EDuke32 – Duke Nukem 3D (Open-Source) | Hacker News Reader

EDuke32 – Duke Nukem 3D (Open-Source)

eduke32.com

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Blast from the past — I made the EDuke32 logo when I was teenager back in 2004. (I still have the PSD sitting around somewhere...) Back then there was quite an active community on the now defunct 3drealm's forums and I spent a lot of time contributing icons, logos, or web dev help to different Duke Nukem projects.

I don't think I ever properly played Duke 3D until recently, picking up the "Cursed Randy Version" version on Switch. But as a kid I was hooked on the level editor (and pixelated nudity.) Duke 3D's custom maps scene never eclipsed the popularity and duration of Doom or Quake, but there were some fantastic creations that really stirred the imagination and kept me in that editor for hours.

(There is also a port of the Duke Nukem 64 version, which whilst almost identical, does have a few interesting variations which makes it worth the try for a series fan.)

That early 2000's web design style, love it!

Which ones where you favorite maps :) ?

Probably the best Duke3D ever got was the ROCH series. They really pushed what was possible with the engine, and must've been so slow on the Pentium 100.

(Hard to remember the names from 20 years ago, but that one certainly sticks out.)

Duke Nukem 3D was probably one of the earlier FPS games that really encouraged modding because of Ken Silverman's Build Engine.

Even the enemy AI could be modified (albeit relatively limited) by editing the text CON files.

Anyone else remember playing over LAN with friends, dropping a Duke hologram in an elevator along with a bunch of pipe bombs hidden at its feet?

It was a wonderful collection of rage inducing weapons: pipe bombs, laser trip mines, shrink ray (then step on them for the kill), freeze gun (any hit shatters for the kill), and the BFG.

We had LAN parties and would play for hours on end with custom maps we had built or downloaded.

Same! We used to host "Jetpack Freeze Ray" duels which ended when somebody was frozen causing them to plummet out of the sky and shatter when they hit the ground~~

Hail to the king, baby!

> then step on them for the kill

I heard the sound effect of that when I read you're comment.

Yeah it sounded like what I imagine pressing on a cardboard of eggs would.

Back when I worked at the AG Group (famous for etherpeek) we'd play late at night we could hear each other screaming from our offices, and I'd walk out of my office terrified. The laser trips were the best. This game truly holds a special place in my heart.

We also had a really good LAN there.

Nice. The laser-trip alarm effect that would play right before it detonated in your face is forever emblazoned in my memory.

Indeed, they made Level Editor available. In fact, there was even a friggin' book on level design: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0782118690

Blast from the past indeed. Many many moons ago, I came up with a "bright" idea of designing a mod for Duke3D that modeled the office of my then-employer (large fintech company). At least I had enough sense not to boast about it - several months later a crazy guy brought a shotgun to HIS former employer and made national news, I don't think people would have taken my creation as lightly as I did back then. Still, working on it was fun.

Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Dark Forces are my triumvirate of that era. Of all of them, Duke Nukem felt the most interactive. There are times I would clear a level of enemies, then play with all the gizmos the level designers put inside like the jail cell block doors of Death Row. The security cameras were so advanced at the time too! They rendered their view, in real time, on a wall TV. I wouldn't see that effect again until the 2000s. The levels felt intuitive too, at least the Earth levels, that I felt like an urban explorer in a way that Deus Ex would later capture.

This is the most fun I've had with Duke Nukem this century https://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-nukem-alien-armageddon

It's a sort of duke roguelike with 100's of potential levels, you play through a a certain random number of them in a run. Also you unlock all sorts of power ups as you progress, enemies also get stronger and get random buffs. + Theyve added a load of mechanics, more weapons, enemies, more playable characters etc.

Looks great! Thanks!

I gotta try this!

Back then I got the game from a friend, who handled me a CD. It was apparently a pirated version because it has that sort of red color progress bar installer.

I actually never made through E1L3 back in 1997, because it was very confusing for someone who only had about 15-20 mins of play every night — and I had to dodge from my parents who absolutely thought and still think that games are bad things.

But I was hooked with the end game screen which promised loads of goods (I still remember this phrase ) on the CD to make my own levels. Wow! I was instantly hooked! Alas, as I said it was a pirated version, and there was no map editor in the installer file. Back then people tend to strip any unnecessary contents off from the games and zip them into a compressed file.

