Posts by Jetsetlemming

Quote from FrieChamp

If that post by a former employee is true, then that demo was nothing but scripted sequences. There was no game in 2001...but that doesn't really speak for 3DR either does it?

The same guy that wrote the "Chair Story" said that it was set up for an e3 trailer, but for most of it it was actually in-game content. The vehicles were working, the shooting, etc. All the dialog was all written and recorded just for the trailer, but the environments, models, weapons etc. were actual completed/in progress, working stuff. In the hands of any competent company it would've been done and out in 2002 and it would've been great and made more than enough money for Duke 5 and more.

http://www.3drealms.com/bio/staff/index.html

Take Two never gave 3D Realms one cent for development. The studio was entirely self funded. There's a rumor that before the end 3DR went to Take Two and asked for 5 mil to finish development, and TT said no, how about we sell you back the publishing rights instead, and of course 3DR couldn't afford it and croaked.

Not "people". Just George Broussard and Joe Siegler.

He put up a donation link for himself, personally, as a result of the 3DR closing, after poor deluded fans posted multiple times on the 3DR forums saying they'd donate to try and keep the company still alive.

I DO care. Duke Nukem Forever looked fucking awesome back in 2001, and I'm still sore that they didn't let me play that game. They never should've thrown away a single fucking build, switched engines a single fucking time. They'd be on Duke 7 by now if they hadn't, and rolling in dough. But they were so obsessed with the fear that anyone anywhere would be one iota better than DNF in any category that they endlessly rejected everything the developers produced, and scrapped builds and restarted from scratch 3-4 times at least over the last 12 years, and don't have a single thing to show for any of it tat they personally created. What about all those poor workers that have nothing to show for 12 years of their career now? Those guys that slaved endlessly towards the perfection of Duke only to have all their shit trashed by Broussard? I care about those guys. I don't care about the clowns that ran the circus into the ground.

Quote from popcornjake

Something I've been working on for what feels like years.[Blocked Image: http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x173/jakey5027/kowloon3.jpg]

That's really neat. I hope somewhere, somehow, the player can reach the roof outside those windows.

Quote from Erratic

[Blocked Image: http://www.business-letters.com/business-man.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/202/lol2iig.jpg]

Remedy created Max Payne, 3DR just published it. Their contributions to Prey don't go any farther than "Indian fights aliens", pretty much everything about Prey was thrown out when Human Head took over.

Nobody and no company is entitled to success. You have to go and do, not just sit there for 7 years without releasing anything that can bring in money and then be shocked when there's no more money. 3D Realms haven't had a significant source of income since Max Payne in 2001. Maybe selling Max off to Rockstar for the sequel.

Other than that, it's been absolutely nothing but porting Duke3d to cell phones and XBL Arcade.

I got the same PM... but on a completely different forum.

Quote from JohnC

No. What the hell is there to celebrate about a developer shutting down, especially one as influential as this?

And to the hell with the qq about taking too long. They've said they'd love to be working on Duke 5 or 6 too. Stuff happens. And there hasn't exactly been a dry spell of other games to play in the meantime.

3D Realms haven't been influential since 2002 at best and they were taking too long because everything the actual workers made the brain-dead beyond worthless management threw out and had them do over. They had a nearly complete Quake 2 engine Duke and trashed it. They had an alpha unreal 1.5 Duke and trashed it. They've worked eight years since we last saw anything remotely significant on DNF and what do they have to show for it? Five seconds of footage that looked like Prey from the Jace Hall show, and that really ugly ass render of Duke pumping iron and a few short flashes of super shiny pig cops.

Good Riddance to 3d Realms indeed. Hope the guys who were actually doing things get new jobs but for the higher-ups, the guys whose names we know like George Broussard and Joe Seigler, I feel nothing but contempt.

Seigler actually set up a personal donation for himself on his site. The most useless member of 3d Realms, the PR guy for a game that didn't release any PR, the guy that spend all his time playing with action figures, insulting fans, and running Texas Rangers and Black Sabbath fansites, is begging for money because he no longer has free money rolling in.

Quote from Skjalg

the game really is cursed...

