[crunchysuperman]

rockmx8, on Mar 15 2009, 02:04 PM, said:

What evidence do you guys(the ones that keep saying they restarted the game) have that suggest that they restarted the game?

No more evidence than you have that everything is all happy puppies & rainbows. Whoopee - wallpaper, thumbnails & media that by their own admission meant pretty much nothing. Even if it did, we had all that ten years ago too, and what became of all of that? Jack diddley shit, that's what.

Quote

I'm telling you they didn't, the game they are finishing up right now is great enough and George and the Co. are very confident with the current build of the game.

They were just as confident in 98, 99, 00 & 01.

Quote

They aren't stupid to throw away such a great amount of epic progress away for nothing.

Hello? WTF? Are you sure you know what game you're talking about? That goes above & beyond annoying optimism - that's just blind stupidity.

Your account has to be a joke. Nobody on earth who has actually kept up with this game can possibly be so blind & naive.


My personal opinion is that sometime in '05 they decided to make the 360 the primary platform. It must have required enough change & delay to be the last straw for many team members. Sure - maybe I'm wrong. But it's as good a reason as any to explain where we are right now considering how "on track" they said they were three or four years ago.

[Kristian Joensen]

"But it's as good a reason as any to explain where we are right now considering how "on track" they said they were three or four years ago."

This is one of the major problems with what you are saying. You are reading certain completeness levels in to quotes from 2005 and previously that just aren't there. 3D Realms didn't even remotely put any numbers on it. As far as that 360 thing goes, well when the 360(and later PS3) arrived it had hardware that beat top of the line PC hardware back then(it has since been beaten squarely, as is always the case with consoles), so they didn't have to throw out or redo content( or code for that matter) to support the 360. In fact developers that do cross platform development are keen to mention how easy it is to port to the 360. It uses DirectX and the same Microsoft development tools that they are use to from the PC.

"They were just as confident in 98, 99, 00 & 01."

Not really, they could never really finish the engine back then(and originally they had only two programmers to A) integrate new code from Epic in all they various highly specialised sub fields fo code B)Add their own engine upgrades in all the various C)Write all the gameplay code, D)fix bugs and do optimizations D)Upgrade Epic's tools and write their own where neccesary that is far from the case now), it was always in a constant flux. That hurdle was demonstratably over and done with by Late 2002. However it takes more than just a done engine to ship a game, ALOT more. They probably realised some of those things too late, hence the mass departures.

As far as the employee situation went, I believe that the last bios page that was online(Late 2002/early 2003) had around 20-22 people on it or so. So sure they fixed their technical issues( A MAJOR MAJOR achievement) but they quite obviously still had various issues that needed to be dealt with and guess what they DID or rather as best they could. That they might have been too little too late as they say is another matter.

Also the programming staff wasn't the only understaffed department, for instance I believe that for several years they had only one(or perhaps two) Modeler/3D Artists to do everything in the game from weapons to characters to environment art, etc.

So in other words you should see DNF as a gradual(LOOOOONG) learning process where lots of mistakes have been made but they have always been fixed(eventually!). But you can't fix what you don't know about

From what I can gather from what we know about this game, their discovery/fixing process has gone something like this:

1. Technology issues(in connection with the restart)
2. Content related issues(After uncovering such problems after the restart)
3 Production/Management/Structure related issues(Probably partly uncovered during/after 2, partly occurring as a result of inadequate fixes to 2(IE hiring too many "noobs", too high/unspecified ambitions, too few leaders under George, etc))

IMHO based on the scant amounts of information we have about it I would say that the best approximation we can do for an actual explanation of the departures(One that doesn't ignore things we do know) is SOMETHING like this:

Hiring of "noobs" and various other matters(Like some of those mentioned above) -> slowing down progress of DNF(Without NECESSARILY introducing regress, but that could also be part of it if say a subpar artist does some subpar assets, they might have to be thrown out/replaced) - causing people to leave -> slowing down progress -> causing people to leave, etc

In other words you could(If I am correct) say that the mass departures where an example of a vicious circle and a domino effect.
Edit:

"As far as the employee situation went, I believe that the last bios page that was online(Late 2002/early 2003) had around 20-22 people on it or so."

I checked this on archive.org and I counted 20 people on the DNF team(IE not including administrative/non-DNF staff like Joe or Scott) including DNF, compare that with my list here. Going from 20 to 30+ is an increase of 50%. Remember this is after a significant departure of people even.

[Kathy]

Kristian Joensen, on Mar 16 2009, 04:22 AM, said:

"They were just as confident in 98, 99, 00 & 01."

