which one did you think was better back then (if you were around) and do you still stand by that opinion today?

Duke Nukem 3D was a cultural phenomenom and a very influencial game when it comes to realism and interactivity, I think Half-Life owes a lot to it for instance.
If you played video games you knew who Duke was and you played 3D. It was playable on a potato too which was its strength.

Blood was very niche in comparison. It also came out mid 97 and by that point the market was flooded by FPS games and Build already didn't look impressive anymore.

Shadow Warrior was a critical and commercial disaster.

Redneck Rampage was better recieved and most likely sold more than Shadow Warrior considering it actually had an in-engine sequel, expansion pack, and spin-off (not even counting the Redneck racing game) while all 3 of Shadow Warrior's expansions were cancelled due to the poor sales of the main game.

So back in the day there was no contest. Duke was king, and if you were into FPS a lot you played Blood and Redneck Rampage. Shadow Warrior was the retarded far removed asian cousin. And I love Shadow Warrior.

>>11848637
visually I do think duke looks the most interesting too

Duke 3D also got ported to all 3 main consoles, also had 3 third person games released on consoles during that same gen; plus Duke Nukem Advance on GBA later on. Blood only had a terrible butchered sequel on PC, Shadow Warrior got nothing obviously.

It can not be understated how huge Duke was back then, the other Build games were just "Duke-likes" and most people wrongly thought (and some still do) that every Build game was built on the same code base as Duke Nukem 3D even though, even in the case of Shadow Warrior, they only share about half.

for me, it's turok

>>11848623 (OP)
I liked Lo Wang's one liners the most.

As a kid I preferred Duke. Part of the reason was I found Blood scary. These days I can't stand most of Duke3D's maps and much prefer Blood.

I still haven't played Shadow Warrior.

Woah!
Oh, just me.

>>11848623 (OP)
>which one did you think was better back then (if you were around) and do you still stand by that opinion today?
It was and still is Blood, though now I'm thinking that Shadow Warrior is the overall "best". Duke probably made the biggest splash while Redneck has the best visuals at the cost of everything else.

>>11848902
Funny how that explains their weird hands

>>11848623 (OP)
shadow warrior is meme. even that redneck game was better

Duke Nukem got played the most often back then

For about 1 or 2 years a lot of people were playing that online

I think I have to hand it to duke by default. I didn't find blood's extreme focus on hitschan to be that enjoyable to progress through without save scumming and shadow warrior is full of annoying spammy bullshit.

>>11848623 (OP)
All of them were heroes we needed in our darkest hour.
All of them immortalized as treasures of their time.
None shall be pitted against the other.

>>11848623 (OP)
Duke has gay and lame enemies so I never even tried playing it. Shadow Warrior is impossible to navigate. Even worse than Hexen.

Blood is the real winner.

>>11848623 (OP)
Objectively speaking it was Duke 3D.
Blood was a good game but it came out too late and Build Engine games looked really primitive when you put them next to stuff like Half-Life and Quake II.
Shadow Warrior was the weakest of the three. Even today I find it hard to replay, it's not a bad game but it's defenitely not very impressive on its own.

>>11848623 (OP)

I was going to say "Duke, no contest" - it changed the zeitgeist and what we expected from FPSs forever, but in terms of the actual feeling I had at the time, I do remember Shadow Warrior being preferred by my friendship group for a bit - essentially because we thought Lo Wang was funny. In terms of the game I come back to though, and that is most fun to play - it's Duke for me.

Blood was never really that much in my consciousness at the time - Duke was obviously raved about, Shadow Warrior I was more aware of due to friends being into it. I remember giving the demo a go and found it to be pretty frustrating - Duke and Shadow Warrior were both challenging but in a fun way, Blood just seemed to be full of annoyingly bullet spongey enemies - and I was still playing keys only at that point. I enjoy it more now though.

Blood was best then and best now.

>>11848623 (OP)
duke nukem was the only i knew
a few years ago when i got into boomshoots i realized i saw an ad for blood in a gaming mag once, but i never played it or saw anyone play it
shadow warrior didn't exist
t: a slav

>>11848623 (OP)
>which one did you think was better back then
what a question
its duke obviously
duke flopped his flaccid 12 incher all over these other poor faggots. and they just took it, cuz they knew the score

>do you still stand by that opinion today?
yea duke is still a fucking excellent shooter

>>11848623 (OP)
I don't care about popularity, critical acclaim or sales. Out of these three Blood was and still is the best game.

>>11850481
>Shadow Warrior is impossible to navigate. Even worse than Hexen.
I don't remember any levels in SW being remotely Hexen-like in terms of navigation.