Saying the game is cursed is implying there's an external fault besides the guys running 3DRealms

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":2omncuh5]Well, programmers do get more than artists, and last in the list come designers.

I was under the impression that that list was reversed- there are more able programmers than talented artists, so the average pay for artists is higher.

Fakedit: Just checked.

http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features ... y_2007.php

The average for programmers across all experience groups is $80k, $65k for artists and animators. Wow, that's way different than I thought. Last time I saw any sort of pay info it was lower 60's for programmers of all types (not just game dev).

Maybe I should redouble my efforts to learn to code

Duke Nuke Forever's coming out next year. Take Two still owns publishing rights to the game, and given how poorly 3DR have treated the franchise over the last 14 years, of course they'd sell the entire license away to the first bidder. It'll follow the exact same path as Prey.

Blood was better than Duke3d

Quote from Seldoon182

Arkane stoped the development of The Crossing last year because they couldn't negotiate the game with publishers as they wondered. That suck!

Whaaat? I can't find news of this anywhere, the rare posts on their site and forums suggest they're at least still doing SOMETHING, there are still job postings and stuff D:

Quote from FrieChamp

Yup, can't wait to hear some ex-employees spill the beans on the madness it must have been to work on that project...I'm also wondering if a different studio will pick it up and continue development

Here's a couple snippets I've read so far:

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In my best interest, I'm going to be somewhat candid for now. I will, however, elaborate a bit on some things:The 2001 trailer was 100% scripted cinematic, and not actual gameplay. They built specific demo maps just to record video from to make a trailer. Everything you see in that trailer was phony.

The typical work flow there went something like this:

Designer would be assigned a task (build a new map, rebuild an old map, polish a bit of a map, etc.). Designer would work on said task for two, three weeks, a month, all the while lower management would be looking over it and making sure it was going in a "good general direction." Designer would move on to another task. A month or two later upper management would finally look at the work and say, "It's all wrong, do it again." Rinse, repeat.

Entire maps would be done from the ground up, almost to beta quality, and then thrown out simply because no one would make decisions early on in the process. (Read up on Valve's 'orange box' method of design -- that's how you make games)

Another example of :wtc: is the fact that there was one part of one map that was being worked on before I started working there. Nineteen months later and the same designer was still working on the same part of that same map... I'm not blaming the designer, it wasn't his fault.

I think the biggest problem that the company had in general is being self-funded. When you're a developer working directly with a publisher and you have milestones to meet it's a whole different ballgame. If you don't meet those milestones, you don't get any money. That right there will keep your project on schedule. If, however, you're funding it yourself, you don't really have anyone to answer to except yourself and you can quickly lose sight of just how much money is going out the door.

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Helter Skelter posted: As I understand it, they made a shitload of money off the Max Payne franchise.

Yes, this helped them out quite a bit.

The sad thing is the game had some really cool shit in it and had some really fun gameplay. The shrunken stuff was fun, vehicles were fun... oh well. (edit) and, I need to add, the best goddamn water in any FPS to date. I'm dead serious about that. It was beautiful to look at and interact with.

Then again, there was some other stuff that got put in that made most of us facepalm

vvv I need to dig out my NDA and re-read it. Trying to be cautious here until I do so

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I left 3DR in 2006 along with roughly half of the dev team.

http://gamingisstupid.com/2009/05/06/th ... y-revival/

Quote from Minotauro

This is the saddest day ever for the games indusrty .

This ain't shit compared to Looking Glass or Origin closing their doors. 3D Realms, as 3D Realms, haven't actually made a single game.

I hope a disgruntled ex-employee leaks the latest build and the E3 2001 build. I've wanted to play that game shown in the E3 trailer so badly ever since I saw it. D:

Arkane Studios, the Dark Messiah dev (and awesome Arx Fatalis dev) are making another Source game called The Crossing. Wiki doesn't list a publisher for that, though. Might just be Steam.

There really aren't too many really heavily licensed engines...

Would it really break an NDA to mention a game engine without mentioning a game name, company name, personal name, etc?

Speaking of which, the only Ubisoft Source game I can think of is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

Quote from Erratic

oh i dunno... having fun?

I click on things, stuff happens, I don't know why, then I black out.

The point is to experiment and find out that why.