Duke Nukem 2 v1.4 Beta has been discovered

[Roobar]

Duke Nukem 2 v1.4 Beta has been discovered:

https://dukenukemcentral.com/archive/?d ... %2FVer1.4b



If you wanna try it, there is a password prompt probably for security reasons for the beta testers at that time. It's "superman"

If this is genuine release, there are plenty of differences between it and the final version, like the joystick pick-up item and possibly differences in the levels themselves. Some game assets work differently, like the laser turret can only be destroyed by rocked launcher, while other weapons can't destroy it. Also spiders can be removed very easily. Teleporter has a different sound. And other.

Here's a video:

https://youtu.be/4TzH5c5INuM?si=ZFao6P5ks8vZu55U

[Frenkel]

Awesome. Somehow this version was already known 10 years ago: Duke Nukem 2 : Disposable Hero

Cheats:

N+U+K full health and items

G+O+D+Enter God mode

When the God mode message is shown, press:
W warp to level
R restart level
F choose a weapon
K change skill level

[K1n9_Duk3]

This pirated beta copy is interesting. Thank you for posting about it here.

At first I was a bit skeptic, since the reconstructed source code would make it relatively easy to create a "fake" beta version. But after checking the files, I've come to the conclusion that this must have been a real beta copy, not just something someone created from early slideshow screenshots and images from other beta versions posted in the duk4.net forums. The files that convinced me were INTRO8.MNI and INTRO9.MNI. These contain the voice recording for the "I'm back!" at the end of the intro. It's clearly not the same take as in the final version, it's a different recording, but the voice is obviously the same as in the final version Duke Nukem 2 (Joe Siegler). I doubt that AI could fake the voice so convincingly.

The vast majority of the level files are slightly different than what's in the final release as well. And the levels don't appear to have been edited with my level editor (are there even any other level editors for Duke 2 out there?).

Also, it's good to know that the edits I made to the ending screen for episode 3 some ages ago were mostly correct. The ending screens for episodes 2, 3 and 4 in this beta contain only the artwork and not the text. Something must have gone wrong when they added the text to END3-1.MNI.

[Roobar]

Great!! Now only if we can also find the earliest Hocus Pocus beta... Is Hocus Pocus 01/15 Beta that it or is that the one we already have?

There's this collection where Duke 2 beta was found: https://archive.org/download/ibm-wgam-wbiz-collection This is a fairly recent upload, but it's too big (500 GB). If anyone is curios to explore, there seems to be other game betas. It looks like an incredible amount of software and games from the 80's and 90s. But beware: there might be some actually fake betas as well.

(are there even any other level editors for Duke 2 out there?).

There is this one by... you guessed it. lethal-guitar. He was using it for the Evercade's remaster. Yours seems to be vastly more superior, but this one excels at one thing: the native windows UI, allowing for better viewing experience in higher resolutions! The sprites/tilesets selection bars displays bigger images. I needed that, so I could actually see what tiles/sprite are in order to make my level editing experience easier. But working with two editors turned out made my work even harder, the editor is also buggy and harder to use, so eventually I had to abandon it. You can check it out for research purposes:

https://github.com/lethal-guitar/Duke2Edit

These contain the voice recording for the "I'm back!" at the end of the intro. It's clearly not the same take as in the final version, it's a different recording, but the voice is obviously the same as in the final version Duke Nukem 2 (Joe Siegler).

Joe Siegler's response:

[K1n9_Duk3]

About the Cheats:
Upon closer inspection, it seems that, after enabling God Mode via G+O+D+Enter, you were supposed to access the other debug cheats that Frenkel mentioned by pressing the key in combination with F12 instead of toggling God Mode and pressing the key while the god mode message is shown.

The fact that the other cheats can be activated during the god mode message appears to be just a side effect of the quirky implementation.

One thing to keep in mind is that you should press and hold the letter key FIRST, and then press F12. Pressing F12 on its own will just cause the game to fade out, redraw the game screeen and fade back in (to erase whatever the debug cheats might have drawn to the screen). The cheat keys won't be processed during the fade, so you'll just have to wait longer if you press the keys in the wrong order.

N+U+K - full health, destroy all radar dishes, get all inventory items (keys, keycard, cloaking device) for current level
Note that the NUK cheat can only be used once per level in this beta version. It also doesn't give you any weapons.

