Duke Nukem Forever.... beyond a joke. (1 Viewer)

[Doug R]

For fun, here's what has been started and completed since Duke Nukem Forever was first announced.

1) Six Final Fantasy games.
2) Two Star Wars prequels (almost three).
3) Three Matrix movies.
4) Three Lord of the Rings movies.

The fact that people are still getting up in the morning, going to their job, and working on this game is funny as hell. How do they work without wondering "WHY????"

 

[DonRoeber]

Do kids even know who Duke Nukem is anymore?

 

[Tony Whalen]

Duke who?

 

[Jason_H]

Never the less, when(if?) this beast finally rolls out the door, it will be to a hungry audience.

Hmmmm...I don't think I can agree with this. They have moved far, far off of the radar in my opinion. With Half Life 2 and Doom 3 immenent (not without their own delays, although relatively speaking very small), I can't see there being that much of an audience that is just salivating to get it. But who knows?

 

[Max Leung]

Never underestimate the buying power of gaming seniors.
("Hey, why are all those old men lining up at Electronics Boutique? The clatter from the canes and walkers is really distracting!" "Didn't you hear? Duke Nukem Forever was just released!" "Duke who?")

 

[James T]

From the CEO of 3D Realms, http://www.totalvideogames.com/pages...rticle_id=5842
"IMO, it's more abusive to the community to continue to talk about and show the game when it's not real close to release. What's the point of leading people on? The best thing we can, and should do, is to shut up, finish the game and start showing it and talking about it when it's near enough release that people can actually see light at the end of the tunnel."
Way too long for any game.

 

[Tony Whalen]

So after all this time, they still can't see the light at the end of the tunnel huh?

What, does this tunnel core through the entire planet? Sheesh!

 

[Chris Farmer]

You know, there's something to be said for a "When it's done mentality." There's also something to be said for fixing a date in stone and saying the game will be ready by then. Best example, Copland vs. Mac OS X or Longhorn. For those of you who don't know Apple history (which I would presume is quite a few) Copland was in the mid 90s, Apple's modern OS update to the original Mac OS. It was in development for years, with numerous problems. Apple was too ambitious, they were trying to completely overhaul the Mac OS while maintaining full backwards compatibility with existing apps. Feature creep started in, where they were always trying to add whatever the latest and greatest ideas were, doable or not, feasible or not, regardless or whether the features were even all that great. In the end, it turned into a huge fiasco, cost Apple huge amounts of money, and never came out.

Contrast this with Mac OS X. Apple started with the NeXT step OS, the Mach microkernel, and some BSD UNIX elements, crafted an OS around it, and set a ship date in stone. The result was an OS that was premature, buggy, and slow, but it was out there. After one major update (10.1, aka Puma), it was a fully functional, usable OS. Sure, it wasn't everything it could have been, just look at the recent release of Panther to see how far OS X has come since then, but it was damn good, and it was definitely superior to OS 9. Microsoft has had a similar thing happen with Longhorn. Feature creep and similar kept pushing the release date further and further back, so they've said enough is enough. Longhorn will now ship in 2006 with everything available, and any features that aren't ready will simply be dropped.

Sure, this mentality isn't perfect. The end result is substandard to a "it'll be done when it's done" mentality. But the problem is, if that's your sole concern, there will always be a new feature or an extra level or something you can add. If you're waiting for perfection, it's never going to arrive, it just ain't happening. In addition, if that's the mentality, there's no incentive to bust your ass, you know you have all the time you need. People simply work better with a hard deadline over their heads. At some point you have to say things are good enough, the features stop here. The next six month we polish what we have, and we ship. Otherwise you end up with a game that's been in development longer then most presidential campaigns and the term that follows it. I can guarantee this, with all the development time DNF has had, nothing short of literally the best FPS ever will justify it. Look at the games that have been fully developed since DNF was announced, much less since development on it started. Doom 3 will be out this summer, The Sims will have been developed, had a half a dozen expansions, a MMO version, and a sequel. Halo and Halo 2 will have come to fruition (and that's form Bungie, a company that practically invented the "when it's done" philosophy back with Marathon on the Mac in 1994) on the X-box, and Halo will have been ported and enhanced on the PC. Nintendo will have released three console Zelda games (Majora's Mask on N64, WW, and the new untitled Zelda), two GCN Metroids, two GBA Metroids, and probably two massive Mario games. There will have been no less then THREE top-notch Jak and Ratchet and Clank EACH games on the PS2. Capcom will have remade Resident Evil 1 top to bottom, finished Resident Evil 0, and made RE4.

