Duke Nukem Forever Not Dead? (Yes, This Again)

kaychoro writes "There may be hope for Duke Nukem Forever (again). 'Jon St. John, better known as the voice of Duke Nukem, said some interesting words during a panel discussion at the Music and Games Festival (MAGFest) that took place January 1 – 4 in Alexandria, Virginia, according to Pixel Enemy. Answering a question from the crowd regarding DNF, St. John said: "... let me go ahead and tell you right now that I'm not allowed to talk about Duke Nukem Forever. No, no, don't be disappointed, read between the lines — why am I not allowed to talk about it?"'"

Comments

YouTube version

[jones_supa]

This is in YouTube too.

Re:GRRRROOOAAANNNNN

[Narpak]

This time the plan is perfect!
* License iD Tech 4
* Begin development!
* Drool at Rage and Doom 4
* License iD Tech 5
* Struggle to incorporate previously developed content into new engine
* Start over with a new license of iD Tech 6
* ???
* Profit!

Ya see, kid, ...

[dazedNconfuzed]

Upon seeing the headline I realized there's a whole generation of /.ers who weren't even around when Duke Nukem became old news.

http://xkcd.com/647/ applies.

Re:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem?

[TheRaven64]

Duke3D was the only one with strippers. The first three games in the franchise were platformers. They had the same sort of humour and, most importantly, were just hard enough to be fun but not so hard that you couldn't complete them. I played all three through a few times. Duke3D had a few things that made it a good game:

• The 2.5D engine was good enough most of the time (it failed massively on a few things, like a satellite dish in the middle of a room that changed angle as you walked around it).
• Because the engine was simpler, it could run at 800x600 on a machine that could only run quake at 320x240 (yes, that really was the default resolution for Quake 1).
• Because the engine wasn't pure 3D, it could do impossible levels and the designers used this very effectively in a few places.
• Mirrors worked. Unlike other games of the era, there were mirrors that you could stand in front of and see yourself. Ray gun shots bounced off mirrors, so you could even shoot yourself accidentally.
• There were bits of scenery that you could destroy. Destroying occasional walls had been possible since the Catacomb Abyss (which required it in a lot of places - including the first room you entered - to progress), but Duke3D let you destroy other things like mirrors, toilets, and so on. This made the game feel a bit more real than other titles where you could fire a hundred rockets at a potted plant or window and not damage it.
• It retained the Duke Nukem humour (which, admittedly, is quite childish, but was always done in a slightly self-deprecating way so you got the feeling that the designers of the game knew how silly it was and were fine with that). The only other game I've played that came close was Serious Sam, which unfortunately had painful typos all through any passage of text in the game.
• Guns like the freeze and shrink rays were fun, but not particularly practical. They were great in multiplayer though. Spray the area with shrink ray and then run around trying to stamp on everyone.
• The jetpack let you fly. It was the first FPS that I played that had an official mechanism for flying in it. In some places, the jetpack let you skip a lot of the level, in others it let you get secret things. Because it had a limited amount of fuel, you had to choose.

A lot of modern games do some of these, and generally do them better than Duke3D because the technology has improved. Given how much more primitive than Quake the engine was, you should get some idea of how good the game was from the fact that the two were played about as much. The thing that killed Duke3D for us was the fact that Quake supported mods (like most Id games, it's basically a playable engine demo), and so you kept getting new games that ran on the Quake engine for free. Duke3D stayed Duke3D and I never even managed to get custom levels to work in multiplayer.

Re:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem?

[MemoryDragon]

Yet Doom as Well as Duke 3d were supbar technologically to Ultima Underworld which came out a few weeks before Castle Wolfenstein 3d.

Re:GRRRROOOAAANNNNN

[quantumplacet]

3d realms is not 'done' and Take Two does not own the rights to Duke Nukem. Take Two is suing for the assets to Duke Nukem Forever (possibly to finish the game) saying 3D Realms breached their contract with Take Two for failing to deliver the game. By the time the court case is finished, those assets will almost certainly be worthless, if they're not already.

Re:Duke Nuken For.... WTF?!

[Nick Ives]

The irony about the latest incarnation of DNF is that this time, it really was almost done. 3DR had finally hired someone from outside to manage the project and stop the feature creep and, by all accounts from people who'd seen the latest incarnation, it would've been a kick-ass Duke Nukem game.

Unfortunately the financial armageddon meant that 3DR needed some cash (they were probably funding DNF through various investment schemes) and so they were at the mercy of T2. Take Two decided that the Duke IP was worth more than just helping 3DR and so decided to screw them over. That incident a few years ago where George Broussard told T2 to "shut the fuck up" probably didn't help matters either.

This piece on Wired is probably the best write-up of the whole saga I've seen.

Re:Meh

[YourExperiment]

Yeah, no doubt that's why he said "don't be disappointed, read between the lines — why am I not allowed to talk about it?"

Because the most exciting thing possible for fans would be Jon's not allowed to talk about it because it was all a big fuck up! Oh, the excitement is pretty much killing me.