[Psyrgery]

crunchysuperman, on Jan 8 2009, 09:56 PM, said:

It needs to be this year.

That's a damn good sentence, which resumes the status of a legend itself. All people, believers, non-believers, followers or non-followers, lovers and haters are pending on what happens this year.

I think DNF has never got such attention since the last trailer in 2001.

I mean, I've searched all over the net and the blogs, main websites about videogames and most important gaming news sites have all the "media" (look at the quotes) from the last year, including the teaser, and the bet is there.

The people are aware of it, and they know it.

They are betting for a 2009 release for DNF, and they are willing for it, even if they love it or they hate it.

It's just the curiosity, or the need to see "a legend" sort of speaking, about to reach its end.

Just my point of view.

They better not screw it again this time, because it will be completely lost.

[Kathy]

Well, yes. There was a build-up. Maybe it's going overtime, but they still have the awareness.

I mean, come on. They released teaser in 2007. I don't think ANYONE on 3dr forums, who knows and understands DNF's blackout of media thought that DNF won't be out at least in 2009.

[rockmx8]

I sure Hope and Pray George is right... He better show us substantial media for DNF already, and please let this truly be the Goldmine year for DNF. I can't wait for the demo and game finally this year most likely, it seems it will make it this year afterall.

[Montykoro]

Mmmm August or september trailer...Game MAYBE in December...

[Lead]

kaisersoze, on Jan 8 2009, 11:17 AM, said:

So should we be expecting anything this first quarter from 3drealms? The DBJ Miller quote saying he thinks they'd miss the end of 08 by a "few months" would give us a rough 1st quarter 09 completion for the game. So we have between now and March/April for the game to be finished based on Scott's estimate.

Dude wasn't that estimate to have it DONE by end of year and maybe miss it by a few months?

If they were still on track for having it DONE a few months after the new year, they'd be showing stuff by now. I really doubt they'd just shit suddenly shit the game out with only a brief period of time before its in stores. Many games seem to start showing stuff 6 months to a year before release.

[Yatta]

Yeah, I'm sure they fucked up again. At least we're used to it by now.

[peoplessi]

If that's the case, then: WTF?

[Echo Black]

I think DNF will come out at the end of 2009. Hype throughout the year and a release on the fourth quarter. *says the same thing next year*

But seriously, I ain't kidding. I think Q4 2009 is it. Perhaps earlier but I doubt it. I think the "official" hype period will be somewhat long.


---

[zchri9]

I really hope it comes out this year.

If 3D Realms released a Demo or Pre-Release Demo after you had finished the demo level(s) it should come up with the words 'When It's Done' =D

[DavoX]

Do you guys still believe that the dallas journal posted scott's comments without his approval? come on, you can't be that naive.

[peoplessi]

No, but things change.

[Kristian Joensen]

trackit, on Jan 5 2009, 05:10 PM, said:

i think he meant not only departures, but the fact, that George said in 2005 that DNF comes along nicely and they could ship with what they have and it would be a decent game, and now, 3,5 years later we have still nothing. So restart later in 2005 sounds quite reasonable.

Expect of course George didn't say that. You guys are unbelievable. There is not a single shred of evidence of another restart. Yet you guys are absolutely 100% certain that there was another one and invent completely evidence less ad-hoc hypothesis to explain gross deficiencies with your "obvious" theories.

[exaggeration/hyperbole]Frankly speaking the Flat Earth Society can muster a heck of alot of more evidence for their nonsense than you guys can.[/exaggeration/hyperbole].


OBVIOUSLY another restart can be the only cause(and accrording to some effect, will you make up your minds?) of mass departures. NOTHING else, NO. Management issues? NO they cannot EVER create mass depatures like that. Hiring lots of noobs considerably slowing them down(As SPECIFICALLY mentioned by both Scott and Charlie) cannot in ANY way contribute to departures, NO OBVIOUSLY that is TOTALLY impossible. Always striving to make the perfect game can NOT in any way, shape or form, directly or indirectly even CONTRIBUTE to causing mass departures. NOOOO. That is IMPOSSIBLE

ONLY another restart can EVER be the one and only cause that in any way shape or form, directly or indirectly can ever even contribute to a mass departure at 3D Realms. Obviously game development and especially 3D Realms are hyper simple things, with hyper simple universal explanation(based on nothing). Obviously without a restart people will stay forever and with a restart everyone will leave immediately.