G+O+D+Enter - toggle god mode

While god mode is on, these cheats are available:

R+F12 - restart level
F+F12 - select weapon
W+F12 - warp to a level
K+F12 - change skill setting (and restart level)

God mode also disables the pause window. Due to the rather buggy nature of the "wait for a key press" code used by the pause code, the game immediately unpauses as soon as you release the P key. So the pause will only last as long as you keep the P key held down in God Mode. This feature might have been useful during development.

And this one is technically not a cheat, but pressing F11 prints the amount of unused memory at the top of the screen. You don't need to enable god mode for this, pressing F11 will always work.

Another side-effect of enabling God Mode is that the game will record a new demo instead of playing back the existing demo when you exit to the demo loop while God Mode is still active from the last game you played. God mode will be turned off automatically when the demo recording is triggered. You can either wait a couple of seconds seconds in the main menu or just press the 8 key (the key above the letters, not the one on the number block) to exit to the demo loop. While recording the demo, pressing the space bar will take you to the next level. The demo levels are hard-coded to L1.MNI, L3.MNI, L5.MNI and L7.MNI (the demo is basically episode 5, consisting only of 4 levels), same as in the final release.

Speaking of the demo, this is actually where another small difference between the beta and the final version can be found: The beta displays a level number during demo playback and recording. The level number is somewhat misleading, since it shows the level number for the demo episode (levels 1, 2, 3, 4) and not the number the level would actually be playable as in episode 1 (levels 1, 3, 5, 7). Perhaps that's why the final release version doesn't display a level number for the demos.

The intro voice samples:
I mentioned the file names of the sound effects because you can extract the contents of NUKEM2.CMP with "K1n9_Duk3's Enormous Tool" and then import the sound files in the "VOC Converter" menu and save it as a WAV file. If you do this for both the beta files and the ones from the final release, you have two pairs of wave files that you can play back to back. If you open the files in an editor (like Audacity) or just compare the visualization shown in the VOC Converter, you can see that the files are clearly not identical and must have come from different recording takes.

The sounds in the final release are louder and parts of them got clipped to the maximum values. The beta sounds are also clipped to the maximum here and there, but not nearly as much as the other ones. I assume that something like this would be difficult to fix after the sound has been digitized, but I'm not a recording engineer, so I could be wrong about this.

Uploading a side-by-side (or back-to-back) comparison of the sounds might by helpful for Joe, so he doesn't need to download the game and run it (in DOSBox) to hear what it sounds like. I don't think I ever heard Todd Replogle's voice (except for the death scream in Duke Nukem 2), but I'm pretty sure the "I'm back" lines in the Beta and the final version all come from the same person, which should be Joe Siegler.

The "DISPOSABLE HERO(ES)" sub-title:
I haven't been able to find any reference to that title in the game itself. I've only seen it in the FILE_ID.DIZ and EXCRETE.NFO files, which were obviously put together by the people who pirated the game (their name/logo is found in both files).

The sub-title could be something that the pirates came up with. It's only found in the files they wrote and they used a slightly different name in each file.

On the other hand, it would be funny if the developers told each of their beta testers a unique (fake) sub-title for the game, so that they'd know whose copy got pirated. But that's silly. Hiding an encryped name somewhere in the game or using other means to identify the "owner" of the beta copy would be far more reliable.

[spikey]

Thanks for sharing guys! I check back here and there's something awesome to find. Looking forward to giving this a go someday. Now if only we could find a Monster Bash or Cosmo beta..

[Roobar]

There's actually an even earlier Duke 2 beta, which we are looking for. It would be much more interesting to look at, as from the little footage we've seen, it looks vastly different and more weird than the final version. Unfortunately, I think only the Danish 3DR have it for sure, but it's a lost cause waiting for them to release it. There's a small chance it's in that vast collection https://archive.org/details/ibm-wgam-wbiz-collection along with other undiscovered betas. However it's too big for me to download.

[dark]

Where can I see some media of the earlier beta?

[Roobar]

Where can I see some media of the earlier beta?

https://youtu.be/SUVNr-ChjcY?si=u0cq3tUx5kMisSz0

Btw 3D Realms had that video on their channel, but it seems that they've removed it!

[dark]

Wow I feel the need to try out everything shown in that video.

[dark]

There are now spreadsheets that identify the content of the archive without you needing to open every zip and guess.

https://archive.org/download/ibm-lists-details

There are a few things I've seen in the lists that might be something interesting. There is not every time a classic game appears in the lists, just every time I noticed a description suggests it might be something other than the released version

These are all in the "IBM" List. I did a quick look at the WBIZ List but didn't see any games in it, it looked more like non-game utilities, and a few keyword searches for some apogee/id/epic games didn't turn anything up.

