has anyone tried this? i have an installer that can install a retail cd and shareware but it wont recognise the downloaded file. if anyone has done this succesfully or knows how to take the download and make it look like a retail disc please help.

Since there is nearly no instructions on how to play this game on Mac OS X on the internet I will describe it.

There are two ways: Boxer (DOSBox implementation for Mac) and EDuke32. I will be describing Boxer first and EDuke some other time.

Preparations
You will have to do the following whether you use boxer or EDuke32
Download Duke Nukem 3D form GoG.
Now we need to install the game somehow. use a Windows PC, a BootCamp partition, a virtual machine, Crossover or, my favourite, Wineskin. Wineskin is free and all we need to do is just install the game, not run it, so any of these will do.
Now that you have installed the game go to the folder you installed it to (e.g. C:\Program Files\GoG.com\) and put the "Due Nukem 3D" folder somewhere on your Mac. You can throw away the rest of your installation away now.

Now that we have the game's folder it#s time to get it running

Boxer

You can get Boxer at
http://boxerapp.com/

Download it, put it somewhere on your hard drive (Applications folder recommended) and launch it once.

Remember the folder we prepared in the last post? Add the extension ".boxer" to it (e.g. "Duke Nukem 3D.boxer")

Congratulations, you have created a ready-to-use gamebox. Now all you have to do is double-click and play it. Well, usually that would be all, but Duke Nukem 3D still needs some settings.

Launch "Duke Nukem 3D.boxer" and you will see a DOS prompt. At the bottom of the windows you will see abunch of executables. To the far right there is "setup.exe". Click it.

Now you can see the setup screen. It is its own appliction, unlike today#s games where the configuration is done in-game.

Choose "Sound Setup", then choose "Setup Sound FX Card". Select "Sound Blaster"

In the following "Window" make sure adress is set to "0x220", Interrupt is "7", 8-bit DMA is "1" and 16-bit DMA is "5"

The "use these settings and continue", number of voices is 8, 8-bit mixing, and the rest is fine as it is.

Now we could play the game, but while we're at it we can change the controls to be more like modern FPS. I included an image file that shows how I set up my mouse and keyboard. It's the same control scheme EDuke32 uses.

Exit the setup, save the changes when asked and you will find yourself at the main DOS prompt. Among the executable at the bottom choose "duke32.exe" to play the game. Boxer will ask you if you want to launch duke3d.exe every time, say yes if you want to. Then you won't have to select duke32.exe every time you launch "Duke Nukem 3D.boxer"

------------------------------
That's it, you now have a fully working authintic DOS version of Duke Nukem 3D. You can still customize the gamebox, like adding an icon and so forth. There is enough information on that at Boxer's website.
Have fun.
=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=
---- THIS SPACE FOR Rent ----

I will put the EDuke32 instruction here ventually. In the meantime there is a YouTube video that has a link for intstruction in its description. I used it to set up my game, but it's not well written, that's why I want to writ the instructions here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epnU0FxFLy4

EDuke32

What is EDuke32 and why should I care?
I don't know about the technical details, but EDuke32 lets you play the game with modern technology like high resolution tesxures and 3D models instead of sprites. All that happens in a native application, so there is no emulation like in Boxer/DOSBox.
Sound great, right? Well, except my experience with EDuke32 was anything but pleasant. The game would crash in various occasions, framerate would suddenly drop for a split second, but long enough to have the camera look the opposite direction while being shot at and the music messed all the sound up after one loop.
If you still feel like giving EDuke32 a try please read on.

Go to
http://www.spam-filter.de/osx/eduke32_on_os_x
and download one of the the binaries appropriate for you system (not the ready to run packages, the binary only ones)

Open the download and drag EDuke32.app somewhere onto ypur hard drive. launch it. You should get an errror saying you need some files to put somewhere.

Well, let's do just that. Open up "~/Library/Application Support/EDuke32"
(On Lion the user Library is hidden. There are a million ways to access it, just google)

Now back to our prepared folder from the forst post. Get the file "duke3d.rpg" and put it in "~/Library/Application Support/EDuke32". Create a folder ther called "autoload"

Look in the mods thread of this forum for the high resolution mod. I recommend the bare HRP mod, the update for it, the maphacks and the music pack.

Put all these downloads into the autoload folder. Dont extract them, just put the ZIP files there.

We are almost done. Launch EDuke32.app and you will get messed up sound, so quit. back in ~/Library/Application Support/EDuke32 open EDuke.cfg in TextEdit (or any other text editor). Edit the following lines to look like this:
ForceSetup = 0
NoAutoLoad = 0
Polymer = 1

Launch EDuke 32 again, go to the sund settings and make it 8bit sound instead of 16bit.

That's it. if the sound starts stuttering pause the game, open sound stting, turn music off and then turn it on. You might as well play without misic but that would be a shame.


There is also a video from the guy who ported EDuke32 to the Mac
http://www.spam-filter.de/_media/osx/eduke32/eduke32_howto.m4v

Sorry for the 12 year long reply, but I stumbled across this post (thanks for helpin everyone who has sucessfully gotten Duke Nukem 3D on their Mac, even me), but about one of the files you mentioned, the "EDuke.cfg" file, that doesn't appear inside ~?Library?application Support/Eduke32. I was just wondering what's going on. but anyways thanks for helpin us lad!!!