I didn’t find the map editor until much later in my life. By then I have lost the interest of level design (I used to dab into Half-Life mapping because the pirated version was mercifully the full set of the original CD so it contained worldcraft.exe).

Nevertheless, very good memory. I still play its mods from time to time. Doom, Quake, Duke3d and Blood all have long lasting communities that produce loads and loads of goods throughout the years. They also built better tools and ports for us to enjoy.

Jeez. So many things to do, yet so little time.

Mac Source Ports has signed and notarized versions of this along with Raze and JFDuke3D - https://www.macsourceports.com/game/duke3d

All ported and ready to go on Apple Silicon - they even have instructions on how to extract the needed data from Steam or GoG.

Does anyone here have any background on Mac Source Ports? It's where I get most of the games on my Macs, but it's a little weird how there's no "here's who we are and why we're doing this".

There’s an email address on the About page which is a first name at macsourceports.com.

And a GitHub that’s not hard to figure who is contributing.

Each port is also tagged with the exact project they're coming from and the source.

It's not exactly a secret, they just don't have a vanity page.

Classic!

Play the (only?) WASM demo at https://midzer.de/wasm/duke3d/ (ported from https://github.com/GPSnoopy/BelgianChocolateDuke3D). Miserably only software rendering right now.

Offtopic:

> "Click here to load ~19mb"

Oh, how sweet...

The front page of reddit (not logged in) is 11 MB, logged in it is 17 MB for me (variable based on media-heavy subreddits and ads). Facebook's login page is 8 MB. Hell, Google's front, once a bastion of efficiency (long since fallen), is 9 MB.

It's sad how 19 MB now doesn't even register for me in today's bloated web.

> It's sad how 19 MB now doesn't even register for me in today's bloated web.

I have recently mentally registered that many people look at GB the same way in 2026

I do appreciate that it puts up a warning instead of starting automatically, maybe not so much for the 19MB part, but for the fact that it plays sound.

wow, first Linux crash in over a year trying to run that. artifacts and unresponsive 2nd monitor, had to hard reboot.

I played a lot of Duke Nukem 3D multiplayer in the 90s. We connected PCs with a serial cable, and later the game was available in a local “internet cafe”, except that cafe had no internet. Just games and a local network. I spent a lot of time there. Then, after several years, when I was studying IT in a different city, someone approached me and asked “hey, aren’t you by any chance “Phantom” from that cafe? We used to play together Duke Nukem.

i has a similar moment when visiting a good friend that just moved back to romania after brexit and while sitting at a classy café, a well dressed guy approached my friend and started making a lot of melodramatic bowing and effusions and calling him with what was clearly a nickname. after he left, my friend simply said that they were homies on cs1.6, probably met in real life thanks to the cafes (i bet romania was a messed up place in early 00s). i felt a urge of envy, not so much for their skills in cs1.6 but because i totaly missed out on those early days of lan parties and internet multiplayer games with real freedom (i only played single player duke3d and other FPSs with my cousins as a kid, taking turns).

Duke Nukem/BUILD was the first level editor that sucked me into level editing/mods, it is also the place where I spent the most hours. I later pivoted to more professional pursuits, however i killed a ton of time building new levels, and exploiting the engine to an obscene level.

I doubt I could get back into it these days, however, I hope the open source effort can inspire some awesome stuff!

Duke3D is one of those weird games where I don't respect it as much as Doom or Quake, but I have to admit I've had a lot of fun playing it at different points in my life. Some seriously great memories deathmatching with friends on the opening map, and the combat in the single player is often really good.

I honestly think DUKE3D is better than either of them. The levels actually look like what they're supposed to be, instead of abstract corridors with nonsensical props strewn about, as in DOOM. It could also be my habits, but I also find the DUKE3D's movement is superior to QUAKE's. I always feel like I overshoot my target position in QUAKE.

Agreed about Duke3D movement being superior to Quake's. Not Doom (at least not for me personally), but I agree about Quake, which feels "artificial" -- no momentum.

I usually set the sv_friction cvar in Quake to 6 or 8, by default it's 4 and it makes the movement feel slippery. It also has the instant airbrake when you hit the move backward button mid jump, which is useful but pretty strange.