[something to do with Duke Nukem, perhaps the original game?]
DUKETRIL.ZIP Duke Nukem Trilogy [1/1] add-on adventuresfor Duke Nukem Uploaded by: Bob [edit: I was able to test this one and it is just regular Duke Nukem 1 with a cracktro]
[there are at least two Duke 2 beta zips]
DUKE2EXC.ZIP DUKE NUKEM 2 : DISPOSABLE HERO - APOGEEBETA VERSION 1.4 Disk 1 of 1
DUKCKEXC.ZIP DUKE NUKEM 2 : DISPOSABLE HERO - APOGEEBETA PASSWORD BYPASS .COM
[Blakestone, beta or final game?]
BS-PAT12.ZIP Blake Stone : Aliens of GoldFinal Beta ReleaseCrack/Expiration Patch v1.2 [100%]
BSAG1EXC.ZIP BLAKE STONE: ALIENS OF GOLD FROM APOGEEFINAL BETA RELEASE DISK 1/2
BSAG2EXC.ZIP BLAKE STONE: ALIENS OF GOLD FROM APOGEEFINAL BETA RELEASE DISK 2/2
BSTONE-1.ZIP BLAKE STONE: ALIENS OF GOLD FROM APOGEEFINAL BETA RELEASE --- CRACKED!Disk 1 of 2
BSTONE-2.ZIP BLAKE STONE: ALIENS OF GOLD FROM APOGEEFINAL BETA RELEASE --- CRACKED!Disk 2 of 2
BSTRNEXC.ZIP BLAKE STONE: ALIENS OF GOLD FROM APOGEETrainer with Beta Protection Bypass
[Raptor]
HMP-RAPB.ZIP Raptor - Beta From Apogee [1/1]
HMP-RPGD.ZIP Play in God Mode in Raptor Beta
[ROTT, probably just shareware versions or slide shows?]
MANIA2.ZIP Rise of the Triad Preview from APOGEE
RBS-ROT1.ZIP Rise of the Triad Preview from APOGEE
[Xenophage, maybe an earlier version since it doesn't have the word Xenophage in it?]
PSGXEN01.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN02.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN03.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN04.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN05.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN06.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN07.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN08.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN09.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN10.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN11.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN12.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN13.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN14.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN15.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN16.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
PSGXEN17.ZIP ALIEN BLOODSPORT(C)APOGEE xx/17
[Hocus Pocus, probably just the shareware version?]
SLA-HPSS.ZIP Hocus Pocus Screen Shots/Demo from Apogee
[Realms of Chaos]
SLA-PRRO.ZIP Realms Of Chaos Pre-Release From Apogee
DOD-ROCT.ZIP REALMS OFCHAOS BETA interactive trainer
[OMF 2097]
R2!OMFPE.ZIP ONE MUST FALL: 2097 PHOTO EDITOR (c) EPIC!
RBS-OMF1.ZIP One Must Fall 2097 Slideshow Previewfrom EPiC Megagames
[Unreal]
NK_UNR1.ZIP Unreal *BETA* (c) Epic MegaGames x/4
NK_UNR2.ZIP Unreal *BETA* (c) Epic MegaGames x/4
NK_UNR3.ZIP Unreal *BETA* (c) Epic MegaGames x/4
NK_UNR4.ZIP Unreal *BETA* (c) Epic MegaGames x/4
ROR-UNL1.ZIP UNREAL ALPHA LEVELS PREVIEW (C) EPIC x/4
ROR-UNL2.ZIP UNREAL ALPHA LEVELS PREVIEW (C) EPIC x/4
ROR-UNL3.ZIP UNREAL ALPHA LEVELS PREVIEW (C) EPIC x/4
ROR-UNL4.ZIP UNREAL ALPHA LEVELS PREVIEW (C) EPIC x/4
ROR-UNRM.ZIP UNREAL ALPHA MONSTERS PREVIEW (C) EPIC [1/1]
[quake]
AOF-QB01.ZIP QUAKE BETA! x/2
AOF-QB02.ZIP QUAKE BETA! x/2
DOD-QK8A.ZIP QUAKE ALPHA v0.8 (C) id SOFTWARE x/5
DOD-QK8B.ZIP QUAKE ALPHA v0.8 (C) id SOFTWARE x/5
DOD-QK8C.ZIP QUAKE ALPHA v0.8 (C) id SOFTWARE x/5
DOD-QK8D.ZIP QUAKE ALPHA v0.8 (C) id SOFTWARE x/5
DOD-QK8E.ZIP QUAKE ALPHA v0.8 (C) id SOFTWARE x/5
[It looks like there are several Quake and Doom mods/wads/custom levels/tools in here too]
[Death Rally]
IAPDRA01.ZIP DEATH RALLY ANIMATION ADDON! xx/19
IAPDRA02.ZIP DEATH RALLY ANIMATION ADDON! xx/19
IAPDRA03.ZIP DEATH RALLY ANIMATION ADDON! xx/19
IAPDRA04.ZIP DEATH RALLY ANIMATION ADDON! xx/19
IAPDRA05.ZIP DEATH RALLY ANIMATION ADDON! xx/19
[Doom]
[lol] DOOM-X12.ZIP Patch for Doom turns corridors into X-Ratedhalls of excitement and thrills
DOOM01.ZIP Doom Preview [1/4]
DOOM02.ZIP Doom Preview [2/4]
DOOM03.ZIP Doom Preview [3/4]
DOOM04.ZIP Doom Preview [4/4]
DOOM0522.ZIP Doom BETA Pre-Release 1/1
DOOM1_4.ZIP Doom 1.4 beta This is the real thing!
DOOM16BT.ZIP DOOM V1.6 BETA
[Wolfenstein, a few unusual sounding mods]
[lol] WLFNEWGR.ZIP X-Rated Castle Wolfenstein (hacked) [1/2]
[lol] XXX-WOLF.ZIP X-Rated Castle Wolfenstein (hacked) [2/2]
WOLF3DMK.ZIP Wolfenstein 3d - Mortal Kombat Edition

