DUKE NUKEM ARENA

a mod for the Eduke32 port of Duke Nukem 3D

by DeeperThought

DUKE NUKEM ARENA (DNA) is a singleplayer game that simulates multiplayer competition, in the spirit of games like Quake III: Arena and Unreal Tournament.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A PREVIEW RELEASE. A full version complete with a campaign mode is forthcoming.

INSTALLATION: Put a copy of Duke3d.grp in an empty directory. Then, extract the contents of DukeNukemArena(wip).zip to that directory. Open DNA.bat to run the game, which will use the included snapshot of EDuke32. To run DNA  using high resolution graphics, place duke3d_xtr.zip in the directory and use DNA_with_Hi-Res.bat

IMPORTANT! When you run Duke Nukem Arena for the first time, make sure you go under OPTIONS -> KEYBOARD SETUP and OPTIONS -> MOUSE SETUP and assign keys/mouse buttons to the game's special functions:

ARENA GAME MENUS -- toggles the in-game menu on and off

ALT FIRE -- secondary firing mode (not yet implemented for the pistol or laser tripbombs)

ARENA SCORES -- toggles the scoreboard on and off

DOUBLE JUMP – this should be set to the same key as JUMP

Playing Duke Nukem: Arena

Select PRACTICE MODE as an episode when starting a game. Selecting the singleplayer campaign episode will do the same thing. When a game ends, you must bring up the game menu and start a new game in order to play again.

The Game Menu. Press the ARENA GAME MENUS key to bring up the menu. Moving the mouse along the y-axis selects menu items. Press fire or press the use key to make a selection, where applicable. To change values for a given menu item, use the left and right strafing keys. Menu items include the game type, map, number of players, your team, item respawn times, etc. When you are finished choosing the options you want, use the menu to start a new game. You can bring up the menu at any time and make changes, but most of them will not take effect until a new game is started (exceptions include music and gore level).

PRACTICE MODE GAMETYPES

DUKEMATCH: Standard death match gametype. Players score points for killing other players, and lose points for killing themselves. You do not lose points for getting killed by other players.

TEAM DUKEMATCH: Standard team death match gametype. Players score points for killing enemy players, and lose points for killing teammates. Friendly fire can be toggled in the options menu.

CAPTURE THE FLAG: CTF rules are the standard rules used in vanilla Quake III and Unreal Tournament.  Teams score by taking the enemy flag and returning to their own flag stand while their own flag is still there.  Touching a dropped flag belonging to one's own team instantly returns it to the flag stand.  Dropped enemy flags can be picked up. 

FLAGS N' FRAGS: Similar to CTF, except that captures are worth 5 points, and enemy kills are worth 1 point, making it is possible to win without capturing enemy flags.

Monster Arena: A team of players faces waves of monsters. The number of respawns each player starts with, as well as the amount of spawning energy  available to the monsters in each wave, is determined by the score limit. There is no time limit in Monster Arena. When all waves of monsters have spawned, a special version of the Cycloid Emperor is spawned. The players must defeat him in order to win. Note that inventory items and ammo do not respawn in monster arena (though weapons do). However, any item in the game can be dropped randomly by the monsters in this gametype (tougher monsters drop more).

Soul Stash:  Kill your enemies, then collect their soul coins and deposit them in a treasure chest to score.  Some maps have more than one chest.

-A total of 14 maps can be selected from the in-game menu, complete with map preview pictures. Some maps are not available for Capture the Flag.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON MONSTERS:  The "TEAM MONSTERS" option is off  by default.  When it is on, this will cause monsters to spawn and assist the teams.  Blue monsters will fight on the side of the blue team, and red monsters will fight on the side of the red team.  To turn the option on, go under the game menu, select "more options", find the option for TEAM MONSTERS, turn it on, then go back to the main menu and start a new game.

Alternative Weapon firing modes and Special Ammo.

If you normally use a mouse button to fire, I recommend setting Alt-fire to the secondary mouse button.

Alt-fire modes are available as soon as a weapon is picked up. In addition, some weapons have special ammo which enhances their normal firing mode until the ammo is used up. Special ammo glows, making it easy to see. There is a catch, however. If you pick up special ammo without having the weapon it belongs to, it counts only as normal ammo.

Note that with the exception of dropped weapons, you cannot pick up a weapon that you already have, even if you are out of ammo. If you want a “weapons stay” option, try reducing the weapon respawn time to 0.

Dodge moves:

Double tap on a movement key to quickly dodge in the direction of the movement (this includes forward, backward, strafe left and strafe right). If you jump while in mid-dodge, the jump will go a much longer distance. If in the air and touching a wall, dodge in the opposite direction from the wall to push off of it. This also gives you upward momentum. If walls are close together, you can use this technique to climb them, by pushing from one to the other.

Target Locking:

If you have an enemy in your sights, you can “lock on” to the enemy by pressing the use key (spacebar by default). When locked on, a special crosshair will appear and you will automatically face the enemy, giving you perfect horizontal aim. Your view height will also move towards the enemy's position, though you can still adjust it for brief periods. The lock will remain on, even if the enemy is out of view, until one of three things happens: (1) You press the use key, (2) The enemy is destroyed, (3) You die.

Hit Chime:

When you damage an enemy player (bot) a chime will sound. The pitch of the chime is inversely proportional to the amount of damage you caused (lower pitch means greater damage). The chime will not always be audible if there is a lot of action going on.

Spectator Mode:

Use the game menu to enter or exit spectator mode at any time once a game starts. When spectating, you can observe the game freely with increased movement speed and infinite jetpack. You can also view from a particular player by pressing the weapon number key corresponding to that player. Once viewing from a player, you may toggle you view distance with the primary fire key, or return to free movement with the alt-fire key.

