Things continue to come together nicely, and we’re now ready to reveal that BioMenace Remastered is coming 18 December this year! There’s still a bit of work ahead of us, but we can see the finish line very clearly.
Continue reading “BioMenace Remastered Dev Log #3”BioMenace Remastered Dev Log #2
Wow, is it November already? Work on the game continues and we’re making good progress. Our primary focus is still on finishing episode 4’s new bosses. We’ve also just onboarded a small group of playtesters to help us make the game as solid as it can be. Thanks to everyone who responded to our call for testers at the end of October! We got a lot of responses and it was not an easy task to choose just a few out of that list. It’s really great to see so much interest in the game, and we can’t wait to share it with the world! We just need to finish it first. So on that note, let’s have a closer look at what we’ve been up to.
New boss fights
We want to keep most of episode 4 as a surprise, so we won’t reveal much about the new bosses. But we think they’ll be pretty epic! So far, focus has been mostly on the final boss, and it’s coming along nicely. It’s probably the most complex boss fight in the whole game, but absolutely in a good way. Just in terms of sprite work, there are 46 distinct frames of animation as of now! For reference, most of the original bosses have around 6. There are 964 lines of code just dedicated to this boss (1,262 when including comments and blank lines) as of now, and its behavior isn’t even complete yet. In comparison, Master Cain has about 277 lines of code (338 when including comments and blank lines).
The other new boss fight, a mid-episode boss, is almost complete in terms of art, but still needs to have most of the coding done. It’ll be the top priority once the final boss is finished, which will be very soon (by the end of this week at the latest).
Level Editor
I created a new custom editor for the game so we could make edits to the existing levels and create new content for episode 4. Due to many new level design features and extensions in the remaster, the original game’s level format was not sufficient for our needs, and thus using existing editors was not an option. Throughout most of development, the editor was geared primarily to our needs and not ready for “public” use. I’ve now taken the first steps towards making it usable for end users, so you’ll be able to create your own levels from day one. The editor is now integrated into the game and can be opened from the menu:
Levels created with the editor will be saved as files in a user_levels directory within the game’s install directory. Any files found in that directory are listed in the “User Levels” menu in the game, and can be played from there. The files can be shared with other people, they just need to be placed into the directory and will then be accessible in the game. We still plan to add Steam Workshop support at some point for even easier sharing, but this definitely won’t make it in for the initial release. With the setup as just described, it’s still possible to create your own levels and share them with your friends and/or the community, for example by sharing the files via Discord or other methods.
Unlike our internally used version of the editor, the public editor has some restrictions, as certain game features like bosses – or also specific items you will discover when you get to play episode 4 – are very specific to the levels they are placed in within the full episodes, so it doesn’t make sense to allow them in user levels. Opening the official levels from the 4 episodes will also not be possible in the public editor, as we want people to experience the game normally at first and not be tempted to just look up all the secrets etc. We may release full map snapshots for episode 4 at some point, but for now we want you all to discover things on your own! Finally, the public editor lacks the ability to edit the tileset. We may potentially add support for custom graphics at some point in the future, but for now, we have to keep things simple in order to be able to hit our planned release date.
This is only the first steps of course, there’s more work left to do to make the editor more user friendly. We plan to add some inline documentation for controls and how to utilize certain actors, and also some extra features to replace functionality that was previously only available in the tileset editor. And of course, we need to record the tutorial videos we mentioned last time.
Aside from the editor and the bosses, it’s now mostly a matter of bug fixing, polishing, and some small final TODOs, plus finalizing the difficulty balancing across all episodes with the feedback from our new testers. It’s all coming together! Stay tuned for the next update, where we might reveal the exact release date we’re aiming for 👀
BioMenace Remastered Dev Log #1
It’s been 6 months since we announced BioMenace Remastered, and we’re getting closer to the planned release window (December). We’d like to keep you in the loop as we’re moving towards the finish line, so here’s our first dev log!