That is the one, only and sole factor that governs the overall stability of the work force at 3D Realms. Nothing else every plays a role, period. That is 100% certain and obvious and you have to be outright stupid not to see that, or else a crazy fanboy. OBVIOUSLY.

Development can grind to an utter halt, but so long as nothing gets thrown out, everybody will stay. Development grinding to an halt CANNOT cause mass departures, again this is OBVIOUS to everyone. It doesn't matter if 0 MB get added to the game directory on a monthly basis so long as 0 MB get thrown out.

On other hand you can produce 2 GB of content on a monthly basis and throw out 100 MB/month and that will surely, OBVIOUSLY and certainly cause mass departures.

You got to be CRAZY to think that work environment, productivity, organizational structures, etc have ANY impact on people leaving or staying. Development could have grind to a halt while everyone engaged in intense physical combat at the office on a daily basis but as a long as they didn't restart that would not EVER cause mass departures. Heck George could MURDER half the staff and that would NOT cause the other half or a substantial part of it to leave. That is OBVIOUS.

[crunchysuperman]

Calm down, man. All ANY OF US can do is speculate.

[Micki!]

That's his point i think... People like to treat their speculations as proof, and in some cases even logical facts...

I said "people" in a genereal sense, many say all this stuff he's referng to, i know, i've experienced people around other website pulling crap outta their asses, thinking it meant something...

[Echo Black]

Kristian Joensen, on Jan 10 2009, 08:56 PM, said:

WORDS

Jesus, what the fuck is your problem, man? Calm down. No need to get emotional (eight paragraphs!) just because people are making up their own explanations for the tardiness of DNF. What's the problem with it? It's a guess, a hypothesis, you can think it's correct but you will only get to know for sure when push comes to shove. Not to mention there's nothing else to go on about, only when more about the game is discussed we'll know what happened for sure.

Don't let this site become like the 3DR Forum, where your thread gets locked for "speculating". Speculating is all we can do. Is it really that bad that some people take their conclusions as fact?


---

[DavoX]

Echo Black, on Jan 11 2009, 01:22 AM, said:

Is it really that bad that some people take their conclusions as fact?
---

Yes.

[Kathy]

Kristian, you've missed the point completely.

Not the restart led to mass departures. Mass departures most likely led to semi-restart. And OBVIOUSLY mass departures at least led to some slowing down in making of the game.

[Montykoro]

Read Kristian Joensen post... all

And still have my theory of: Another restart...sorry but they had TECH complete... and

Quote

06/26/05 03:11 PM

Alpha requires that all levels be in-game and nearing completion, nearing alpha?

I think there are two levels we haven't started yet. And some others are in pretty advanced states, so it mostly balances out. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

In 05!!!! now 26/06/08 they have 3 years of "Working" C'mon 3 years?

Tech complete-2lvs+3years=stay tuned? LOL...

[Kristian Joensen]

He was saying that those two levels where not started at all. He doesn't say anything about the status of the rest of the levels, except that SOME of them are in pretty advanced states. For all we know there could be several levels in pretty darn early states as well. What he is describing there isn't really an advanced state of development at all. In fact there is some evidence that there might have been one or more levels started from the ground up shortly before that quote (Since then level designer Neil Alphonso talked about "ground up" work back in March 2005(and problems still "lingering on")).

What some people seem to forget is that while the restart back in 2002/2003 got rid of technology as a bottleneck there is much more to a game than technology and there is some content creation bottlenecks since then, like these two quotes:

Quote

We are probably still attempting too much with too few people

- George Broussard, March 15th, 2005.

