Level Editing - Duke Nukem - ADG Mod 12

[@hyperteleXii]

Oo I've discovered my kind of channel. Retro gaming as far as the eye can see.

[@hrnekbezucha]

So happy you're still doing these game editor features.

[@dinitroacetylen]

Building levels in a hex-editor is some Matrix-themed shit. "You get used to it. don't even see characters and digits. I see a blond muscular dude, a box with dynamite, a balloon."

[@lethal_guitar]

Great video! The exact list of objects that can only exist once per level: - collapsible floor - level exit door - robo hand terminal - bridge (activated by robo hand) - keycard reader - Dr. Proton video call terminal - Dr. Proton - snake tech bot - reactor - jump boots - grappling hooks - robo hand - key card For other objects, there's a hardcoded limit, which is usually 100, but only 20 for gun upgrades and health molecules, 15 for keys, and 6 for DUKE letters.

[@luke-gamedevlearning]

I've places many more than 15 red keys on a map, to give a similar gameplay to Mario where treasure is floating. Keys are the only thing that I can think of that float, so thousands of keys it is.

[@timixretroplays]

Peder Jungck is the guy behind the original Secret Agent, also from Apogee - he's still around, and I'm sure it'd be possible to contact him, if there's any information he might have sitting around about that program which would be useful.

[@Cyberbrickmaster1986]

This is truly groundbreaking to see. I just hope someone will be able to release a source port to give this game quality of life improvements, like with Duke Nukem 2's Rigel Engine.

[@EdmondDantes224]

And after all this time, those PC Speaker noises still sound like heaven to me.

[@FooneTuring]

Oh god the mirrored floor thing. So, fun fact, it's a bug in how it doesn't clear all of the back buffer properly after you've died. So if you never die, it'll show black. And there's multiple vanilla levels where it can be triggered! I talked to the programmer of the DN1 remake, and they confirmed it's fixed there, at least.

[@lethal_guitar]

Oh hey, that's me 🙂 Yes, it's fixed in the remaster. The main issue is that the mirror effect routine unconditionally copies 30 rows of pixels, without checking if enough rows are available on screen

[@TheMightyAtomNL]

Commander Keen 4/5/6 Level Editing Mod corner next? I remember myself briefly playing around with a DOS editor for the Goodbye Galaxy CK games called TED5, but have never produced let alone released anything playable. I'd be very interested in seeing this on a future ADG Mod video. :)

[@Roobar_Plays]

Oh yeah! A new Duke 1 level in 2024! Isn't that great? Also, I would make levels, if there weren't such limitations. The last was Stargunner, so the next game should be either Xenophage, Realms of Chaos or Death Rally. But DRally.exe and Xenophage were already reviewed, so Realms of Chaos it is!

[@monochameleongaming5317]

Xenophage? Realms of Chaos? I await with baited breath. Cool video, I remember playing "Duke's Next Adventure", a mod for the shareware episode that was on a shareware shovelware CD I had back in 1995/96. I'm pretty sure it was hex-edited, and it was my first experience with actually installing a mod for a game.

[@taffer69]

I remember using one of the first DN1 level editors by David Bollinger. ANSI/ASCII characters represented items/enemies/walls.....And you could only use the keyboard (PGUP/PGDN for category switch, arrows to move cursor, space to place...).

[@Aeduo]

I have written a python script to for now just convert DN1 tileset files to PNG. I may try to go the other direction. Let me know if you're curious.

[@Pixelmusement]

Somewhat pointless just as an exporter for the moment, but if you can get it going the other way as an IMPORTER that's not just curious for me but probably for EVERYONE with an interest in DN1 editing, at which point you may want to get in touch with the people at moddingwiki.shikadi.net/ to contribute the tools you create! :o

[@Aeduo]

@@Pixelmusement I seem to have gotten it working the other way. I dunno how to get a link to you from here but if you want to check it out you can. I haven't extensively tested it and it's not super user-friendly.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@Aeduo Again, best way to contribute your efforts is not through me but by getting in touch with the people at the place I linked you to! :B

[@Aeduo]

@@Pixelmusement I'm not really up on editing wikis and I don't really want to get too involved in another community, but I've made it a bit nicer to use and added 2 more of the game's graphics formats (seems to be all?) for conversion in both directions. I see on there some other tool already supports it though? Although I think I already left a comment about where to get it but maybe i forgot to post it or it got automodded or intentionally deleted. If you're interested i guess it's up to you, otherwise, I'm probably not going to bother any further.

[@Pixelmusement]

Comments with links are either auto-deleted if the link is HTTP, not HTTPS, they will also be auto-deleted if they're executable in any way, otherwise they go into a "Held for Review" buffer for me to verify first and then either allow or delete manually. At the very least you should make what you've created available, let the appropriate person/people know, and then just go from there. As for the tool you mentioned which seems to do it, that's the one I tried which does NOT. (It's either been mislabeled or once did work but no longer does.)

[@nodakamakadon]

Random request that's probably unfulfillable short of undertaking a big project yourself - featuring level editing for Bart vs. The Space Mutants. A few QoL changes like those found in the one romhack I've come across, plus some more forgiving level design, and I think a lot of fun, nostalgic stuff could be made.

