The Nuking of Duke Nukem 325
Rick Bentley writes with more on the story behind the meltdown of Duke Nukem Forever, the game that will now live on only as a cautionary tale: "Although the shutdown was previously reported on Slashdot, this new Wired article goes in-depth behind the scenes to paint a picture of a mushroom cloud-sized implosion. Developers spending a decade in a career holding pattern for below market salary with 'profit sharing' incentives, no real project deadlines, a motion capture room apparently used to capture the motion of strippers (the new game was to take place in a strip club, owned by Duke, that gets attacked by aliens), and countless crestfallen fans. *Sniff*, I would have played that game."
Developers with style (Score:5, Insightful)
Using motion capture room for strippers is just badass.
Re:Developers with style (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Developers with style (Score:5, Funny)
Well, You know what they say. It's better to have motion captured strippers and lost, than to have never motion captured strippers at all...
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Pretty sure that's illegal in most states...
No, no, that's *capturing* strippers. Motion capturing them is quite legal. You just have to ask really nicely before you try to stick the little green dots on them. Or so I hear. I've never even touched... er, met... umm, I mean *seen* a stripper. And I've never been within fifty yards of an elementary school in the... Hey, is that Ubuntu? You should show me how that works and stop reading this post before my parole off... mom gets here.
Aww, dammit.
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Re:Developers with style (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Developers with style (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think at places like that your career actually becomes "Portfolio Development" since there's really no goal or end to the project itself. People actually end up spending days and days just honing portfolios.
Re:Developers with style (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that's just a bunch of handmade animations someone put together? That's the kind of stuff you put together to make a pitch, not a playable game. It's not a bad pitch, but that's the kind of work one talented artist (and maybe a programmer to help get it going in-game) could do in a month or two.
There are worlds of difference between that and a full, playable game.
Re:Developers with style (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet it's not so badass sitting at the unemployment office wishing you had actually WORKED ON THE DAMN GAME instead of wasting time.
Read TFA. It wasn't TnA that caused it to fail, it was good old fashioned feature creep, applied to the damn engine underneath.
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A project where they are motion capturing strippers, no wonder the project has got nowhere! Probably the most uncovered women these 'nerds' have seen in their life. Why would they want to stop that?!
Re:Developers with style (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably Grand Theft Auto IV's developers mo-capped strippers, and that shipped.
as a kid (Score:5, Funny)
School day became to end and I tried to consider my options, but there were none. I had to go help my papa make pizza. Frustraded, almost crying, I walked the streets of Naples back home. Every now and then I watched inside a window on the street and noticed someone playing on computer. I was thinking if that could be it, but I'd never know.
I decided to think for a moment. Like a good oven takes its time and peace to bake and finish a delicious pizza, my padre would wait for me. It was time to go see what the game was about.
And I was amazed. Great looking graphics, funny sounding man that I did not understand and girls with something on their chest that looked like doughnuts with a salami on top of it. It was truly marvelous.
While later serving customers at my fathers pizza place, I couldn't but think that I have to get a computer and this Duke Nukem 3D game. I mean, I loved baking pizza. But there is a time when a boy must choose between leisure and girls. But my father never got me a computer.
Like an overbaked pizza, my dreams were crushed when Duke Nukem Forever never came.
Dedicated to his schtick (Score:3, Informative)
He's been keeping this stunt up for months. And now I could really go for a pizza.
Re:as a kid (Score:4, Interesting)
Dude, that was the third iteration of Duke Nukem and it lacked much that the side scrollers had. My favorite part of DN1 (a squeaky little side scroller that used the PC speaker for sound) and DN2 (similar to 1 but better 2D graphics and used the PC's sound card) was shooting the Energizer Bunny.
George Broussard used to post at Planet Crap almost daily shortly after DN3D came out. He said there were 35,000 people that registered DN1, which had been released as shareware.
I was one of the 35k. It was twenty bucks well spent! I think I picked up DN2 at K-Mart.
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like a blood soaked tampon left in for too long, DNF died of toxic shock syndrome?
Re:as a kid (Score:5, Funny)
And now for something completely obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Developers spending a decade in a career holding pattern for below market salary with 'profit sharing' incentives, no real project deadlines, a motion capture room apparently used to capture the motion of strippers
Really, that's just too easy. Can't you at least make it a challenge to get +5 Funny???
