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Duke Nukem Forever Physics Impress
rauper wrote in to alert us to a GameIndustry.biz story. The quote says it all: "Swedish company Meqon, the firm behind the physics for 3D Realms' Duke Nukem Forever, has rekindled interest in the long-delayed game with a stunning demonstration of its latest physics technology."
the laws of physics will have changed. Whenever...
You mean there's a real game behind this that might actually be released someday? That's scary, when you consider the release of this game would signal the end of the world more than say, the Rapture would, to most gamers.
How come we haven't heard of this game before now? It sounds great. I can't wait for it to be released.
The fabric stuff sounds just like the goal-net "physics" in every soccer game since 2000. I don't have much confidence in DNF, but with HL2 and PPUs, "physics" seems to be the new buzzword in town.
How would you answer honestly when someone asks you what you do for a living when you're working on the physics technology for Duke Nukem Forever without sounding like an idiot.
I actually almost got involved in doing the music for Duke Nukem Forver. I must say i don't regret it didn't happen.
Sample this!
Quickly, patent it in Europe!
(more info here.)
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
I been waiting so long for this game that I can start singing the song or watch the music video instead.
This Link is Useless Without Video.
Has to have the latest physics technology since its release will freeze over Hell and give the power of flight to pigs, not to mention pulling one of the seals off the Book of Judgment and releasing the End Times. :)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
This news is as equivalent as UFO using a jet engine to generate thrust force. Altough the theory plausible ( the jet engine ), the UFO it's self a myth.
Ow and i dont believed Elvis still alive, let alone duke nukem forever will exist.
I willing to bet jesus second coming rather than duke nukem forever gone gold.
What the artical says, is that the physics demo is fast, impressive, and going to be all over games for the next generation consols. I think this is the generation where the PC really takes it in the ass as a gaming platform.
Especially for this type of hyped-up claim, I'd really like the opportunity to judge, or at least see it for myself. If you say you're going to change the world, I'd prefer you bring some evidence to the table rather than have closed-door accounts spinning your PR for you.
Duke Nukem already existed as a platformer but after the success of doom it also went 3D. Or rather 2.5D if I remember correctly. Like Doom I don't recall being able to walk under things. Meaning the floor plan was essentially 1 story with differences in heights. Odd because at the same time the game System Shock did have a full 3D world although still using 2D sprites for characters.
Then in 1998 talk really started about a sequel being in the works. To give you an idea how old duke nukem 3D was then already. The new Duke Nukem would use the quake 2 engine. So ID had done Quake AND quake 2 by the time 3D realms was ready for its next attempt.
Since then ID has released Quake 3 and of course Doom 3. 3D realms in the mean time switched from the quake 2 engine to the unreal engine while over the years the unreal engine has had plenty of upgrades as well.
Luckily 3Dreals claims that they replaced most of the unreal code. Good thing because the original while ground breaking at the time is now a bit dated.
But not just graphics engines have changed. The pure "walk around shooting things and collecting key cards" thing has changed. Games like Half-Life added a story. Dues EX added character interaction beyond getting strippers to flash their titties and started with physics (I still love being able to shoot your rifle up in the air and then hearing the bullets fall back down). Half-Life 2 added an even better physics engine that worked on more of the world. Operation Flashpoint added huge outdoor worlds with vehicles.
No game has yet done it all but my fear is that Duke Nukem Forever is trying to do just that. Lets face it. They can't get away with a Doom or even a Quake clone. Unreal has beaten them to it. We gonna at least want a bit of story telling ala half-life. Some nice open levels at least of the unreal level if not Operation Flashpoint. Something to drive perhaps. Physics and some destruction of the level.
The bar just keeps being raised higher and higher for 3d realms. Who can beat the looks of Doom 3 (yeah yeah anybody that can put the pc monitor in power save mode)?
We all remember daikatana. Tried so much. Failed at even more.
Now 3D realms is using its own money to fund this so perhaps it is nothing more then an excentric rich guy funding some magazine that never makes a profit. Their money their right to waste it.
Frankly if the demo is half as good as it sounds then just release the damn game already. Either the demo is as fake as the Half-Life 2 E3 demo was OR 3D realms just is stuck because they want their game to be the best at everything and other game companies keep beating them by focusing on only a small section.