Overall, we’re currently on track to releasing the game in December this year. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but things are coming together nicely.
Continue reading “BioMenace Remastered Dev Log #1”BioMenace Remastered
I’m excited to reveal my latest project: BioMenace Remastered – an official modern re-release of the DOS classic with enhanced graphics, refined gameplay, and quality of life improvements. Watch our reveal trailer:
We’re a small independent team and this is the first time we’re fully self-publishing a title, so we’d highly appreciate it if you could wishlist the game on Steam to support us!
In this post, I’ll be sharing some of the backstory of how this project came to be.
Disclaimer: All screenshots and GIFs shown in this article are from a work in progress version of the game – visuals may still change before the final release.
Continue reading “BioMenace Remastered”Graphical effects in Duke Nukem 1 & 2, part 2
Last time, we investigated the routine Duke Nukem 1 uses to create its mirror surface floor effect. In this post, we’ll have a look at one of the effects found in the sequel: Underwater areas.
Anything present in the affected area is rendered in a blue tint to make it appear submerged in water. To further sell the effect, the water surface is also showing an animated wave/ripple pattern. It looks pretty cool, if you ask me! Across the whole game, this effect is only used in two levels: E1L2 and E3L3. I wouldn’t mind seeing it more often, but then again, pools of water don’t always fit thematically. Anyway, we’re here to understand how this effect was achieved, so let’s dive in.
Continue reading “Graphical effects in Duke Nukem 1 & 2, part 2”Graphical effects in Duke Nukem 1 & 2, part 1
The first two Duke Nukem games aren’t necessarily known for groundbreaking, industry-changing visuals, but they do have some neat effects, which were somewhat impressive for the time. I already talked in depth about the games’ parallax scrolling, which was rare to see in DOS games of the early 90s. But this time, we’ll focus on other graphical effects: Mirror-surface floors in Duke Nukem 1, and under-water and translucency effects in Duke Nukem 2. Let’s start with the first game.
When I played Duke Nukem 1 for the first time as a kid, I was certainly impressed by the mirror surface floors. It may not look that flashy nowadays, but as far as I’m aware, this was an unusual effect to see in EGA-based action games of the time. It’s certainly not something you’d find in other Apogee titles of the era. So how were these implemented?
Continue reading “Graphical effects in Duke Nukem 1 & 2, part 1”Duke Nukem 1’s collision detection
So far, we’ve looked at how the game renders its world and the characters and objects inhabiting it. But one key ingredient is still missing in the engine layer: There’s not much gameplay to be had if objects can’t interact with each other and the world. For that, we need collision detection. And just like rendering, it has its fair share of quirks in this game.
Duke Nukem 1’s sprite rendering
Last time, we looked at how the game renders its world – background and tiles. What really brings the game to life though are the sprites drawn on top. Almost everything interactive in the game is represented using sprites: Duke himself, enemies, pickups, doors, force fields, laser blasts, floating score numbers, explosions, etc.
In this post, we’ll have a closer look at how these things are rendered.
Continue reading “Duke Nukem 1’s sprite rendering”Duke Nukem 1’s tile rendering
There are a few areas in Duke Nukem 1 which feature a pitch black background instead of the usual graphical one. Why is that – was it an aesthetic choice? Turns out, it’s actually an interesting trick used to work around limitations in the game’s tile rendering.
Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered
Duke Nukem 1 and 2 are getting an official remaster for the Evercade platform, and I was lead developer on the project. Here’s the official showcase video with an overview of all the new features:
And the announcement trailer:
If you’ve seen or used RigelEngine before, some of the new features will sound familiar – the project is in fact based on RigelEngine. But it very much goes above and beyond what the open-source version can offer, with additional features, a completely new menu system, new music and artwork, and of course the biggest one, a remaster of Duke Nukem 1 with the same enhancements and quality of life improvements as Duke 2.
Continue reading “Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered”
Lethal Guitar