3D Realms' Ion Maiden Revealed, Runs on Duke3D.exe's Build Engine
3D Realms is reviving the engine that Duke Nukem 3D was built on. What a time to be alive.
Shackers may still be debating if the Duke Nukem franchise is ready for a reboot, but 3D Realms clearly thinks it is time for another game built of Duke Nukem 3D's Build Engine. The company has announced Ion Maiden with a brand new trailer showing off all the "hand-crafted pixelated glory". Please take a look.
Check out the official PR statement:
Welcome to ION MAIDEN!
Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison earned her nickname as a bomb disposal expert for the Global Defense Force. When transhumanist cult mastermind Dr. Jadus Heskel unleashes a cybernetic army on Neo DC, Shelly decides it’s time to start chucking bombs rather than defusing them. Her journey will leave trails of blood and gore in huge, multi-path levels filled with those famous colorful keycards and plenty of secrets and Easter Eggs to discover behind every corner. Order Ion Maiden now, and get access to the exclusive preview campaign TODAY!
It remains to be seen if this game will live up to the hype, but Shackers who enjoy games that run on Build Engine may want to give this game a shot. Ion Maiden is available now on Steam. It is also for sale with no DRM at 3D Realms official website. The game is priced at $19.99 but is on sale until March 7 for $17.99.
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Asif Khan posted a new article, 3D Realms' Ion Maiden Revealed, Runs on Duke3D.exe's Build Engine
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The new episode in the Duke Nukem World Tour was pretty solid and it used some new tricks in the Build engine. I know this isn't the same thing (Gearbox hired the "original episode designers" for the new episode, this Ion Maiden game presumably doesn't feature the original designers but the original company, in name at least) but it could have potential.
Maybe there's something to be said for the idea that when you know the tech already you can just use it to make an awesome game.
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So it's a prequel to http://store.steampowered.com/app/353190/Bombshell/ ?
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Ok I'll press you on that. What modern shooter has gameplay worse than Duke3D? They didn't even have first person control figured out, no mouselook. I think even some piece of crap like Aliens: Colonial Marines probably controls infinitely better than Duke did. And even in the "no-mouselook" realm of shooters I think Doom is way more fun to the modern gamer with its emphasis on dodging projectiles.
Again don't get me wrong Duke3D was a formative part of my childhood but no way in hell am I gonna play much more than Hollywood Holocaust if I wanna go back and take a nostalgia hit. It was great for its time and that time was 1996.-
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I don't mind some backtracking here and there but the labyrinth style of maps used in DOOM and Duke3D are definitely are not my jam. Running around the same room 20 times trying to find the hidden doorway is not fun.
I played Quake for the first time a few years back and found the map deign to be far better. There was some exploration and backtracking needed but the map layouts themselves were not confusing to navigate.
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Its built on a proper balance of monsters/weapons gunplay, doom is fundamentally sound, brilliant even. Duke3d isnt, its gimmicky, derivative and 90's in a bad way, it would have been interesting to see how the genre evolved with the more interactive direction duke went in 2,5d vs the full 3d post quake and the barren polygon limited worlds for the next 7 years following (though again quake is still better and has aged better as well just like doom).
This looks like something that’s should have been released in that window of time and maybe its cool but I wouldn’t bring up duke3d to champion it.-
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Now read http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74 and watch https://youtu.be/yuOObGjCA7Q
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Sin is absolutely one of those games that unfortunately had their lunch money taken by halflife (the brokenass demo and loadtimes on release didn’t help). After that the next big directional shift was when cod took the scripted scene/spectacle and ran with it. Literally every thing that made sin or half-life good was smothered by the cod shooting gallery, trigger script design.
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I was about to make a madden joke and went to check how many cod titles are out by now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty
jezuß chroist O_o
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Its amazing what these people manage to wring out of the game. If they would recruit mappers/modders for a game on a source engine I would love that. It really needs someone who understands how to design a map, enemy placement, pacing weapons/ammo limitations and the cacowards every years show off the talent pool available.
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Did you know that Iron Maiden has their own mobile F2P shitfest?
http://ironmaidenlegacy.com
Sort of like SWGOH but with Eddie from his album cover incarnations.
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I thought you were being sarcastic but then it occurs to me that that's a tricky question actually. It depends on what you mean by 3D Realms because they've farmed out a bunch of their development over the years.
Like, if you consider 3D Realms the developer (as in, no other companies involved) the old Build engine games were DOS originally. Duke Nukem Forever was in the works for Windows for many years but 3DR stopped development and laid off all their employees before it could be finished, Gearbox goes on to finish it along with Triptych, which was a bunch of 3DR staff and I don't think exists anymore.
Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project was on Windows but they farmed out that to another studio. Looks like they did the XBLA port though.
Looks like the Megaton Edition of Duke Nukem 3D was on Windows but besides being after the DNF layoff era, looks like even that was farmed out to a developer called General Arcade
Prey 2006 was on Windows, and preceded the DNF layoff, but again it was outsourced, this time to Human Head Studios.
