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Duke Nukem Forever 2001 - Nearly Complete

Anonymous
Not applicable
Apparently there is am ongoing squabble between 3d Realms and Randy
Pitchford over the release of the infamous Duke Nukem Forever that was shown in the E3
trailer.

The long short of it is that 3d
Realms inherited the legacy backup drives for their old games - and 3d
Realms VP
Frederik Schreiber

has looked through them and found that the December 2002 build was an
80-90% finished game. He paints it as a much darker game than the DNF
that finally shipped - and from the sounds of it, it was part Deus Ex
and part Survival Horror with a hub based open world and some vehicle
gameplay as well. Apparently it was about 25 levels spread across 5 or 6
zones, and mostly complete with the exception of the last zone (Area
51).

The original claims happened on a Duke Nukem Discord discussion - https://discordapp.com/invite/qccgJ9v

and some images and such made there way to this discussion - https://forums.duke4.net/topic/9930-dnf-2001-build-was-apparently-almost-complete/page__pid__295897#...

as well as http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/have-any-of-the-builds-of-duke-nukem-forever-ever-l...

From what I can tell this is legitimate - and 3d Realms wants to release
it for free including making it stable for current windows builds and
offering mod support to fans so that they may finish it. But Randy
Pitchford is saying they have to buy a license to release it even for
free - as they own the IP now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9du-Wdimj4

Seriously - I have always loved that trailer, and reading about this now makes me hope that this gets at least leaked or even better - finished.

The DNF that was released always felt like a parody of a fan mod for Duke3d - the tone is way off and while the game is better than reviews would have you expect it is still a poor shooter with lots of pacing issues and a terrible narrative.

If it is true that they were nearly done with it in December 2002 - and the ensuing madness that happened is because they wanted to keep up with the dynamic lighting and shadows of Doom3 - I am heartbroken. Because I think had DNF come out based on the trailer at that time - with the high level of immersive and interactive environments it would have been a huge hit despite being somewhat dated.

Edited the title - I just watched a bit of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JephRoi3os&t=41m10s

Randy Pitchford comes across as not unreasonable, I think there is just a lot of legalities in the way. LOL

11 REPLIES 11

falken76
Expert Consultant
Lol, Duke Nukem forever is still a thing?!  I was a kid when that was supposed to be made, now I'm middle aged.  Great, I just depressed myself....

Anonymous
Not applicable
Yep still a thing - to be honest, I get the hate for Duke as a character because he is ridiculous. But when I watch the trailer for the 2001 DNF - I get the feeling that it was not really a funny parody game like what was later released.

kojack
MVP
MVP
Yep, the 2001 trailer was great at the time. I'd love to try that version.



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Rob_In_Phoenix
Rising Star
Ahh Duke Forever the ultimate vaporware example.  Even when it was finally released it turns out it may be released again in another version. 

Well, they gave the game the right title it seems.  I loved the whole attitude in Duke3D.  I think it would be lost on a lot of people today.

LZoltowski
Champion
Oh Duke Nukem ... I have fond memories playing Duke Nukem 3D ... troubleshooting my sound blaster drivers ... the game was awesome ..

@Rob_In_Phoenix yeah, it was a game of its time ... I enjoyed throwing money at the dancing ladies, even though I was not that way inclined.
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Rob_In_Phoenix
Rising Star


Oh Duke Nukem ... I have fond memories playing Duke Nukem 3D ... troubleshooting my sound blaster drivers ... the game was awesome ..

@Rob_In_Phoenix yeah, it was a game of its time ... I enjoyed throwing money at the dancing ladies, even though I was not that way inclined.



The whole macho caricature was just golden.

Your mention of soundblaster drivers brings back some not so good memories though.  The days of configuring the memory upon boot up into MS-DOS. 

Gamers during that time were all experts at using config.sys, himem.sys, and autoexec.bat files.  I had a whole box full of boot up disks because it seemed each game required different settings to configure the memory.

Not to mention all the DMA and IRQ settings for peripherals (soundblaster, modems, etc).

Morgrum
Expert Trustee
Balls of Steel!
WAAAGH!

falken76
Expert Consultant
"It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum"

Anonymous
Not applicable
My first PC was a 486 that I hobbled together from spare parts - it didn't even have a case, and every time I turned it on I got a little shock. It was SVGA capable and had 16mb ram - it was Win95, but most games I had were dos based and so I ran them in Dos. The game I had the most problem with setting up was Ultima7 - I remember getting lots of out-of-memory errors and whatever. After that it was Cybermage - which was a beast of a game and very difficult to get running.

Ah - I do not miss those times.

I really do hope that this DNF gets finished - the late 90s / early millennium was a golden age of gaming on the PC especially for First Person games (Half Life, Deus Ex, No One Lives Forever, etc.) and DNF should have been right there with those titles (even if the macho man character of Duke is very dated).