Duke Nukem 3D

Developer: 3D Realms Entertainment, Inc. Publisher: GT Interactive Technology: Build Engine Release Date: April 19, 1996 Chat-Room: #duke3d Buy Physical: ebay.com Buy Digital: Zoom

Info

"Duke Nukem 3D truly looks like a 3D supermodel of a game: sleek, sexy, and gory with lead thrashing action." -- Strategy Plus

"It's the ultimate game for unleashing all your pent-up aggression. It is the most astonishing game we've laid eyes on for ages! In fact, it makes pretty much every PC game we've ever seen - DOOM included - look slightly dull. Honestly!" -- PC Gamer

Prepare yourself for the Ultimate 3D Slugfest

Murderous aliens have landed in futuristic Los Angeles, and the humans suddenly find themselves atop the endangered species list. The odds are a million-to-one, just the way Duke likes it!

Butt Kickin' Features

DIVE INTO REALISTIC 3D SCENARIOS, with 28 totally realistic levels, as you drive the sinister aliens through the streets of L.A., out to an orbiting station, and onto the surface of the moon itself!

LEADING-EDGE BUILD 3D TECHNOLOGY lets you explore an interactive, fully immersive world of towering skyscrapers, deep canyons, and murky bodies of water - with many realistic effects like level-altering earthquakes, exploding buildings, working security monitors and functional subways.

ARMED TO THE TEETH with 10 hi-tech weapons: Clear crowds with the pump action Assault Shotgun, blast through enemies and walls with the Rocket Propelled Grenade, splat enemies under foot after blasting them with the Shrinker, cut through trouble with the 3-barrel Ripper machine gun, set DukeMatch traps with the wall-mounted Laser Mine, watch enemies shatter alter cooling them off with the Freeze Cannon, and 4 more!

FULL MOVEMENT CONTROL lets you run, jump, crawl, swim, and jetpack your way through hostile environments as you look up and down.

DEATH-DEALING DUKEMATCH lets you duke it out one-on-one via modem, and enables up to 8 player battlefests over your network. Also, send prerecorded cut-downs via Duke's RemoteRidicule(tm) system.

TOTAL PENTIUM(TM) SUPPORT with advanced options like hi-res SVGA graphics that add detail and realism, and dynamic (moving) real-time shadows.

BUILD YOUR OWN LEVELS in 3D mode with an easy-to-use editor, included as a FREE BONUS. Creating our own worlds as never been easier!

WITH PARENTAL PASSWORD PROTECTION, you can select a password and lock out younger players from any mature content or language.

FREE: GET THE TWO ORIGINAL DUKE NUKEM GAMES, plus 5 of the hottest shareware titles for free!

taken from the back of the box

Screens

Source code availability

Trivia: The source code release for Duke Nukem 3D was mainly done as an apology for the lack of news regarding Duke Nukem Forever.

How-to-play On-line

If you're using a client similar to Icculus Duke3D, then you create a text-file. Name it something like 'multi.txt':

interface 127.0.0.1
mode peer
broadcast 1

Where the line broadcast 1 specifies the additional number of players. You can then start broadcasting via the commandline:

duke3d -net multi.txt

It'll then start broadcasting requests out to the network you're on. Anyone can now join it with a similar text file. You can be selective in which member on your network can join via a file like this:

interface 127.0.0.1
mode peer
allow IPADDRESS

Where IPADDRESS will obviously have to be changed to the one allowed to join your game. Note that in Duke Nukem 3D there really is no such thing as a 'Client' and a 'Server'. Everyone has more or less the same authority as it's a P2P game. You can add more allow lines like that. Each one will increment the required player count.

Some Duke3D ports have problems with binding the localhost address (127.0.0.1), so you might have to specify your interface manually.

Further notes about multiplayer

You can experiment yourself by downloading the shareware. The Linux build is provided by eukara and is based off icculus.org Duke3D. It requires SDL 1.2 and SDL_mixer 1.2 for 32-bit systems. Source code included, as well as several scripts to make multiplayer set-up a little more bearable. Under DOS the process is undocumented. Also other source-ports all differ in this regard as well.

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