[Shax]

Seems like Duke would be way better off with TT to me. It's hard to argue 3DR hasn't squandered the franchise. I have been waiting for DNF since it was announced in 97 and the only thing 3DR seems to do well is let time pass them by.

[Ramen4ever]

Shax, on Jun 6 2009, 05:37 PM, said:

Seems like Duke would be way better off with TT to me. It's hard to argue 3DR hasn't squandered the franchise. I have been waiting for DNF since it was announced in 97 and the only thing 3DR seems to do well is let time pass them by.

Yes. Absolutely. Because with TT at least we know that they won't ever release DNF.
And at least we won't have to worry about game quality because there's no chance of it being a good genuine Duke game with TT anyway.

[Jimmy]

It's a catch 22, I think.
With 3DR- Assured Quality, Its will be THE Duke, not likely to be finished
With Take2- Quality is iffy, Could be just another generic shooter, more likely to be released

Not to say Take2 couldn't have a good Duke game produced, because other developers have done great things with the IP (Zero Hour, for example), but with 3DR its gonna be the Duke. Its a trade off, most definitely.

[necroslut]

Zero Hour was good, but it was no Duke 3D. Not even close.
The reason we have been waiting for DNF is because we think it's gonna be awesome, not because it's called "Duke Nukem". If all you want is a new DukeTM brand game, then you could just go play Duke Nukem Mobile 3D or something, because that's the kind of stuff we would get from TT.

[Lt.Havoc]

Well, no, because as it was already established, Take 2 has no or little interest to finishing DNF, because that would mean they need to put even more cash into it and whatnot. Its also not that easy then as well all know a new team simply cant pick the thing up, they first need to learn how the teach works and when they know they can change the negine again because its outdated etc.

Also, I cant see Take 2 doing good with the Duke IP. As necroslut said, we would get a lot of 3rd party Duke games that could be anything else then good. All 3rd PArty Duke games that came out under 3DR supverision where at least decent if not great, like in the case of Zero Hour, but you cant expect anything like that if Take 2 takes care of the game.

A very good example how a franchise gets in the wrong hands would be Strategy First with Jagged Allaince. If you rember, JA2 came out in 1999 and we are still wating for a game like that (10 years already, sounds familiar, dose it?) and then Sir Tech went bankrupt and Strategy First bought the rights to JA a while back.

So, what do they do? They hire a Russian developer who has to this date made games that where so danm buggy that Stalker and Fallout 3 look like extremly stable games and polished games, let them work with the whole thing and account 2 JA games, one set in Africa (JA3D) and the other is JA3. After that, they scrap JA3D and shift the game over from one Russian developer to another. And here we are now. In the meantime a lot of JA ripoffs appeard (African Allaince: the Jagged Edge, 7,62mm etc.) and JA3 is still in the making and the game looks outdated graphic wise by now and we got no news whatsoever about the game.

So, Fallout fans should consider themself lucky that they got Fallout 3.

This could also happen to the Duke IP if Take 2 gets it, but I admin, its a worst case scenario, but we can all agree that Take 2 wont treat the Duke IP the same way 3DR did it. Also, even if Take 2 wins the court case, I highly doubt they get the Duke IP, because thats not the point of the lawsuit at all, its about money being payed and contract breach and so on.

Also, we do not know what will or what will not happen in court and what is currently going on behind the scences. Right now, everything can happen.

[Raziel]

I would say no for various reasons which I won't cover in this post. Instead, I'd like to point out that yes, we did wait a whole 12 years, but I think we've seen a good amount of evidence that suggests they were making good progress and actually intended to release it this time.

They were apparently hitting agreed milestones and had a set development cut-off date of November 2009 (according to a source which so far has proven very reliable and therefore I see no reason why I should doubt the accuracy of this information either). This means that 3DR wanted to declare the game finished in 5 months. Also, if you look at their remaining task list (http://twitpic.com/1fuju) it all seems like fairly minor things that are still outstanding with a mostly unnecessary tasks in there (for example, menu megatask, optimise checkpoints, prevent octabrain wave attack from detonating pipebombs, make pipebombs start counting down upon first impact, etc. etc. - These seem like nice-to-have's to make the release perfect, and yes, I agree, all these little things add up and 5 months sounds like a realistic estimate to make it perfect, but at the end of the day I think you *could* still ship the game as it is and it would still be a far better release than some of the games that have shipped recently).

