Jump to content

Duke Nukem Forever

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.37.247.142 (talk) at 15:39, 26 November 2005 (→‎Engine changes and restarts). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Future game

Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Forever artwork
Duke Nukem Forever artwork
Developer(s)3D Realms
Publisher(s)Take Two Interactive
Designer(s)George Broussard
EngineUnreal engine
Platform(s)Windows
Release"When it's done"
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Mode(s)Single player, multiplayer

Duke Nukem Forever (DNF) is a yet-to-be-released first-person shooter video game being developed by 3D Realms, and is the next game in the popular Duke Nukem series. It is notorious for its protracted development, which has been ongoing since 1997.

Plot

Although two teaser trailers and a series of screenshots have been released, the game's plot remains only vaguely defined, as most of the publicity is now out of date. Fans speculate that Doctor Proton, Duke's original nemesis, will return. Originally it was planned that Duke would be teamed with a female sidekick named Bombshell, who appeared in a 1998 trailer for the game. However, she did not appear in a later trailer released in 2001, and it has yet to be confirmed if she still plays a role in the developer's plans.

Infamy for delay

Duke Nukem Forever was officially announced on April 27, 1997. Full scale development work began in late 1997 [1], after early prototyping with the Quake engine, and many now consider the game to be vaporware.

Indeed, Wired News awarded Duke Nukem Forever the Vaporware Awards in 2001 and 2002 and the game was given the Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. While there has never been an official release date, Scott Miller stated in the November 1997 issue of PC Gamer that the intended release date was 1998.

The game has been jokingly referred to in gaming circles as Duke Nukem If Ever , Duke Nukem Taking Forever or Duke Nukem Never among others. By far the most common wordplay on the title used by gamers is Duke Nukem Whenever. Another source of humour is the common abbreviation DNF for both Duke Nukem Forever and the sports term "Did Not Finish," which indicates a competitor who was unable to complete a race.

Many speculate that this title will never see the light of day, although the developers continue to insist that it will ship "when it's done." [2] Rumors in April 2005 suggested that the game might appear at the 2005 E3, along with 3D Realms' previously cancelled Prey, but while Prey was, in fact, at the show, the rumors of DNF's appearnace turned out to be false. [3]

Internet forum comments made by lead designer George Broussard in 2004 suggested that development was progressing reasonably well, even though he later said that almost all of the previous generation of game content had been scrapped as of early 2003 [4].

3D Realms cites several factors which have contributed to the game's late release. They primarily blame the delays on several project "restarts" (starting the project from scratch), as well as engine changes, in order to take account of the swiftly-advancing pace of home computer development. These engine changes, they say, demand that content (art, levels, animations) must be reworked as well to keep up with the new possibilities the updated engines offer. They also lay some early blame on attempting multiple in-house projects, which split internal focus too much for such a small developer. 3D Realms also claims that they have been short on manpower (especially in programming), which has slowed the development process.

Some gamers have reacted to the "quality justification" with a great deal of skepticism. They show examples of games with a much shorter development time which have been commercial and critical successes (Doom 3 and the Unreal Tournament series, among others), and point out that long development delays often augur poorly for the finished result. The most cited example of this is Daikatana, a game which began development on April 17, 1997. While Daikatana was initially expected to come out by the end of 1997, it was not released until April 21, 2000 and was a commercial and critical failure. (Other similar failures included Dreamworks' Trespasser and, historically, such 8-bit titles as Mike Singleton's Eye of the Moon and Ultimate's Mire Mare, both which were eventually cancelled).

On September 14, 2004, 3D Realms announced that they have replaced the Karma physics engine with one designed by Swedish developer Meqon [5]. Several sites have also speculated that DNF will be using the latest generation of this technology, designed for next-gen consoles.

3D Realms has also announced that DNF will likely use a Steam-like delivery system known as Games XStream in addition to traditional distribution.

Because a great deal of fan arguments occur over the topic of DNF's development, it is interesting to note that most delay-related discussion is no longer tolerated on their forums. Critics speculate that this is because, historically, earlier delay-related criticisms exposed developer comments that they would prefer people to forget—notably assurances that the game would be released by a certain year. The official reason given is these discussions often degenerate into heated arguments, treading the same topics that regular readers of the forums no longer wish to endure, since the delays and mistakes with release dates are now common knowledge and openly admitted by 3D Realms. The company still drops hints about the game's progress, in terms of engine specifics, gameplay specifics, and size (as of October '05, Broussard reported the game build to be 9.6 gigabytes.) [6]

Engine changes and restarts

The game has undergone at least one complete change to its game engine during the course of development. Originally utilizing id Software's Quake II engine, the 3D Realms team switched in 1998 to Epic's Unreal engine [7], forcing a revision of all previous work except for the game's textures, which were later replaced anyway.

