Duke Nukem Forever

[Gambit37]

Ah well. Duke Nukem is now Dead. 3D Realms have gone bust and shut up shop. I really feel for those guys who worked on the game for TWELVE YEARS -- for nothing!!! What a complete waste of time and energy Poor guys. Now they have nothing in their portfolio for the last dozen years

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/58519
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ga ... 7/games-pc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ga ... me-culture

[Ameena]

Someone made a post on my other forum about this. I dunno if they were just lifting from another article but I found the post quite interesting anyway. Here it is...


"http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/58519

On May 6th 2009, after 12 years in development and numerous awards for vapourware, Duke Nukem Forever has finally been axed and its developer 3D Realms has gone under. This is a sad day, I've been eagerly anticipating DNF since it was announced when I was 10 years old, and 3D Realms (formerly Apogee Software). They developed some of the classic games of the 90s including BioMenace, Secret Agent, Crystal Caves and of course the Duke Nukem series, and produced Commander Keen, Wolfestein 3D and Max Payne 2.

DNF was first developed for the Quake engine, then switched to the Unreal engine, then to the Doom 3 engine. When DNF was announced, the fastest processor available to consumers was a 233Mhz Pentium. Since then the clock speed of consumer processors has increased over 16 times (32 times counting dual cores), and the fabrication process has decreased from 250nm to 65nm.

To put this 12 year development in perspective, some games that were developed in the same time

# Every Unreal, every Unreal Tournament, and every game that has used any of the Unreal engines.
# Quake 2, 3, 4, and countless games that have used their engines.
# Every Tony Hawk and extreme sport spin-off game.
# Every version of Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike Source
# Every Thief game.
# The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and IV:Oblivion, and the entire Baldur's Gate series.
# The entire Halo trilogy
# The entire Grand Theft Auto series
# The entire Sims series, and expansions
# Every 3D Prince of Persia game
# Every Gran Turismo game
# Over 75 games based in the MegaMan universe, and 12 games featuring MegaMan universe character cameos
# Over 50 games based in the Star Wars universe
# Daikatana began development 10 days before Duke Nukem Forever- (Though no one was made John Romero's bitch when it hit retail shelves on May 23rd, 2000)



In April of 1997, Google, eBay, and the term "weblog" didn't exist and the fastest consumer internet connection was a 33.6 kbps modem. On average, consumer internet connections are 300 times faster today.

Every peer to peer file sharing program including Napster was developed, and every GeForce and Radeon graphics card was produced in those 12 years.

Britney Spears' entire musical career as a pop star has taken place during Duke Nukem Forever's development and Colin Farrell's entire movie career.

Approximately 509,373,000 people have died and 661,373,000 have been born. There have been 7 total solar eclipses and 8 total lunar eclipses.


Things that have taken less time than DNF's development...


# The Beatles formed, released every single one of their albums and broke up.
# The Wright brothers designed and flew the first airplane
# The United States' entire program to put a man on the moon, from Kennedy's challenge to the landing
# The complete construction of many monumental buildings and engineering projects, including
* The Empire State Building
* The Channel Tunnel
* The Golden Gate Bridge
* The World Trade Center
# The American War for Independence
# World War I
# The United State's involvement in the Vietnam War
# World War II and the entire Manhattan Project


Yes. The entire development of the atomic bomb took less time than Duke Nukem Forever."

[Gambit37]

That stuff is from the Duke Nukem Forever List, you can get more of it here:

http://duke.a-13.net/

[Tom Hatfield]

World War II and the entire Manhattan Project

Combat actions in Europe ended shortly after the German Army surrendered in May 1945, but the peace treaty with Germany wasn't finalized until 1990 — over 45 years later. (The peace treaty with Japan was signed in 1951.) So, if you want to get really technical, WWII lasted over 50 years.

[Jan]

So, if you want to get really technical, WWII lasted over 50 years.

I think it is still not over, because Russia (Soviet Union) has not signed a peace treaty with Japan yet. Or this is what one my colleague - a historian - says. Or something.

[Gambit37]

I honestly never thought I would see the day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hail to the king, baby!

[cowsmanaut]

yep, know people who worked on it.. it was a surprise when it appeared on their facebook page.. they had to be really tight lipped about it during production.

[Gambit37]

Nearly 15 years in the making!

The people you know... were they at 3D Realms, or at Gearbox?

[cowsmanaut]

neither.. though they are working with Gearbox. They're at pirahna games. Worked on the multiplayer component.

[Gambit37]

Well, I've played the demo, and it's all a bit "meh, whatever."

Playability = Slow character movement, can only carry 2 weapons, hardly any world physics, limited interactivity, a badly controlled truck etc. etc. -- nothing terribly new, unique or interesting
Graphics = nothing special these days, indeed quite underwhelming.
Fun factor = pretty low

It's just not Duke. Duke was all about being larger than life, a one man army, indestructible and almost god like, mowing down enemies with ease and just having a blast blowing stuff up. DNF takes all that out and makes it slower and more realistic, but that's just no fun whatsoever. I think they really missed the point. Or they simply gave us a very poor choice of levels for the demo -- no real hook in a boring desert level to make me think "hey, this is cool, what's in the full game?"

Obviously it could never live up to the hype, but if the demo is really representative of the game, it's really nothing to write home about. I doubt I'll buy it. This review sums it up for me:

http://testzerosblog.blogspot.com/2011/ ... -demo.html

[sucinum]

Well, it's a console shooter. Savepoints, autoheal, linear level design, ...