A lot of people disagree and say we have no indication of how shippable the release was, but everything I have seen so far has pointed towards the game being basically ready with them just tweaking things to make it perfect now. If the game really isn't in as good a state as I've been led to believe, then if Take-Two wins, basically we won't see the release completed (as Lt.Havoc pointed out - and I'll repost a small chunk of another post of mine to help clarify why this is).
-----------------------------
You can't just take a game of that complexity and throw it at an entirely new team. If you purchase an engine from someone like Carmack, he actually flies to your HQ and teaches you how it all works, in addition to that you have a strong modding community, lots of good tutorials and excellent tech support, that is why licensing his engines are so attractive, there is a lot of information on working with it. Unfortunately DNF is basically a custom in-house engine... I mean, it is not even based on Unreal 2's tech, yet it looks to be just as complex (if not more-so) than Unreal 3 - only, Unreal 3 was written with 3rd party development in mind, this engine was written with in-house development in mind... You may not get it, but this makes a huge difference as far as usability of the tools and code is concerned.
-----------------------------
In other words, for Take-Two to pick up from a game that really is incomplete and based on basically fully custom technology, well, sorry, but that's just not going to happen. An example of this is the 3D modeling tool called Blender, everyone complains it is hard to use and impossible to learn without all the docs and tutorials online... Well, yes, because this was originally designed as an in-house tool - just like DNF's 3D engine/tools which are very different from the original Unreal 1 tech they started on. Now imagine sitting down at a computer desk with the Blender 1.0 software (as in, when it was fully keyboard shortcut driven) running on it but no internet community or documentation of any sort... you'd be like, okay, WTF is this shit?! And that is exactly what is going to happen if a different team jumps on the game to complete it. Most likely their tools will be relying on similar magical things you are expected to 'just know' because you are part of the team and if you don't know those things, you're just not going to get anywhere - also, from experience, shit only gets uglier with age - this is true for women and game code, and 12 years is a long time for shit to get ugly.

On the other hand, if the game was as close as I believe it was, perhaps Take-Two will just ship it as-is? Basically, people don't develop games linearly from map 1 to 18 and call it finished, they basically do everything in iterations. They may concentrate on one level they can use to demo the game, but overall the maps will be built breadth-wise, which means the game is almost certainly clockable at this point even if it wasn't close to completion, it just won't have all the detail, polish and features they wanted to add to it over the next 5 months before saying it's done. Meaning, Take-Two might pick it up and say "WTF, this is actually finished... lets ship it" when in reality it wasn't actually done. This could be quite dangerous and if it gets shipped as-is and sucks because it wasn't properly tweaked/finished, people won't blame Take-Two, they'll blame 3D Realms for that... Still, at this stage I'll be happy if anything gets released and I guess Take-Two would still make the same amount of money anyway. Funny world we live in, isn't it?

At this point I guess I'm just going to wait and see what happens...

[necroslut]

Caine, on Jun 8 2009, 02:33 PM, said:

duke? who is he? who remembers him? yeah new gamers want Call of duty, god of war, guitar hero etc.

guess, duke will be a forgotten hero...

thanks george, he is the one to blame!

Without George, there would be no Duke as we know him.

[crunchysuperman]

necroslut, on Jun 8 2009, 08:34 AM, said:

Without George, there would be no Duke as we know him.

With George, there's no Duke as we knew him.

[Lt.Havoc]

Hurm...seems Caine is trying the same he is doing at the 3DR forums, trying to engineer a new reality that Duke is dead. Do I need to repost what I said over there here as well?

I love how the mentions Call of Duty, because Call of Duty has such a rich main charachter you play. You play a faceless SAS Soldier named Soap and I actually forgot how the Marine was called you play, that also DIES. I am pretty much fed up being the faceless nameless hero of the game. That pissed me of about FEAR as well. I bet that no one will rember how the main heros in CoD 4 where named, at all, but the game will be remeberd.

Duke nukem, like so many other game personas, are already part of the collective minds od millions od gamers. I know lots of people and pretty much all of them know Duke Nukem, all my members of my familiy do, my freinds do, all the people I chat with know him, in the forums I am registerd, people know Duke Nukem....I could go on. I think more people know Duke then Gorden Freeman.

Gah, now we went off topic. This topic is about if Duke would be better of with Take 2. We already know by now that Take 2 didnt offerd 30 Millions for the Duke IP, at least Scott said they would have taken thins offer if it came up. So, I doubt that even if Take 2 wins the courcase, they will get the rights, then the rights on Duke Nukem are not part of the lawsuit, its only about money in regards of the publishing rights and thats all Take 2 ever had and will have.