Not really, they could never really finish the engine back then(and originally they had only two programmers to A) integrate new code from Epic in all they various highly specialised sub fields fo code B)Add their own engine upgrades in all the various C)Write all the gameplay code, D)fix bugs and do optimizations D)Upgrade Epic's tools and write their own where neccesary that is far from the case now), it was always in a constant flux. That hurdle was demonstratably over and done with by Late 2002. However it takes more than just a done engine to ship a game, ALOT more. They probably realised some of those things too late, hence the mass departures.

While you are right, crunchy was probably referring to 3dr's words about the game. In all this years in the public they were confident about the game. Right now we know that was not the case, which implies that even now that may be not the case.

Quote

Hiring of "noobs" and various other matters(Like some of those mentioned above) -> slowing down progress of DNF(Without NECESSARILY introducing regress, but that could also be part of it if say a subpar artist does some subpar assets, they might have to be thrown out/replaced) - causing people to leave -> slowing down progress -> causing people to leave, etc

By the way, George himself was(is?) a noob as a manager if you look at all those mistakes that were made on the management level. I don't even know if the so called "ambition" played that of a major part. It's like boy in the basement having an ambition building a space rocket. Well, that analogy is a stretch, but you get the picture.

[zchri9]

heh I suppose one good thing is that George has been frequently updating his twitter the past couple of days.
Suppose when he gets back to work we might see something Duke related?

[Luther Blissett]

Luckily Re5 is very short

if he just plays the story he should be done for tomorrow

[crunchysuperman]

Kristian Joensen, on Mar 15 2009, 08:22 PM, said:

"But it's as good a reason as any to explain where we are right now considering how "on track" they said they were three or four years ago."

This is one of the major problems with what you are saying. You are reading certain completeness levels in to quotes from 2005 and previously that just aren't there. 3D Realms didn't even remotely put any numbers on it. As far as that 360 thing goes, well when the 360(and later PS3) arrived it had hardware that beat top of the line PC hardware back then(it has since been beaten squarely, as is always the case with consoles), so they didn't have to throw out or redo content( or code for that matter) to support the 360. In fact developers that do cross platform development are keen to mention how easy it is to port to the 360. It uses DirectX and the same Microsoft development tools that they are use to from the PC.

"They were just as confident in 98, 99, 00 & 01."

Not really, they could never really finish the engine back then(and originally they had only two programmers to A) integrate new code from Epic in all they various highly specialised sub fields fo code B)Add their own engine upgrades in all the various C)Write all the gameplay code, D)fix bugs and do optimizations D)Upgrade Epic's tools and write their own where neccesary that is far from the case now), it was always in a constant flux. That hurdle was demonstratably over and done with by Late 2002. However it takes more than just a done engine to ship a game, ALOT more. They probably realised some of those things too late, hence the mass departures.

As far as the employee situation went, I believe that the last bios page that was online(Late 2002/early 2003) had around 20-22 people on it or so. So sure they fixed their technical issues( A MAJOR MAJOR achievement) but they quite obviously still had various issues that needed to be dealt with and guess what they DID or rather as best they could. That they might have been too little too late as they say is another matter.

Also the programming staff wasn't the only understaffed department, for instance I believe that for several years they had only one(or perhaps two) Modeler/3D Artists to do everything in the game from weapons to characters to environment art, etc.

So in other words you should see DNF as a gradual(LOOOOONG) learning process where lots of mistakes have been made but they have always been fixed(eventually!). But you can't fix what you don't know about

From what I can gather from what we know about this game, their discovery/fixing process has gone something like this:

1. Technology issues(in connection with the restart)
2. Content related issues(After uncovering such problems after the restart)
3 Production/Management/Structure related issues(Probably partly uncovered during/after 2, partly occurring as a result of inadequate fixes to 2(IE hiring too many "noobs", too high/unspecified ambitions, too few leaders under George, etc))

IMHO based on the scant amounts of information we have about it I would say that the best approximation we can do for an actual explanation of the departures(One that doesn't ignore things we do know) is SOMETHING like this:

Hiring of "noobs" and various other matters(Like some of those mentioned above) -> slowing down progress of DNF(Without NECESSARILY introducing regress, but that could also be part of it if say a subpar artist does some subpar assets, they might have to be thrown out/replaced) - causing people to leave -> slowing down progress -> causing people to leave, etc

In other words you could(If I am correct) say that the mass departures where an example of a vicious circle and a domino effect.
Edit:

"As far as the employee situation went, I believe that the last bios page that was online(Late 2002/early 2003) had around 20-22 people on it or so."

I checked this on archive.org and I counted 20 people on the DNF team(IE not including administrative/non-DNF staff like Joe or Scott) including DNF, compare that with my list here. Going from 20 to 30+ is an increase of 50%. Remember this is after a significant departure of people even.

I started to go into detail replying to several different points individually, but it all just boils down to that fact that we'll just have to agree to disagree.

[Kathy]

Nooooo! Crunchy, let's argue! That's interesting as long as we don't too personal or angry.

