Duke Nukem Forever Update

Gamasutra reports on an update to one of the longest running jokes in the games industry, Duke Nukem Forever. The title, already ten years in development, may (possibly) see release this decade. From the blurb: "3DR's George Broussard also demonstrated world interactivity that includes Duke standing in front of a computer and emailing the player, if he provides his email address for the game. But, according to the piece, Broussard was bashful, overall, about showing off the game, commenting: 'The problem is that when we show it, people are going to be like, Yeah, whatever. Honestly, at this point we just want to finish it.'"

Comments

Nothing for you to see here, move along

[Bogtha]

But, according to the piece, Broussard was bashful, overall, about showing off the game, commenting: 'The problem is that when we show it, people are going to be like, Yeah, whatever. Honestly, at this point we just want to finish it.'"

Sounds to me like Broussard has finally realised that endless rewrites and engine changes were a mistake, and that at some point you have to accept limitations and ship the product. Now that he has realised this, I expect DNF will actually be released in the near future.

Re:What Went Wrong?

[AKAImBatman]

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 [6], forcing a revision of all previous work except for the game's textures, which were later replaced anyway.

It's worse than that, actually. From a PC Gamer article I read back in the 90's, DNF started with the Quake I engine, then moved to the Quake II engine. They thought it would be an easy transition until they realized that the higher resolution of the Q2 engine meant that they needed to add more detail to all their models. By the time they got to the Unreal engine, everyone was already starting to wonder if it was going to ship.

So in short, they've been picking up and throwing away their work for a long time now.

Wow. 10 years for....

[bobwoodard]

... a test level, a vehicle sequence and a few test rooms????

Oh please

[thepotoo]

There is more viral marketing behind this game than you could possibly imagine. This game is a fucking legend. Every 10-year-old on AOL knows that when DNF is released, hell will freeze over, Elvis will return, and Linux will gain 100% marketshare.

Because of this, the instant it's released, a million people will rush to buy the game just because of the hype.

It may be that a week later, the game will turn out to be shitty, and no one will care, but I'm predicting that the game will at least cover its development costs within that first week.