Oh well, here goes... Sounds like my job, but without the strippers.
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Never mind the sourcecode (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the game is cancelled, can they at least release the data from the motion-captured strippers ?
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Yeah. I'd like a copy of the assets of those assets.
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Have you seen a stripper (in action)? of course it is insigt ful.
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:5, Informative)
You know, a lot of people like to put them down, but I've seen some strippers in clubs do some pretty impressive things. You go in and strippers basically fall into 4 categories:
1. The drug addict working to feed the habit
2. The single mother feeding the kids
3. The girl working for tuition
4. The professional/career stripper
Types 1 is annoying but must be tolerated. Types 2 & 3 are a crap shoot - sometimes they're attractive, sometimes not. Type 4 though often put on a hell of a show. The professional girls often times can do some crazy stuff on a pole. To see a girl climb to the top of a 12-14 foot pole wearing lingerie and do a controlled slide down the thing upside down and be naked by the time she gets to the bottom (while doing all this to the actual beat of the music) takes some skill ;).
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against strip clubs, and have had some great times in them. I've just been in enough of them for long enough to know that there is no mythical lawyer-in-the-making who's paying her tuition with tips.
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Oh, both #3 and #4 exist it's just that most members of group #3 either aren't very active (since they're normally working for beer and weed money, not tuition) or they end up transforming into a member of one of the other groups and most members of group #4 don't exactly strip in your regular strip joint in the bad part of town, they can most likely be found in places where you have to pay $50 for a drink and just checking your jacket at the door ends up costing more than what most people are prepared to s
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:5, Interesting)
most members of group #3 either aren't very active (since they're normally working for beer and weed money, not tuition)
Actually, I think you proved my point for me. For any girls you've met who may actually have been attending classes at some school (rather than just claiming that they are as many do), too often, they're actually stripping to support the things you're referring to, rather than the noble pursuit of paying their tuition. Typically, the fun and partying becomes a lot more appealing than the various sacrifices it takes to complete a degree and enter the working world, and the allure of higher education and a "real job" fades.
hey end up transforming into a member of one of the other groups
Yep, I agree....although they transform into group #1 or group #2.
members of group #4 don't exactly strip in your regular strip joint in the bad part of town, they can most likely be found in places where you have to pay $50 for a drink and just checking your jacket at the door ends up costing more than what most people are prepared to spend on beer in one night...
I'm familiar with the so-called "feature dancer", and yes, I've been in attendance for several. They too are an illusion, as they all have dreams/aspirations of becoming actresses (whether in porn or not) and one day leaving the trenches in the strip clubs, while the reality is that most do not, and in fact also eventually morph in to members of group #1 or group #2. As I commented to another poster, I've been in many, many clubs of many types from the pristine ones where most of the girls look like models to the ones where you're not entirely sure you're going to make it out the door alive, and the stories (and story-lines) are the same wherever you go, just slightly modified to fit the situation/people involved.
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Um, I live in a college city, we're also the strip-capitol of New England, and I can tell you that I've met plenty of stripper-students who are paying their way through various schools with the money (I also work at the universities, so I see them on-campus). It's tough to find a job where you can make rent and tuition without going into debt, and without help from the parents.
Not everyone is on good terms with their parents, especially younger folks, and there are a lot of young folks who aren't comfortabl
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:4, Interesting)
You must be looking in the wrong places (or just not close enough to a local college). Trust me I've been in and out of them for a LONG time and have known plenty of strippers both in and out of the club setting. When I was in college I knew 2 other students specifically (who I met AS a student, not as a strip club attendee) who were doing it explicitly for tuition money. One of my sister's best friends also is a stripper who does it to fund her tuition (she's going for an anesthesiologist - my sister goes to the same school and is in the nursing program).
I think you're just visiting the wrong caliber of club ;).
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:5, Interesting)
You must be looking in the wrong places (or just not close enough to a local college). Trust me I've been in and out of them for a LONG time...I think you're just visiting the wrong caliber of club ;).
