Duke Nukem Forever Back In Development 356
An anonymous reader writes "'Always bet on Duke.' It seems he was right about himself, at least. The longest, most storied in-development game in history seems like it's finally going to be released by Gearbox Software sometime within the next year. 'According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing Duke Nukem Forever in late 2009. "Clearly the game hadn't been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created," he says. "The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn't quite make it, and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It's the game it was meant to be." The game is currently expected to ship in 2010 although given its history Pitchford is understandably reluctant to be more specific.'"
HAHAHA! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Duke Nukem cycle continues. Just wait until "2011" slips into "2013" and so forth...
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The Duke Nukem cycle continues. Just wait until "2011" slips into "2013" and so forth...
Duke nukes you on 2012-12-21. It's the big bang everybody's waiting for!
Re:HAHAHA! (Score:5, Funny)
Available now... (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm glad to see that DNF is back. Part of me, however, kind of hopes the release date keeps on slipping. It just seems like things aren't really right in the world unless Duke Nukem Forever is still "in development".
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Hardware has advanced quite a bit over the years. Perhaps they (or someone licensed/contracted to do so) could create viable mobile versions. There certainly is a large potential user base between iOS and Android.
So what will it be? Which desktop OSes, consoles, and/or mobile devices may see this game?
The article lacked coverage of that important point. They did say this:
"Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox Software, says an announcement regarding the future of the IP would be made on Sunday at the company
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So what will it be? Which desktop OSes, consoles, and/or mobile devices may see this game?
Windows, PS3 and 360.
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I think the mobile platforms are a very attractive target. They certainly could reach many users very quickly, and without the delay and manufacturing costs of shipping associate with brick and mortar retail.
But can/will a quality product be coded soon???
So your saying this will be a download only game then. Which is a good idea. But I wouldn't limit it to just mobile devices. Go the download route but for all platforms. You keep the speedy delivery to customers. The hard core gamers, who I do think game on their phones, can get the product.
Re:HAHAHA! (Score:5, Funny)
I can imagine the scene:
Boss- "Reimplement this usign XYZ"
Programmer- "Uh, OK, but we need to redo the strippers motion capture for that"
In other Hell News a cold front may be moving in.. (Score:5, Funny)
Bound to get frosty (Score:2)
What with hell freezing over and all. Could freeze the balls of even the Duke!
Re:Bound to get frosty (Score:5, Funny)
Aaack! Does that mean that soon I'll have to do all those things I said I would do when DNF shipped!?!
*runs away in terror*
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Does this also mean that 2011 will be the year of linux on the desktop?
Vaporware (Score:3, Funny)
The legend continues!
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I don't know, man - it looks legit (finally). Check out all the coverage from PAX on the Kotaku home page: http://kotaku.com/ [kotaku.com]
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Even the meme is dead (Score:3, Interesting)
Haven't seen any Duke Nukem jokes on /. in a while.
Re:Even the meme is dead (Score:5, Funny)
Haven't seen any Duke Nukem jokes on /. in a while.
We're still working on them. Expect some in 2011.
Re:Even the meme is dead (Score:5, Funny)
Better make that 2012, they're having some problems migrating from the Knockknock engine to the Insovietrussia engine.
is it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Even the meme is dead (Score:5, Funny)
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In the USA, you port game; in Soviet Russia, game deports you!
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Re:Even the meme is dead (Score:4, Funny)
Netcraft is down. They're porting their servers to Hurd.
It's putting a big load on the hardware, but they've drilled pipes down so they can use hell as a heat sink.
Too Late (Score:4, Insightful)
Generic console FPS game with some punchy one liners. Snooore!
Re:Too Late (Score:4, Informative)
I remember all of the dumb little hacks I had to do to get Borderlands working as a proper PC games. Even then, the interface and menus still suffered from console-itis.
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"I remember all of the dumb little hacks I had to do to get Borderlands working as a proper PC games."
And which hacks were those? I haven't had ONE single issue running Borderlands on my HP laptop, not since release date.
Let me guess, you got a crappy sound card the U3 engine didn't like and you had to drop all the way down to basic sound acceleration?
It's not april 1st (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's not april 1st (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, if they could make the actual release date on April 1st it would be rather funny. NOBODY would believe the press releases :-)
Re:It's not april 1st (Score:5, Funny)
You know, if they could make the actual release date on April 1st it would be rather funny. NOBODY would believe the press releases :-)
At this point, they could pick literally any other day of the year and nobody would believe the press release.
If you believe... (Score:2, Interesting)
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please forward specifications of said bridge
-prince hommardadarmajar
my prediction (Score:4, Interesting)
In another five years someone will buy the naming rights to Duke and release a flash browser game as "Duke Nukem Forever" as a gag. "See, it finally came out."
If they dropped the word Back (Score:5, Funny)
"Duke Nukem Forever in Development"
Re:If they dropped the word Back (Score:5, Funny)
3d Realms Forums (Score:2, Interesting)
3d Realms is taking it badly -- they forcibly closed all forums related to Duke Nukem, even the older ones. It looks like Take 2 stole their IP.