So the answer I guess is: it depends on where you want to draw the line but in general it's true that 3D Realms' heyday as a first party developer was during the DOS era.-
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Also the gameplay video I showed below indicates they technically farmed this game out too. Wikipedia says 3DR has like seven people total working for it now and while a Build engine game in 2018 probably doesn’t require a ton of resources, it probably still makes sense to farm it out.
So it’s possible that if 3DR never develops another game directly themselves then they’ll never have developed a game for Windows, ever.
Although interestingly it looks like this game supports Linux of all things.
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There's some gameplay footage here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oRDgts3uTs
It'll be interesting to see where they draw the lne. Like, it looks like they've upgraded the engine with higher resolutions, more color depth, things like the on-screen weapon being high quality, etc. but it's still very much a build engine game.
It occurs to me it would be interesting to see what the evolution of game engines would have looked like if for some reason developers just kept going on the same engine and codebase instead of periodically starting over. Like, maybe we would have still eventually gotten to Unreal or id Tech level graphics but the path might have been different.
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At first I was thinking that was the complex carnival funhouse map with a tram used for the funhouse cars but it's "Dave's House" which when I saw it, I remembered, because of course I played that map; looking back I probably at least glanced at half of all Duke maps made/hosted prior to 1998.
I'm also kind of annoyed at the inability to start a multiplayer game without a second player for map testing (even in Megaton and World Tour, not that you can use .map files for multiplayer in World Tour) and am now remembering how I used another computer that could barely run the game to act as a multiplayer dummy.
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This company makes physical editions of indie games
https://store.theindiebox.com/
I think originally they did the cardboard boxes but it looks like there’s DVD or Blu-Ray style cases now, plus some special edition stuff. Maybe they’ll do a Ion Maiden release at some point. Also they had a Loot Crate style subscription thing but it’s been discontinued.
Also there’s some company that puts indie games in Steelbook cases and they sell at GameStop.
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Wonder if they are using an eduke32 based engine or something in house? Does 3drealms own the rights and assets for Megaton still? I know the rights to that were pretty messed up so I wonder if they ended up with it somehow. If so I'd bet they are using its eduke fork which would be alright.
I don't really see 3drealms putting the work into a modernization of the vanilla engine so I'd be really surprised if it's not eduke based. -
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Yeah, dude. Right now it's just a mini-campaign, with the full game launching Q3 this year, but I've spent a couple of hours playing through the episode today and absolutely love it. http://store.steampowered.com/app/562860/Ion_Maiden/
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I picked it up and played some. High quality build game with some things I don't think I've seen before like an elevator with glass on the sides so you can actually see it coming down before it arrives. Fun shooting and weapons. I like how the shotgun is almost animated exactly like the Duke 3D shotgun, and that is because it was already perfect.
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It's unmistakably a build game which I think causes some things to look pretty similar? Things that look the same are the explosion effects, props like the chairs, destroyed buildings. The level design upfront has a real Duke 3D vibe versus other build games I think. But the textures all around don't feel reused imo. You can tell they're trying to take what they have the license to use (bombshell) and essentially make a new Duke 3D game in a new world with very much the same ideas. Lots of quips, key cards, similar weapons, level design. I haven't played much yet though!
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And to think that the full game will 8 times as long as this episode, and offer new enemies and weapons, I'm already drooling! https://tenor.com/search/homer-drool-gifs
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If you guys like/love this, get Dusk too! http://store.steampowered.com/app/519860/DUSK/
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OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SHIT
Just played the first level. It's fucking HUGE. It told me I had 18 secrets left to find when I found the exit (naturally, I didn't leave just yet). The music is great. The sound effects are fantastic. I like the character. The game looks amazing. I'M RUNNING OUT OF SUPERLATIVES HERE.
CrustaR! Br0! You try this yet? It 0wns your arse!
I only noticed one problem, occasional stuttering (especially during autosaving). Aside from that it's remarkably solid for early access, especially given the engine it's running on.
This is what Duke Nukem Forever should have been. It feels like a gift for those of us who were let down by DNF. -
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Just played about a hour, got more left to play still, it's great!
- The good: It looks and feels like a 3DR game from the 90s -- lots of fast action and you can blow shit up and the weapons sound and behave nicely and the voice acting is good and did i mention it is fast? There is vents to jump in and you can go underwater and I didn't find a whole bunch of secrets but I left the level anyway and there is that same sense of "What do I do now" once all of the bad guys are dead, you know you unlocked a door SOMEWHERE but WHERE?
- The bad: Can't yet remap movement to mouse and I hate WASD, I assume this will be ironed out later, also I had one lock-up at the menu that I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del to fix, and later in the game a few small freeze-ups that were just slight hitches and ironed themselves out, that is to be expected from a incomplete game preview though -
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