>>11852520
I remember a fireplace that had a sneaky ladder, but that’s far from “Hexen-like” and the level progression was otherwise fine.

>>11851791
>Blood was and still is the best game
Objectively true even without the first part.

duke 3d is culturally the most important, but episode 2 shits the bed and ep 3 is not as good as 1 (it also has some annoying stages); ep4 was better than 2 but not as good as 3
blood is consistently good until eps 3 and 4 when it becomes a mixed bag, same with the expansions, but its peaks are the highest of the three games
shadow warrior has the most consist level design quality overall and a lot of its stages range from good to great, so my choice is shadow warrior (both of the expansions were good as well)

in the 90s i never played blood or shadow warrior, and i was barely allowed to play duke3D.

as an adult i like blood the best, but all three are great.

>>11848623 (OP)
the first one i played was Duke 3D in the 90's. i fell in love instantly.
Shadow Warrior never clicked for me despite the first map being one of my favorite FPS maps. the other maps are very forgettable and the gameplay is not my cup of tea.
Blood was the very last i tried(a few years ago) and it's the one i play the most these days because the monsters, despite being buggy and unpolished are the most entertaining ones.

>>11855029
that art is kino
is there more like it?

sometimes I wonder what a shadow warrior that had riffed more directly on underground hong kong movies would have been like. like more earnest engrish than go peepee in your coke chinamen type jokes.

>>11855060

>>11855091

>>11855093

>>11855094

>>11854285
>but episode 2 shits the bed
I hold the opinion that Allen Blum's E2 levels are good, with Lunar Reactor and Dark Side being among my favourites in the whole game. Levelord's E2 levels are largely what drag the episode down considerably, with Spin Cycle in particular being hot garbage.

As a kid I spent a long time on Duke levels with cheats just exploring and enjoying the world.
It was really fun as an underage kid to virtually go to forbidden places like strip joints.

I don't like Duke's movement, it feels awful. Blood all the way.

>>11855127
Is it too fast for you, zoomie?

>>11848623 (OP)
I'm 35 and Duke 3D is the only one out of those I've played, and thought it was good.

>>11855134
for me its the humble British, McPlant®

Duke Nukem 3D is another great example of technical limitations defining influencial game design principles. What we think of for mid to late 90's FPS level design are multi-paths, like letting the player reach an area through the main door or through a event, and areas big enough for extra maneuveribility. DN3D largely defined that except that most of that in DN3D comes from the fact that they wanted to design every single map to be playable in SP, but also DM and COOP in the same map, instead of all those extra 5 mb of space it would have required to have 3 versions of each level. In Hollywood Holocaust, the reason you can blow up the wall through the window of the ticket vendor? Deathmatch.

Shadow Warrior and Blood levels also have that mentality but not to the same extent really.

>>11855201
Map size isn't a big problem as long as it doesn't have tons of custom textures.

any good shadow warrior user maps? ive played the expansions before and replayed great showdown In suzhou map today

>>11848637
>Shadow Warrior was a critical and commercial disaster.
Ironic how the reboot got 3 whole games that were successful and well received while Blood and Duke's sequels were universally panned.

>>11854285
I love Lunar Apocalypse, even the drones.

>>11855250
Bento Noodle is a fun map.

Last Warrior TC is also pretty good but good fucking luck getting it to work with modern sourceports

>>11855375
played the bento map, its fun but quite small.
i got the last warrior tc running with the redux version on steam with the -gLastwar.grp in the command line

>>11855352
drones are funny i don't know why people have ptsd over it. just cheese them

>>11848623 (OP)
>most fun
Shadow Warrior
>best guns
Blood
>best character
WHOOOOOOO WANTTAH SUM WANG
>best levels
Blood

>>11855914
It's like Spawns in Quake to me, literally just shoot them lmao.

>>11856491
right. every time you hit them with bullets they freeze the a short time. i like luring them to doors and exploding them by proximity through them.
particularly in the big crater in Dark Side (E2L8)

>>11848623 (OP)
Blood by a mile. I like Duke 3D and I like Shadow Warrior more now, but Blood is the best of those three.

>>11856724
That one is probably the easiest drone encounter in the entire game, because you get this huge arena to move through where you get all this space and you can see clearly everywhere.

It also looks cool.

>>11856902
some of the modern user maps do drone encounters well, la meltdown 2047 is one imo. a swarm and lots of pipebombs in wide open areas is good fun.

