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

Of course it's not dead

[Lord Lode]

Duke Nukem Forever is FOREVER!

Re:Of course it's not dead

[Hognoxious]

It's resting.

It's, errr, pining for the fjords.

Re:Of course it's not dead

[Pseudonym]

It seems really wrong for DNF not to be in development. Long may it remain so!

Umm...what is Duke Nukem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that one of those old bands my dad use to listen to?

It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum

[MK_CSGuy]

And I'm all out of gum.

Meh

[Kjella]

The only thing he sounded like, was "I'd like to tell you all about that shit and how horribly mismanaged that disaster was, but I've been gagged from telling you"

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!

"Duke Nukem Neversaynever"

[Arancaytar]

That's a good new name. :P

Of Course it's Not Dead

[segedunum]

It's only been dead because the whole thing was totally mismanaged for the best part of a decade, and those in charge of it got themselves into what can only be described as a mental illness. It's far easier to promise that a game will blow away everything else if you don't deliver it, and given that DN pre-dated games like Quake and an age where 3D games were developing fast I can sort of understand it, if not forgive.

The story, plot and characters of the game are still worth quite a bit. There still isn't anything quite like Duke Nukem even after all the FPS games that came after. The question is, can anyone take those up and create an actual game to some sort of plan?

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:Ya see, kid, ...

[Golddess]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/21/ applies too.

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.

Oh not again

[GF678]

Won't this bloody game ever die?!? I feel sorry for the Duke actually, being dragged through this ordeal when he should have been put to rest a long time ago.

The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts the body of Duke Nukem on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
Duke Nukem: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
Duke Nukem: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
Duke Nukem: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Duke Nukem: I'm getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
Duke Nukem: I don't want to go on the cart.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don't be such a baby.
The Dead Collector: I can't take him.
Duke Nukem: I feel fine.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor.
The Dead Collector: I can't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
The Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, when's your next round?
The Dead Collector: Thursday.
Duke Nukem: I think I'll go for a walk.
Large Man with Dead Body: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
Duke Nukem: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Duke with his a whack of his club]
Large Man with Dead Body: Ah, thank you very much.
The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Large Man with Dead Body: Right.

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.

DNF???

[cvtan]

I thought DNF stood for "Did Not Finish".

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

[petermgreen]

Why didn't they just get someone to develop something and slap a name on it?
They did slap the duke nukem name on third party stuff a couple of times, duke nukem time to kill and duke nuem manhatten project spring to mind.

It always appeared to me that the big problem with dnf was they really wanted it to be a ground breaking game but others kept overtaking them and so they kept rearchitecting the game over and over again.

Re:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem?

[Dogtanian]

No publisher would throw away 12 years of hype.

Isn't it even longer than that now? Anyway, Duke Nukem Forever had already moved from badly delayed to standing joke in the early-2000s. Now the joke's worn thin and just plain strange. The fact that someone hasn't just slapped the name on *something* and released it as Duke Nukem Forever long before now is what is weird.

I suspect that any game released would end up being the "Snakes on a Plane" of games. People discussing it a lot, but not necessarily buying it. Anyone who remembers playing the original games in their mid-90s heyday would have to be at least in their 20s now, and even then I suspect that most of them have moved on.

Disclaimer; though I'm old enough to have been a typical DN fan, I never played- nor had even heard of it- during its heyday, only becoming aware of it through DNF's reputation as a standing joke several years ago. Even *that* was so long ago that many kids probably aren't aware of it. Its best hope is as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to ride an "ironic" revival of the 1990s. Yuk.

You're all drawing the wrong conclusion

[Quarters]

He's not allowed to talk about it because there is now ongoing litigation between Take2 and 3DRealms over contracts, monetary advances, etc...

The Build engine

[GF678]

Duke Nukem 3D did have a rather interesting engine. As someone else has posted, it did various things other engines at the time couldn't do (eg. mirrors) and was well optimized.

For anyone who's interested about the history of the engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSVzn0F3pyQ

OK, it's got nothing to do with DNF but I found this video recently and felt it was worth sharing. :)

He's not dead

[Anonymous Coward]

He's pining for the, er, strip bars.

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.

Jon St. John's Duke Nukem outtakes

[celerityfm]

I just have to share this here - if you are a Duke Nukem fan... or really if you are just a fan of 'the funnay' then be sure to visit 3D Realms' Duke Nukem outtakes collection page: http://www.3drealms.com/duke3d/outtakes.html (note, it says realplayer is required by they also have .wav links)

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:Anyone else outgrow Duke Nukem?

[Blakey Rat]

Marathon had the impossible levels too... they're really quite cool, and I haven't seen anything like them in Prey or Portal.

For example, you could make a figure-8 level where the two crossing hallways in the center "don't intersect" with each other. So and your friend can be standing literally in the same place, but you can't see each other because you're in different hallways. One of the Marathon multiplayer levels was mind-bending by using this trick... it made the radar completely useless.

Re:Indeed

[Synchis]

I remember when... ...dialing a phone meant putting your finger in a hole and spinning the dialer. ...25MHz was fast for a computer. ...a dollar could actually get you a chocolate bar, and leave you with change to spare. ...downloading a song from the internet took 25-30 minutes, or more. ...I could bring my pocket knife on a plane. ...I could say merry christmas to somebody without offending them. ...cell phones were the size of masonry bricks, and were actually used to make phone calls. ...all personal computers were beige. ...a personal computer cost $2000 or more. ...playing a 4-color adventure game was cool. ...everyone knew how to use a command line interface. ...I had to rewind movies after watching them. ...I had to turn the cassette tape over in the player to listen to the other half of the album. ...camera's used film. ...polaroid camera's were the only way to get an instant photograph. ...a printer, a scanner, a copier, and a fax machine were 4 separate devices. ...the only way to make a phone call away from your home was to put quarters in a payphone.

Okay... I'll stop now. I could likely do this all day. :)