Duke Nukems are still my favorite games ever. One of the first game I played multiplayer with two laptops. I was 12ish years old. First game was actually retaliator, but that aside. Level design, graphics, sounds and the atmosphere was groundbreaking those days. Wish I was that age again.

Me too! I learnt a lot about how games „work“ by using the level editor and using more and more of the advanced features. And playing your own worlds in 1vs1 serial linked multiplayer mode was a whole new experience.

Agreed, amazingly fun multiplayer experience. Also love Ion Fury, built in the same engine and having a satisfyingly tactical feel to it. What's interesting is the deep satisfaction with games from the 90s being more "tactile" isn't just about isometric games, it's in the shooters too. When did games get clippy (as in clipping through walls), squishy and plastic diminishing their feel?

Oops, meant to say tactile, not tactical.

Hmmm. I do sometimes play old DOS games. And then the era of games that followed, say ... from 1995 to 2005 or so, give or take. Though quite rarely nowadays.

I'd wish there could be an improvement of some of the old games. Not to change their character per se, but to make some small modest improvements to e. g. gameplay, usability, perhaps even the graphics - without killing the old flair it had. Anyone remember Alone in the Dark? I liked the polygons, even though nobody would use these today. So that can probably not be improved a lot without ruining the old feeling. But content-wise? Where is AI when you need it? Can't AI autogenerate more content for those games AND also improve them modestly?

There are a lot of remakes of old games. Nintendo has done this a lot, but one challenge is these old games all come with IP and copyright, so it's hard to remake a game even with the technology. You have to have ownership and a good reason to believe people will buy a slightly updated game.

Some of the source ports (and some of the reimagining) does exactly what you want:

Various DooM ports go beyond replicating "vanilla DooM" and even beyond updating graphics, to adding true 3D, etc.

VMCI and HotA go way beyond "Heroes III on modern machines"

Augustus expands on Julius until it's not just "Caesar 3" on current equipment.

> Can't AI autogenerate more content

We have so many old books and movies. Can't AI autogenerate more content so that we had more Fellini movies or at least more Sherlock Holmes stories? Most worthy games have quite some work behind them.

If all you need is more levels for old games, certainly there are competent level generators for Doom and Quake, but don't expect them to produce something like Arcane Dimensions.

> Where is AI when you need it?

Back in 2003 or so some wonderful smart folks added accessibility to the Quake engine. Since then, there have been very few accessible FPS games.

I just took Claude, dropped it in the AudioQuake engine directory, asked it to write up a taxonomy of the accessibility solutions used to make quake accessible, waited, dropped the EDuke32 source next to it, and said "Let's plan for how we can make this accessible now using similar techniques."

I now have the beginning of a working accessibility mod[0], and am walking around replaying Hollywood Holocaust, something I haven't been able to do since I played with my dad (him driving and me shooting). It's kind of amazing, actually.

I am totally blind.

[0]: https://gist.github.com/ctoth/f955884813dd0daa497914108c467c...

I spent a lot of time in the Duke Nukem 3D level editor, even had a thick reference book. Really gave me a leg up for CAD in school.

https://dukenukem.fandom.com/wiki/Duke_Nukem_3D_Level_Design...

I think this perhaps to be the one?

> Open-Source

It's not Open Source, it's source available because of the Build license: https://www.eduke32.com/buildlic.txt

> [2] Any derivative works based on my Build source may be distributed ONLY through the INTERNET.

> [3] Distribution of any derivative works MUST be done completely FREE of charge - no commercial exploitation whatsoever.

> [5] The use of the Build Engine for commercial purposes will require an appropriate license arrangement with me. Contact information is on my web site.

Duke3D deathmatch over IPX was epic, especially to hide in secret places when others didn't know them.

Yes! And Kali!

I was on Kali back in the day too. Got into the top 10 on Cases Ladder. One of my friends made #5 one time.

Tried to find more duke nukem sites

- https://m210.duke4.net/

- https://infosuite.duke4.net/

- https://msdn.duke4.net/

- https://hrp.duke4.net/

- https://dukeworld.duke4.net/

- https://scent-88.com/

- https://dnr.duke4.net/

Found in domain index https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

I pirated this as a kid.

