[Submission] Duke Nukem

Name: Duke Nukem
Difficulty: Hard/Very Hard
Connection: Duke Nukem,
Summon: DukeNukem
Melee: Yes
Distance: Hitscan, Projectile
Type: Human
Brightmaps: No

WAD Created by: DBJ87
Decorate Created by: DBJ87
Palette: Doom
Sprites: 3D-Realms, Duke Nukem 3D, Ultimecia, lolo_is_cool, DBJ87
Sprite Edit: DBJ87
SFX: 3D-Realms, Duke Nukem 3D, Ryan Williams (Duke Shotgun)
Idea Base: A Rival vs. Rival Scenario. Own Idea.

[DESCRIPTION]
We knew it was coming, he's headed to Mars to kill some scum after wiping all his bad-guys out but, he's bumped into you,
The Doom Guy! The Marine!! OUR HERO!!! Surely, you're not gonna sit there while this jerk steals your thunder right?

He's certainly not! Armed with a Shotgun, a Pistol & an RPG, Duke is literally "Ready for Action"
One of the few reliefs is that he has to reload all his weapons (which buys you some time).
He also can't fire the RPG at close range. But the Pistol, Shotgun or a Boot below the belt, make up for that...

Time to show this jackass how a real Hero fights!
He'll take a lot of punishment, but he stepped on the wrong person's toes tonight...

I think it's "Time to Kill"... ... Him

[COMBAT]
All weapons have to reload at some point in combat which offers multiple chances to counter attack.
-Duke keeps firing the pistol or the shotgun until the gun has ran out of bullets, or if you take cover.
-If the any clip is empty he has to reload the weapon.
-He will run away when reloading the shotgun & stay static when reloading the Pistol or RPG.
-The RPG has a very slow reload time & has to reload after 1 shot.
-He also can't shoot the RPG at close range so will either close in for a Melee attack or switch to the Pistol or Shotgun.
-He can chase you almost anywhere due to an advanced configuration that allow easier climbing up & dropping down from platforms & steps.

{ADDITIONAL INFO]
The RPG Missile is taken from Duke 3D's Heat-Seeker Bazooka, which has been submitted to Realm 667 by lolo_is_cool.
Shotgun Sounds are taken from the Duke Shotgun submitted to Realm667 by Captain Toenail.
Pistol Sounds taken from the Duke 3D were used in the Weapons Resource Wad.
Pistol's decorate is created from scratch.
Ultimecia created the PNG sprite sheet with the sprites I have used, from (Update 27/05) onwards.

I only take credit for I have created, edited, restructured.
- Created a proper shooting Sprite set
- Created the Decorate & Sound Set-up for this WAD.

[Updates]

Thank you to yuraofthehairfan & MagicWazard for feedback.

[Preview]

Download Removed. File is Offline.

dose seem cool will half to try it
hmm its funny that he would be about the same size as the baron
me might be a good for a secret map

Duke Nukem? Oh, man, where do I start.

First off, this is probably going to be hard to justify adding to the Repository just because it falls kind of close to a joke monster. I mean, how useful is a boss-grade Duke Nukem monster going to be to the average mapper? It's the sort of thing they'd use as a gag boss once and probably never again, and only if they're open to a gag boss in the first place. But I'll ignore the possible joke factor and take it seriously for a moment, and weigh its execution on its own merits, because I can see that you put a lot of work into this, and it deserves a proper criticism of its behaviors.

*Using his sprite at native size is definitely a no-no. You'll want to use Scale to resize him to something closer to Doomguy.

*His shotgun attack is much too powerful. Not only is the spread pattern very tight, and the damage pretty high, but his rate-of-fire is something like 3 shots a second, which is definitely too much, especially since he can get off 8 shots before he needs to reload.

*The PigCopPistol attack just shoots 4 bullets at once, which basically winds up being just a weaker version of his Shotgun attack, and with a slower rate-of-fire too. I assume you intended it to do rapid-fire, rather than simultaneous shots.

*His Bazooka seeking effect is really too high. Even if you know it's coming, it's nearly impossible to dodge. I know you basically recycled the projectile from another submission, but being used against a player by a boss-grade monster, I really feel it would need its seeking effect modified to be fair.

*His DropItem slots appear to hook to items from a custom mod. You'll probably want to leave those blank if you aren't supplying the items he's dropping.

*I like that he has range checks to prevent using his bazooka at point-blank range. I think that should be extended so that he gives preference to his shotgun at closer ranges, and his pistol at medium ranges.