[NY00123]

Belated response, as I've finally given all episodes a try. Thanks for bringing the information about the Duke Nukem II beta out, and also the list of the other archives; These archives seemed to be uploaded quite a while ago. The aforementioned BetaArchive thread is further a good hint.

I don't recall enough of the game's details, but I've still went through a play-through, generally using hard skill. With one possible exception, I've managed to complete all levels.

Starting with two potential gameplay-breaking issues:
- The game will freeze upon loading E3L3 on hard skill. I've still completed the level on normal skill, using cheat codes for level skipping.
- After bringing the dialog asking if "Are you sure you want to quit?", do *not* press on N if you want to return to the game. That will abort the game, as if you were pressing on Y.

Some more bits spotted by me:
- E2L1 shows nothing for the hint globe.
- There's an additional explosion sprite/frame from napalm bombs.
- The napalm bomb's blast does not impact soda cans the way they do in the released game.
- I assume K1n9_Duk3 saw the presence of differences in levels via a data comparison. I don't recall enough from playing in the past as I wrote, but I spotted one visual tiling fix in E3L5. I think it was towards the center of the first half of the level, i.e., the half preceding the (restart) beacon.
- The restart beacons look and behave differently. In particular, once used, they'll block the way back to the area/sector preceding the beacon (they kill Duke on touch). Also, compared to the proper versions released later, there seems to be significantly reduced use of beacons in the beta, presumably for that reason.

[_mr_m_]

Thanks for giving this beta release attention.

After seeing that the beta version included the "G+O+D+Enter" cheat, I had to go back see what the cheat does in the commercial release:



One quirk of the beta version that I observed: If you use the F+F12 cheat to give yourself a weapon powerup that isn't available in the level you are currently on, the projectile for that weapon doesn't display properly but functions as it should. Example: Start a new game at E1M1, enable GOD mode, F+F12 cheat to give yourself the flamethrower weapon. The flamethrower projectile doesn't display correctly when fired. When cheating to give yourself a weapon that *is* available in E1M1, such as the laser or the rockets, the laser and rocket projectiles display correctly. Continuing this example, if you exit E1M1 with the flamethrower, the projectile sprites for the flamethrower appear correctly in E1M2 (I haven't had the time to search through E1M2 to see if the flamethrower appears in this level). If you use the F+F12 cheat to give yourself rockets in E1M2, the projectile sprite for rockets do not display correctly.

Guessing Apogee took the god mode out of the commercial release because it was so bugged.

[lethal_guitar]

One quirk of the beta version that I observed: If you use the F+F12 cheat to give yourself a weapon powerup that isn't available in the level you are currently on, the projectile for that weapon doesn't display properly but functions as it should.

That makes sense, when loading a level the game scans it for all types of enemies and items that are present in that level, and only loads the sprites that are needed for those to save memory. Since the weapon wasn't present originally in the level, its sprites aren't loaded.

This is probably also why the NUK cheat in the released version only gives weapons that are found in the level, despite claiming to give a "random" weapon.