5D. Nonetheless it was a great game. What made is truly great was the interactivity of the environment. Duke could break things, drink water from a fire hydrant, use a toilet, even interact with a stripper. The overall gameplay was great, and Duke was just a badass. Who else could deliver the line "It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum.....and I'm all outta gum!" (Originally taken from the movie They Live) In multiplayer Duke would deliver awesome taunts (in actual audio) like, "You're an inspiration for birth control!" or "It hurts to be you!"

Sunny, Yono, Jackson and I played a whole lot of Duke3d over the modem back in high school. It was the first game that ever made my wrists/hands hurt, since that was before I knew that mouse look was infinitely better than keyboard look. (I was young and stupid.) The single player mode was interesting enough, but you could also play deathmatches and even coop, in which Sunny and Yono proceeded to beat most of the game over the modem. Here's a very old screenshot where Sunny's got me in his crosshairs just after dying. Guess I beat him to the punch that time. I even made that little map we were playing on. It was a big rectangle with a 'fort' at each end. 'Fort' being a small wall to hide behind. Notice the old handle, Maverick. Since there are a billion Mavericks out there, and it didn't really mean anything to me anyway, I've seen gone to the arguably lamer ramk. But it works and no one else uses it. Except for the person who stole ramk.com...

So why am I reminiscing? Because in April 2003 3D Realms released the source code to the game. Within a few days there were working ports for Win32 and Linux. There's been time for those ports to mature, and there's an excellent version out at rancidmeat.com, coded primarily by David Koenig. All I had to do to run this version was extract the zip, then copy the duke3d.grp file from my old duke3d directory into the new one, and it worked perfectly. I even cranked my resolution up to 1024×768. I had tried my original DOS version, but it had sound, video, and control problems when I ran it under Win2k or WinXP. On top of that there was no TCP/IP networking support. Since I'm not that interested in playing by myself, I hadn't resurrected it, until now. This new port allows multiplayer over UDP. It takes a tiny bit of effort to get going, but it worked ok. Jackson and I tried it out for about 30 minutes today. I learned yet again that the rocket launcher should never be my weapon of choice in any game. I did alright with the other guns though, especially the chaingun. I like the chaingun...

So go download the port and let me know when you want to play! It's really easy to setup, and while it might not have the graphical beauty of the games coming out today, it's has classic gameplay. In what other game can you kill your opponent by shrinking them and then stomping on them! It was unlike anything else at the time, and a precursor to all the interactive FPSs that would come years after.