>>11856491

The annoyance factor in both enemies are:
- Movement is irregular in comparison to most enemies
- They're silent
- They cause devastating damage when they get to you and close distance quickly, so you have a limited time to shoot them down
- They're relatively bullet spongey - particularly if you're pistol or shotgun starting as you are in some levels (E3L1 for instance)

IMV, the least frustrating, while still being challenging 'explosive' enemies have two or three of these things (but not too many or all - as they'd then be shit):
- Loud
- Slow
- Weak
- They move towards you in a fairly straight line
- There's a lot of them at once

I'm going to play blood in a bit for the first time.
Can someone tell me the hardest difficulty that's still playable solo? I heard the hardest one was meant for co-op and it's too hard to beat alone.

>>11857839
Extra Crispy was made for co-op, yeah. You can try Well Done but it's pretty hard, people usually start with Lightly Broiled. Some ports have a custom difficulty that let you adjust different things individually like enemy health, enemy quantity, and damage taken.

>>11854285
Duke 3d ep2 is the best Duke ever

>>11857839
If you're playing for the first time, play Lightly Broiled. Enemy hitpoints, damage, and reaction time scale with difficulty to the point that even on Well Done you can instantly get shredded by cultists laying in ambush, so you need to have the level memorized to know where to bounce TNT to play on Well Done, and that goes double for Extra Crispy, the co-op difficulty. On Lightly Broiled, you can play for the first time comfortably. If you think that's too easy you can pitchfork start the levels, though you might need to know the secrets to survive in some cases.

>>11848902
Is that image seriously how the artists made the sprites? That is fucking ghetto

>>11858050
>>11858123
tyy

>>11858121
It's got a big difficulty bump with its enemies. If you find that agreeable then yeah it's a great episode.
>>11858131
It's not too far off from how a lot of Doom sprites were made: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Models
But Monolith didn't mold their own stuff. Still a great "Evil Dead" look.
>>11858156
How are you playing it, by the way? Original DOS version will have a "difficulty swap" bug if you save and then load the game on the easiest or harder difficulties, but it shouldn't happen if you follow the advice from >>11858123 and stick with Lightly Broiled.

>>11858160
I think the point is that Doom models were custom made. They even hired a pro sculptor for some of the models. Blood devs just bought off the shelf toys. Duke 3D was mostly pre-renders, I think.

>>11858168
Yeah it's certainly ghetto, no arguing against that point, but I still like what they did.

>>11858168
> Blood devs just bought off the shelf toys

That's a stupid simplifcation

>>11858160
>How are you playing it, by the way?
i got the remaster on steam for like a dollar, people say it's good and pretty faithful to the original.

>>11858473
It's pretty decent. If you're an autist you can browse some of the differences here https://steamcommunity.com/app/1010750/discussions/0/1644292444647662838
A few years back they included the original version with purchase so you can play it through a sourceport down the road.

>>11858479
>play it through a sourceport down the road.
good to hear, I'll check it out.

>>11848623 (OP)
Duke weapons felt the best, i could never get used to blood arsenal

>>11848623 (OP)
loved all of them, I grew up in ideal peak fps kino development, starting with wolf3d then to doom to duke and rise of the triad to blood to half life then peaking before the call of duties and halo ruined it forever. All of the 90s had amazing FPS's even stupid shit like corridor 7 and catacombs 3d. Sorry kids these days didn't get to grow up with such phenomenal viddya progress.

>>11858168
>>11858185
Blood's characters weren't exactly all stock toys, their design approach varied considerably. This is Caleb's base for instance, he wasn't a Power Rangers toy with a papier-mâché skin on it (like the Axe Zombie was), he was crafted from the very ground up as a posable figure with an armature and everything.

A similar approach was taken to make posable figures for Chernobog, the spiders, the dogs, etc, etc. Many of the weapons were pre-rendered 3D, like the Tommygun, but some were handcrafted props, like the Voodoo Doll.

>>11858168
For Doom, the design approach probably varied even more than Blood's, and best I can tell, Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud used far more toys to create characters, weapons, and props, than Blood did.
In fact, I'd say that Blood ends up having significantly more consistent visual design for its characters than Doom, given how Kevin Kilstrom crafted them like 90% from scratch, and I think that deserves a lot of additional respect, particularly given how good it actually looks.

In comparison, most of the weapons in Doom were toys, the pictured 12" G.I Joe here (or one extremely similar), was used to make he hanging dead body sprites in the first game, his FAMAS-raygun thing was used both to make the Rocket Launcher weapon, as well as the rifle you see Doomguy and the Zombiemen hold in their hands (to clarify, they were made out of clay on wood dolls, they just gave them the rifle because it fit).