The HUD:

Most of the changes are self-explanatory. Two things worth noting are: The amounts for health, armor and energy shield are displayed as bars. In the case of health, a number is displayed as well because it can be useful to know the exact amount.

Changes to inventory:

Steroids increase weapon firing rate on most weapons, increase running speed, and quickly regenerate health if it gets below 50.

Nightvision goggles are “ghost goggles” which make the user almost invisible and make weapon fire do half damage.

The Holoduke creates a large “Holosphere” protective field when used. The holosphere will slow enemy projectiles that enter it to ¼ of their normal speed, making them much easier to dodge.

You can raise a personal energy shield at any time by crouching. Your own shots will pass right through it but enemy fire will be blocked by it until it is destroyed. It regenerates when not in use.

KNOWN (STUBBORN) BUGS:

-Kills from certain weapons (usually pipebombs) are not consistently counted towards the killer's score. When this happens, the death message will display incorrectly.

-The game menu cannot be used while the player is dead

-Bots sometimes fail to return to their base when they have the enemy flag

-Bots have difficulty navigating in tight spaces, and occasionally get stuck if they can see a goal but cannot reach it

changelog

1-21-07

-Fixed a bug causing gore to fly incorrectly. Also reduced size of gore chunks.

-Added double-tap dodge moves, double-jump, and wall jumping (for human players only as of this release)

-Reduced running speed for human player to balance for the addition of dodge moves.

1-12-07

-Changed Tower.map to 1.5x original scale, and tweaked some of the botpathing

-Gave bots correct width for detection of hitscan; they should now be easier to hit with bullets

-Menu item selection with mouse is no longer inverted if your mouse y is not flipped

-Some auto turrets fire bullets

-Fixed bug where player could join the monster team in monster arena

-Spectators cannot quick kick

-Added some new bot names (mostly the names of map authors whose maps I have used)

-Fixed bug where if a player was hit by a weapon after beginning his death animation, the new weapon hit (and its owner) would be counted as his cause of death.

-Bots will now back away from enemy pipebombs and, if they have no other targets, will attempt to destroy them

-Main con file is now eduke.con instead of game.con

1-9-07

-Many bugfixes

-Improved bot movement

-Special ammo for enhanced firing modes

-Tower map by Dani Swanson

-Ballroom map by Jason Bredhauer

-Holoduke is now useful

-Target lock feature

-Much improved spectator mode

-Hit chime

-HUD overhaul

-various tweaks too numerous to list

12-19-06

Special Christmas Edition!

-XXXMAS map by Dukebert!

-A special XMAS Bonus (shouldn't be too hard to find.  Hint:  It is not map specific)

-"Soul Stash" gametype (uses treasure chest model by L2theKING, with con coded sparkles added)

-Improved HUD

-frozen jibs

-fixed bug where bots in stayonpath mode would fire at targets they could not hit

-fixed bug where bots in non-team games would fire at their own turrets

-fixed bug where bots would continue to fire  at lizard troopers long after they had turned invisible

-restored Cheer sound when scoring in CTF (had been overwritten by a user.con error)

-various minor bugfixes

-optimized bot dodging

-bots shoot at cracks to open new areas, unless they really need to, in which case they just bump into the crack while holding an RPG

-some stuff I don't remember because I'm too tired

.40 December 9, 2006

-Monsters now spawn in waves in the Monster Arena gametype.  They are:

Wave 1 - liztroops and lizmen

Wave 2 - pigcops, pig tanks and recons

Wave 3 - Sentry Drones and commanders

Wave 4 - Alien Drones and Octabrains

Wave 5 - Cycloid warriors, Chibi-Lords and Battlelords

Wave 6 - All types

Wave 7 - The cycloid emperor

-Added "The Cube" map by Dani Swanson.  Increased the scale to make it suitable for CTF

-Added "Giant Wardome" which is a scaled up version of Wardome

-Increased the scale of Temple of Death  by Maarten Oostrom (it plays better with a large number of players)

-Tweaked the global shade values on several maps in order to improve visibility (this should make them closer to the authors' original intentions, in most cases)

-Fixed a couple of bugs which prevented actors from following waypoints properly in some situations

-Fixed problem where items would sometimes fail to respawn

-Alien Drones now have blood that is the correct color when gore effects are turned on.

-Slightly increased damage of railgun

-Added my own version of the Recon.  It rams enemies and it shoots grenades and bullets.

-Added grenades as the alt-fire for the shotgun

-Added support for music selection in the options menu (names are not yet listed, but you can change the music)

-Added ricochet sounds for bullets

-Added squishy landing sounds for  modelled jibs

-The Cycloid Emperor has a transparent, invulnerable mode that he switches to when not attacking

-Gave the Cycloid Emperor a health bar

.35 December 2, 2006

-Fixed a very stupid bug which caused players to always start with 9 respawns in Monster Arena

-A few other small bug fixes

-Preliminary support for gore (on by default)

.30 November 30, 2006

-Added "Iron Will" and "Agony" maps

-Added map previews in game menu

-Various bug fixes

-Monster bodies fade away after a minute

-Minor improvements to how bots choose  weapons

-pistol shoots with perfect accuracy when player is not moving

-new formula for determining number of player respawns in monster arena

.25 November 24, 2006

-Fixed the “too many sprites spawned” bug

-Fixed the sprites stuck in the air bug

-Added “Monster Arena” gametype

-Added "Roch Island" map for all gametypes

-Added "Chibi-Lord" monster (a small version of the Overlord)

-Reduced rate of team monster spawning

-First game does not begin until it is started using the in-game menu

-Adjusted positioning of some text