Re:3d Realms Forums (Score:5, Informative)
If by stole you mean "used their contractual rights to get the game finished, since 3D Realms didn't," then yeah.
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I was on the forums at around 5 am; they closed around the time of the announcement at PAX, apparently.
I for one, Welcome our new Duke Overlord!!
How many computers have we been thru since the original? I remember the Plutonium Pak had an install bug that complained about my 16MB of ram, lol. It required 8MB, and failed on 16, lol.
It looks like my Duke game directory was last modified in January of 1999; that's the last time I changed a config file, lol.
I'm ready for this to be released; I have vacation time
Re:3d Realms Forums (Score:5, Informative)
3d Realms is taking it badly -- they forcibly closed all forums related to Duke Nukem, even the older ones. It looks like Take 2 stole their IP.
You should probably actually visit their forum before posting misinformation. What has actually happened is that the main forum moderator, Joe Siegler, has been hired by Gearbox to handle their Duke Nukem community. As such they have moved Duke Nukem related forums over to the new Gearbox forum.
See his posts here [gearboxsoftware.com] and here [3drealms.com] for confirmation.
Whether they now own the Duke Nukem IP is unknown as no announcements have been made one way or the other.
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There's a Duke Nukem community??? Are these forums hosted on an OS/2 Warp server? *Head assplodes*
This is GREAT news ... (Score:5, Funny)
... for my grandchildren.
In Other News... (Score:2, Funny)
Which System? (Score:5, Funny)
So, is this going to be released for the N64 or PS1?
Slipped (Score:5, Funny)
2012 perhaps???? (Score:5, Funny)
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The invasion of the Rigelatins!!!
Gearbox? Hell yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
After being thoroughly satisfied with Borderlands (and I still play it regularly, can't wait for the expansion this month!) I think Gearbox is the best developer to finish up DNF. BL has lots of similar humor and is probably in my list of top 5 favorite games of at least the last 5 years.
Having said that.. I'm still going to wait until it's been out for a few days or weeks before buying, to see if it's worth it. I don't doubt Gearbox's talent but I do think DNF has enough negative "vibe" around it that there is a chance it won't live up to how fun the original was. And that's really the ultimate metric in my opinion...is the game fun? Nothing else really matters.
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Borderlands was amusing. It unfortunately suffered from console-itis however. The menus and interface were the most present problem, but there were also plenty of issues with movement. Of course, most things could be fixed if you wanted to sift through the game files and edit a few lines of code. Still, you shouldn't have to do that.
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And that's really the ultimate metric in my opinion...is the game fun? Nothing else really matters.
That's technically not true. You also still need to be alive.
This will take some time for release I reckon (Score:2)
I would expect this will be at least 6 months off.
The amount of QA for this game will be enormous.
They will have to ship almost perfect code with no map flaws or seems in the levels.
Any even minor flaw will need to be cleared before the game can ship.
I notice they will not give a date for release as they do not want to fall behind expectations.
I am hopeful the team is, in fact, working on this game and is not, in reality, tickling our testicles whilst cocking the gun that is behind our heads.
ID perfected customer QA (Score:2)
Nah they'll just patch it again and again. ID did this with the original Doom, and that seems to be the normal development cycle for just about everything these days. Release what you have, see if the customer notices/finds your bugs, patch, profit.
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Release what you have, see if the customer notices/finds your bugs, patch, profit.
ID is pretty much the only game company which bothers with anything after "release what you have".
Duke Nukem Forever... (Score:2)
Aw... (Score:2)
That trick NEVER works.
Like Iridium (Score:5, Insightful)
It cost 6 billion to put a network of satellites in orbit for a satphone network that cost $4 a minute--absolutely unsustainable business model. Picked up for $25 million after bankruptcy, it's now a thriving business since the huge sunk costs were discharged to the investors.
No surprise at all that a company would take 3D Realms assets, slap them all together and box them up. The launch campaign writes itself: "HOLY SHIT IT'S FINALLY HERE!"
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They should include an empty wrapper of bubble gum inside each box.
Please, please, PLEASE!!!! (Score:2)
will it be on 6-bit tape? (Score:2)
so I can play it on my Control Data computer?
Yeah, right. (Score:3, Funny)
Just you watch; the way this thing's going, it'll released just in time to put it in a bundle with Duke Nukem Forever.
Oh, wait...
GameStop Preorder ticket (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if GameStop will honor my DNF preorder ticket I got when the location was a Funcoland 12 years ago.
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Give it a shot. They need the revenue after what EA did to them.
Uh what? ``"Out of respect to those we serve, we will not be stocking this game," said the Army & Air Force Exchange Service's Commander Maj. Gen. Bruce Casella.'' This has nothing to do with EA or Gamestop except as a setting. Unless you had some other citation that proved something other than the opposite of what you intended...
What is this game? maybe I am too young? (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as I can work out, this is a follow on from a game previously released 14 years ago? is this correct? So who will care about its release apart from some very old-skool gamers? I guess it's just a kind of in-joke for old slashdot fans these days?
Re:What is this game? maybe I am too young? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just died a little inside...
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Is Starcraft II a joke to you? What about Diablo III?