The reason they hired Greg Punchatz (recommended to them by his father, Don Punchatz, the game's cover illustrator) to make models for them was because while the clay models Adrian made gave a pretty good and consistent look, lighting them for capture would make the clay warm up and soften, and it would sometimes break apart. There's subtle inconsistencies on the Baron Of Hell's legs from breaking apart and being repaired because of that.
Some stuff was drawn from scratch, also, like the Cacodemon, while the Imp was largely drawn over Doomguy. Some was adapted from existing stuff, like the Pain Elemental having parts from other monsters grafted over a recolored Cacodemon sprite, or the Arachnotron being a downscaled and retouched Spider Mastermind, the zombies are all edits on Doomguy's sprites, etc.

>>11858168
>Duke 3D was mostly pre-renders
To a very large part, yes they were, Duke Nukem 3D made VERY extensive use out of 3D models which were crafted by Chuck Jones (who would later do much of the monster and character design in Half-Life and Half-Life 2, among other Valve games).

For exceptions, Duke's hands and his kick are digitized, and his shotgun is a Winchester 1300 Defender with a factory pistolgrip, which George Broussard bought used, having previously been owned by the Texas Department Of Corrections.
He figured it would be cool to put a real shotgun in the game, and he was right, but people and journos complained in previews that it looked dull and like "a gray banana," so he bought a Tac-Star vertical front grip and vented heat shield to put on it, to make it look more distinct, and I'd say that did the trick.
To me, Duke's shotgun is iconic, drawing the radiation tre-foil logo on it for Duke is a neat and fun touch.

The explosion and fire graphics in Duke Nukem 3D were mostly sourced from Pyromania FX, which is a royalty free stock asset set you buy once and then you're free to use the contents in all of your productions. You can see a lot of the same assets used independently in various other games of that time.

>>11848645
I tried Time to Kill 2 times

I always say fuck it in the sewer level... Which is the beginning... Fucking annoying

>>11858991
TTK has a terrible start. The city is supposed to act as a tutorial to teach you all the moves, like how to reach the two secret appartments or the atomic health behind the wall, except that it's easy to just let all that fly by and go straight to the sewers; meaning you'll be missing on the basics before being thrown in. And then those sewers are genuinely one of the worst part of the entire game (minus the last 1 or 2 levels which are just a bunch of super rushed succession of square rooms). Those sewers are also dark and confusing.

So overall I'd say the game has a terrible start and a high learning curve at the start, but if you're willing to commit to it it gets pretty fun after that.
The game operates on Tomb Raider principles, and the devs largely assumed that anyone playing the game would be familiar with those mechanics (which would have been mostly correct at the time) ie: a normal jump makes you jump a two block distance but a running jump gives you a distance of 3 blocks; but the scale of the game makes those blocks smaller than in TR which imo gives it less gameplay clarity (though this scale does make the game look more detailed than TR). You just need to get used to this game's variation on that for the platforming; the shooting will come naturally. Note that later on you'll often get a jetpack to bypass the tougher platforming.

>>11848645
love this game

>>11859028
Me too, despite a couple levels being pretty bad and the overall lack of enemy variety (it's basically just variations of Liztroop / Pigcops / Octobrains), when it's fun, it's really fun, the far west and medieval castle were very memorable for instance.

>>11854285
I think episode 3 is the best one
3>1>4>>2

>>11859043
it's crazy that ttk is so good but land of the babes is so mediocre, since they were made by the same people

>>11848645
I got filtered pretty hard in the second level (western one I think), but used cheat codes to explore all levels and also played multiplayer a lot
Loved that game

>>11848623 (OP)
Duke is the one with the best character, most fun environments, and most cultural impact.
As for Shadow Warrior, Lo Wang is a very gimmicky and limited character, since his whole point is to be a stereotype. That works, but it's not nearly has dynamic as Duke. The levels themselves are pretty good, but I find the enemies incredibly annoying and the weapons just aren't as good as the other games.
Blood is probably the most mechanically solid game. It has some neat level concepts and probably the best shotgun ever put in a video game, but I find the whole presentation of the game, its atmosphere, and the character of Caleb to be uninteresting for how straight its played. I suppose these games don't have to be EPIC and COMEDIC all the time, but the over the top nature was part of the appeal for me. Because Blood doesn't lean into that, it just comes off as more generic.

Essentially, I'd say Duke is the best from a thematic standpoint and Blood is the best from a mechanical standpoint. I've never played Shadow Warrior past the first few levels, so I can't really say much on it. From everything I know of the game, it just doesn't excel at anything in particular.