[Raziel]

I don't think Duke will be forgotten any time soon... We will see games featuring Duke, it might not be DNF, but he'll be around some way or another. Hopefully not in the form of Take-Two milking the series in every way possible, but you never know.

And keep in mind, the duke we know and love is largely where he is due to George, so cut him some slack... I don't think he really screwed up that badly. He figured Take-Two wouldn't mind pouring in a little bit to finish the game off which I think would be a reasonable assumption given how much DNF will bring in. Unfortunately it turns out that Take-Two was expecting to get the game for free (so they bought the publishing rights from GT interactive, but they still contributed jack directly to the development of the game). The only funds that ever came from Take-Two to 3DR (which ended up going into DNF's development) was 2.5 million that came in due to signing an agreement for another unannounced project - in other words, it was 3DR's money by the time it was spent.

Normally a publisher will pour a shit load of funds into a game development project - I think it is sad that Take-Two tried to skimp on their spending and eventually couldn't come to a good mutual agreement with 3DR by the time their money ran out. It is business however and the world's economic situation does tend to make you cut on your spending, this unfortunately killed DNF. 3DR has stated that they were in negotiations with Take-Two for funding and that they were hitting pre-determined milestones to get the game done. However, when it became time for Take-Two to open their wallets, it seems they changed the parameters of the agreement to be unrealistic.

Think of it like this, they had pre-arranged milestones that had to be hit by certain dates to get the promised funding - hitting such milestones is no easy task but it keeps you moving forward... now, what happens if all of a sudden they change the funding agreement so you will only get half of what you're currently burning financially... This means you would only be able to afford half of your current development team, can you still sign a contract to say 'yes, we will keep hitting our agreed milestones' - NO, you can't, and I suspect this is exactly what happened here. Take-Two gave a false impression that they would continue funding the game, then changed the parameters of that funding when they actually had to act on their word - perhaps this was even intentional, hoping that 3DR would get desperate and do whatever it takes to get it completed. Later they 'kindly' offered to steal the Duke IP and take over the development team - but didn't actually promise any upfront money, additional funding or a guarantee that the game would be completed. By this agreement they could acquire the Duke IP for free, lay off the entire team anyway and then resell the Duke IP for millions or milk it like hell.

If you ask me, even if their intention was to finish the game properly under this agreement, there is still something very wrong here and to be realistic, I can't say I blame Scott/George for the decisions they made and I think people should cut them some slack as well. To put it bluntly, would you agree to such a bullshit contract? I already expect a bunch of trolls to say yes just because they want the game, but really, did this agreement guarantee its completion? NO, the only thing it guarantees is that Take-Two would acquire the IP for free. So think about it, realistically, if you were Scott and George, would you say yes to this agreement?

[Striker]

Ok, next time someone says Duke is forgotten to the new masses, that person is gonna get a hard kick in the nuts.

Get this, pretty much everyone that I have played video games with, recognized Duke right away as soon as I launched Duke3D. They'd be like "Hell yeah, Duke Nukem 3D, I love that game!"

Heh, actually, a few years ago, on the last day of school, we were allowed to pretty much do anything on the PCs there... I fired up Duke3D, and about 7 of the guys in the classroom recognized it, and were talking about the levels and their secrets n' shit. Quite something, hm?

Now, Today, I have a friend, he's 14 years old, and he owns a 360. He's really into the Evil Dead Movies/Army of Darkness, Alien, Predator, Die Hard, Terminator, Dirty Harry, you name it...

As for Music, he listens to Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, among others. He also collects all sorts of gaming paraphernalia from the stuff like the Halo 3 Legendary edition. As for what games he plays? He plays Halo 3, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War, among other things, but, most of all, Duke Nukem 3D for XBLA.

He likes Duke3D even more than Halo 3 right now, that is saying something.

When he heard that Duke Nukem Forever might not be coming out, he was quite upset. He was looking forward to it...

[PokeThePower]

Raziel, on Jun 8 2009, 08:14 AM, said:

If you ask me, even if their intention was to finish the game properly under this agreement, there is still something very wrong here and to be realistic, I can't say I blame Scott/George for the decisions they made and I think people should cut them some slack as well. To put it bluntly, would you agree to such a bullshit contract? I already expect a bunch of trolls to say yes just because they want the game, but really, did this agreement guarantee its completion? NO, the only thing it guarantees is that Take-Two would acquire the IP for free. So think about it, realistically, if you were Scott and George, would you say yes to this agreement?