*The reload function for his weapons is fairly well-implemented, though I do notice that he can only reload up to 5 shells at a time, even if he's spent more. Perhaps you can extend the reload function to his pistol, too (given that it had a 12-round mag in the original game).

*For situations where you don't need a sprite for a given frame, don't use "NULL"; use "TNT1" instead. It's a special "empty" graphic lump included with ZDoom for exactly these situations. "NULL" won't break anything, but it will irritate some people.

*Since a lot of his voice quotes are fairly long, he tends to talk over himself a lot. I don't have an immediate suggestion to fix that, but it's worth pointing out.

Now, a lot of these are complaints and criticisms, but I do have to give you credit for what is a pretty sophisticated submission! And I wouldn't spend so much time talking about it if it didn't show potential. It's obvious that you know your way around DECORATE pretty well already. Now you just need to work on the balance and polish a little bit, and there's an odd chance we can take this seriously.

On a side note, rather than converting the sprites to the Doom palette and image format, I'd leave them in the native Duke palette, and use PNG format images instead of Doom format. The reason for that being is that if the images are in PNG format, then ZDoom can convert them at run-time to the closest color match for the game you're running. You don't have to do the conversion before hand. Plus, if you're using GZDoom, there are NO palette restrictions, so the sprites will appear using the exact colors they do in Duke!

How useful is a boss-grade Duke Nukem monster going to be to the average mapper?

Main idea was like yuraofthehairfan said, maybe to be used as a boss for a secret level or like you said, a joke monster to use once or twice. Like how the SS Nazis only appear in Doom 2's Wolfenstein & Grosse levels.
It was a "spur of the moment" idea, found a couple of Duke sprites looking at ways to find better ways to improve my skills, get some more experience as an editor & to find some ways to update or improve another submitted project. I submitted this for positive & negative feedback, but, now realising, without properly checking over the final details in the decorate.

If anybody at Administration doesn't find this relevant then please, take it off the forum- I won't complain because this is all a learning curve for me. And I would rather know what I should & should not be offering from my own projects, instead of having something on here taking up space that other users will need.

His DropItem slots appear to hook to items from a custom mod.
You'll probably want to leave those blank if you aren't supplying the items he's dropping.

This was just down to "ignorance", I completely forgot about removing the dropped items (not clever), so sorry about that everyone. The bazooka used is submitted in the armoury forum, but still, I had no intention on leaving any item drops in. I completely forgot about them being there. I also thought adding weapons & other items with a submitted monster, would be breaching the Terms & Conditions of the forum, so left that them out while making it.
(This is one of the reasons the Bazooka Marine from the Allied Marines I have submitted doesn't drop his equipped weapon)

Using his sprite at native size is definitely a no-no. You'll want to use Scale to resize him to something closer to Doomguy.

I do have a Player replacement skin set that is smaller, but I'll have to recolor anything that was originally green again,
so appearance changes will take a while, but can be done but it will take a day or two to complete that.
All the Sprites used were converted to Doom's format before I used them.
So as for using Duke Nukem's palette from exporting as a PNG first goes, I doubt it will work. But will see what I can do.

A bit more on the weapons, seeing as I've never played any Duke Nukem game, this was a stab in the dark,
basically running blindly and see what happens, but I see your point about this complaint.
The Pistol is meant to act as the more accurate Hitscan attack, the Pig Cop's pistol does have 4 bullets per clip.
And instead of firing like the one at a time, like the shotgun, all 4 are fired to make it more versatile.

The shotgun & bazooka damage & bazooka's tracking set up were based on the submitted weapons to Realm 667*.
*Contributors to those weapons, have been credited.
I'll slow down the projectile speed. (Make it the same speed as the Revenant's Tracer), it might make it worse, but if that's what's needed, so be it. I'll increase the shotgun's spread & reloading time as well as decrease all 3 weapon's damage.

I also didn't know how large the shotgun clip was, so reading that it's 12, instead of 5 or 8,
might still make it too over-powering, so for now, I'll leave it at 8, increase the spread (to make the pistol more relevant),
and decrease the damage.

On to the voice-over sounds, I'll remove what isn't needed, I know there is too much being used.
But hopefully, you'll agree that using some before firing the bazooka & failing to fire it, still work out.
-I'll remove any Before & After Reloading.
-I'll Reduce the amount of sounds used in the Active & Pain states.

Thanks again for the feedback. It's going to take a few days to make all these changes, but again,
if anyone at Admin doesn't see any relevance to this in any way, shape or form, let me know & take it off...

