Duke3D. Old school gamage just not working :(

Well this is the only tech support forum I know of so I'll ask this here. When I was digging through my pile of outdated install CDs I came across the install CD for the ever-classic Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition. Without hesitation I threw this beast right into the D: Drive and started installing it from the command prompt. The beast got installed and then it told me to go into SETUP and get things in order. The first problem I encountered was that every time I pressed the Up or Down arrows on my keyboard, instead of going down one option, it would go down 2, 3 or sometimes up to 5 options depending on what setup menu I was on.

I was trying to change the keysets because they were somewhat impractical compared to the WASD centered keysets most games have now. After trying to tap the Up and Down keys as lightly as I could I couldn't seem to get to many of the options. Also, when I Alt+Tabbed out of the command prompt to access a picture of a keyboard that I was going to print off to write down my new keyset, everything ran extremely slow. I figured this might be because since computers didn't have as much memory when the game was made, the setup was programmed to try and use all of the memory. I got the thing finally printed off but then I just gave up, set the few keys I was able to change back to default, and exited to start running the game.

When the thing started with the demo screen of Duke blasting things to pieces in game it was going at 1 frame per second. It took poor Duke 5 seconds to crack his knuckes and an impossiblely long time for duke to c.ock his gun and start shooting.

This obviously has something to do with running a 12 yr old Win95 game on WinXP, but I don't know enough to know what exactly is going wrong. Does anyone know of a way to fix this problem so I can run it on XP? Or is there some sort of emulator to simulate the older running systems? Or is poor 600x800 Duke doomed to never be played again?

Use the compatibility modes, and install it under windows 95 compatibilities. If that won't do it, you may be fuxed.

I dont remember how I have mine set up but I can play the game fine and all, I just cant get my sound to work on the game. I love Duke 3D

Ok thx much. I didn't know about the compatibility modes.

Too bad you can't hear Duke explwn things, Unlucky

Well for starters, you have to take into consideration that MS-DOS (the OS under which Duke3D was made) and Windows XP are two completely different things when it comes to run programs. As such, running Duke3D (or any DOS-based programs) it is best to run those on a "vintage" machine. For instance, I have built myself a Pentium 200 on which I installed DOS 6.22 and only that. From there I can run any of these old games.

If you want to run Duke3D on your XP machine, I suggest heading over the official 3D Realms website's forum. A section of that forum is dedicated to Duke only. You should be happy to know that since the release of Duke3D's source code, a couple of emulators have surfaced. Here's the link:http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=15

You'll also find a lot of resources about choosing, installing and configuring the emulator of your choice. I think the most successful being Jonof's one.

Ok thx this helps a lot. Ya I was thinking about how it's not actually MS-DOS I've been trying to set it up on. And while the Compatibility Mode Wizard seemed to make the Duke programs work fine at first, it still doesn't work when I Alt+Enter to go into fullscreen mode. Thanks again, I'll check the link out.

VM Ware (Or similar) and Real DOS -- Cant beat compatability mode!

Look for a program called D-Fend.

It works very similarly to Vm-ware, whereby it creates a mini-DOS to let you run old games.

I used it to play Moonstone and SWIV

Or as you have the original data files:

JFDuke 3D

Remake of the original Duke3D engine, with direct3D and high resolution textures. Gameplay is the same, just looks bit better than the original (or just same as the original if you want to)

DosBox is decent freeware for running old dos games

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

This game was made when I was....still in my mother's tummy ><

Anyways, it ran fine on a old Windows 98 when I was 3 and played it, hope that helps a tiny bit.

ahaha, that's great, didn't think anyone still played that. Although I still have the first quake on CD in one of my game boxes. Ya, the compatibility modes might allow it to work. I should try that with some of my old games, but I think the graphics would really suck.