was the art in Duke ripped off?

[Destroyer]

have any of you guys seen this?
link

what do guys think?
a friend was buggin me about it, because he knows I hang around these forums a lot,
personally I dont really care even if some of this art was copied.
I think alot of it was probably just coinscidence

[Thedutchjelle]

A lot probably yes, but like a few texture look exactly the same..

Anyway, I think the person who made that site is pretty lifeless.

[DragonflyWolfTen]

this thread made me burn my grilled cheese sandwich. stop posting stuff like this. we already know that everyone copied from Duke.

[Steve]

This has been posted many times

[Zaero]

Stolen - no doubt about it.

[Geoffrey]

My first thought would be that the art came from a public source or collection cd, like many of the sounds. My second thought is who cares

[Sang]

hey hey hey throw them a freaking bone here

In the beginning of the 90's it was probably very difficult to create a cool game WITH original art assets

Spoiler:

show spoiler

just kidding

[DragonflyWolfTen]

watch dnf come out and its city levels are straight out of R6V.

^worst joke ever in this forum. i will now kill my self with a lawnmower

[Thedutchjelle]

Originally Posted by DragonflyWolfTen

watch dnf come out and its city levels are straight out of R6V.

^worst joke ever in this forum. i will now kill my self with a lawnmower

Good luck with that.

[avatar_58]

Originally Posted by Sang

hey hey hey throw them a freaking bone here

In the beginning of the 90's it was probably very difficult to create a cool game WITH original art assets

Well thats still no excuse. It's kind of funny that this case has been brought up on a few websites after the Stalker accusation.

[Sang]

Originally Posted by avatar_58

Well thats still no excuse.

Read the spoilers

[Nukkus]

I wonder if Joe knows anything about this?

[Thedutchjelle]

Originally Posted by avatar_58

Well thats still no excuse. It's kind of funny that this case has been brought up on a few websites after the Stalker accusation.

What do you mean, 'Stalker accusation' ?

[avatar_58]

Originally Posted by Thedutchjelle

What do you mean, 'Stalker accusation' ?

GSC has been accused of stealing assets from HL2 and Doom 3, some light and water textures. However nothing as blatant as this, with Duke 2 actually stealing an entire enemy sprite from another game like that.

[SonnyBonds]

Yeah seems too similar to be coincidence to me.

By the way, the game they ripped graphics from is a lot better (in my opinion).
Everyone should play the Turrican games, especially Turrican 2.. one of the best action/arcade/platformers of all time

[jobro]

Originally Posted by Sang

hey hey hey throw them a freaking bone here

In the beginning of the 90's it was probably very difficult to create a cool game WITH original art assets

Spoiler:

show spoiler

just kidding

No you are actualy damn right about that. I remember seing Duke1 the first time, consider it was using 16 colors on a EGA screen this truly kicked ass when it was new, and besides we all know that EVERY game designer is looking at EVERY game to see how they can create something similar. Could be just as simple as reversing an image + making it darker. No I don't wanna start a war here, but damn I've tried to code my own games in Pascal and it ended with crappy block graphics. And I looked alot at SEGA Mastersystem to get some ideas how to create them images in a similar manner.

[SonnyBonds]

Actually, the game they ripped the graphics from has 32 color graphics and 22 khz stereo sound so Duke 1 wasn't really that cutting edge. For the PC perhaps, I'll grant it that (but I don't know though, just assuming based on what you said).


EDIT - here is a clip of Turrican 2.. the sequel to the game Duke ripped art from. I chose the sequel since it was released in the same year as Duke Nukum. Technically it's .. well.. *quite* a bit better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYamO...elated&search=

[Killd a ton]

wow, so is there an official storry to this?

[DragonflyWolfTen]

I wonder if it hangs on the wall of shame at 3dr

[Destroyer]

Originally Posted by Steve

This has been posted many times

sorry, i just posted it cuz a friend was buggin me about it.

[Mr.Fibbles]

You know, the bullets in Half Life look a lot like the bullets in Duke3D. . . .

[SonnyBonds]

Oh come on.. these graphics are obviously ripped, it's not a coincidence. That's a very silly example. Have you even look at the link?