None of these are games that are terrible. The only ones that look to have been seriously limited by time constraints to any extant are Halo (from what I've heard, repetitive final levels) and Wind Waker (needed three more dungeons, and the location for where they were supposed to be is obvious). All were done on short or time-critical schedules (the Jak and Ratchet games took about a year each to finish, Halo HAD to be ready for X-box launch) The rest are games where the developer set a release date, knew what they had to accomplish and how long they had to do it, and set out to do it. All of these games were or look to be smashing successes. At some point, "when it's done" stops being a philosophy and starts being an excuse.

 

[Tony Whalen]

At some point, "when it's done" stops being a philosophy and starts being an excuse.

Yup. And I'd have to say they passed that point long ago...

(Great post Chris!)

 

[Benson R]

I check this thread every once in awhile, hoping against hope there will be some shred of news to grasp onto.

All this begs the question, who is funding the development process of this game? At this point it looks like throwing money into a bottomless pit. I almost wish they would announce the game is cancelled so we can all stop wondering.

Also the developers seem to be too concerned with having the latest technology. They are completely missing what made duke nukem 3d so much fun.

It was in no way cutting edge, it just made the best possible use of the technology available at the time, and design and fun ruled above the latest in graphics.

It is the only pseudo 3d fps that I can still play and enjoy.

 

[Shawn C]

I don't think that there is a DNF game at all. It wouldn't suprise me if this is all one big joke by 3D Realms.

 

[Scott Thomas]

I gave up on DNF for a LOOONG time now, But at least I have Halo 2, Half-Life 2, and Doom 3

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

At some point, "when it's done" stops being a philosophy and starts being an excuse.

Very true. How many industries let this line of reasoning fly? For that matter how many jobs? Who here would be inclined to tell their boss that an important project will be "done when it's done"? Set a realistic time frame and stick to it. I think a great point is made that with an open window the incentive is there to keep on adding, keep on tweaking.

 

[JustinCleveland]

And then, you think... well, the AI could be better... and once that's done being tweaked, you realize the graphics are out of date, so you fix all that, but then another part of the project is behind. Like Jay said, set a date and hit it. At this point, unless the gameplay is stellar, this game is a waste of retail space.

 

[Anthony Thorne]

George Broussard posted some stuff on the current DUKE situation about 8 months ago or more, (I think on the official site). Having started over two or three times already on the prior build of the game, and patched and repatched and rebuilt the engine as the delays made it less usuable, they all apparently stopped just over a year ago and said "Folks, this isn't working". They've subsequently started the game over AGAIN. Broussard mentioned that DUKE NUKEM FOREVER is now a DirectX9 game.

Broussard's other comment was (in response to those light at the end of the tunnel gags) the word in the office was "At last we've finally FOUND the tunnel".

The situation with DNF is ludicrous beyond compare, but I guess they can now salvage the situation by making a good game. The 'long awaited' DUKE NUKEM FOREVER no longer exists. It was dumped, scrapped, thrown away, tossed out. Broussard and co. are now making a new DUKE NUKEM FOREVER with the same story and gameplay mechanics (and theoretically levels, etc.) but a new engine. I hope they don't get any more cases of 'engine-envy' - the next iteration of UNREAL TOURNAMENT (marked as 18 to 24 months away or so) looks remarkable, and really lets you know how incredibly rich and detailed game software graphics will be a couple of years from now. The DUKE guys have missed the chance to release anything on Gamecube and Xbox (plans of which they announced in 2002 or thereabouts) but will be happy for us all to buy another console a year or two ahead to play their latest started-over effort.

 

[Dustin_Taylor]

Check out what George Broussard said in a thread on 3D Realms message board a few days ago.

The end results will be nice. We've been solidly on track for a long time now and just churning away. We're working towards and end and it will be in your lifetime

LOL!

 

[Anthony Thorne]

Interesting comments from George (who must wonder what karmic hand he was dealt to have worked on PREY, a hyped-then-canned title, for some years before DUKE NUKEM FOREVER). I understand that the company has enough funds to develop in circles until 'it's ready', but I wonder how some of the development team feel about throwing away three years of work (again) just to redo it a third or fourth time. It must occur to those guys some nights that they could have been paying teams of hookers for lapdances and lingerie parties on a cruiser in Rio for half a decade rather than pecking away at a computer in an office.

 

[Shawn C]

That's a ridiculous excuse. This has got the be a hige joke. No one in their right mind would continue this project IF the facts presented by George are factual.

If it were me I would have let them change engines MAYBE once if the engine you were on was seriously lacking. Beyond that, you're done. Go work on something else. Bye bye now, see ya later..

 

[Benson R]

At this point I would be ecstatic if they released a remake of duke 3d with the exact same levels and weapons, but with and updated 3d engine and graphics.

Duke 3d multiplayer is still probably the most fun I ever had with a pc game and would love to be able to play it over xbox live.

 

[Rob Speicher]

1. Buy a license to the Source engine.
2. Port Duke 3d to it.
3. Profit.