Well, let's see, I started going to them when I was 17 (with my boss at the time who was dating one of the "girls"....though his wife didn't know), and have been in and out of many different ones in many different cities over the last 20 years, so I'm not exactly a stranger to the scene. I've had more than casual "acquaintances" with several girls often spanning several years, so it's not as if I'm making these statements based solely on the table-talk. All I'm saying is that IF you've met any who actually did complete their respective degrees and went on to leave the stripper life, you sir, have met a rare breed indeed. It has been my experience that the clubs are filled with plenty of girls with seemingly good intentions, that rarely manifest.
I've been in all walks of clubs, with all types of girls, from the seedy to the chic, and the stories/archetypes appear to be universal.
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:5, Funny)
Ah yes, slashdot, the only place I know of where a discussion about video games will devolve into a debate about who knows more about watching naked women dance on a pole.
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:5, Funny)
and the comments are strangely not off topic...
One would expect that given the social life of the average slashdotter, all stripper-related comments would be +5 Informative.
re: completing degrees, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd tend to agree with you too. My theory is that basically, an individual who would be willing to put up with the "taboo" nature of the industry, the labeling of your character that comes with the territory, and the relatively high risk to one's personal safety -- all because it's "easy money, compared to other jobs out there" is the type who isn't likely to do well in school either.
Good intentions don't count for much, if you're too lazy to act on them.
Honestly, I don't have any problems with a woman dec
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Excellent post. That's a real issue. I had my bank account frozen twice when I had my stripper roommate. I would put her ones in and withdraw twenties, the bank didn't like getting four stuffed envelopes of ones every night, I guess.
I actually testified at the state house that the sex workers in my city need 401Ks and tax advice more than they need prison terms or 'rescuing'.
Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a minute..
You expect to go into a strip club and find a dancer who had "good intentions" and got out of stripping? And since you didn't find any in the strip clubs you go to, they must not exist?
Where did you learn statistics?
This post brought to you by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias [wikipedia.org]
Office Perks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Developers spending a decade in a career holding pattern for below market salary with 'profit sharing' incentives, no real project deadlines, a motion capture room apparently used to capture the motion of strippers.
I'd work for below market salary just to be able to work with no deadlines, let alone the free strippers in the office. :-)
Re:Office Perks. (Score:4, Interesting)
They weren't all free, most were tied up or in handcuffs.
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I'd prefer working well above market salary. Strippers can be bought with cash, ya know?
Re:Office Perks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Both game developers and artists need money (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting note in the article also was
Normally, game developers don’t have much cash. Like rock bands seeking a label to help pay for the cost of recording an album, game developers usually find a publisher to give them an advance in exchange for a big slice of the profits.
Since people usually complain about music labels being evil, would game developers survive without publishers that pay their costs? Sure, indie's do, but look at what happened to 3D Realms too, and they even financed lots from their own past revenues.
Re:Both game developers and artists need money (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point to that statement was that getting the money up front usually tied the artist (game or music) in to deliver on someone elses' timeline, which in this case is what DNF needed more than anything else since even a stream of crappy, poorly selling titles would have been better than, well, nothing.
It highlights the cautionary tale that DNF has become: don't let a mountain of cash take your eye off the development process that usually ends when the investors tighten the leash and say its time to start paying back, since that part is only avoidable if you want to fade into oblivion with nothing to show for it.
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Oddly enough, there were two "OMG this is taking forever" titles.
The other one was Daikatana. The much-maligned Daikatana actually was released. It went through one engine switch, similar to DNF (Quake to Quake II) because the Quake II engine offered it more to work with. It was "Feature-locked" in mid-1999, as the Wired article suggests that DNF should have been several times, and then worked on to finish and release.
Unfortunately, it was beat to the market by Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 (November and De
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Since people usually complain about music labels being evil, would game developers survive without publishers that pay their costs?
Apples vs oranges. The fact that record companies give advances to artists isn't what's evil. Ripping off those artists, suing their best customers, and DRM is what's evil about record companies.
Also, the record companies are no longer needed. In the past it was indeed prohibitively expensive to make a record, but the cost od digital recording has dropped to the point that recor
Damn! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Damn! (Score:5, Funny)
so you are this guy [yfrog.com]?
