What could have justified Duke Nukem's development time?
- Thread starter Zaverexus
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Let's be honest. There was nothing they could have done. NOTHING! Nothing will ever be so good that a decade or greater development time will be worth while.
So what could they have done to justify the development time? Release it about 8 to 10 years ago.
So what could they have done to justify the development time? Release it about 8 to 10 years ago.
I really dont understand anyones logic when hateing on Duke with this game, everyone who reviewed it is saying "this wuld be cool in 1999 when this ideas where new and cool" it was a game that would turn the gameing world upside down, but du to #d relmes tanking and then Gearbox haveing to ducktape a mess together ended up floping the game.
I really dont think anything could live up to a 14 year development time unless it was universally accepted as the greatest artistic venture of the human species. Or to put it another way it would have to be what Shakespear was to literature
The thing is people think DNF was developed over 15 years but it really wasnt even close to that (my facts might not be 100% right here Im writing this from memory). It started development in 1996 with the quake engine. Then in 1998 Unreal was released and 3D realms decided they wanted duke to look the best which meant either getting a hold of the Unreal engine or designing one themselves (which would have taken many more years). They scrapped the current DNF project and got the rights to the unreal engine before continuing development. In 2002 it happened again with the release of the Unreal engine 2, development got scrapped and they started over a third time (thats six years of this happening btw). More time passed and as far as I know nothing happened before 2009 when 3D realms began downsizing, lawsuits were filed for them not producing DNF, and 3D realms stopped development. The next year 2k announced that Gearbox picked the project up (as far as I know they never said how long Gearbox had it before that announcement). Earlier this month it was released
That leaves DNF with a development time under Gearbox of about a year (possibly longer but a year is as much as we can confirm) along with the time 3D realms had begun actual development spanning from 2002 to 2009. Thats a total of 8 years, still a long time but its also about half of what people think the development time was.
The thing is people think DNF was developed over 15 years but it really wasnt even close to that (my facts might not be 100% right here Im writing this from memory). It started development in 1996 with the quake engine. Then in 1998 Unreal was released and 3D realms decided they wanted duke to look the best which meant either getting a hold of the Unreal engine or designing one themselves (which would have taken many more years). They scrapped the current DNF project and got the rights to the unreal engine before continuing development. In 2002 it happened again with the release of the Unreal engine 2, development got scrapped and they started over a third time (thats six years of this happening btw). More time passed and as far as I know nothing happened before 2009 when 3D realms began downsizing, lawsuits were filed for them not producing DNF, and 3D realms stopped development. The next year 2k announced that Gearbox picked the project up (as far as I know they never said how long Gearbox had it before that announcement). Earlier this month it was released
That leaves DNF with a development time under Gearbox of about a year (possibly longer but a year is as much as we can confirm) along with the time 3D realms had begun actual development spanning from 2002 to 2009. Thats a total of 8 years, still a long time but its also about half of what people think the development time was.
I'd say a good game would have been enough, truth of the matter is the one's that have been waiting are really a minority, 30and+ years old PC gamers since the 90s. Honestly how many of you fill that billet?
Not even I do, I didn't start gaming on the PC till the early/mid 2000, I didn't get onto the DNF joke until a year and a half ago, and I'm 30.
Truth is the majority of gamers don't really follow what's on the waiting list, they only hear about a game once they start advertising it's release in the coming weeks. Those of us that investigate and look into upcoming games for the next 2 years are a very small group, and the die hard DN fan that's been actually waiting for the last 12 years, an even smaller minority.
Not even I do, I didn't start gaming on the PC till the early/mid 2000, I didn't get onto the DNF joke until a year and a half ago, and I'm 30.
Truth is the majority of gamers don't really follow what's on the waiting list, they only hear about a game once they start advertising it's release in the coming weeks. Those of us that investigate and look into upcoming games for the next 2 years are a very small group, and the die hard DN fan that's been actually waiting for the last 12 years, an even smaller minority.
If you consider all the time since release, World of Warcraft represents roughly 10 years of active development time. At time of release, the Warcraft franchise was only ten years old.Proteus214 said:
As far as what justified the development time, I think it simply boils down to the fact that they wanted to make the best game ever made. They changed engines (the actual piece of software responsible for making images appear on the screen and sounds play and so forth) at least twice (I seem to recall it started in Build, the engine running Duke Nukem 3D, and it certainly shifted at least once before ending up on Unreal Engine 3), they recreated the assets used in the game time and again and often found they did not have the best game around so they kept working.
I think that people seem to have trouble recalling that game technology, especially in the FPS genre, advanced at a blistering pace. And in the early days of the FPS, it was often the game with the best technology that was played by the most people. The same year Duke launched for example, Id launched Quake and barely a year later online deathmatch was an easy enough proposition for the masses to join in on. Quake 2 included polygon counts more than an order of magnitude higher (along with technical flourishes people don't even think about like the ability for a world object (called a "brush") to rotate). Duke itself was a huge step in technology over the Doom engine in that it allowed for more complex moving spaces, the most primitive basis for scripted sequences and level over level (In doom one could not place a room directly above another room). From there we had Half-Life with it's advances in AI, Unreal's amazingly adept engine, the huge open Spaces of Tribes and all of that was in the span of less than four years. Trying to be the best at everything is what torpedoed the project, ultimately.
You know what, I feel pretty lucky about Duke Nukem Forever. Being currently 15 however turning to 16, I wasn't old enough to grasp a concept such as a video game when it was released. Truly, I hadn't even heard of Duke Nukem until just a few years ago. My wait was only about 2-3 years. So the justification for the release date of Duke Nukem Forever for me would be a stable game...Now I just need to purchase Duke Nukem Forever and play it on a computer that can play it, seeing as I don't have any USB ports on a crappy laptop.
http://www.dukenukemreloaded.com/Xzi said:
I didnt buy Duke Nukem Forever because id rather send the development team of DN3D:R a $60 donation
If the game was released after the first year and the other 12 were additional content (think EVE and TF2).
Oh! The lead designer got the disk with all the info lost in his couch cushions!
[sub]Lame, I know...But it's an idea.[/sub]
[sub]Lame, I know...But it's an idea.[/sub]