Duke Nukem Forever Gameplay Footage Leaked 189
Tjeerd writes, "It seems that while 3D Realms is dead, some new footage has been leaked of Duke Nukem Forever." 3D Realms posted a brief good-bye to their website, and two of the developers have hosted screenshots and concept art from DNF on their personal blogs. Also, for those who haven't seen it yet, there's an entertaining list of things that have happened during DNF's development cycle.
Cool, but, . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope the game escapes the collapse. (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that really got to me, a little at first and then more and more, was what would happen to the game that we'd all worked so hard on. The parent company had proven very inept at finding a publisher (two deals came to the final meeting before our directors walked away claiming the terms weren't good enough) and they owned the copyright on the code and assets. Most likely the game would just have ended up mothballed permanently.
I'd like to see some provision whereby almost complete products owned by a freshly deceased company could be freed (open sourced, or just released unencumbered by any copyright). Surely the cultural loss of media like this is far greater than the cultural loss claimed by copyright proponents as due to lack of compensation.
This may be overly optimistic, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm quitely (well not so quietly now that I'm talking about it) suspecting that we may next see the leaked marketing materials, then the playable demo, then behold! The laid off staff members actually finished the game! Here it is in all its glory!
Given the fact that this game has been one of the most famous vapourware titles for over a decade, could this simply be a marketing stunt leading up to it's release?
Re:Could they please.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What would have been nicer (Score:5, Interesting)
So what you end up with is either (as happens in successful software companies) someone forceful seizes control of the development process, and the success or failure of the team rests on their shoulders, or (as usually happens) no-one really takes charge, and everyone with vague job descriptions wastes all their time doing nothing (or doing meaningless busywork) while Rome burns.
It's generally a good sign of a software company's health if it has a clearly defined process not just for actual software development, but for planning and milestone setting. Even with a clear process in place, and even with management staff committed to transparency, it still takes a long while at the start of the project to weed out the idiots who slipped into management roles, and replace them with competent people. Once the weeding-out process is close to completion, the actual development work can start in earnest.
Re:Cool, but, . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually they claimed they hadn't moved to Doom. The it was Unreal -> inhouse -> rumored doom. What they did confirm is they changed physics engines...
And if it actually was an inhouse engine, they might actually have something worth open sourcing even if they have to pull out huge chunks of licensed code.
Re:This may be overly optimistic, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
If they really went this far to shut things down just to promote the game and then release it, well, I'd buy TWO copies of DNF. That marketing stunt would be over the top and most original for sure.
Re:Could they please.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The first Quake was pretty creepy, I think. Much more atmospheric than Doom. In any case, I'm sure id would rather work on their own properties. In the long run it makes more business sense. Also, really the only thing novel about Duke is the humor. That goes for all of the Duke Nukem games. I think I'd be more interested in seeing a new Duke platformer for WiiWare than I would a new Duke FPS.
I don't know what to do. (Score:4, Interesting)
In all seriousness, I really hope they leak the game as it stood in 2001. There is very little about that IP that would be of value to a potential debtor. The new gameplay looks like it would stand up to modern games if given a 6-8 months finishing rush cycle under good management. Granted button events are lame, but everything else looks like it'd be a fun romp. Maybe it wouldn't be top 5 titles of the year, but I'd pay 50 bucks for it. That being said, the video didn't have enough time to demonstrate what made duke 3d great, the personality of the game. I mean in multiplayer, you could drop a pipe bomb, if somebody collected it, you could detonate it on their body, no matter where they were! I mean you just don't get dynamics like that nowadays. That kind of mechanic doesn't show up well in 2 minute demo vids.
Re:This may be overly optimistic, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What would have been nicer (Score:1, Interesting)
I've suffered from perfectionistic tendencies most of my life and it's very difficult to prevent it from being self-defeating when you're in charge. I've been working on an iPhone project full-time for six months now, and just had a two week delay changing over the most complex and important view from CoreGraphics to OpenGL. The reasoning is sound - I thought that since I'm only doing 2D graphics, using the CG stuff would be fine, but as I finished up main work in the app engine the lack of hardware acceleration for CG caused the app to become unusable. Still, I find myself in similar delaying situations often enough to where I'm sure at least some of them have more to do with unnecessary perfectionism than what the market wants. The worst thing is being absolutely desperate to finish and yet not being able to say "This is good enough for the initial release."
Re:What would have been nicer (Score:3, Interesting)
"On Time" is something 3D Realms didn't understand. I mean, they EMBRACED the fact that everyone called it vaporware and LOVED that nobody thought it was coming out. I hope it stings REALLY bad for them now that they aren't going to get to release it, cause I know after all the little things they've let slip out over the last couple years (trailers, screenshots, etc) that it pisses me off.
I agree with making the project open source. That would be nice. But hopefully a big name dev will pick it up and finish it off (probably in like 6 months time since they won't be a bunch of bumbling idiots like 3D Realms was) and we can finally play the game. I don't even care if it is only "OK". After all this time, I'll be perfectly happy just to hear some Duke catch phrases while I frag some aliens. The industry needs it.
But why would you want to? (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole point of agreeing to publish (meaning pay for) a game is that you want to make money on it. A development stupid has an idea that you think will make money, so you agree to fund said idea and bring it to market. In return, you get to make money on all the sales.
So sure, depending on the contract, you could refuse to give them more money, stop the project, and take what assets have been developed. But then what? Now you've paid for something that isn't useful to you. You have a nice unfinished game and nobody working on it. Wonderful. That is stupid business 101 right there.
It also isn't as though you can just take a finished product and run. There is going to be a contract between you and the developers. Now maybe the contract is straight pay for work. Like "We agree to pay you X amount to make this product." Ok well then the developers don't care what you do, they've been paid. You sell it or don't sell it as you like, they aren't getting more money from you for this game no matter what. Maybe it is a royalty situation "10% of all sales," or the like. Ok well you still have to pay that. So if you grab the finished product, well the contract is still in force, you still have to pay them the royalties, so again they don't really care. You "cut and run," so to speak, they make their money all the same.
What it comes down to is that all the assets that go in to a game are only worth anything when they are all put together in to a working game that can be sold. So there is nothing for a publisher to gain from trying to cut and run in the middle of development. It is in their interests to see the game completed so they have a product they can put on the shelves.
Re:DNWC (Score:3, Interesting)
Serious Sam came close to Duke3D. I just discovered it works nicely in CrossOver games (although, for some bizarre reason, only in Direct3D mode, not OpenGL - somehow emulating Direct3D on top of OpenGL works better than emulating OpenGL on top of OpenGL...). I played the whole game from start to finish - which I did once when I first bought it - although it's a lot shorter than I seem to recall Duke being. The same sort of one-liners and humour as Duke, but also wide open levels where massive numbers of enemies rush at you (also one level I only completed because a bull accidentally threw me up onto a wall where I could hide and fire all of my ammunition into a mass of monsters). Even the plotline - such as there is - is quite similar between the two games.
It's almost a shame that they didn't just buy Croteam and brand Serious Sam as DNF.