Another year has passed, and hopefully we can now say for sure we are done with that horrible pandemic. Since it's that time of year, I felt like giving, so I have issued a big update for the Addon Compilation 4.0 prototype (WIP for a while now), bringing smaller or bigger changes to 22 addons.
Mostly it's about adding Rednukem compatibility (no worries, EDuke32 will also still work), but in some cases I have made some additional effort to get even closer to perfection.

My personal highlights:

• Chimera: Added Mikko Sandt's "Hidden Zone" as last map, some art fixes (+ widescreen)
• Duke Hard: Optional Rednukem support (requires switching con/def definitions in GRPINFO file), some widescreen support
• Last Reaction & Water Bases: Fixed overbearing outdoor sound in "Launch Base", widescreen tile for WB finale panel
• The Gate: Boss map and Predator resizing are fixed for good (with vanilla methods!), widescreen CD Thrower

It's been a while! Not much going on these days, but at least some good news for those of you who always wanted to get their hands on digital copies of the Duke3D addon manuals. PDF versions are available, at long last!

Following addon manuals are available in our Bonus Files downloads:

• Duke Caribbean: Life's A Beach
• Duke It Out In D.C.
• Duke: Nuclear Winter
• Duke: The Apocalpyse
• Duke Xtreme
• Duke!Zone

The Enhanced Resource Pack (or ERP) has been released on July 1. It's a collection of several community projects that have accumulated throughout the years (those upscales are rather new, though), meant to significantly boost your Duke3D gameplay experience on a visual and acustic level. You might see it as a spiritual successor of the HRP, if you want.

What the ERP has in store for you isn't little! You get:

• Neural upscales for textures + sprites (by Phredreeke and others)
• EDuke32 indexed hightiles build (by Nuke.YKT, needed to run the whole thing)
• Skyboxes (by Fox)
• Voxel Pack (by the Duke3D Voxel Pack team)
• SC-55 Music Pack (by Brandon Blume)
• PSX Sound Pack (by Marphy Black)

The Fixes for Duke3D mod has received a lot of love with all relevant menu tiles (e.g. 3DR intro logo, title screen, ingame help menu, ep.1/2 ending screens etc.) having received an 8-bit widescreen treatment, making it look a LOT better on modern systems without losing that retro vibe one can only get when sticking to the original artwork instead of using highres replacements.
There's also a few more tweaks under the hood, like you can now switch the menufont color to blue, green or grey if you want (you would have to edit duke3d-fixes.def for that, though). Picking up access cards now also mentions their color (e.g. "Red Access Card") and Raze support has been added (however, please note that if you are using any port other than EDuke32, you will have to remove game.con from the zipfile first since it will prevent the mod from loading otherwise).

Grab it now from Github while it's hot!

• [UPDATE] Fixes for Duke3D v1.4: Huge widescreen update for menu tiles, optional menufont color switch, detailed access card pickup messages, Raze support

Graf Zahl's Raze port has been released in its first official (non-beta) version 1.0, allowing you to play almost all Build games (Duke3D Atomic+WT, Shadow Warrior, Blood, Redneck Rampage and others, pretty much everything except for Ion Fury) with the same executable. In order to celebrate the occasion, I have created a small tutorial in the ZDoom forum with info about how to get everything working.

Even though there is not much else going on right now (besides the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Duke Nukem 3D release on April 19), I took the opportunity to apply a small patch to Duke!Zone II to make it work flawlessly with Raze, which is only fair after I already included Rednukem optimizations last time.

• [UPDATE] Duke!Zone II Fixed Release v2.0.4: GRPINFO definitions adjusted for Raze compatibility

The next version of the Addon Compilation is finally making real progress! You can now participate in testing any addon from the upcoming version 4.0 you want, regardless whether it's one of the new entries or an "old" one (many addons received considerable updates, anyway). In total there are now 135 addons with almost 1.500 levels.

Just be aware of the fact this is still a WIP release. Especially user map collections (e.g. Space Map Pack or Urban Map Pack) still cannot work properly due to a missing EDuke32 feature. It is quite possible that some of the other addons cause issues with recent EDuke32 snapshots as well, but that's why we need your help! The more, the merrier.

The intention is to be done around the end of March next year, so a stable and fixed release can happen for the 25th anniversary of Duke Nukem 3D on April 19, 2021.

A new Addon Compilation release after almost four years? Wow! However, before you freak out: This is NOT what you might think or expect. I realized that most of the compilation entries would not appear in the EDuke32 launcher when using this with the World Tour groupfile, so I supplied a separate batch file (addons_wt.bat) for that purpose. This new version won't gain you anything if you are using the Atomic Edition - there are no new or updated addons in this version whatsoever. There is also no need to download the entire pack again for just a few kilobytes, so I have made a small patch over at the Duke4.net forums which saves you a lot of time and bandwidth if you have version 3.13 installed already.
And no worries: The REAL (huge!) update has not been forgotten and I am still working on it!

Our nice little Voxel Pack is doing fine in the meantime. mxrtxn is currently working on Caribbean voxels which we will hopefully soon be able to use in EDuke32 without having to edit internal Voxel Pack definitions.

Furthermore, we are currently thinking about retiring the old HRP and compile a new version (which would bear a different name which has not been decided yet) with upscaled original textures, sprites, voxels and SC-55 music. It would be much closer to the original artwork and might have a realistic chance of being completed within a reasonable amount of time. Also, most of the work for it is actually done already.

That's all for now. Get back to work, you slacker!

Updated downloads:

• [UPDATE] EDuke32 Addon Compilation v3.14: Added proper World Tour support


• [UPDATE] Duke!Zone II Fixed Release v2.0.2: Sound definition fix (reverted to v2.0 state)

In this difficult time of disaster, disease and suffering, it is important for you to remember two things: 1) We are still alive and 2) We are still working on something (even if it does not look like it all the time).

The Voxel Pack has made some progress in the last few months, mostly thanks to Borion and his amazing additions. Be sure to check out the latest version which is from now on also linked in the Downloads section.

Unfortunately, no substantial news regarding HRP (no surprise considering nobody is really working on it any more) and Addon Compilation. I intend to make some progress with the compilation, but it's hard to catch up with recent substantial EDuke32 code changes and the remaining issue with custom maps loading from internal groupfile folders is also still unsolved. There will possibly be a test version in the hopefully-not-too-distant future, though.

Until then: Stay healthy, stay safe! Wear those masks in crowded places - help protect others!

Updated downloads:

• [UPDATE] Duke3D Voxel Pack v1.3 pre4: 69 new and 11 updated voxels (since pre2), updated maphacks


• [UPDATE] Duke!Zone II Fixed Release v2.0.1: Fixed predefined sound #207 not being overwritten by custom definition


• [UPDATE] Duke3D Fixes v1.35: Game.con update and various DukeGDX optimizations