You are making a lot of assumptions based on one (vague and incomplete) side of the story.

[crunchysuperman]

Quote

Ok, next time someone says Duke is forgotten to the new masses, that person is gonna get a hard kick in the nuts.

Get this, pretty much everyone that I have played video games with, recognized Duke right away as soon as I launched Duke3D. They'd be like "Hell yeah, Duke Nukem 3D, I love that game!"

Heh, actually, a few years ago, on the last day of school, we were allowed to pretty much do anything on the PCs there... I fired up Duke3D, and about 7 of the guys in the classroom recognized it, and were talking about the levels and their secrets n' shit. Quite something, hm?

Now, Today, I have a friend, he's 14 years old, and he owns a 360. He's really into the Evil Dead Movies/Army of Darkness, Alien, Predator, Die Hard, Terminator, Dirty Harry, you name it...

As for Music, he listens to Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, among others. He also collects all sorts of gaming paraphernalia from the stuff like the Halo 3 Legendary edition. As for what games he plays? He plays Halo 3, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War, among other things, but, most of all, Duke Nukem 3D for XBLA.

He likes Duke3D even more than Halo 3 right now, that is saying something.

When he heard that Duke Nukem Forever might not be coming out, he was quite upset. He was looking forward to it...

Certainly there is still a very big fan base, but I don't think anything close to what it would have been about eight years ago, when this game should have come out. Gamers have changed & games have evolved (not that I'm a big fan of what they've evolved into).

[Raziel]

Wieder, on Jun 8 2009, 11:20 AM, said:

You are making a lot of assumptions based on one (vague and incomplete) side of the story.

Yes, but in this case some of my assumptions are based on things I've experienced first hand, not identical, but I know what it's like having to hit deadlines to try and get more funding and how unreasonable things can get in these situations.

For someone who used to work for them you are quite anti-3D Realms.

[theoneandonlylordofdeath]

Whatever you say about Take 2. They get good quality games out in a reasonable timeframe. I think they would do the game justice if it ended up in their hands. If they get the assets and code as well, the groundwork is already there.

[Kathy]

Raziel, on Jun 9 2009, 01:12 PM, said:

For someone who used to work for them you are quite anti-3D Realms.

You are making a lot of assumptions. I'm yet to see one negative post about 3dr from Charlie.

[Raziel]

Lotan, on Jun 9 2009, 04:16 AM, said:

You are making a lot of assumptions.

Well, it's not like I advertised it as historical fact... I think it is clear in my post that it is speculation.

[ShXIII]

At this point its better off in any developers hands other then 3DR, geez I have more respect for the 10 year old who developed Big Rigs after the years of this DNF bullshit.

[Sinisterambo]

[PokeThePower]

Raziel, on Jun 9 2009, 04:12 AM, said:

For someone who used to work for them you are quite anti-3D Realms.

I'm anti-failure, especially for things that I spent 8 years and more personal time and love in than pretty much anything else up to this point in my life.

Just trying to help provide some level of realism to the intense speculation. Being realistic is not being anti.

[ShXIII]

Wieder, on Jun 9 2009, 02:35 PM, said:

I'm anti-failure, especially for things that I spent 8 years and more personal time and love in than pretty much anything else up to this point in my life.

Just trying to help provide some level of realism to the intense speculation. Being realistic is not being anti.

I like your posts, you seem to be the only person I can take seriously between this forum and 3DRs

[Raziel]

Wieder, on Jun 9 2009, 10:35 AM, said:

I'm anti-failure, especially for things that I spent 8 years and more personal time and love in than pretty much anything else up to this point in my life.

That makes sense dude.

[megamustaine]

Can someone please show me these iffy games that T2 publishes? I would love for 3DR to finish development on DNF, but T2 puts out quality stuff. Hell I hate GTA, but can recognize the quality that is there.

[Raziel]

megamustaine, on Jun 9 2009, 10:48 PM, said:

Can someone please show me these iffy games that T2 publishes? I would love for 3DR to finish development on DNF, but T2 puts out quality stuff. Hell I hate GTA, but can recognize the quality that is there.

You're missing the point... It is not a question about whether Take-Two's games are good or not, it's more a case of, will take two do a better job with the IP than 3DR.

