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05.04.2024 19:19, Yulia Pozdnyakova
Modder Daniel Peterson, known under the pseudonym Cheello, published a video demonstrating the progress of work on a new modification for Duke Nukem 3D – Voxel Duke Nukem.
Image source: DSOGaming
Voxel Duke Nukem will replace the 2D sprites of enemies and objects that turn towards the player when approaching, with fully 3D models. Voxel analogues are made while maintaining the original visual style, which especially distinguishes Cheello’s work from other 3D mods for the game.
In the new video, the creator showed models of the hero, a vase, an attack aircraft (Enforcer), ammunition, a first aid kit, as well as a few seconds of gameplay. Journalist DSOGamingwho noticed the video praised it highly: “Duke Nukem 3D has never looked so good”.
More gameplay can be seen in the March trailer.
Voxel Duke Nukem does not yet have a release date. You can support the author on Patreon.
In the past, Cheello has created voxel mods for Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth. Like Voxel Duke Nukem, they are extremely faithful to the style of the original shooters, so that from afar the voxel models look exactly like sprites. Last month, another modder, Derrick Davison, released Brutal Voxel Doom, a mod for the second game that combines Cheello’s voxel models with parallax textures and also makes the game more varied and violent.
Duke Nukem 3D was developed by 3D Realms on the Build Engine, which also became the basis for Shadow Warrior, Blood, Redneck Rampage, PowerSlave and Witchaven. Like id Tech 1, the engine was pseudo-3D, but thanks to portal technology, it allowed levels to be rendered at a higher speed and without rendering invisible parts, and also to be viewed during editing without pre-processing. Additionally, it supported jumping, crouching, limited interaction with the environment, inclined surfaces, and mirrors (via room and hero model duplication). Sprite enemies remained the standard at that time, but became obsolete six months later – in Quake, enemies became polygonal.
Interestingly, the Build Engine still received voxel support in later versions – this technology was used in Blood in 1997 for weapons, upgrades, ammunition and environmental elements.
Duke Nukem 3D was released in January 1996 on PC (MS-DOS). The shooter subsequently appeared on multiple platforms, including PlayStation, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS.