>>11848645
>I WONT BECOME THE THING I HATE
>I WONT BECOME THE THING I HATE
>I WONT BECOME THE THING I HATE
>I WONT BECOME YOOOOOOOUUUUUU
https://youtu.be/X5nJWdHBVhQ?feature=shared&t=66

>>11859347
yeah I'm thinking this is kino

Blood is fucking impossible

>>11860116
It's a tough game for sure, but it's got its logic and rules. Crouch, duck, jump, and intermittently dive behind pillars and corner for cover to break their line of fire.

>>11860196
Thank you for giving actual advice instead of screeching ZOOMER like most of the balding faggots on this board.

>>11860196
Like that webm shows, I think all of these Build games were heavily balanced with the vanilla "autoaim" in mind, and Blood's manual even recommends leaving it on. All the most annoying enemies (Duke3D drones, Shadow Warrior bees, rats and eels in Blood, etc.) all become way less annoying with it enabled.

>>11860210
Remember that dynamite is your friend, you'll get a lot of it and you can bounce it around corners and through doorways and windows.

>>11860232
Is that not designed with using keys to aim in mind? Like having auto aim on a controller.

>>11860267
>Is that not designed with using keys to aim in mind?
Not specified, and both that page and the previous are talking about multiple control schemes (keyboard, mouse, joystick, gamepad)
https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/299030/manuals/One%20Unit%20Whole%20Blood%20Manual.pdf?t=1668116208
Duke3D also didn't readily let you disable it, I think that was only a sourceport option introduced much later.

>>11860116
Until you realise why the game is generous with the dynamite. You have to play like a mad bomber.

>>11860252
>>11860307
I always run out of dynamite very quickly.

>>11855375
i found a better way as the redux version dosnt display the custom gfx properly and skips levels for some reason. this was from moddb.

To play your custom .grp file with voidSW you do the following:
---------------------------------------------------------------
1- Create a shortcut of the voidsw.exe file and
have your addon's .grp file in the voidSW root folder.
2- Enter the properties of the new shortcut file and find the TARGET command line entry field.
3- After \voidsw.exe" add /gswc20.grp.
(So it looks like this ...\voidsw.exe" /gswc20.grp)
4- Save this and now the shortcut will launch swc20.grp file add on.
5- Use your .grp file name obviously, enjoy.

>>11859256
>Blood is probably the most mechanically solid game. It has some neat level concepts and probably the best shotgun ever put in a video game, but I find the whole presentation of the game, its atmosphere, and the character of Caleb to be uninteresting for how straight its played
I think it's the exact the opposite. Blood has great presentation and has lots of fun with its genre but beyond the base Build engine stuff the mechanics suck with its terrible enemy and weapon design.

In Duke, you need to approach every enemy differently, every weapon has a situation it excels at while Blood is just dynamite everything.

>>11860654
>while Blood is just dynamite everything.

This is completely wrong.

>Butchers
Flamethrowing canister

>Gargoyles
Tesla or Voodoo Doll, alternatively Rocket Launcher

>zombies
Shotgun alt

>Shark dudes underwater
Shotgun up close, Voodoo Doll in the distance

>Cerberus
Tesla or Rocket Launcher

>Ghosts
Tommygun or Shotgun

>big Spiders
Tesla

>Cultists
Shotgun or Tommygun (especially Tommygun alt when they're all over the place) to stun them and make them stop shooting at you for 2 seconds; or flare gun to pick them off in the distance or one by one

You just haven't figured out Blood yet. Once you have the game has you constantly change weapon to accomodate the situation. I played Blood so much that now I'm bored and don't play it anymore precisely because I know exactly what to use in any given circumstance to be the most efficient, but that still precisely demands to switch weapons all the time

And the soul leech turret is just for trolling

The shotgun is also a decent alternative for Cerberus up close

>>Ghosts
>Tommygun or Shotgun

Forgot to mention that's Tommygun alt fire, it's the fastest way to get rid of them and it's underrated

>>11860758
>Shark dudes underwater
>Shotgun up close, Voodoo Doll in the distance
I always used the napalm launcher. It instantly annihilates them.

>>11860758
zombies are pitchfork or TNT

>>11860795
Pitchfork is for when you need to conserve ammo (which admitedly often happens when you pitchfork start), it takes forever otherwise (even when you know the best pitchfork starts) when a single shotgun alt shot kills them and sends them flying. TNT is for when they are in packs

>>11860789
well the napalm launcher annihilates most things in one shot so I only mentionned it for Gargoyles because I'm not sure many people use it for them. It's satisfying to lend a shot when they're flying about.

>>11860890

good vids, based Blood enjoyer.

also:
>manically chattering cultists > every other enemy in FPS history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDCQY6nHsbI

>>11860890
i should do that but every time i chicken out because i suck at TNTjump