3D Realms continued to receive updates from Epic for their newly licensed engine, and in 2000 they moved to the Unreal Tournament technology branch. However, in mid 2001 they cut themselves off entirely from Epic and went their own way [8].

2002 marked the start of what is widely considered to be the second project restart. After hiring several new programmers, the team completely re-wrote the renderer and other game engine modules, beginning work on a new generation of game content. Broussard estimates that around 95% of the previous level design work has since been scrapped. The engine is now for the first time, supposedly complete, and supports features such as pixel shading, normal mapping and HDR based lighting.

George Broussard has stated several times that the only parts of the Unreal engine that are still part of their code base are UnrealScript, the networking code, and the level editor. Everything else, except Meqon, which is the physics engine, has been written from scratch by 3D Realms. The principal technical reason given by Broussard for the extensive delays was the unstable tech base. Now that this problem seems to have been solved, 3DR have expanded their team considerably, from 22 to 31 members, marking what many hope to be the final stage of the development cycle.

When a major game comes out, it is humorously suggested in many fan circles that Duke Nukem Forever will be switching to the engine of that recently released game.

Conflicts with Take Two

There has been a degree of tension between 3D Realms, the game's developers, and Take Two Interactive, the game's publisher. The most infamous was the STFU IMO argument. On May 20, 2003, Jeffrey Lapin, then CEO of Take Two, told reporters that the game would not be out by the end of 2003. [9] In response, George Broussard commented on Shacknews that "Take Two needs to STFU imo"—internet parlance for "Take Two needs to Shut The Fuck Up, In My Opinion." [10]

Later in the year, December 18, 2003, an article from GameSpot revealed that Jeffrey Lapin had a recent conversation with 3D Realms. Discussing a revised released date with the developers, he was told that Duke Nukem Forever was expected to be finished by the end of 2004, or the beginning of 2005. [11] 3D Realms's CEO became infuriated with Jeffrey Lapin for releasing confidential information regarding Duke Nukem Forever, and had neither denied nor confirmed the information that Jeffrey Lapin revealed.

On September 9, 2004, GameSpot published a conversation between Take Two CEO Rich Roedel and UBS analyst Mike Wallace which alleged that Duke Nukem Forever had switched to the Doom 3 engine. Many gaming news sites mailed George Broussard to have him confirm or deny the rumor, but after receiving no answer from him, they published the rumor as fact, ending the article with "Attempts to contact 3D Realms for comment were unsuccessful as of press time." Later that day, George Broussard explicitly denied the rumor and explained that he was not able to answer the emails only because he was working elsewhere in the building. As of May 2005, it is believed that Rich Roedel had mistaken DNF for Prey, which Human Head (supervised by 3D Realms) is developing with the Doom 3 engine.

Fans speculate that the strained relationship between 3D Realms and Take Two Interactive is based on the fact that the success of earlier Duke Nukem games, along with proceeds from the wildly successful Max Payne, has allowed 3D Realms to self-finance the development of the sequel, as well as the successful release of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project in 2002.

3D Realms CEO Scott Miller denies that relations have been strained at all. [12]

Development timeline

1997

1998

  • May: First video footage of the game released at E3.
  • June 1998: 3D Realms announces switch to the Unreal Engine. George Broussard predicts the transition will only take approximately six weeks. They later admit it took much longer than expected.

1999

  • Late: 3D Realms announces upgrade to Unreal Tournament level tech.
  • December: Second batch of screenshots released showing the game on the Unreal Engine for the first time. [13]
  • Christmas: 3D Realms releases a Christmas Card suggesting DNF will be released in 2000. [14]

2000

  • Christmas: 3D Realms releases another Christmas Card suggesting DNF will be released in 2001. [15]

2001

  • May: New video released for E3 showing the game in action with its new engine.

2003

  • December: Take 2 expresses frustration with DNF development and expects it around the "end of '04 or the beginning of '05". "We’re hopeful that the team in Dallas will finish the project." [16]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Duke_Nukem_Forever&oldid=29289461"