If I should directly answer the question in the topic (whether the Duke IP is better off with Take-Two)... 'No' would be by answer. 3DR has proven time and time again that it is capable of selecting good external partners to work with on titles based on their IP, look at games like Prey, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project, etc. They also pushed games like Max Payne to be as good as it is. Yes, Take-Two's games don't suck, but we already know finding good external talent is 3DR's specialty and I see no reason to suspect they'd be incapable of doing the Duke IP better justice than Take-Two who will probably just milk the series for a while, then sell off the IP to the highest bidder.

Also keep in mind that right now it is Take-Two trying to prevent DNF from being finished... so as soon as you say Duke's IP might be better off with Take-Two, you are basically saying you don't care if any chance of DNF seeing the light of day is destroyed, because if this restraining order goes through, DNF is as good as dead.

[ShXIII]

As if it wasn't dead already in 3DR's hands. In 3DR's hand its like a long torturing process just barely keeping it alive with blood transfusions just out of spite. At least Take Two would A: Finish it or B: Put it out of its misery ending the pain

[Raziel]

ShXIII, on Jun 10 2009, 05:13 AM, said:

As if it wasn't dead already in 3DR's hands. In 3DR's hand its like a long torturing process just barely keeping it alive with blood transfusions just out of spite. At least Take Two would A: Finish it or B: Put it out of its misery ending the pain

1) Take-Two will not finish DNF
2) Read my post properly, I'm saying the duke franchise is better off in 3DR's hands because I know I can trust them with it. As for DNF itself, I'd still go with 3DR in terms of likelihood of release (which as I've stated I'd put at about 25% at the moment - there is a lot of interest in seeing this game completed, I think that might be enough to push it through).

Also keep in mind that you are now basing your expectations of the entire franchise on the failure of one internal Duke project. They had a dream to create the perfect game and if DNF doesn't see the light of day, then I will see it as something they wanted to do for us, but couldn't manage due to technical issues I'll discuss in a minute. No one pours 12 years and 20 million dollars of their own cash into a project without wanting to see it succeed. That strong will to prove everyone wrong and to get it out there is what might bring it out as long as it is within 3DR's hands, even if that means passing it to one of the other companies in the radar group along with some x-employees. Also, keep in mind that the game was supposed to be finished November this year, so it is not like they weren't going anywhere with it, they were really close. I'm not saying if it stays within 3DR's hands it will come out, at this point I would give it a 50% chance with 3DR, 1% chance with Take-Two (overall 25% which is not a combination of 1% and 50%, it is just my gut feel). I think if the game is 'good-enough' when Take-Two acquires it, they might release it as-is... otherwise forget it.

Now onto the technical issues... They've gone through multiple engine switches and perhaps I don't blame them for the latter ones. Keep in mind they started on Q2's tech, then unreal came out and looked really cool and had effects Q2 didn't have, so they switched to it thinking it would be a good move for the game... The only problem is, and I shouldn't really say this, but I'm going to anyway... Unreal's tech is not what they advertise it to be... it is hard to work with, inflexible and the technical support from Epic kinda sucks. I suspect at the end of the day their only option was to write basically their own engine that could do what they wanted (easily) - they've stated it themselves, all that is still unreal is basically the network and scripting code. Silicon Knights ran into similar issues with UE3 and ended up writing and using their own engine and then sued Epic over the whole mess. The way I see it, they should have stuck to the Quake 2 tech, it is a nice and simple engine and is easy to extend and work with (look what valve did for Half-Life 2, although the core is still Quake 2, you wouldn't easily say it from seeing the in-game result), admittedly it would have been nice if it was all nice and object oriented, which is probably what made them shift to Unreal in the first place. But that is what I think the key issue was... they should have stuck to Quake 2 and enhanced it as needed.

With their tech finally stable and now having what they want development was progressing well and you could have seen it next year if not for Take-Two not really wanting to properly fund the project.

[crunchysuperman]

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 11:11 AM, said:

Unreal's tech is not what they advertise it to be... it is hard to work with, inflexible and the technical support from Epic kinda sucks.

So I guess then you've been involved with licensing Unreal tech, developing games with it and had first-hand experience with their support system?

Quote

Silicon Knights ran into similar issues with UE3 and ended up writing and using their own engine and then sued Epic over the whole mess.

Out of the bazillion Unreal licenses out there, how many others got on board with that strategy? I don't remember any. In fact, I remember other developers speaking up against SK for basically just not knowing what they were doing.

