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Duke Nukem Developer 3D Realms Shuts Down (??)


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Posted

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:

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:

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.

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

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

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

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Posted

Really weird (although not really unexpected). I hope some ex-developer blogs pop up, would be extremely interesting to read about "behind the scenes" stuff.

Duke3d was what got me started with level design, so I guess I owe a lot to 3drealms.

Posted

Not surprising at all. Surprising was that they could go on with their obviously flawed development scheme for so long.

i second that !

duke was also kind of before my time ...

i played through it all the way for the first time 1 year ago and was only mildly impressed the shrink ray stuff was really imaginative and sure having strippers in a game can never be wrong ... but i think people need to calm the fuck down nuke nukem is nowhere near as good as people say

me i stick with "MY" FIRST PC FPS love : Half-Life ! :D

mark my words ... "2008" the year of the duke !!!

:D

Posted

mark my words ... "2008" the year of the duke !!!

:D

:(

But I really hope they do a Masters of Doom like book on this....but more like Masters of Fail ;)

Posted

Bit of an old list, but for those who hadnt seen it before:

http://duke.a-13.net/?080907

At the bottom half.

I especially like:

Things that have taken less time than Duke Nukem Forever's Development:

The Wright brothers designed and flew the first airplane.

he United States' entire program to put a man on the moon, from Kennedy's challenge to the landing.

World War II and the entire Manhattan Project. Yes, even the complete development of the atomic bomb took less time.

Every Unreal, every Unreal Tournament, and every game that has used any of the Unreal engines.

Valve released both Half-Life 1 and 2, with several expansion packs and countless mods for each.

The entire Halo trilogy.

PS2, 3, Xbox, Xbox360, Wii, Gamecube, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color, DS, Dreamcast, and PSP

Just to put 13 years of development a bit into perspective :)

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