3D realms, there is room for more then 1 nice FPS out there. You don't need to be the best to win. Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 both had their missing features and did well. Just release and start work on Duke Nukem "and you thought the previous one took a long a time".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://www.meqon.com/downloadarea/downloadarea.php
"Hey guys! Physics is done!"
"Alright! What's left?"
"Not much. Just graphics, control, scripting, AI, sound, and multiplayer."
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Schrödinger's cat experiment?
They should hire the stapler guy right now, to monitor the fuel drum -cache in their basement; I'm serious.. -Vapour is less of an embarrasment when it smells of gasoline.. ..People have f**king forgotten about Duke Nukem by this stage, and those who remember it (being 'g(h)a(y)mers', not DN3D fanatics) probably do so due to the crappy 3D side-scroller, which AFAIK was the last official release starring the Duke.
There'a a walkway above part of the level at the end of the first level, for example.
A spiral staircase too, though I don't remember offhand if it just made a U-turn or looped more than once.
Marathon back in 1994 allowed map pieces to be "stacked" on each other, though rooms themselves were more or less topologically flat with floors raised and ceilings dropped. One map (I don't recall in which Marathon it was) had a monster spiral staircase that must've looped 5 or 6 times.
The system allowed for this cool thing called 5D space, you could have map pieces at the same "height" laid on each other. For example, a figure-8 shaped map would appear to be just long hallways in the middle instead of an intersection. At least a few network-maps were set up where the corner of a room might have what looks like a simple column, but a player running behind it would literally vanish before the eyes of a casual observer.
They printed out what they had of the source code and dropped it on the floor. Bang.
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
Did the Duke Nukem Graphic engine demo run on the Phantom Game Console? Why are they still bothering to pretend that they are making that game?
-Dipster
I thought that they'd have to completely start over to make full use of that hardware physics engine we heard about the other day.
...provided you make a very small patch. Basically you need to a) make sure all visibility and collision routines don't take shortcuts to determine what sector you're in vs. what is visible. That is, I don't do the LOS or height collision test unless my sector (according to my sector attribute) is visible from your sector (according to your sector attribute). And that sector attribute updates ONLY occur when crossing two-sided linedefs. The code may already be this way... I haven't checked.
The only thing you need to do is to make any necessary changes to the BSP tree builder (for your level editor) to convince it that overlapping sectors are okay, and to always make them NOT visible to each other. I think it'd even be okay if they auto-partition them into subsectors... so long as the checks operate at that level.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The page contained no concrete information, it could have been a rewritten press release for all I could see. The "links" linked not to anything relevent but to ads - for example, the link on Duke's "technology" went straight to an ad for Microsoft LiveMeeting.
This is obviously a click farm, albeit a slightly cleverer one than usual.
So far there's no evidence that DNF is anything but vapourware. An article that talks excitedly about improvements in realism, without showing any evidence, and whose links turn out to be ads, strikes me as about as trustworthy a source as an email entitled "L@@K! FR33 V10XX 1N Y0UR MA1LB0X N0W!!"
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Not being real is what makes a game a game...
"Think you can take me? Go ahead on. It's your move." --Joe Don Baker in Final Justice
I read the blog of Scott Miller, CEO of 3DRealms, quite frequently. He's a really smart guy. If companies followed the advice he dishes out on his blog, they'd be much better off. He's especially keen on marketing. For example, he has some great ideas on naming games and on avoiding using long titles like Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight III etc. Very smart stuff.
So why he has so f-ed up the marketing on DNF is beyond me. Frankly, I think he's betrayed the relationship between developer and fan more than nearly any other gaming single company. The problem is not that they've taken so long. If they had never released any information at all about DNF but simply announced the game and released it a year later after a PR blitz, it wouldn't have been a big deal. People might've wondered why it took so long, but they'd probably be too busy playing the game to care.
Instead, Miller and 3dr has arrogantly strung their fans along by surfacing every 2-3 years with a carrot of information or screenshots or an E3 preview. Then, when the enthusiasm level is just enough to maintain a slight knowledge of the game, they dive back into the murky depths of "when it's done."