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Maybe it'll turn out to be a good game, and thus people who like good games will care about it?
Not everything HAS to be a sequel to sell. See Gearboxes last game: Borderlands.
Re:What is this game? maybe I am too young? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, DNF is part of the Duke Nukem series, and Duke Nukem 3D was released 14 years ago. There's also the 2002 Manhattan Project but it's not really the same genre. If the game is good, being a sequel to an old game won't hurt it. Fallout 3 looks to be a good example. Released in 2008 to much acclaim from critics and players but it was a sequel, the first two Fallouts came out in 1997 and 1998. So technologically, it's a huge jump and I bet Fallout 3 had plenty of younger players who never played the first two parts. Which didn't hurt the perception of Fallout 3 any.
Likewise, DNF would not be hurt directly by being a sequel in the Duke Nukem series. It will do just fine if it's ever released and is a good game. Although if it really is released within the next year, I wouldn't expect the game to be much good - the development history seems too screwed up to produce a good end result.
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Likewise, DNF would not be hurt directly by being a sequel in the Duke Nukem series. It will do just fine if it's ever released and is a good game. Although if it really is released within the next year, I wouldn't expect the game to be much good - the development history seems too screwed up to produce a good end result.
Disagree. They could probably make a pretty decent game using whatever assets the game already has, engine and textures, models etc, but spend the remaining time left doing voices story and level design. Throw in a pretty good multiplayer mode and you have a solid game. I know it may not be feasible if the assets are too "last-gen", but I assume they at least wont follow what I keep hearing was the cause of the long dev time to begin with: the over-arching ridiculous desire to be as bleeding edge as possibl
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Enough people have heard of this game that the marketing power of the name alone will be big (everyone at the game blogs have heard of it, even if you haven't, and that will be enough to bring in the younger generations). I
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Right, because no one cares about old games apart from some very old school gamers. A follow up to an old game is something that no one mainstream would ever care about, right? I mean look at what happened when they released successors to Super Mario Bros., StarCraft, Fallout, and Street Fighter.
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It's a sequel to one of the best games ever made. That's why everyone who remembers it cares.
More than that, we know that 3DRealms, who was responsible for the predecessor, created much of the content for this one, so there is ample reason to believe Duke
it worked for Batman (Score:5, Funny)
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makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
Duke Nuke'em has such massive name recognition
Apparently it doesn't have enough name recognition for you to get it right...
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How to parse (Score:2)
Hope you held on to your preorder receipts! (Score:5, Interesting)
So will that guy with the oldest preorder receipt for DNF [yahoo.com] actually get GameStop to honor it?
Wow... really? (Score:2)
Wow... understatement of the decade?
A whole new generation (Score:2)
Heh... I just heard a collective "Duke Who, now?" from all the current gamers who weren't alive when DNF was first announced, much less when the other Duke games were released.
Bad news everyone! (Score:2, Funny)
It's going to be another Windows-only game!
Memories... (Score:2)
Oh yea, I remember thinking to myself "damn, I probably have to get a new graphics card" when they announced that they've switched to the Unreal engine (version 1 that is), since my current one couldn't handle it.
Those were the times...
Duke Nukem MMO (Score:2)
Meh. I'll wait for Blizzard to make Duke Nukem Online or DNO...
I'll play a stripper with a shrink ray.
Think about the alternative... (Score:2)
They should finish it (Score:2)
Dunno why anyone's surprised. (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that's why they named it that in the first place.
"Duke Nukem Forever" back in development - or - (Score:2)
forever back in development
-CF
Ob (Score:2)
It was never actually out of development. It was just indefinitely delayed.
Here it comes (Score:2)
It will be released in 2012. The resulting violation of reality itself will so anger the Mayan gods that they'll destroy the Earth, thus fulfilling the prophesy.
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Yeah but George and 3DRealms are no longer involved. Gearbox can actually get a game done.
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Duke Nukem 3D was Doom with strippers, porn posters and dirty jokes. If Doom and Leisure Suit Larry had an illegitimate love child, it'd have been Duke Nukem 3D. What was revolutionary about that?
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JETPACKS!
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I think you really missed the spirit of the game, if you reduce it to just being a crass Doom.
It was simply a fun FPS that didn't take itself or the genre too seriously. It was full of satire drawing from video games and pop culture. It did not try to be realistic, including things like shrink rays, holodukes, jetpacks, rapidfire rockets, and the Mighty Boot.
Just because it included some of the content you reference does not mean that's all the game was about. Did you actually even play the game, or did
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Yeah, I played it and I thought it was fun. I'm just saying, I don't think it was revolutionary. It seemed to just be Doom + boobs. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, just saying holding it up on a pedestal as some sort of super-game is kind of pointless.
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They weren't even alive when Green Day last released an OK albumn and Kurt Cobain was still alive. Doesn't prevent them from pretending like they know what's up, though.
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You mean there will be half as much ass kicking in this one?
There'll be exactly as much, but it'll be half-assed kicking.
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Gameplay footage at PAX:
http://kotaku.com/5629655/your-first-look-at-duke-nukem-forever-in-action [kotaku.com]