Quote

Yes, in hindsight, writing our own engine would have been the way to go, but that wasn't an option once we were so deep into things. We basically stepped back in early 2002, said "This just isn't going to work or be what we want" and spent most of 2002 re-writing things to get us where we needed to be, once and for all. Most of 2003 was spent on content creation and hring new people. Once we were able to make progress, content creation bottlenecks emerged that needed to be dealt with. So, it's been an interesting journey, but one I do not recommend be repeated, by anyone, ever Haha...

- George Broussard, January 7th, 2004.

So I think it wrong to assume that everything was fine after the restart just because they got rid of the tech bottleneck.

Found the Neil Alphonso quote I was talking about above:

"Work has been good the last few months, I've gotten to do some more ground-up work rather than polish and I think it's some of the stronger work I've done in my career so far. The issues that have plagued the production still linger around a bit to be sure, but we're still moving forward well." - Neil Alphonso, March 2005.

[Nihilanth]

Their management must be a total disaster. The game is over 6 years in the making and there's still too early for 3DR to start showing it. And even when they do, it's gonna be 3-6 or even more months of PR period until the actual release. It's gonna be at least around 7 years of development. I mean, seriously, 7 freaking years. What kind of game takes 7 years?

[Kathy]

Yeah. We can justify 1997-2002 years in development, the project was scraped because they were not doing it right, blah-blah-blah.
So, now they supposed to be on the right track since 2002. And they're still doing it really slow.

1997 - 2002 - 5 years, two scraped builds.
2002 - ????? - supposedly one build

[Havoc 05]

I kind of like the 2001 look. I don't care if they thought it looked old. I love old games even more so than new ones. I wish they had finished it then.

I know that they had problems early on, but all I want is a sequel to duke 3d, heck, it could even be using the build engine and I wouldn't mind.

[Kristian Joensen]

"So, now they supposed to be on the right track since 2002. And they're still doing it really slow."

Right track? I guess we can sorta say that. But far from without some problems(As seen in my previous post). As far as the second part of your statement. I think we can all pretty much agree that 3DR ARE slow. It is also not that big of mystery why the current incarnation is taking so long given the departures. They certainly slowed them down, don't we all agree on that? Is a restart(or so called semi-restart) the only possible explanation for the depatures? No, certainly not. Yes such a restart would explain the departures but is is not needed there are other possible explanation that don't fly in the face of the evidence. Is a restart(or semi-restart, what ever the heck THAT is supposed to mean?) the online logical consequence of the departures? No. For instance. If you look at the feature list on the UE3 site this very day, it is virtually the same as far as rendering and lighting features goes as it was back in 2004. The little evidence we do have about the sort of content that was produced in 2003-2006 for DNF would suggest that content is fully competitive with modern games. The age of shaders has GREATLY extended the life of engines. Most of the things that current games have over Doom 3(for instance) feature wise is a matter of shaders. Doom 3 even had its feature set pretty much locked back in 2001. Not saying there haven't been HUGE improvements in graphics since then, obviously there has. But most games coming out today have technology going back to 2004 or so.

On the other hand I am sure that we can all agree that the departures had an impact and slowed them down. Which is probably one of the major reasons we haven't seen DNF's current incarnation sooner. No big mystery there, no reason to resort to conspiracy theories.

"What kind of game takes 7 years?"

DNF? It seems? I don't know. But remember, don't assume that everything was perfect just because they got rid of the technology bottleneck. If you read some quotes from the 1998/1999-2001 period you would get glance of how chaotic things where engine wise. So obviously getting rid of those problems was a HUUGE thing for 3DR back in November 2002-January 2003. However from the quote above it seems that for instance 2003 wasn't really as productive as it could have been. It seems to me that solving the tech problems exposed some other underlying, perhaps even more fundamental problems.

[Nihilanth]

Kristian Joensen, on Jan 12 2009, 09:47 AM, said:

"What kind of game takes 7 years?"

