[LaughingMan008]

So, I was wondering if anyone here knew anything about the status of the Hail to the King Edition. It was supposed to come out on Android sometime last year. Hopefully with a proper PC release to follow. Its got all the expansion packs and more. Like the PS1 episode and even the N64 version in it. I'm sure most of the people here have heard of it, and was wondering if anyone knew anything.

Regardless, thanks for reading my dumb question.

[HiPolyBash]

http://techraptor.ne...box-vs-gobeille

[deuxsonic]

It's still coming. Always bet on Duke.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

LOL the guy in the comments who turns the discussion over Randy Pitchford into a stupid argument about Donald Trump.

deuxsonic, on 01 June 2016 - 02:15 AM, said:

It's still coming. Always bet on Duke.

Sorry, I made the "don't come" bet when Duke Nukem Forever went on pre-release and I'm somewhat glad that I did.

[LaughingMan008]

LOL
Weelll.....
I don't think Duke is as safe a bet as he used to be. For that matter, neither is Gearbox. Thank you for the link. Nice to know what is going on. I actually feel kind of stupid, not guessing it had turned into a pissing contest between the dev and Randy Pitchford. That's just sort of what happens with this IP these days, isn't it?

[Matthew]

HiPolyBash, on 31 May 2016 - 09:45 PM, said:

http://techraptor.ne...box-vs-gobeille

Wow, reading through that, i came to one conclusion:

Randy Pitchford is a complete asshole. 3DR selling the rights to Gearbox was the worst mistake they made. They don't deserve to have the rights. It's like he's trying to be Clinton-level evil.

[icecoldduke]

Matthew, on 01 June 2016 - 04:29 PM, said:

3DR selling the rights to Gearbox was the worst mistake they made.

3dr was broke at the time. The publisher wanted the game finished, and George and Scott were screwed because of bad project management. Remember the bad project management issue had nothing to with Gearbox, that was all 3dr. Wether or not "Gearbox deserves to have the IP" is irrelevant, they bailed out 3dr, and now here we are.

[Kathy]

I'm not sure, but I don't think publisher was much of a problem. Some people wanted the game finished and some were willing to buy the IP.

[icecoldduke]

Kathy, on 01 June 2016 - 04:51 PM, said:

I'm not sure, but I don't think publisher was much of a problem. Some people wanted the game finished and some were willing to buy the IP.

You are very wrong. When a studio hasn't passed a milestone in say 4+ years, and the project lead, who is the studio head, comes to you and begs for more money...the response is...fuck off, and finish the game .

[Kathy]

What milestone? I'm saying that publisher wasn't in position to demand anything since they weren't funding anything.
Although, I don't remember, if 3dr's asking for funding in 2009 was the first time they did so.

[icecoldduke]

Kathy, on 01 June 2016 - 05:33 PM, said:

What milestone? I'm saying that publisher wasn't in position to demand anything since they weren't funding anything.
Although, I don't remember, if 3dr's asking for funding in 2009 was the first time they did so.

So I'm reading this:

Quote

While the game neared completion, the funding began to dry up. Having spent more than $20 million of their own money, Broussard and Miller asked Take-Two for $6 million to complete the game. According to Broussard and Miller, Take-Two initially agreed, but then only offered $2.5 million. Take-Two maintained that they offered $2.5 million up front and another $2.5 million on completion. Broussard rejected the counteroffer, and on May 6, 2009, suspended all development.

From: http://dukenukem.wik...i/History_(DNF)

No way they only spent $20 million on 10+ years of development. Including engine licensing rights from two different studios, no way. Why else would they want a publisher, if not for money . Does anyone know when Take-two got publishing rights for DNF?

[HiPolyBash]

It probably would have been better if Gearbox actually completed Duke Nukem Forever as intended instead of cobbling together what was there, throwing it out into the wild, and butchering out what wasn't finished and selling it at DLC and lying directly to the public and saying what they were releasing was 3D Realms vision.

Funny how about half of this appears in the game, parts of it in the DLC, and some of it not at all eh..

Quote

Does anyone know when Take-two got publishing rights for DNF?

http://legacy.3dreal...kefindsgod.html

Quote

Duke Nukem Forever is being developed by 3D Realms and will be released by Gathering of Developers in the second half of 2001.

Taking place in and around Las Vegas, Duke Nukem Forever is the latest game in the incredibly popular Duke Nukem series and will feature Duke's infamous off-the-wall wisecracks. Using Epic Games' Unreal engine, Duke Nukem Forever strongly pushes the limits of gaming and gameplay for the first-person action genre, establishing new standards in interactivity, variety and pure fun. In keeping with the cinematic aspirations of 3D Realms, the game will be one of the first to support wide screen format and Dolby Digital surround sound.

[Fox]

IMHO that's wishful thinking. Gearbox haven't change everything about the game. They just completed what was there already. For the DLC they just used material that was in the cutting room floor. If anything it shows Gearbox had no idea how to produce new material for DNF.