[rockmx8]

Lotan, on Mar 15 2009, 02:59 PM, said:

Well, that was quite a read. Fanboys defending 3dRealms because they respect them and everything. I wonder, what if that story broke up today.

Btw, thread about that was nuked on 3dr forums.



Yeah, and fuck you too.

WTF? I didn't say nothing to you dude, take it easy.

[Lead]

I wouldn't worry too much about what Lotan was saying, he was probably just in so many words just telling you to eat a cock.

[hackmed]

crunchysuperman, on Mar 15 2009, 02:55 PM, said:

I still say they started over again in '05.

http://www.shacknews...n.x?id=15829697

Quote

The game has not been one continuous game worked on. It's probably re-started 3+ times due to various issues. The current (and last) version is 2004-ish. As for game length we should be similar to competitive games in our genre.

However what i find odd is the "ish". Is the latest version 2004 or not?

[crunchysuperman]

^ I'm well aware of that quote. It still doesn't change my opinion.

[hackmed]

crunchysuperman, on Mar 18 2009, 03:10 PM, said:

^ I'm well aware of that quote. It still doesn't change my opinion.

Wouldn't surprise me if you were right, seems odd that he would say "2004-ish", if it really was 2004 why wouldn't he just say it was 2004. However im probably over analyzing it

[Kathy]

At first, he was saying 2002.

[Kristian Joensen]

George very often uses approximate language and expressions like "or so".

As far as the restart goes, it is mentioned once or twice in here even though I haven't started on the status section yet.

[crunchysuperman]

Well, today is 15 months to the day since the teaser was released.

Happy fucking anniversary.

[Psyrgery]

crunchysuperman, on Mar 19 2009, 09:07 PM, said:

Well, today is 15 months to the day since the teaser was released.

Happy fucking anniversary.

And counting...

LadiesAndGentlemen at 3DR's Forums said that Scott Millers had stated in an interview that there wouldn't any big promises this year.

Seriosly THIS YEAR MUST BE THE ONE. Fuck with George and his Cutting is shipping crap.

ENOUGH WITH THAT FUCKING CRAP

[Kristian Joensen]

"LadiesAndGentlemen at 3DR's Forums said that Scott Millers had stated in an interview that there wouldn't any big promises this year."

Quote/Source/Link?

Edit:

Found it myself.

[trackit]

Muhahahahaha

[Kathy]

Let's summarize then.

Teaser(12/2007):

"After seeing the teaser we thought it was something we should share with all of you and while it's just a teaser, rest assured more is coming." - GB

Gameplay from Jace Hall(06/2008):

- so does this video count as "stay tuned" material?
- Not really. It was kind of random. - GB

Duke 3d XBLA screens(09/2008):

"The only reason we put the shots in the game was because we thought it would be a cool surprise." - GB


Right now is 03/2009.

[Kathy]

Scott Miller's interview. Haven't watched yet.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1257607

Jump to the 7th minute.

OK. The info about DNF was on 10-11 minute. I haven't heard Miller saying that DNF isn't coming in 2009. He said about the tunnel blah-blah-blah. The guy even asked Miller "Is DNF coming in 2009?" and Miller didn't answer.

[trackit]

Quote

About this video

The latest gaming technology news and life extension tips

Now is this coinsidence that they talk about DNF and life extention on the same broadcast? No shit we need life extension if we want to see DNF some day.

[Kristian Joensen]

He said on Shacknews that he has recently been elected to the board of directors of the Immortality Institute. I knew he was a health freak but DAMN!!

[trackit]

we know what this means, dont we... they are preparing for extra 100 years of DNF development?

[Yatta]

Trackit: LOL

I wonder if there'll be anything for April 1st. If not, FUCK I WILL BE ANNOYED.

[Jobi-Wan Kenobi]

Yatta, on Mar 20 2009, 12:53 AM, said:

Trackit: LOL

I wonder if there'll be anything for April 1st. If not, FUCK I WILL BE ANNOYED.

will you be annoyed if its only a joke? I bet I will be fucking annoyed it its a joke, like last year!

[Yatta]

Yes, last year it was a stupid pig drawing. Very lame.

[Kristian Joensen]

trackit, on Mar 19 2009, 11:10 PM, said:

we know what this means, dont we... they are preparing for extra 100 years of DNF development?

100 years? Why so modest? Try 10000 years

[Kathy]

It always could be worse.

http://www.3drealms....em_fore_15.html

[Lead]

They don't answer any questions about the release date and when it might be. Asking if it will or will not be out in 2009 or any other given year falls into that category, so it is no surprise that he chose not to answer and doesn't really mean anything at all.

[Sinisterambo]

This game is fucked and won't be released ever it seems. Just last month I posted how optimistic I was it was due to be out and now I just feel all negative about it, its not coming and we know it