I'm here to kick ass and pay salaries (Score:5, Funny)
And I'm all out of money.
Where is the funny? (Score:5, Insightful)
They never released it because the opposition kept getting better? If they could retain the great humour that went into the Duke3D, they would not need the latest and greatest in 3D gaming. It should stand alone.
Duke Nukem 3D was pretty average technically, but who cares when it is so funny and engaging. The saga of Duke Nukem Forever reminds me of how George Lucas discovered CGI, but forgot script writing. Just because something is pretty doesn't mean to say that it is good.
Re:Where is the funny? (Score:5, Funny)
Just because something is pretty doesn't mean to say that it is good.
+1 Avatar reference
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Besides, they could have put a blank CD-R in each of the game cases and we all know it would have sold millions world-wide on its debut. They could have broken even with no effort at all.
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From the sounds of it they were at the pinnacle of gaming plenty of times during the 12 year span but simply failed to say "Alright, lets wrap it up". Games rely on three things to sell: visually engaging graphics, engaging story and gameplay.
Four things: visually engaging graphics, engaging story, gameplay, and actually being for sale. Okay, maybe three things; I can overlook poor graphics (I'd gladly buy a good Infocom clone for a dollar).
Vaporware Free software projects (Score:5, Informative)
Free/open-source software has a lot of these. As an open-source developer myself, I can understand why. One issue is that a lot of open-source projects are started by young naive people who do not realize how much time and effort it really takes to make a software program. Probably over half of the projects on Sourceforge fall under this category. One example is MooDNS [sourceforge.net], a DNS server that stopped development around the time the developer realized what a pain in the butt DNS compression is.
Another way open-source projects get abandoned is when other software that does the same thing comes along. For example, the GNU Hurd [gnu.org] never became production-ready because Linux came along and was good enough that the perceived need for Hurd development went away.
Other projects that stop development are projects where the developers stop going to school and get real jobs, and no longer have time to devote to an open-source project. One example of this is the Y Window System [wikipedia.org]
For all of the advantages of Free software, one issue is that, without, by and large, the developers being paid money, there is not nearly as much motivation to get something finished, so a lot of projects become vaporware.
Closer to home, I've told myself for years I would have a thread-free version of a recursive resolver for my own MaraDNS. I finally started writing the code in late 2007. Around the end of 2007, I had a working basic non-recursive cache. The project was put on hold in 2008 while I got out of the Slashdot-posting basement and looked for a girlfriend. I finally got one around the end of 2008, and was able to spend 2009 adding a lot of features to the code, making a lot of releases of the code.
Well, around September of 2009, I got burnt out. Too much work for too little (almost no) pay. I stopped doing major development on the recursive code at that point, but have a really nice non-recursive cache with most of the foundation needed to make it a recursive cache. I do want to get back in to the project; but it's a lot of work and having a few thank you emails doesn't feel like enough compensation at times, especially when the other half of the emails are people asking me to implement their favorite pet feature for fun and for free, or asking for free email support. I finally put a plug on that nonsense by making it extremely clear that I only answer private email for people willing to pay me. Here are some of my rants I blogged about [blogspot.com]. I do get the occasional "you made this nice DNS server, we would like to hire you" email, but haven't gotten a job from that yet.
I do want to finish up the recursive code, and put closure on my DNS server project, but I just haven't gotten myself in the "develop free software" mindset again.
Maybe it's time to stop goofing around on Slashdot and finish up the code. :)
Re:Vaporware Free software projects (Score:5, Funny)
The project was put on hold in 2008 while I got out of the Slashdot-posting basement and looked for a girlfriend. I finally got one around the end of 2008,
Wow... phrased like that, getting a girlfriend is like a side quest in the RPG of your life.
Re:Vaporware Free software projects (Score:5, Funny)
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If only the real-life girlfriend quest was as easy as finding a girl with a giant exclamation point over her head.
It can be... But then it's a real pain in the ass 'cause she starts talking and you've got to keep pressing the A button to skip over it.
Re:Vaporware Free software projects (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll work on an open source project when my lawyer and my doctor start providing free consultations.