DNF? It seems? I don't know. But remember, don't assume that everything was perfect just because they got rid of the technology bottleneck. If you read some quotes from the 1998/1999-2001 period you would get glance of how chaotic things where engine wise. So obviously getting rid of those problems was a HUUGE thing for 3DR back in November 2002-January 2003. However from the quote above it seems that for instance 2003 wasn't really as productive as it could have been. It seems to me that solving the tech problems exposed some other underlying, perhaps even more fundamental problems.

I actually wanted to add something like "Yeah, I know, DNF" as an answer to my own question. But I'm not assuming everything was perfect. I'm actually asuming something is messed up out there. 6 years is already a very long development time. And 7 years, I think I wrote that earlier, I mean stalker took around or a little less than 7 years. But it was stalker meaning inexperienced team with overambitious design in minds, engine upgrade (dx8-dx9), development of the A-Life system and its implementation (huge amount of time has been invested into experimentation with it, cuts, making it work with the story and so on), open world, non-linear design, numerous problems along the way. Far from a standard FPS. And now with DNF, come on, it's nearing stalkers total development time, that is including tech (and GSC created their engine from scratch, including physics, animations [and like I said, upgraded from dx8-dx9 along the way] and so on while 3DR had some base, they reworked the render but they had something to begin with) and there's still nothing. They haven't even started to show the game. What they can possibly be doing?

[Kristian Joensen]

"What they can possibly be doing? "

Apparently using a chainsaw for something? I don't know.

[RVD]

Kristian Joensen, on Jan 12 2009, 11:47 AM, said:

The little evidence we do have about the sort of content that was produced in 2003-2006 for DNF would suggest that content is fully competitive with modern games. The age of shaders has GREATLY extended the life of engines. Most of the things that current games have over Doom 3(for instance) feature wise is a matter of shaders. Doom 3 even had its feature set pretty much locked back in 2001. Not saying there haven't been HUGE improvements in graphics since then, obviously there has. But most games coming out today have technology going back to 2004 or so.

Unfortunately the screenshots released so far show crappy hair, no AA and low poly models, but I hope they're working on that.

[rockmx8]

The game is not going to get restarted, the graphics look fine so far, the game will Rock Hard much more than anything you've seen. Just wait a little more.

[NUKEMDAVE]

I'd expect a trailer soon now that we got confirmation that DNF will ship this year.

[Striker]

Kristian Joensen, on Jan 12 2009, 04:40 PM, said:

"What they can possibly be doing? "

Apparently using a chainsaw for something? I don't know.

What could they be doing?

Making/Polishing/Perfecting a shitload of Content, possibly. Remember the amount of Art / Resources Duke3D Had for it's time? Take that, multiply it by 1000x, and design it for a modern engine, going through every single resource every so often, polishing what you can, throwing away what isn't used, fixing bugs, and so on. That is a lot of work.

Remember George saying the amount of detail goes so far that you can shoot pieces of armor/faceplates off of Enemies? Doing the final tweaks, to perfect this can take a while.

From what I am thinking, DNF will be a big game with a LOT of Art/Content. I honestly believe this process is near completion. I think in the next few months we'll be seeing a bit.

RVD, on Jan 12 2009, 04:59 PM, said:

Unfortunately the screenshots released so far show crappy hair, no AA and low poly models, but I hope they're working on that.

The game isn't even out yet, and you are worried about FUCKING HAIR?! Wow... That is pathetic. Gimme a break. The Lack of AA is a tech limitation, if DNF uses Deferred Rendering like I think it does, that is the reason. Low Poly models are good to keep the FPS Up, It just might be that we'll be seeing a lot of Props and Actors on the screen at once. It's a good assumption, anyway.

"NUKEMDAVE" said:

I'd expect a trailer soon now that we got confirmation that DNF will ship this year. :cool:

Since when did we get confirmation? Yes, it is likely by the looks of things. But this is Far from official confirmation.

[zchri9]

He didnt confirm that it would ship this year, he just hinted it.

I think they are getting close to a release though, since he said they were working on the menu and most of the time the menu is one of the last things worked on.

It isnt confirmed unless he comes out and says "Duke Nukem Forever is shipping this year on xx/xx/09" and of course he hasnt said this. I can't wait till he does though!