[Steve]

Originally Posted by Destroyer

sorry, i just posted it cuz a friend was buggin me about it.

That's cool. It's really rather interesting

[Mr.Fibbles]

I have looked at the link, and I can see the similarities and such, but my point is, there are a lot of things in a lot of games that look a lot alike etc. From a technical stand point, the graphics were probably copied, not ripped. Modern games can rip graphics, then they may have copied the design, not necessarily ripped the graphic file. When you have only 256 colors to work with, and only so many ideas floating around, do you really expect a lot of diversity? Even today, there are only so many ideas around (how many damn games are there with zombies?!! or elves, orces, dwarves, the standard gold, wood, food, iron/stone, harvest system?). Graphically, yes, there are variations, but not as many as there are games.
The example of the ground texture is a bit of a stretch, I mean how many different asphalt/concrete textures are there in the world? A generic concrete texture is going to look like every other concrete texture out there. The same can be said about projectile textures.

[C. M. Dratz]

The rest of the site is nice. [Edit: Sadly, the only Turrican game I played through was the SNES Super Turrican.] I found this on the clones page: http://www.poke53280.de/files/hurrican/hurricandemo.zip [Edit: I forgot to write that I saw this years ago in a similar thread on the 3dr forums.]

[avatar_58]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fibbles

I have looked at the link, and I can see the similarities and such, but my point is, there are a lot of things in a lot of games that look a lot alike etc. From a technical stand point, the graphics were probably copied, not ripped. Modern games can rip graphics, then they may have copied the design, not necessarily ripped the graphic file. When you have only 256 colors to work with, and only so many ideas floating around, do you really expect a lot of diversity? Even today, there are only so many ideas around (how many damn games are there with zombies?!! or elves, orces, dwarves, the standard gold, wood, food, iron/stone, harvest system?). Graphically, yes, there are variations, but not as many as there are games.
The example of the ground texture is a bit of a stretch, I mean how many different asphalt/concrete textures are there in the world? A generic concrete texture is going to look like every other concrete texture out there. The same can be said about projectile textures.

Oh bullshit. Why would there be nearly a dozen examples of it then? Why is that savage enemy ripped directly? Why are those sprites so similar you could overlay them and not see a difference? They were ripped pixel for pixel and the colours were degraded since Duke Nukem couldn't handle it, so that accounts for any changes.

Its a clear cut case of assest theft. Apogee got away with it because the DOS PC wasn't as popular as the arcade/console side and no one even noticed. What are the odds someone played Turrican AND Duke in those days? Thats what they counted on.

[DragonflyWolfTen]

^so what you are saying is rather then them putting their foot into the door of the gaming industry, they ripped off some else foot and then claimed it to be their own? Well any way they scored with an original character and Duke 3d started a wild fire. It feels like one of those one hit wonder bands out there. "Don't fear the reaper, we can be like they are, come on baby"

[SonnyBonds]

Do any 3DR people read these forums? In that case, it would be very interesting to hear what they have to say about this.

[Thedutchjelle]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fibbles

You know, the bullets in Half Life look a lot like the bullets in Duke3D. . . .

Wow! Good find.

[avatar_58]

Originally Posted by DragonflyWolfTen

^so what you are saying is rather then them putting their foot into the door of the gaming industry, they ripped off some else foot and then claimed it to be their own? Well any way they scored with an original character and Duke 3d started a wild fire. It feels like one of those one hit wonder bands out there. "Don't fear the reaper, we can be like they are, come on baby"

Every other Apogee game was created from scratch, so no Apogee already did have their foot in the door. It seems to me the sprite/textures artists of Duke Nukem 1 and 2 were lazy and started stealing assests from other games.

What I don't understand personally is why. The graphics of both games weren't that great anyway, it couldn't be that hard to make a brick or wall texture.

[DragonflyWolfTen]

Originally Posted by avatar_58

it couldn't be that hard to make a brick or wall texture.

Hey man when you got 3 chicks under your desk it gets very hard.

[Frenkel]

They also borrowed from the PC version of Mega Man.

[avatar_58]

You have GOT to be kidding me. Megaman PC? I guess in that case they assumed since the game was so terrible no one would notice. (Honestly have you tried it? I don't know what Hitech/Capcom were thinking)

Is anything besides Duke himself original? Please tell me there isn't some game out there where his sprite was ripped from...