Updated the Decorate, Sound Placement & Weapons... the height offsets have been changed but the sprites default set up hasn't (unless I scale everything down) but I have a smaller sprite set on hand that I'll start working on now... Going to have to re-create firing sprites & polish everything up afterwards as well. Took me just under 2 days to recolour all of what you have now...

Have also increased the delay between shooting & reloading slightly with the shotgun since first uploading V1.1. That change is now in place.

So try and enjoy this, while I get onto this extra update...

DBJ87 wrote: the height offsets have been changed but the sprites default set up hasn't (unless I scale everything down) but I have a smaller sprite set on hand that I'll start working on now

You don't necessarily need to make smaller sprites. Your offsets will still be preserved if you simply use Scale.

Also, you can get the original, unaltered sprites from TSR , so you don't have to worry about recolors or palette changes.

DBJ87 wrote: I also didn't know how large the shotgun clip was, so reading that it's 12, instead of 5 or 8,

It's actually the pistol that has a 12-round clip. The shotgun technically has no clip size in the original game (like most games of the day, you shoot until you run out of ammo).

Now that, has put a massive new perspective on everything lol. Could give him a melee attack too with the sprites there, potential for a lot of changes in the long-term. :grin:

Now that I've had a bit of time to thinking about all the outcomes, I will try scaling down first. if I can get that right, it will allow me to use those original sprites & save a lot of frustration.

I have 2 alternate sprite sets that match the player's height but on has Green pants, the other has black & both are already saved as Doom formatted images so changing the palette in Slade doesn't help.

I'll probably, keep the pistol as it is (or give it a clip of 4 or 6 then reload), but I think it's fairer that the shotgun has the cap, otherwise you will be killed too quickly, but I suppose now it depends on which has the overall highest damage output because of the lack of accuracy on the shotgun.

Thank you.

Oh, and although it's kind of academic to point this out, the Pig Cop doesn't use a pistol; they use the shotgun. The only Duke 3D character that uses the pistol is Duke himself; it has a 12-round clip. The Assault Troopers/Captains drop pistol ammo, but they actually use blasters instead of pistols (except in the GBA spinoff, where they shoot bullets instead, apparently carrying the same Desert Eagle that Duke uses in that game).

So what I'm getting at is the state name "PigCopPistol" ought to be changed for canonical reasons.

Oh, and although it's kind of academic to point this out, the Pig Cop doesn't use a pistol; they use the shotgun. The only Duke 3D character that uses the pistol is Duke himself; it has a 12-round clip. The Assault Troopers/Captains drop pistol ammo, but they actually use blasters instead of pistols (except in the GBA spinoff, where they shoot bullets instead, apparently carrying the same Desert Eagle that Duke uses in that game).

So what I'm getting at is the state name "PigCopPistol" ought to be changed for canonical reasons.

But in general it's working right? No other problems with any attacks or sound placements? (Just checking)

Like I've said before, never played Duke 3D, Pig-Cop pistol has been the name given to the weapon on several weapon wads-- assumed it was a 4 bullet pistol as that has been the set up for it once or twice, made more interesting than the shotgun too... but that's just my opinion...

If Duke Nukem only uses a pistol, wouldn't just make more sense to leave it as a 4 Bullet, weaker then shotgun but used more often pistol? :oops: Again that's just my opinion.

Anyway... Pistol's now been changed to a 12 shot weapon.

At the moment, the only problem I see is that periodically, during gameplay, a warning message reading "Jump Target 'RELOAD1' Not Found In DukeNukem". The error appears to be in Line 47 of DECORATE; it looks like it should be jumping to "ShotgunReload" instead.

Also, for the pistol, I see it has its own reload counter, but in DECORATE, it's using the reload counter from the shotgun. (Check lines 60 and 69 to see where it's referencing the shotgun's reload counter.)

I think his homing missile can be made a *bit* faster, but not too much--it still has deadly accuracy.

In regards to the pistol behavior, check out a video of Duke 3D in action. His pistol is a rapid-shot weapon--not quite a machinegun, but definitely faster than Doom's pistol, and has reasonable accuracy. (It's actually a pretty good weapon for a starting gun.) I think if you want to include it at all, you might as well try to replicate it as such.



Nice touch on adding the melee attack, too. I'd be ashamed of you if you didn't add it in.

Otherwise, I think this is a lot more fun to play against than it was before. I'm very glad to see you're taking it seriously from an execution standpoint.