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I like the way you prioritize, but I'm not sure your girlfriend would agree :P
Looking for a girlfriend means meeting girls on dating sites and flirting with them on MSN while I'm bored at work. Having a girlfriend means working on geek projects while I'm bored at work and my girlfriend isn't online. I don't think she would appreciate me flirting with other girls. :)
For single Slashdot geeks: I found her at Tagged [tagged.com] playing a flirting game called "Meet me", getting MSN emails from girls who expressed in
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Who says "MSN Email"? For that matter, who says MSN anymore?
No wonder you have issues with open source development. You obviously work for Microsoft.
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"Lower SES" has to be the most polite way that I've ever heard of expressing that (especially considering that no one who *is* "lower SES" would have any idea what the term "socioeconomic status" meant anyway, and therefore couldn't possibly be offended).
But seriously, this is the same problem I've had. Realistically there are very few women in my area (or online) who are anywhere close to my education level, or who share any of my interests. Even lowering my standards considerably, it's still hard to find
so why did the devs stay? (Score:3, Insightful)
at some point common sense will tell you that this project isn't going anywhere and your job may be in trouble and maybe i should look for another job? it's like all the dot coms from 10 years ago where people drank the kool aid and thought that investors will just keep feeding them more money to have fun at the office even though there is no profit and no one has any idea how to make a profit
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Re:so why did the devs stay? (Score:4, Informative)
read the article
"By August 2006, at least seven people had left — nearly half the team... "
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Well, two points:
1) The work environment, when they were hemorrhaging money, was probably really, really fun. Free food, free drinks, office full of toys.
2) Despite that, the team *did* start defecting after a few years.
It's time to (Score:4, Funny)
Duke Nukem isn't dead... (Score:5, Funny)
... I saw him yesterday in Avatar.
Had To Laugh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Had To Laugh (Score:4, Interesting)
It's one of the most treasured running gags on /. It's way more treasured than Natalie Portman, a Beowulf cluster or our sharks with friggin' lasers could ever be. It's one of the oldest ones, old enough that even the ancients here can barely remember a time without it.
And now, it's gone. We have to find a new idiom for something that will be released bundled with $current_topic_considered_vaporware.
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I don't need this Game (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was a joke? (Score:2)
You guys are saying there were real people trying to actually write this software? Seriously?
ALWAYS BET ON DUKE (Score:4, Interesting)
Tycho said it best, "...there are lessons about what makes for good play still bottled up in Duke Nukem 3D, lessons haven't truly informed the last thirteen years of industry progress." If anything at all comes from the DNF fiasco, I hope that some younger gamers (and developers!) go back and give D3D a playthrough.
Maybe it's not as great as we remember but it sure as hell deserved a better fate than it got.
Sounds like they almost made 4 games (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like, from the article, Broussard never really got the concept of iterative development. It sounds like 4 or times they had a game *almost* done, and then scrapped it. Why? I mean, on the one hand, I do understand the idea of not releasing crap that dilutes your 'name brand', but the article author seems to have indicated that every time they demo'ed their 'current' generation of tech, the crowd was wowed.
In the 10 years from 1998-2008 they could have released 4 or 5 great games, each one getting better than the last. Each one making some revenue to help you fund the next version. I've come to appreciate that developing software isn't a destination, it's a journey. Make a new version, give yourself a well-defined, finite set of new features, develop them, sell that version, then start working on the next version which adds all the cool features you just weren't able to work into the last version, but wished you had.
One of the points in the article was that they scrapped the Quake II engine for Unreal, because Q2 just couldn't render the outside deserts around Las Vegas the way they wanted. I think, faced with the same problem, I would have just said, "No outside levels in this version - if we can't make them look decent, don't make them at all; we'll do it in the next version" - although, possibly I could see that one reboot as being necessary - probably the game would have been really missing something if there were no outdoor environments. So, I could see that change could have been necessary, switching to Unreal, but once they switched, they should have committed to shipping *a* game based on that engine, and only worried about changing up engines once they started work on the *next* game, after shipping DNF.
Well, at least young'uns like me can learn from 3DR's mistake.