I've probably bought 10 different versions in the meantime to make up for it

Make up for what? I don’t get it.

For illegally copying software.

Prior to the DMCA, copyright violations were a grey area. In most countries, in order to seek damages a company had to show users were selling copies or using IP for promotional purposes.

Now... people are using the same RIAA/DMCA laws to hijack youtube channel content from legitimate creators. The damage to publishers is done by the time it is sorted out.

As a business, it has always been better to go after distribution channels rather than squeezing customers. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2EdZvXwh0Y

I was playing demo dozens of times. I do not think it was even possible to buy it via legitimate sources at that time where I lived. Great memories when I was finally beat the first ep boss.

Duke Nukem 3D was my first experience urinating in a video game. Hail to the king, baby.

I experienced the mirror stage twice in my life: once in real life and once in Duke Nukem 3D.

Took me ages to realise why I couldn't kill the enemy in blue uniform behind the weird portal.

Peeing in video games appears to be alive and well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL-krAqUuD8

random fact : duke nukem had this weird configuration bug where maxing sensitivity on the microsoft sidewinder strafe axis could make you go much faster than possible by moving in diagonal ( the sum of strafe + forward combined to a larger vector). That lead to everyone in our cybercafe buying one :)))

Man, I used to be in the top 10 on Cases Ladder for Duke Nukem when I was in high school. Good times.

Lol I remember playing a slenderman fangame as a kid made in this engine back in 2012~. Good days

From the website: "PC first person shooter Duke Nukem 3D— Duke3D for short—to Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, several handhelds, your family toaster, and your girlfriend's vibrator. "

Why they go this route is beyond me :)

Ah. It must be the everything can run X thing.

Am still looking for where I am supposed to type 'dnkroz' IRL

Hail to the king, baby!

Duke nukem 3D is kinda the most adult shooter ever if you compute the ratio of age/controversy/sex/blood/possibilities.

I preferred the platform games.

Shake it baby, you wanna dance

I used eduke32 to blaze through DN3D once more on a boomer shooter kick a few years back. Which arguably never ended, as Doom and Quake mods make up most of my gaming time now.

If you havent played the Ashes 2063 mod series for DOOM I highly recommend it. https://www.moddb.com/mods/ashes-2063

Ive played a lot of excellent doom and quake mods...

* brutal doom, hell on earth starter pack

* blade of agony

* Hedon

* quake brutalist jams 1 to 3

* Arcane Dimensions

* alien armageddon (for duke3d)

but that one really stand out.

Ashes 2063 looks awesome thank you for sharing!

I downloaded the AshesStandalone_V1_51.zip file, but it looks like it only contains the windows executable. For our linux friends, unzip it, install gzdoom, and then run this command inside the "Resources" folder to play it on linux:

> gzdoom -config gzdoom-ashes.ini -iwad freedoom-0.12.1/freedoom2.wad -file AshesSAMenu.pk3 lightmodepatch.pk3 Ashes2063Enriched2_23.pk3 Ashes2063EnrichedFDPatch.pk3 +logfile log.txt

Don’t forgot to check out Ashes Hard Reset and Afterglow as well.

I was into playing and modding Doom back in the 90s and just a few months ago rediscovered the community - I am just blown away by the effort and creativity that is going into these source ports and the indie games people are building on top of them. That passion and spirit of sharing is peak Internet/open-source.

doomhack and hex editors taught me a lot in that era

*DeHackEd

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/DeHackEd

This game got me into so much trouble. What a mistake.

Care to share the story? I have no idea how my parents let me play this but it was my first multiplayer online game and I was hooked.

I got the game with the condition I would never enable the adult mode from my parents. And I never did, at home.

One day my parents dragged me to a dinner party they were going to, and I brought along the game disc. Me and one of the other parents kids loaded the game and started playing. At some point the other kid wanted to see the adult mode and I relented.

Later on, to troll this kids brother I threw the dollars so the speak… and this little kid just lost his mind. He ran into the other room where the adults were enjoying tea and dinner and totally ratted us out.

My parents immediately bust in, drag me out and we drive home. They don’t let me use the computer again for a month over some pixelated bewbies. Good lord things were different in the 90s.

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