"When it's done" does not inherently violate the relationship between developer and fan. But as soon as companies like 3drealms start relying on fan enthusiasm and fan network news distribution, they owe more to them than to snub their nose at the fans, say in a British Lord accent, "When it's done," and then walk away backs turned. DNF is a perfect example of this elitism.
There was a sociological study done a few years back that showed that the time people wait for things demonstrates the level in society of the two groups of people. This study was talking specifically about people waiting in doctor's offices or at a government institution. The longer people waited in these offices, the more important the person was they were waiting for - either a doctor or an institution. The longer we sit in a waiting room, the more we need to be in the waiting room. Doctors and buerocrats can get away with that because of their level of importance in society. Simply, we need them more than they need us, and that's why we wait.
But there's a discrepency in this when we apply this same theory to gaming. We don't need a DNF as much as Scott Miller and gang need us. We've been getting along fine without them. And perhaps Miller and 3drealms have enough money that they don't need to work quickly on the game, but if they have other aspirations for DNF - for it to become a benchmark, or just known as a really fun game - they're going to have to drop this elitist "when it's done" attitude and do one of two things: a) shut up about the game and stop releasing any kind of information like this, or b) set a date for the game and stick to it as best as they can.
Some of the more succesfull studios get away with "when it's done," namely id and Blizzard to name a few. This is just the validity of the sociological study; that we actually do "need" a game from id and Blizzard and are willing to wait long enough. Why this works for id and Blizzard and not 3drealms is that the first two companies have never betrayed the trust. While utilizing the fan network and and fan ethusiasm, they have never taken advantage of fans to maintain momentum while they diddle-dally on a game. 3drealms has violated that relationship - time again and time again. Gamers are a very forgiving bunch - throw a great screenshot their way and usually all is forgiven - but I think that DNF has broken a cardinal rule, and "fans" may relegated it to special level of gamer hell.
Considering how long this game has been in production, it had better have the most awesome physics engine known to man when it comes out.
It had better be so awesome that on the day when Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Zeus, Odin, and Vishnu come down from the sky holding hands, they will organize a huge LAN party and sit around fragging each other in DNF.
Will I need to run an IPX stack to play online?
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
Where the hell can I see this video?
I hate Halo and GTA. Sue me.
Sounds very impressive. Of course, so did the destructible terrain in Red Faction. So did the physics in Doom3. Problem was, they didn't really contribute much to gameplay.
Whether these cool physics actually make the game better or if they end up simply being another checkpoint on the list of features depends a lot on the game developers.
Now normally, I'd say "We'll just have to wait till it comes out to see" but since this is DNF we're talking about...
(Since there is no such thing as 'karma-whoring' anymore, I can safely tell you why I am posting these two simple links)
;-)
;-)
Links:
Meqon - the dudes with the rigid bodies!
3D Realms, the home of Duke Nukem FOREVAR!
Not one damn link! NOT ONE DAMN LINK. Have they even heard of the world-wide-fucking-web? it is like the www but it has damn links!!
Here are some links for your guys, since the pineapple fuckers who wrote this article didn't have the courtesy to link to the companies they wrote about (I haven't seen a news article without links in it since 1994, and these fuckers have that shit green underline context shit, I hope adblock can shag that to hell once day).
Links:
Meqon - the dudes with the rigid bodies!
3D Realms, the home of Duke Nukem FOREVAR!
Hope that helps.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Worth checking out the links I posted:
3D Realms
Front page has a look at rise of the triads, a really really cool game which I forgot how much I missed playing. 10 years old today! (If you are ROTT, remember this?
I also miss Quarantine and DOTT. aaah Quarantine... bliss... remake? yeah!!
ROTT source!!!11 I miss gaming on a 486... using '-'-'-'-' to shrink the screen so you would have a decent framerate!!!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
You have made my adblocking day with this tip.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Out of curiosity, if you have thousands of objects all having physics calculations being done on them, and all this data being shared by 32+ people playing a deathmatch on a server... wouldnt it all quickly choke the game to unplayability?
Hopefully I'm wrong, destroying your maps could make for really fun deathmatches. Blow out a buildings supports and watch it fall, use high explosive to blast a new entry into someones base, etc.
Um, I uh... anyone else contemplate how artificial and reality are understood to mean the same thing?
Get me a meat pie floater!