Duke Nukem Forever

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series of screenshots have been released, the game's plot remains only vaguely defined, as most of the publicity is now out of date and development has changed direction many times since their release. In the November 1997 issue of PCGamer, Scott Miller stated that Doctor Proton, Duke's original nemesis, would 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 developers' plans.

The 2001 trailer's plot was regarding an alien invasion in Las Vegas.This trailer featured Duke fighting with several weapons, most notably a Rifle, his Desert Eagle and the Shrinking gun. Duke was fighting the aliens in many areas, for example a mine, some rural areas, the streets of Las Vegas, on water, indoor areas,etc.(many of them resemble areas from previous Duke Nukem games) Features:

Duke was fighting an alien while in a moving car, driven by a fellow soldier.
Duke was riding several vehicles (a boat,a spaceship)
Duke was interacting with several characters, most notably some spooked civillians, in a scene where Duke and them were hiding in a restaurant, while the entrance door was being smashed by the aliens from the streets (other interactions include:an interaction with a general, regarding the President of The United States being kidnapped by the aliens)

Infamy for delay

Duke Nukem Forever was officially announced on April 27, 1997. Full scale development work began in late 1997 ^*, after early prototyping with the Quake engine.

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. By popular demand, it was added back on the list for 2005. 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 Whatever, Duke Nukem Whenever, Duke Nukem If Ever, Duke Nukem Coming Out Never, Duke Nukem Waiting Forever, Duke Nukem Taking Forever, Duke Nukem Never, Duke Nukem Fornever, Duke Nukem Forever Wait, Duke Nukem Forever in Development, Duke Nukem Never Ever, Duke Nukem Cant Ever, Duke Nukem: Over The Road Racing, Duke Nukatana, and others. Another source of humor 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. It has often been said that the game is stuck in development hell.

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." Rumors in April 2005 suggested that the game might have appeared 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 appearance turned out to be false. [http://pc.ign.com/articles/617/617251p1.html

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

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, Ascension and such historical 8-bit titles as Mike Singleton's Eye of the Moon and Ultimate's Mire Mare, both of 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 Several sites have also speculated that DNF will be using [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=7322 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 the 3D Realms 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.)^*

Competing game company Croteam took several less-than-subtle jabs at the game in its own Serious Sam II: game characters mention a "blondie guy" who was supposed to be "The Chosen One", but since they had been "waiting forever" for him, Serious Sam was picked as the hero instead. Additionally, Duke's skeleton can also be seen in game hanging from a tree with a rocket up his posterior.

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 1.0 ^*, 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 Engine 1.5 technology branch. However, in mid 2001 they cut themselves off entirely from Epic and went their own way ^*.

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 (now based on Unreal engine 2.0) is for the first time supposedly complete, and supporting such features as pixel shading, normal mapping and high dynamic range 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 UnrealEd. 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 renderer 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. 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." [http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/11/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/

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. ^* 3D Realms' 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) developed 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 Manhattan Project in 2002.

3D Realms CEO Scott Miller denies that relations have been strained at all. ^*

Development timeline

1997

January: Prototype work started with the Quake engine.
April: Quake II engine purchase announced.
August/September: First screenshots released in PC Gamer.

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 Engine 1.5.
December: Second batch of screenshots released showing the game on the Unreal Engine for the first time. ^*
Christmas: 3D Realms releases a Christmas card suggesting DNF will be released in 2000. ^*

2000

Christmas: 3D Realms releases another Christmas Card suggesting DNF will be released in 2001. ^*

2001

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

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." ^*

2004

September: Physics engine replaced with one from Meqon.

2005

October: Game size reported by Broussard to be at 9.6 gigabytes, although the size will be optimized somewhat for release.

2006

February: In an interview Broussard had this to say about Duke Nukem Forever ^*:

March: Scott Miller, CEO of 3D Realms, announced that the company intends on developing a sequel to Duke Nukem Forever. ^*
April: In an interview with Computer Game Magazine George Broussard made the following statement.

Broussard also demonstrated samples of the game, including an early level, a vehicle sequence, and a few test rooms ''^*

June: In a filing to the SEC, Take-Two Interactive reveals that Atari, via their ownership of the holdings of GT Interactive (the original publishers of the game), have re-negotiated the deal and received $4.25 million outright instead of $6M upon the release of the game (widely, but mistakenly, blogged as $4,250 going to 3D Realms ^*" target="_blank" >do not mention whether or not Take-Two expects the game's release to make this target date. A few days later, Broussard told GameSpot that 3D Realms does not care about the bonus and will not ship DNF early to earn it [http://www.gamespot.com/news/6152687.html.

External links

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