[ShXIII]

You can get all detailed if you want but no matter what you will always come down to one thing and that is 3DR failed to release this game PERIOD end of story. I don't know how much more obvious this very simple FACT can be. I have seen all the leaked footage and screen shots and just about every damn detail leaked about it thus far. All I can say is I wasn't very impressed with how it looked, not to say it looked bad but I wasn't expecting a Doom 3ish feel to it. But all that is besides the point, the main point is 3DR failed and someone else needs to pick up the ball and run with it otherwise DNF will certainly continue and will always be a "When It's Done" title, and we all know how far that got.

[Kathy]

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 04:26 PM, said:

Also keep in mind that right now it is Take-Two trying to prevent DNF from being finished...

I'm sorry, what? They are suing because DNF was not released. DNF was dead before Take-Two sued. They're just trying to get some money out of this.

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 07:11 PM, said:

1) Take-Two will not finish DNF

3DR did not finish DNF. Making it from 1997.

Quote

Also, keep in mind that the game was supposed to be finished November this year, so it is not like they weren't going anywhere with it, they were really close.

It was supposed to be finished in 1998.

[PokeThePower]

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 09:11 AM, said:

1) Take-Two will not finish DNF

You keep saying this, but I think you are completely mistaken.

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 09:11 AM, said:

The only problem is, and I shouldn't really say this, but I'm going to anyway... Unreal's tech is not what they advertise it to be... it is hard to work with, inflexible and the technical support from Epic kinda sucks.

What are you talking about? What makes you think that? Unreal has absolutely NO competition in the gaming industry when it comes to technical support or easy to learn tools and adaptability. It has its problems, but when compared to pretty much every engine out there, if I had to pick an engine to make a game with and I didn't have a team capable of writing their own, I'd go with Unreal. It wouldn't even be a hesitation. This is after working with quite a few of the engines out there.

You said in another post that "Carmack flies out to teach you" etc... but no... actually when you license an id engine you are pretty much on your own and are *lucky* to get any help from id. It's been that way since at least 1997, though I know they are hoping to improve that with the new tech but they haven't gotten to that point. I was originally going to respond to your other post but decided it wasn't worth it and just assumed you meant to say Unreal. Unreal has UDN and an entire team dedicated to supporting the engine on a technical and feedback standpoint, as well as all their game devs participating in the UDN communication and on hand to answer questions when they can. Then you also have the massive dev community who also participates in providing help and feedback. I've known *Epic* to fly out to devs to help them learn, but not id except in very rare circumstances.

When it comes to an engine that is Capable + Morphable + Reasonably User Friendly Tools + Has Customer Support... Unreal wins hands down. The only thing id's engines have going for them is Capable.

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 09:11 AM, said:

I suspect at the end of the day their only option was to write basically their own engine that could do what they wanted (easily) - they've stated it themselves, all that is still unreal is basically the network and scripting code.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the decisions made to wind up with a basically 100% rewritten engine.

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 09:11 AM, said:

Silicon Knights ran into similar issues with UE3 and ended up writing and using their own engine and then sued Epic over the whole mess.

The lawsuit wasn't what you present it to be. Considering hundreds if not thousands of other games have been made with Unreal tech just fine, and hundreds of devs have used it without significant problem (every engine has its challenges)... I'm more inclined to think something was going wrong at Silicon Knights. Epic has not been a flawless company, but to suggest they even have any competition in the engine licensing world is strange.

Furthermore, Epic has a countersuit against SK which I don't think has been resolved. It may wind up with SK owing Epic money, and not the other way around.

Raziel, on Jun 10 2009, 09:11 AM, said:

With their tech finally stable and now having what they want development was progressing well and you could have seen it next year if not for Take-Two not really wanting to properly fund the project.

Perhaps Take-Two *CAN'T* fund the project? Think about it this way: 1) Given the history DNF is a risky investment no matter whether the project looks like it is close or not, 2) Take-Two has had a difficult year financially, 3) they have their own IPs and devs they are currently funding, etc.

It's not like they have this bucket of cash sitting there and they decided to be "mean" and just withhold it. If they genuinely believed that investing X amount would give them a return of Y where Y is greater than X, they would absolutely have done it. That's what they exist to do. This means one thing and one thing only, they were not confident that the cost needed to finish was likely to pay off. Nothing more. And considering 3DR appears to have shopped it around trying to get funding from other areas as well, everyone *else* determined that investing however much needed was not likely to pay off and/or they simply didn't have enough on hand to be able to do it.

This should tell us something.