Duke Nukem Forever Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
\Duke Nukem Forever is a yet-to-be-released first-person shooter video game being developed by 3D Realms. Once released, the game would be the most recent in the Duke Nukem franchise.
| Table of contents |
|
2 Infamous for Delay 3 Conflicts with Take Two 4 The "Since DNF was announced" article 5 External links |
Little is known about the plot of Duke Nukem Forever, considering that a great deal of earlier teasers and trailers have been said to be out of date. It is believed that Doctor Proton, Duke's first nemesis, will return.
DNF has achieved legendary status as vaporware, winning Wired News' Vaporware Awards in 2001 and 2002 and getting the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. While there has never been an offical release date, developers hinted that the intended release date was 1998. It has not been completed as of 2004.
The game has been jokingly referred to in gamers circles as Duke Nukem If Ever and Duke Nukem Whenever. The most common joke, much to the chagrin of the 3D Realms webmaster, is Duke Nukem Forever Is Taking Forever.
It is speculated by many that this title will never see the light of day, although developers continue to insist that it will ship "when it's done". Messageboard comments made by lead designer George Broussard suggested that as of 2004 the game development progresses reasonably well, even though he later said that almost all of the existing game content had been scrapped in early 2003 [1].
3drealms has justified the delay of the game on a few levels. Mostly, they explain the delays on project 'restarts' (starting the project from scratch), as well as engine changes. These engine changes, they say, demand that content is improved as well. They also lay some on the blame on other in-house projects, which have at times consumed internal resources. To top it off, 3drealms claims that they have been short on manpower (especially in programming) which has slowed the development process. The most common explanation, however, is that 3drealms is interested in making a quality game, and such quality demands a long development time.
Most gamers have reacted to these justifications and explanations with a great deal of skepticism. They show examples of games with a much shorter development time which have been commercial and critical successes (Doom 3, the Unreal Tournament series, among others), and other games which experienced long delays, only to come out poorly in the end. The most common example of this is Daikatana, a game with a shorter development time than DNF, and was a commercial and critical bomb.
Other people cite that these explanations show a distinct example of feature creep. As the game is developed, many games with 'new' features are released, and they believe that project 'restarts' are caused by the developers realizing that a game has already done one of their 'new features'.
Because a great deal of arguments have historically occured over the topic of DNF's development, it is interesting to note that most delay-related criticisms are no longer tolerated on their forums. 3drealms maintains it is to avoid repeated and redundant posts, but some people feel that the rule was brought about as a result of many online arguments in which the developers involved kept having previous comments pointed out to them. Indeed, 3Drealms developers have said a great deal of things which they would perfer gamers forgot.
The game has undergone two major changes to its game engine during the course of development. Originally utilizing id Software's Quake II engine, the 3D Realms team switched in the middle of development to a heavily modified engine of Epic's Unreal, forcing a revision of all previous work except for the game's textures.
It still uses the Unreal engine, but in a extremely modified version. George Broussard has stated several times that the only parts of the Unreal engine which is still part of their code base is the netcode and the level editor. Everything else, including the renderer, have been written from scratch by 3D Realms.
It is amusing to note that when a major game comes out, a rumor often begins that Duke Nukem Forever will be switching game engines to the one that was just released.
Most memorable of the conflicts with Take Two Interactive was the infamous STFU IMO argument. On May 20, 2003, Jeffrey Lapin, CEO of Take Two Interactive (the publisher of Duke Nukem Forever), told reporters that the game would not be out by 2003. In response, George Broussard commented on Shacknews that 'Take Two needs to STFU imo" - gaming parlance for "Take Two needs to Shut The Expletive Up, In My Opinion'.
Later in the year, December 18, 2003, an article from GameSpot revealed that Jeffrey Lapin had a recent conversation with 3D Realms. Discussing a revised released date, he was told that Duke Nukem Forever is expected to be finished by the end of 2004, or the beginning of 2005. 3D Realms's CEO became infuriated with Jeffrey Lapin for releasing confidential information regarding Duke Nukem Forever, and had neither denied nor confirmed the information that Jeffrey Lapin revealed.
Many people believe that strained relationship between 3drealms and Take Two Interactive are based on the fact that the success of earler Duke Nukem games, as well as proceeds from the wildly successful Max Payne, have allowed 3D Realms to self-finance the development of the sequel, as well as the successful release of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project in 2002.
In one of the more amusing articles written about Duke Nukem Forever, a long list of gaming and non-gaming events were listed which happened since/during the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever. The article uses April 25, 1997 as the starting point, because the writer could not find anything involving Duke Nukem Forever before that time.
Notable gaming events include:
This is an Article on Duke Nukem Forever. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Duke Nukem Forever Plot
Infamous for Delay
Engine changes
Conflicts with Take Two
The "Since DNF was announced" article
Notable non-gaming events or trivia include:
While some of the facts presented are now out-of-date, the overall theme remains.External links