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reminds me of someone i know that bought all the electronics as soon as they came out. think when DVD first came out and players cost $1000.
in the 1990's he refused to buy a computer because he said he was waiting for his ultimate one to be available
Re:Sounds like they almost made 4 games (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, every time you reboot with a new engine, you raise expectations, and make no mistake expectations for this game were massively high from the very beginning. It's a hugely self-defeating cycle to tell a bunch of ultra-hyped users that the current gaming engines just don't do your game justice so you're switching to the latest bleeding edge engine, no way they could ever have released a game that lived up to its own hype. They would have been far better to release an average game, take the hit on the brand and then build on it for the next version (and by all accounts if they'd released at any time the game would have been more than average anyway, DN3D was never about graphics, they were superceded shortly after its initial release, it was about pure, unadulterated but often adult-based FPS fun).
Sounds like the guy at the top just cared too much about his baby - should have backed away and left it with a project manager.
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Well, at least young'uns like me can learn from 3DR's mistake.
Too bad 3DR didn't learn from the long history of software management blunders, as recorded in, e.g., The Mythical Man-Month. The blunders made by the DNF team read like a table of contents for that book. In particular, mindlessly adding employees to help speed things up in the endgame is usually a recipe for further delay.
Also, if you're aiming for the technically most advanced game out there, using the engine some other guys developed to do it seems like a questionable strategy at best. It's sad. It m
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I wonder what happened to all these "90% finished" versions - whether they were just trashed outright and lost entirely, or there are a few still kicking around in a repository somewhere. A micro-scale version of the DNF 'pattern' played out for the original D3D too (partly-finish the game, then scrap it and head in a new direction), but they actually released the partly-finished lame version because the curious D3D fanatics were clamoring for it (google for 'lameduke' if it still exists anywhere). It had a
Transcript : SCRUM, DUKE NUKEM (Score:2)
Developer 1 : Spent 12, Burned 0
Developer 2 : Spent 12, Burned 0
Developer 3 : Spent 12, Burned 0
Developer 4 : Spent 12, Burned 0
Developer 5 : Spent 12, Burned 0
Developer 6 : Spent 12, Burned 0
Scrum Master : We have sprint review coming up...
Developer 2 : So, we have 500 hours of capacity, and 0 tasks burned...
Repeat 60 times
eDuke32 (Score:5, Informative)
eDuke32 [eduke32.com] is an open sourced Duke Nukem 3D project. It needs the Duke Nukem 3D game data files to work, and if you lost your Duke CD they can sell you a copy for $5.99. It works with Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX, but only the Windows version is compiled, you have to compile the Linux and Mac OSX versions; although they claim to have a link to precompiled Mac OSX files.
It is not Duke Nukem Forever but it has some advanced features and a link to Dukeworld to get fan made content creation and new maps and levels to keep you playing Duke Nukem almost forever. It can support resolutions the original couldn't and fixes a lot of game killing bugs the DOS version suffered from.
"George’s genius was realizing..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Success didn't kill DNF (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the article, it's blindingly obvious that what really killed the project was nothing but bad project management.
"Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it." [joelonsoftware.com]
Quick Question (Score:2)
Not that I have any riches right now, but one day I might.
So just to beg the question, how much would the rights to Duke Nukem Cost?
I can see alot more than just a video game in 10 years, when Duke's status has all but been tarnished, where he will once again rise to the top of the entertainment industry. I see a new Video game, a completely original blockbuster trilogy, and his face and silly slogans slapped on every lunchbox from here to Taiwan.
I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't mind someone milk
An interesting followup... (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone posted a link to the WIRED story yesterday and one of the responses was from Jason Bergman [shacknews.com] who worked for Shacknews at one point as a writer and later moved on to Take Two and now works for Bethesda. In the discussion he posted [shacknews.com]:
Which naturally got the "Well how could you even know?" response, to which he responded [shacknews.com]:
Granted this is from someone who used to work at Take Two, which is the company somewhat demonized in the article, so there may be some bias in play there, but it sounds like some of the stuff in this article may just be flat wrong.
That said, this article is probably the best it can be under the circumstances, given that no one can really talk too much about it because of the lawsuit.
Wow (Score:2)
Apparently, they really were working on DNF all this time. I thought for sure it was just a joke on the industry and a way to drum up publicity every couple of years while they worked/published real titles.
Ken Silverman and Levelord (Score:5, Informative)
To quote Voltaire (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't really been following this (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't really been following this; so I read TFA.
