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Wired News: 2002's Greatest Vaporware
Quill writes "Wired News has once again compiled a list of last year's greatest (worst?) pieces of vaporware. The winner (I won't spoil the surprise) has been on the list three times now! The nomination process was mentioned a few weeks ago on Slashdot."
They're still not shipping segways.
Amazon claims they're selling, but isn't releasing any numbers.
Wasn't this supposed to have changed every american city by now?
Duke Nukem Forever started out on the Quake II engine. When that became outdated, they rewrote it for the Unreal engine. That was the last I ever heard ANY news on the game.
They're going to have to write it again for the new Unreal engine, and then when they're done with that, they'll have to redo it again for the Doom 3 engine.
It's a vicious cycle. Bets that this game won't see the light of day?
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Then switched to unreal.
They also likely rewrote the unreal engine to add in features they wanted. As the article says, they rewrote the engine more than once.
Of course now the unreal engine is obsolete, so they likely need a new engine.
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It's shipping, people have the new motherboards up and running. See Eyetech's (who are making the boards) announcement at http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/oct252002a.php, or the discussion at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amigaone/. The OS itself isn't out yet, but the boards run Linux PPC just fine.
Prey! Anyone else remember this much vaunted/hyped fps from 3D Realms? It was first promoted back in '96 right before the original Quake was released.
Googled this bit of info from IGN..
http://pc.ign.com/articles/355/355382p1.html
March 12, 2002 - Prey, its very name is the definition of vaporware, and is even perhaps responsible for a lot of the Duke Nukem nay saying. You see, Prey was to be 3D Realms' grand first-person shooting triumph. What it promised to sport in 1997 was a new engine with better than Unreal looks, Max Payne radiosity lighting, and Red Faction environmental interactivity.
It was only after sometime that the reality of lacking technology sunk in and Prey, along with its Turok reminiscent story of a Native American gone alien abductee superhero was axed. From then, DNF was put in full swing, and has still yet to arrive, leading conspiracy theorist gamers with way too much time on their hands to always expect the worst.
However, in 1999, 3D Realm's George Broussard made it abundantly clear that the title was still in some way, shape, or form being developed, but that it should not be expected anytime soon. Despite this, and all the other hype surrounding the title, it seemed Prey eventually wound up on the dreaded backburner (insert Prey falling prey pun here).
That was then... This is now.
Web rumor (as wonderfully reliable as it is) suggests the game has perhaps risen from the dead by the helping hand of Rune's own Human Head Studios. Further speculation cites the latest in Doom technology to be the likely power behind this prey's second wind.
All parties rumored to be involved are obviously tightlipped (the terribly sad norm in this industry). We'll be back with more details if further information arises substantiating or debunking this rumor.
wtf? How the heck can a first post be "Redundant"? The definition of redundant is repeating what has already been said. By definition, a first post can't be redundant as long as it refers to the article (IN SOVIET RUSSIA jokes notwithstanding).
Get your moderation right. Parent should be -1 troll, not -1 redundant. And this post is not (-1 troll) or (-1 redundant). It's (-1 offtopic). Mod it right.
Repeal the DMCA!
If you buy a game in a store for $25, the best the developers could hope for is $12.5. This is because the retailer gets half of the game's cost. And them getting as much as $12.50 assumes they published the game themselves, which in the case of Max Payne, they didn't
$25 / 2 = $12.50 (half for retailer, half for publisher)
Of that $12.50 that the retailer doesn't take, it is common for the publisher to take 50%, and divide up the rest among whoever is left. Now, Max Payne was developed by Remedy Entertainment, produced by 3D Realms, and published by GodGames.
So, GodGames got 50% of that $12.50, or $6.25. The remaining $6.25 was divided up between Remedy and 3D Realms. Exactly HOW it was divided up is unknown to me, but let's assume that each got 50%.
Therefore, for every $25 copy of Max Payne sold in a retail store, the developers (Remedy Entertainment) got about $3.12. Now, for a while the game cost $40 or $50, but most publishers pull all sorts of shenanigans so that they can stiff the developer out of their share of the money. Even if the publisher is as honest as a Boy Scout, that's still not a lot of money.
If Remedy was smart, they demanded royalties from the movie rights, console and Macintosh port royalties, etc., but hey, who knows, not everybody has good business sense (and some have downright horrid business sense).
Nobody licenses an engine, only to rewrite it. Many companies license a game engine and then make tweaks and additions, but none license something just so they can rewrite it.
Also, like with id Software engines, when you license the Unreal engine, you get access to the updates. 3D Realms may decide not to use them, but they have access to them.
And before you say anything else stupid, the Unreal engine isn't obsolete. Unreal Tournament used it (there is NO Unreal Tournament engine; it's just a much later build of the Unreal engine than the version that shipped with the game Unreal), Unreal Tournament 2003 used it too IIRC.
You see, instead of writing a new engine from scratch for every game, Epic built a solid foundation (the Unreal engine) which they could easily update to include the latest graphic technology. All they do is keep updating the same engine, adding stuff to take advantage of newer graphics cards and faster CPUs.
The name is Bit Boys.
IIRC, they were bought out by some other company (3Dfx if memory serves).
*ahem*
Flash 6 Beta Download page
Thank you for you're time.
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Actually, it WAS released, in 1985. It was an all-in-one package for the Mac, like Symphony (also released by Lotus) was for the PC, with a word processor, spreadsheet, database, etc. Google for reviews.
The problem was that the product apparently sucked big-time, as did Symphony. I tried Symphony way back when and it just didn't cut it. As great as Lotus 1-2-3 was, these integrated products were horrible. Swapping between modules was iffy at best, and they taxed the capabilities of main-line PCs.
Remember, Symphony was a DOS program, and the Macs of the time just didn't have the horsepower to run a complex app like that.
Plus, the programs sucked. Did I mention that?
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn...
That's a load of BS. The markups are much larger than that. Example: Warcraft3 is $59.99 at the local WorstBuy, but it's $27.99 with FREE FEDEX at newegg.com. That means Newegg is getting it for under $25, so WorstBuy's markup is around 150%
Repeal the DMCA!