In an effort to bring this wiki to where I want it to be I've had to do a lot of things I've never done before... and a ton of stuff I haven't done in years. For starters I haven't touched wiki's for years so when I decided to give this thing some CPR I had to relearn everything from scratch. But I was okay with this... this after all was my idea so I of coarse had to put in a little effort after all; its to be expected. Yet, as time goes on I find myself growing as a person from this wiki, it may sound odd but it really isn't... I love all things Duke and while I get lost researching my projects for this wiki I find myself getting in touch with my childhood a bit. To be honest I actually haven't played a Duke game in years but now I find myself tracking them all down so I can go through them all again or - in the case of the expansion packs - for the first time in my life, boy what a treat.
Yet not all things are fun and games in the wiki kingdom... one of the many project I've taken on is Sprite Ripping which is the ancient art of taking the sprites - graphics and textures - from a game in an effort to make sprite sheets. Why would I do this? They come in handy. I can then go on to use them in the enemy and weapon sections for a much cleaner effect than just posting a screenshot. It is also incredibly cool to look through sprite sheets and really analyze and get a better look at some of the stuff that you see in the games. This however is only effective in games which use sprites, which means I can only pull this stuff from the 2D and 2.5D games in the Duke series which are quite numerous thankfully. Even then it isn't an easy task sometimes...
For instance ripping sprites from Duke Nukem 3D or the Expansions is time consuming but thankfully they are relatively easy to access. So this was a good place to start for me as I've never ripped sprites before, thankfully I understood the basic concept. But now... now I've hit a snag since I chose to rip the sprites from Duke Nukem Advance which so far seems to be an impossible task. I've never seen anyone rip sprites from a Gameboy Advance FPS... I'm not even sure if it is at all possible yet here I am. While getting things like the menu sprites and text is easy but frustratingly more time consuming than it would be in Duke Nukem 3D it is at least possible. Once we get into the game itself... the FPS part that is... that is when things take a turn. I can get the hud, and the weapons Duke holds... but things in the game world like the enemies, items, and textures I so far have no clue how to obtain. Thankfully I still have a lot of stuff I can get in the meantime and have been making significant process. I've also reached out to sprite ripping communities hoping that someone may have an idea on how to pull this off so that by the time I've pulled all the sprites I know how to from the game someone will have have come up with a solution. I won't hold my breath however... this maybe something I may have to learn on my own. But that's what I like about this whole thing... discovering.
Since the start of this wiki I have learned how to edit and create wiki templates and pages, learned how to edit game files and levels, figured out how to rip sprites, and above all of this have done so much research that I've even started talking back and fourth with some of the games developers in an effort to get as much information on the games as possible... that last part has been a real treat and has led to some unexpected events which I will talk about one day in another blog. So as I explore the Duke Universe I find myself spreading out into territories into which I've never ventured before and I'm glad I did. That is after all what wiki's are... a place to explore and learn, and what better way to do so than by making one.