[@Pixelmusement]

There comes a point where modding an existing game becomes more trouble than just building something new. With Bart vs. The Space Mutants in particular, that game's levels weren't really built to be modified and have a massive number of hard-coded elements, thus if you wanted to make something which was "better" it would be easier and faster to just make something new. :P

[@thomasolson8417]

After all these years, he still says "thuzz" instead of "thus". 😂

[@Pixelmusement]

Just be thankful I don't do any of the more stereotypical Canadian stuff like "aboot". :P

[@tomyyoung2624]

@@Pixelmusement But YES!!

[@nyccollin]

@@PixelmusementWhy do you and the south park creators spell it that way though? It’s not so much about the o as it is the over pronunciation of the u!

[@Pixelmusement]

@@nyccollin Because "oo" is visually the correct sound as an "ooh" sound. "uu" suggests a "you" sound which is not what's said. :P

[@nyccollin]

@@Pixelmusement ah ok fair enough! Great video by the way!

[@luke-gamedevlearning]

(3:11) I can't get it to run. - I got DOSBOX running and mounted to my editor folder, and like you, the game files are "..\" relative to the DN1MOD folder. But no matter what, I get the error that BACK0.DN? cannot be found, and I have all 3 episodes in the game folder.

[@Pixelmusement]

WHERE you run it from is important. For "..\" to work the editor has to actually be run while the current directory goes back to the parent directory with the game files. So in your case, make sure you're actually in the DN1MOD directory when you run DN1MOD and so long as the parent directory has the game files you should be good. If you continue to have problems then make sure you haven't installed your DOS games into special folders like "Program Files" or "Desktop" as you may be running into Windows permission issues.

[@Pixelmusement]

The other problem you may be faced with is that if you're running DN1MOD as a separate program through a DOSBox frontend, it may only be mounting the DN1MOD directory and not the parent directory where Duke Nukem is installed. If the DN1MOD directory is being made the root then any actual parents of it won't technically exist as far as the emulation is concerned!

[@luke-gamedevlearning]

@@Pixelmusement: Thanks! Your second reply was my issue, I mounted too high.

[@fisk0]

Fascinating stuff! Have you ever tried digging into the mission files of some flight sims like LHX or F29 Retaliator?

[@Pixelmusement]

Not yet. Never played F29 and never owned LHX and I don't really have a lot of other flight sims. :P

[@MrBenMcLean]

I have always wanted to make my own campaign but only if I can change the executable to add my own text and change the backgrounds. I don't think anyone's managed to make a good tool for that.

[@nodakamakadon]

I'll take all you've got when it comes to stuff like Apogee and Epic MegaGames.

[@bouncingbluesoul5270]

Can you mod DN2 ?

[@ABalazs31]

It was fun to play through the custom level, thank you! There is one bug where you can get "out of bounds" of the level (I guess, actually, just too close to the edge as you explained) and have weird graphical glitching. Was that intentional?

[@Pixelmusement]

No... In fact, that shouldn't be possible, but I will admit, I didn't test teleporters enough to know how the camera responds to them so I'm going to guess that's where the glitch is? I'll go test it myself and if that's the case it's an easy enough fix: Just move the teleporter. :B

[@Pixelmusement]

OH WAIT... I see what the problem is now... Those walls I THOUGHT were solid walls are actually breakable with the gun! Yeah, that's not supposed to be breakable; I'm gonna go fix that and reupload the level! :P

[@ABalazs31]

@@Pixelmusement No worries. I didn't want to give too much details in case it was intentional (so that I don't spoil the surprise). Thanks again for the levels and all the best to you!

[@Pixelmusement]

@@ABalazs31 Update is online! :)

[@luke-gamedevlearning]

Wow... I've seen your Duke 3D modding video (kzbin.info/www/bejne/omiYoaFtfq19rZY) for years, and I see this Mod 12 video is only currently 4 weeks old. That's a long stretch, and IT'S YOU! About time we got more DN1 stuff. I just wish it would find the file that exists.

[@Pixelmusement]

Just so we're clear, I've made about 368 videos between that one and this one. :P

[@luke-gamedevlearning]

@@Pixelmusement: 😇

[@tomyyoung2624]

YesSuchKey

[@zzco]

"instruction calls"? That's... not a thing in CPUs. xD You mean opcodes or just "CPU instructions", given that CALL exists in the 8086 instruction set. :p

[@Tim.Hammer]

Am I the only one who tried to click the X on the notepad that he popped up in front of his video?

[@MultiTelan]

It would have helped idiots like myself if you would have shown examples of what happens when you place item boxes or cameras or whatever. I could not follow that at all. (Again, not your fault, mine)

[@Pixelmusement]

I didn't want to go over all of them because there's a lot of exceptions, but the general rule of thumb is active tiles take their background from whatever tile is to the left. When in doubt, place an active tile on the world just as it is, then try to place background tiles around it and watch for when the background of the active tile changes; then you'll know for certain which direction it takes its background from!