Duke Nukem 3D Code Review

alancronin writes "Similar to Fabien Sanglard's previous code reviews of other games such as the Quake and Doom line of games comes a review of the code base of Duke Nukem 3D (split out over 4 pages). This will be a very good read for anyone interested in understanding the mechanics of a highly addictive game or anyone that wants to learn more about game design."

Duke Nukem Forever

[KPU]

I'm more interested in a Duke Nukem Forever code review. Imagine how horrible it must be.

Re:Duke Nukem Forever

[Sockatume]

It'd be interesting to date various components of the code by technological improvements or software development trends.

"Here we see a portion from the early 2000s, by which point the developers had discovered primitive particle effects. It is built upon the ruins of an older epoch developed in the Quake II engine."

Re:Duke Nukem Forever

[Anonymous Coward]

What I love about DNF is that you can spot the bits where, over the years, they looked at the hot FPS du jour and thought 'shit we better put that in'. Like the eerily empty Half-Life 2 bits.

The appeal of DN3D

[RogueyWon]

DN3D came out when I was in my late teens, about 18 months before I went off to university and got a net connection good enough for online gaming. At the time, it was DN3D, rather than Quake, that was the LAN multiplayer game of choice for my friends and I.

Partly that was because of the actual gameplay. While Quake was a better twitch-shooter, DN3D had a real, nasty, sneaky dimension to its multiplayer. You could use the pipebombs and holoduke in particular to make traps for opponents that were just like something out of Spy vs Spy. Much more potential for hilarity than a simple rocket to the face.

But it was also the ease of level creation. Once we were bored of the levels that came with the game, it was trivially easy to fire up the bundled level editor and make new maps. We'd been doing that before with Doom and, if anything, despite having "2.5d" levels (as opposed to Doom's straightforward "2d" levels), DN3D level creation was even easier due to the quality of the tool. By contrast, creating "3d" Quake levels was massively more difficult and time consuming.

Once I went to University, of course, it became much easier to download new maps from the internet and the superior network infrastructure underpinning Quakeworld, Quake 2 and eventually Half-Life multiplayer moved my gaming in that direction instead.

Re:duke nuken

[Mister Whirly]

Duke Nukem 3D was the first FPS to inject a healthy dose of humor into the game. That is what stands out in my mind over actual gameplay mechanics.

Re:duke nuken

[Anonymous Coward]

It stood out for me because of how interactive the environment was, that there were many things that could be used or destroyed, etc. It was something I found missing from later games for some time too. This is not to say Duke Nukem was the first game to do any of that, but it was the first one I played and remembered for doing that. That was more memorable to me than the humor, which considering how crude it is at times, can be really hit or miss depending on the player's particular sense of humor.