Two things leap to mind:
1. The sequel always sucks. He should have realized from the outset that you do a sequel to cash in. Shovel that sequel! There really is no other way. Even if the sequel was actually just as good or slightly better, it will always suck because it can't duplicate the effect of seing a blockbuster for the first time. Note, this is not true if the original was not a blockbuster or particularly popular. A movie/game example doesn't leap to mind; but think of any cover of a Bob Dylan song. At any rate, the psychology of sequel reception seems readily apparent to me, and I suspect to just about anybody. How could they not see that?
2. At what point should they have realized that there was another model available besides "ship finished product"? I'm referring to the "perpetual beta" model of Google, or a subscripion model, or perhaps giving free upgrades for a couple years after the game came out.
Finally, wow! 12 years at a failed project??? That's just staggering but I bet it's not a record. The record probably comes from the defense industry and may or may not be classified.
Engine Switches (Score:3, Interesting)
I myself used to run an indie game project. We were making our own game engine, and at the time, I was a pretty naive programmer. I liked to implement everything myself (reinventing the wheel). I was also never satisfied with the quality of what we had made, and so we restarted the engine development twice. This lead to other members of the team losing motivation, and the game never got completed. I think it's pretty easy to not be satisfied with what you have, but the lesson I took from this project is "refactor/reuse, don't recreate". Refactoring programming code can seem tedious, but in the end, it's always faster than starting completely from scratch, and you avoid losing what you already have.
Re: (Score:2)
The first two are in Half Life, decoys in Bioshock and MDK and the last one in KOTOR from the top of my head. Just to give an example of each. You must not have played many games if you think those weapons haven't appeared elsewhere.
Still not getting it - DN3D was and is the King (Score:5, Informative)
Thats ironic - you're mocking him without realizing that you just made his point... There are NO games out there that have replicated the variety in DN3D - let alone improved on that. They've chosen to look pretty instead of introducing new concepts. And DN3D came out 15 years ago!
Can you do this in any other game - Setup a decoy in an elevator. Plant a pipe bomb. Go to a security terminal. Watch until your opponent triggers the elevator and opens it - set off pipe bomb remotely as they shoot at nothing.
And its not just what the original poster listed - don't forget about:
-unique sounds for walking on every surface (you could tell where your opponent was just by listening carefully)
-3D multilevel environments (even if "technically" bridges)
-Taunts
-Working Mirrors
-Jet Pack
-Semi-destructible environments
-Freeze Ray (expansion)
-Portals (expansion)
-Shrink Ray (expansion)
-Microwave gun (expansion)
I'm probably forgetting more stuff here - its been 10 years since I played last.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Doh! You are right - I was thinking of the deathmap levels in the Plutonium Pak that really made them shine... thinking about it more, I realize I left out a bunch of cool features:
-stepping on people you hit with the shrink gun
-aqualung/diving gear
-steroid power-ups
-night vision goggles
-interactive environments ("working" fountains, phones, etc)
Probably still forgetting more...
Re: (Score:2)
Pipeboms
Left 4 Dead
Laser Trip Wires
Half-Life 1
Holographic decoys
Not so sure about this one
Tap into security cameras
Splinter Cell? I think there was a spy/sneak game that let you do this. MGS?
Re:*nah* *nah* *nah* (Score:5, Funny)
I refuse to believe that they've cancled this... *nah* *nah* *nah* I can't hear you.. AC - patiently holding my breath since 1997
It's ok.. I heard a rumour that it is going to come pre installed on the Apple tablet.
Just for you Quake players... (Score:2)
Rudolph the four legged Stroggie
Had a very deadly tongue,
And if you ever saw it
You would prolly die real young.
All of the other Stroggies
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any deathmatch games
Then one bloody Christmas eve
Shambler came to say,
"Rudolph with your tongue so long
Go take care of Dennis Fong."
Then all the Stroggies loved him
As they shouted out with glee
"Rudolph the four legged Stroggie
You can come and play with me!"
From my old Springfield Fragfest Quake Chriustmas p
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, considering the time it took, the kids that played DN are now old enough to buy Mature rated games, so...
Re: (Score:2)