[Joramun]

Well, I've played the demo, and it's all a bit "meh, whatever."
Playability = Slow character movement, can only carry 2 weapons, hardly any world physics, limited interactivity, a badly controlled truck etc. etc. -- nothing terribly new, unique or interesting
Graphics = nothing special these days, indeed quite underwhelming.
Fun factor = pretty low

The true heir to Duke Nukem was Serious Sam (First and Second encounter are real fun,
but I didn't like Serious Sam 2 - too processor-hungry at the time, and it felt more cluttered than the two first).

[Gambit37]

Well, it's a console shooter. Savepoints, autoheal, linear level design, ...

So you're saying that all console shooters are crap?

[linflas]

of course they are, you don't have a mouse and a keyboard !

[Gambit37]

Well, fair enough

[Lord_BoNes]

of course they are, you don't have a mouse and a keyboard !

CAN I HEAR AN AMEN... AMEN BROTHER!

[linflas]

joypads are NOT made for FPS. i tried Gears of War once on Xbox : i just wonder how console people can move and aim with precision with 2 thumbs on analogic sticks !

btw, i've always hated joypads because they destroy my thumbs. joysticks rulez ! bring me an X-arcade !

[sucinum]

So you're saying that all console shooters are crap?

At least all those features are crap. I really hoped for a classic Duke, in my eyes, fps went downwards after Quake 2. I didn't play too much newer shooters and so might have missed a pearl between them, but genereally, I despise those console features.

[Lord_BoNes]

In my opinion, an FPS should be like Quake 1/2 or Duke3D/Blood/Shadow-Warrior. This whole business of regenerating hp is crap! I feel that none of the newer shooters really follow the original outline of a "First Person Shooter"... it's more like a "First Person Adventure" or "First Person RPG".

Savepoints are understandable, maybe even with infinite lives... but autoheal and linear gameplay, are complete bulls**t. In ALL the original FPS games, there's no such thing as autoheal, and that was critical to gameplay. In my eyes, health points are as valuable as "credits" or "money" in any strategy game, considering your health was very important to actually winning any fight. As if you'd go fighting a monster that does 30-40 damage per hit with only 10hp.

[Sophia]

That distinction is kind of blurry because most single player first-person shooters are "shooter/adventure" games anyway. This isn't really new, even Quake was full of secret areas. About the only "pure shooting" experience might be playing deathmatch with bots, or something.

I personally like the auto-regenerating HP. I think the problem that it fundamentally addresses is keeping "encounters" separate from one another, so that you're fresh for each one and can keep advancing-- rather than have to reload your game and try to get there without getting hit as much, backtrack a long way for a health pack, or other tedious options. In a well-designed game, you still have to play smart and budget your health, because the pressure is always on, and in the midst of a firefight, there won't be time to heal. But that way, after the fight is over, you can approach the next encounter at full strength. Granted, the caveat there is a well designed game. There are plenty of shooters out there, on both consoles and PC (often on both) that would not count as well-designed.

[sucinum]

That distinction is kind of blurry because most single player first-person shooters are "shooter/adventure" games anyway. This isn't really new, even Quake was full of secret areas.

That is actually a huge difference. Quake had awesome level design where you could explore a lot and discover secret areas etc., while modern shooters have very linear design with a lot of cutscenes in between. See this chart for reference: http://mikerebel.blogspot.com/2011/01/level-design.html

I don't think it's a problem to backtrack and get some health kits - having them spare was a reward for doing a specific encounter very well (or discovering a secret area) and usually getting them was a matter of a few seconds, same as waiting for autoheal. With the difference that backtracking is active, while autoheal is passive. But autoheal alone isn't the problem, it's the combination of those features which make modern fps play slower, more pseudo-tactical and less fun.

[linflas]

what i definitely dislike in modern shooters is also the regenerating enemies if you stay at some place and refuse to move, mostly seen in Call of Duty series.

[Des]

I got a copy of the game (PC version) for my [censored] birthday and I've played the first three levels so far. It's a good laugh with similar humour to the original game and more interactivity with objects (such as the "balls of steel" pinball machine) and of course lots of alien butt-kicking

The liniarity is a big raspberry, alas. The original game had a good balance - you had to do the scenes in order but in each one there was plenty of scope for exploration and discovery. Unfortunately DNF treats you like a sheep

[Gambit37]

Another crushing review, and this one's amusing too:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2 ... ensive.ars

I love the little map they included from another source, hilarious because it's so sadly true:

[Jan]

ROFL. Oh, wait, that's not a "ROFL" moment, that's sad and true!

That's basically what Jon Hare would call "Endumbening of Videogamers" - see an interview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz1zOO0oz2I (from ca 11:00).

[Lord_BoNes]

LOL! I had to really laugh when I read that, Gambit. But, it's soooo sadly true.
Why do you think I'm writing my OWN engine?

[cowsmanaut]

well, after reading the review.. I must say that I'm not surprised.. They seem to keep trying to push the limits with their GTA games and the like. People randomly hurting or killing defenseless people and making jokes about it seems to have become somehow acceptable. There are a few games with morals, and though some are thinly veiled.. have at least an attempt at it makes me feel better. Infamous allows you to play a dirty character who is still trying to stop a more evil character, but I choose to play the good guy which has it's own rewards, and even is the expected basis for the whole storyline anyway. Assassins creed labels the army guys as evil and you are punished for even attacking civilians with a warning not to do it. The games are clean, respectable.. Proof that you do a quality likeable game with morals.. that there is no need to be obtuse and vile in order to attract people.

There is no real need for me to shoot hookers, throw feces, beat pedestrians with a baseball bat to a bloody splatter as they beg for their lives.. just because it's not real, doesn't make it alright. No you don't have to push the limits.. and no i don't want to buy your games when you do that..

To be honest, I saw duke nukem as a sort of Bruce Campbell kind of character from evil dead. "hail to the king baby" .. it was amusing in that context.. but it looks like they tried to push things too far..

damned shame..