Duke Nukem Forever Not Dead? (Yes, This Again) 195
kaychoro writes "There may be hope for Duke Nukem Forever (again). 'Jon St. John, better known as the voice of Duke Nukem, said some interesting words during a panel discussion at the Music and Games Festival (MAGFest) that took place January 1 – 4 in Alexandria, Virginia, according to Pixel Enemy. Answering a question from the crowd regarding DNF, St. John said: "... let me go ahead and tell you right now that I'm not allowed to talk about Duke Nukem Forever. No, no, don't be disappointed, read between the lines — why am I not allowed to talk about it?"'"
Re:Of Course it's Not Dead (Score:3, Interesting)
It still rocks (Score:2, Interesting)
"I think the whole world has. Like you said, the main draw of Duke Nukem over similar games was the swearing/stripper angle, and even for today's kids that role was long ago taken by the Internet."
I actually played Duke Nukem 3D recently on Linux using eduke32 and it was still a lot of fun. Back when Duke Nukem was popular some kids may have played it because of the swearing/stripper angle, but I don't know of any adults who played it just because of that. My friends and I enjoyed playing Duke Nukem so much because it contained a lot of humor and it was also one of the first multiplayer games that worked well and in which you could interact with the environment in a more realistic way. The multiplayer mode was great, 8 of us could play Duke Nukem at the same time in the computer lab and when one of us found something he wanted to share he'd just yell "My view!" and we'd all switch to his view. I may be wrong, but I think that Duke Nukem was the first game to feature the ability to switch to another player's view in multiplayer mode.
Indeed (Score:1, Interesting)
I was born in late 1989, so I am 20 years old now, studying software engineering in college. Duke Nukem came out when I was 2 years old (I just had to check the year from Wikipedia), Duke Nukem II came out when I was four years old. Naturally I have never played either. Duke Nukem 3D came out when I was 7 so I technically could have played that on DOS like I did with Doom and Heretic but never did. Some of my friends did and I think my age category is the border here: Most freshmen probably haven't ever tried Duke Nukems.
The console and handheld versions are a lot newer (some came out in 2000s) but I don't think they count. Getting Duke Nukem to work on handheld is kinda like getting your new calculator to run Doom: I've seen people do it for the humor value and because they love tinkering but nobody really does it because of the game itself.
I would of course play Duke Nukem Forever if it was published - the idea od so old series getting a sequel is just epic in itself - but yeah.
Re:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem? (Score:4, Interesting)
No publisher would throw away 12 years of hype.
Isn't it even longer than that now? Anyway, Duke Nukem Forever had already moved from badly delayed to standing joke in the early-2000s. Now the joke's worn thin and just plain strange. The fact that someone hasn't just slapped the name on *something* and released it as Duke Nukem Forever long before now is what is weird.
I suspect that any game released would end up being the "Snakes on a Plane" of games. People discussing it a lot, but not necessarily buying it. Anyone who remembers playing the original games in their mid-90s heyday would have to be at least in their 20s now, and even then I suspect that most of them have moved on.
Disclaimer; though I'm old enough to have been a typical DN fan, I never played- nor had even heard of it- during its heyday, only becoming aware of it through DNF's reputation as a standing joke several years ago. Even *that* was so long ago that many kids probably aren't aware of it. Its best hope is as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to ride an "ironic" revival of the 1990s. Yuk.
The Build engine (Score:5, Interesting)
Duke Nukem 3D did have a rather interesting engine. As someone else has posted, it did various things other engines at the time couldn't do (eg. mirrors) and was well optimized.
For anyone who's interested about the history of the engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSVzn0F3pyQ [youtube.com]
OK, it's got nothing to do with DNF but I found this video recently and felt it was worth sharing. :)
Re:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem? (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a difference between what TheRaven64 and you are talking about with impossible levels. Try making a figure-eight shape for the player to run on the inside of, but make it so that when you are crossing the center point you can't see any of the crossing point - you only go along a single path the entire time and keep passing over an impossible point time and time again. You could literally make parts of a level physically on top of other parts, and the engine would not care. Think about Doctor Who's TARDIS - this would be very easily doable in Duke3D without changing the engine in the least bit. It would require some serious hackery in just about any other engine I can think of. 3D geometry simply doesn't do the crap that Duke3D did. This is probably a good thing :).
Re:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh them were t'days. We used to drag our computers round to Tim's mum's house (we were all in our twenties and all lived with parents,stereotypes or what?) and trail thin ethernet everywhere. IPX , SPX , NE2000 cards, doom2 and duke3d. And there was no internet to download drivers in them days, you had to copy files off the netware floppy disks at work. Duke3d was ace because you could jetpack over an open area and drop pipe bombs on the poor fools on the ground. Good times before the cares of the world crushed my spirit.
Re:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Marathon had the impossible levels too... they're really quite cool, and I haven't seen anything like them in Prey or Portal.
For example, you could make a figure-8 level where the two crossing hallways in the center "don't intersect" with each other. So and your friend can be standing literally in the same place, but you can't see each other because you're in different hallways. One of the Marathon multiplayer levels was mind-bending by using this trick... it made the radar completely useless.
Re:Of course it's not dead (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe they've seen the same joke over and over for the past ten years?