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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replyAsif Khan posted a new article, 3D Realms' Ion Maiden Revealed, Runs on Duke3D.exe's Build Engine
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I feel like they're a little late for this but at the same time I'm kind of interested at seeing whether 3D Realms can put out anything worth playing.
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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.-
I imagine it's basically pennies on the dollar dev cost and time wise. Throw a little marketing muscle behind it and they will probably make a decent profit on under 100k copies sold.
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3D Realms is a Danish company now. The dudes that made the ROTT remake bought the company.
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THIS LOOKS AWESOME.
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So it's a prequel to http://store.steampowered.com/app/353190/Bombshell/ ?
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This...actually...seems interesting.
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Looks like it will be cool for approximately 1 entire level. Build is ancient technology, I can't imagine it being compelling in 2018 for more than an hour or so.
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Remember our Duke3D Shackbattle? That was fun!
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How much of that is nostalgia. I like Duke3D as much as the next guy but I recognize the genre has made a lot of critical strides in the past 20 years.
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I think the gameplay of Duke3D is better than a ton of modern shooters. Level design is also excellent. Games could learn from My Buddy Duke.
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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.-
I guess I mean the rail-shooter nature of COD games. You rarely have to backtrack.
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In terms of level design and specifically the COD games we are absolutely agreed, Duke 3Ds levels are way more interesting.
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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.-
Ugh! Where is it?
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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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Wet blanket alert!
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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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Right?
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If you BUILDTM it, they will CUM.
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(Also AITOO who is disappointed that it's not IRON Maiden? Blasting my way as Eddie through Egyptian tombs and padded cells and Stukka-filled skies would have been great).
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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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It wouldn't have the same feel. The movement in the Build engine is a thing unto itself, I'm afraid.
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Difficult to replicate perhaps, not impossible, but much in the same way 2D indie games don't actually obey the limitations of the SNES - does it really matter? Very few people truly have a flawless memory of the gameplay feel of their beloved classics, let alone actually prefer it that way.
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That day is today!
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Ok that is pretty awesome they are reusing the Build Engine!
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I eagerly await some early feedback on this.
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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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Are they on FileShack?
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Did you make dhouse? Cuz that map 0wned!
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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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Yeah I definitely made a bunch of shit in Build when I was like 9 or 10 years old. I would absolutely love to be able to look at that trash again.
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absolutely. my entire high school career was spent making levels in build and porting all the other build game's textures into Duke.
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Minecraft and BUILD both hit that sweet spot of "spend dozens of hours building cool shit"
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I had delusions of grandeur that I could create a 32 level single player 'total conversion' with my own two hands. Was really copping off of Quake's moving through time with portals...I thought it was some hot shit but it's probably more because Shadow Warrior's outdoor textures were off the hook.
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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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Sticky Bomb A Like A You!
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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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That is why they pay me the big bucks.
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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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Does a lot of the assets feel similar to Duke? I wouldn't be surprised if they used reference art from the original game and essentially just painted on top of it.
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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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You just fucking convinced me.
Maybe if we all buy it, they'll port it to switch.-
OMG it's just 37mb
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Is there ultrawide support? Multiplayer?
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This worked in utlrawide for the most part for me. The menu didn't use the whole screen. In game it uses the whole screen, but in some cases it doesn't render 100% right. In any case I will be playing in windowed mode going forward, it was making me a bit nauseous to play full screen, not sure why.
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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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I've played a bit of it. I'm digging it so far.
I'm going to go back in probably tomorrow. It's really good so far, I think. I need to play more to get a good feel for it. I'm staying cautiously optimistic (I just don't want another Gearbox game, so I can't say if it's a Good Game or not just yet). -
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