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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."
[December 18, 1998] - I Want My TF (TM) II
Well folks, Team Fortress (TM) 2 will be here shortly and community sites are popping up all over the web. Clans are starting to form, Tournaments are being planned, and information pages are being posted. If you haven't checked out the sites yet, be sure to visit our links section or visit PlanetFortress.com for more information.
Gee, I hope none of the tournaments have filled up yet, my clan was just getting off the ground.
My #1 would be "Intelligent Posts on slashdot".
help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
It has been said before but bears repeating: the games of yesteryear had something that all these new games, with their fancy graphics and supposedly advanced AIs, still can't seem to replace. Repeat after us Mr. Game developers: it's all the gameplay.
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?
Come on, even miss Cleo saw this comming.
I started helping on an open source project called Project Armageddon in 1996. It became a massive thing, with about 50 guys working, artists, programmers, the works. It was due for release in 1998. It still hasn't been released..
Why? Because technology moves too quickly and your game looks old fast. If you write a game with a target for release in two years, you write for the highest end kit, make sure your engine scales, and hope for the best. But what if when two years have passed, you need another year to finish the title? Your title immediately looks old!
What if Red Alert 2 ran a year late? It'd look like an old clunky piece of crap. Okay, it's still an excellent game, but it was more cutting edge in 2000 than it possibly could be in 2001.
So, when titles run even just a year late, the developers have to rush and scramble to make their graphics engine look up to date.. but that introduces new bugs, so they become even more delayed.. then they need to upgrade the engine AGAIN, and repeat ad nauseum.
mogorific carpentry experiments
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
A late game is only late until it's released. A bad game will be bad forever. How many people remember when Super Mario 64 was supposed to be released vs when it actually shipped?
In any case if you're going to put "Forever" in your game's title you have to expect a certain amount of jokes about it.
Graham
It's Daikatana, right?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Persoanlly I'm glad Duke Nukem has been taking forever. I know this company has the ability to make a great game, and that they WANT to make a great game. Taking their time to do it right means alot to the overall gameplay. Even the best game ideas can be slaughtered by lack of attention to details.
They've updated the engine a few times and started over a few times.
Any coders out there know that sometimes intense modification or starting over is just what has to be done to make your program what you want. Or you could take the easy route and compromise your program concept to account for a mistake. A poor analogy would be that this is like shoveling all the crap in your roomunder the bed instead of cleaning up.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
They've always been honest about their release date, and posted it openly since day 1. It's not their fault if the public can't read properly:
Duke Nukem Forever
This is the mother and father of vaporware. I mean, look of "vaporware" in a dictionary, and you'll find...
GNU Hurd
Couldn't resist!
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
Step 1. Think up an interesting idea for a game. Spend a few days coming up with mockup graphics.
step 2. Keep working on other projects and spend a few hours a month working on more mockups and prototypes.
Repeat step 2 for a couple years, show the 'game' to reporters. Hype relentlessly, but gradually taper off.
Wait a few more years, occasionally report problems 'we switched engines' etc. everyone laughs, you become the quintessential vaporware, etc. Tell everyone you're waiting because the game is going to be perfect. Ship the games you were actually working on
After 4 or 5 years of this, start working on the game. Everyone's heard of it, everyone knows about it. And when you're finished (in a year or so) everyone downloads the demo, even non-hardcore gamers. Of course, you'll need to make sure the game is fun, and polished, but if you succeed you'll have huge mindshare already, and probably a hit.
Unreal was delayed and delayed, and since it was pretty good it sold well. Daikatana took forever, but it was shitty. If it had actually been a good game, it probably would have done well. We'll have to see what happens with DNF, but I bet it would have sold well if it was good.
With my plan, you'll have years of hype and anticipation waiting for a game that only cost a year or so of development costs.
and licensing my patent will only cost you 4% of the development costs!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.