[Bonesnapper]

A lot of games copied art back then. I remember reading that Turrican stole a song from the old Transformers game. This was kind of common back in the day.

[theHunted]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fibbles

...When you have only 256 colors to work with, and only so many ideas floating around, do you really expect a lot of diversity?...

256^(16x16) = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000

That's about the number of different unique images with an 16x16 pixel resolution and 256 colors. Even with just 32 different colors and 8x8 pixel resolution you still get a number of different possible images that has 96 '0' digits. Not that I want to start blaming 3dRealms (Apogee) with this but to say that there isn't that many diversity is wrong imo. I'm agreeing with avatar_58 on this.

[Mr.Fibbles]

I am discounting all the unintelligible things you can make with a 256*16*16 sprite. Although that is still quite large, I did say "so many ideas floating around" which means without creative insight, most often taken from someone else, you don't have anything.
In 1990, there weren't a lot of people playing games, owning computers, or making games. In the present age, there should never be a case where models look pretty much identical in games made by two different people; there is a much larger base for game and content creation now than there was even 10 years ago. 1991/2 was before the age of Windows and 32 bit graphics. It was before there was a PC in every house and gaming stores were full of people besides the guys who couldn't get a date if they wanted to part with their pixel babes in Leisure Suit Larry and the ladies in Star Trek.
I am not saying it is impossible that they did actually "steal" the graphics from other places, but that it is more probable that they took what was in existence and improved on it, maybe not as much as they should have but they did not just use a complete copy. There are slight differences in all the alleged copied graphics. Some are closer than others, but none of them are exactly the same, pixel to pixel comparison, as the one from the other game.
Many, many games take what is in use and improve on it. HUDs are not all different, the suit in Half-Life is quite a bit like Halo (the other way around is more correct) minus the helmet maybe. You could even go as far as to compare weapons. Not just the traditional shotgun, pistol, and other "real" guns, but even the more alien ones are not so dissimilar. Now, am I saying that those games ripped from others? No, but they didn't look very hard for inspiration. Neither did Apogee in this case.

also, not to be nit-picky, but the number of possibilities is more like 3.231700607131100730071487668867 *10^616 =(256^256)

[C. M. Dratz]

Originally Posted by Frenkel

They also borrowed from the PC version of Mega Man.

[Dopefish7590]

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The graphics borrowed heavily from other games, such as Turrican and the PC version of Mega Man, and a longstanding rumor is that originally Apogee planned to port Mega Man to the PC, but could not get the rights

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nu...mputer_game%29

I have read this before =\

[theHunted]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fibbles

I am discounting all the unintelligible things you can make with a 256*16*16 sprite. Although that is still quite large, I did say "so many ideas floating around" which means without creative insight, most often taken from someone else, you don't have anything.

I agree, those numbers are far away from having a useful meaning and it was a bit of a silly point to show. On the other hand you don't just stumble upon sprites that similar just by having similar inspiration. Even for those restricted amounts of colors and image resolutions it's practically impossible to come up with something like that just by looking at a couple of other games and getting their inspiration.
And btw, looking at the flamethrower sprite and the green flying enemy it is obvious that these have been copied pixel by pixel and just altered a little bit afterwards. Just look at the pixel combinations with the magnifying glass. The yellow L shaped combination on the head of the green enemy just to name one of many examples.

[avatar_58]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fibbles

Some are closer than others, but none of them are exactly the same, pixel to pixel comparison, as the one from the other game.

What in gods name are you talking about? They are pixel to pixel copies, they've just been resized according to how they were needed. The one rocket had it's top and bottom glued together to form the barrier in Duke, but even an untrained eye can see they are the same.

I'm sorry but there is no excuse for this shit. I don't care if IS 3DRealms, this is blatent asset theft. Case closed. If there are any differences they can be explained as resizing, palette differences or that they were ripped from a screenshot rather than the source.

What really makes this sting is how 3DRealms wasn't called out on this and how they continue to sell the games in question! This company makes some quality work so it blows my mind that they had to even do this in the first place.

Did they pay anything to the one's they ripped off? Is the developer of Turrican still around to even care?