[deuxsonic]

HiPolyBash, on 01 June 2016 - 05:48 PM, said:

It probably would have been better if Gearbox actually completed Duke Nukem Forever as intended instead of cobbling together what was there, throwing it out into the wild, and butchering out what wasn't finished and selling it at DLC and lying directly to the public and saying what they were releasing was 3D Realms vision.

http://dukenukem.wik.../Triptych_Games

According to this page, this went down differently:

"When legendary studio 3DR shut down development on Duke Nukem Forever in May of 2009, designer David Riegel saw a way to finish the game with a dedicated skeleton crew. Pitching an aggressive schedule and a solid plan to 3D Realms owners, Triptych Games was formed to resume development on the project in July of 2009. A ragtag team of 3D Realms veterans and top-industry professionals came together at Triptych for a crazy adventure and a grueling 6-month crunch.

Inheriting a game in bits and pieces, the team had their work cut out for them. Building the narrative script, dialog, NPC behavior, music, and a great deal of content from the ground up, the team worked around the clock out of a modest house in Dallas, TX, 6 to 7 days a week for just over 6 months. Work began at 8:30AM, and the last person usually left between 11PM and midnight. There were artists in the kitchen, desks in the master bedroom, hundreds of feet of cat5 cable, and switches taped to the walls. Circuits were so precariously balanced that everyone was limited to one monitor, and once the main breaker was tripped due to a teapot.

With a superb team of top talent, a non-existant budget, and impossible time table, Triptych successfully delivered a content complete PC version of the game to 3DR in January of 2009. Shortly after when rights to the game were transferred, Triptych was contracted by Gearbox to continue leading creative development and to assist with console versions of the game. The version we brought to Gearbox in February of 2010 is largely the version that was delivered to retail customers in June 2011."

This supports what Fox is saying about the DLC being things that were cut to get the game done. George Broussard seemingly acknowledged this himself but I don't have the article on hand.

[HiPolyBash]

Well that seems like some sort of fanatical spin on what really happened. Realistically no one is going to come out and say 'it was a shit show, we just threw together what was done, hastily wrote a narrative, and let Gearbox step in and polish it'

Considering images of the DLC levels existed before the DLC was even announced, George Broussard confirmed that some of the content in the DLC was his favorite stuff, Jay Brushwood came out and said the game that was released barely resembled what was being worked on, and so forth I'd say this is just more spin on the reality of the situation.

3D Realms internal gold date for Duke Nukem Forever was April 1st, 2010 and they were making progress toward reaching that goal with the hiring of Brian Hook as producer who helped put together a cohesive design and goals to reach. The final single player content that Triptych worked on was completed in November 2009 out of the most complete elements of what remained after 3D Realms released their staff in May. That's the reality of it.

If Gearbox had actually come in and said 'we'll finish the game' the narrative wouldn't have been hastily written by two women, the game would actually made some sort of sense, and all the cut DLC content would have been part of the base game.

Instead of a completed game to the design documents and actual vision being released we got a polished alpha from a skeleton team working for free that Gearbox picked up, polished, contracted the multiplayer component to an external party and released.

Five years down the road it hardly matters but it's just yet another big pile of bullshit Pitchford threw to the public in his typical fashion of lying to everyone. It's entirely pointless to even bother talking about now. I doubt the game was ever going to be great following the troubled development that dragged on for over a decade but if Gearbox had actually picked up the team and completed it properly maybe it would have been better than what we got.

Gearbox owns the IP and anything coming from them in future is going to be complete horse shit. The best thing they could do is port the old console titles to PC and modern platforms, support the community by allowing fan games to be created and let some external developer not led by an asshat make use of the IP.

Citations:

Gold date was scheduled for April 1st, 2010

DLC is cut levels

Jay Brushwood talking about the game

Narrative written by women

Quote

So as Kristen kind of alluded to, one of the fun facts about the game is that the narrative is actually written primarily by two women. Valeta Wensloff and Kristen herself and by myself and some of the rest of the team members too. So that’s really kind of a fun fact.

I could go on but anything else that confirms what I've written above is easy to find on Google if you look hard enough.

[Kathy]

icecoldduke, on 01 June 2016 - 05:38 PM, said:

So I'm reading this:


From: http://dukenukem.wik...i/History_(DNF)

No way they only spent $20 million on 10+ years of development. Including engine licensing rights from two different studios, no way. Why else would they want a publisher, if not for money . Does anyone know when Take-two got publishing rights for DNF?

They wanted publisher because they weren't in capacity to do so(agreement was from the 90s, when without publisher you couldn't properly release a game). And your quote confirms Take-Two haven't funded shit. GoD bought rights for publishing and Take Two gobbled that up with them.

[----]

Regarding 2k:

The current situation reminds me of Midway (I also refer to the "if 3DR gets back the DN rights-thread" where Battleborn is mentioned).

Midway forced EPIC to throw out a half finished UT3, because Midway needed money. UT3 then ended up against COD4 (same day of release). A few months later Midway was no more.

Why the hell would 2k release Battleborn against Overwatch. That is either stupid or desperate.

[Tea Monster]

All the stuff post 2009 is damage limitation and salvage efforts.

The people at the original 3DRealms should have got their fingers out of their asses, stopped spending the day playing WoW, or whatever they were doing for a decade, and actually got the god-damn game done like they were supposed to. If that had happened, then none of the aforementioned shenanigans and BS would be an issue.

[LaughingMan008]

Wow. This certainly started a conversation. I have actually followed a lot of the details behind the collapse of 3D Realms and such for quite a while, while Duke Nukem Forever was coming out and all these things happened. And yeah, there's a whole lot to the story. But here's what I, personally, have taken away from the situation, and what I believe:

1. Randy Pitchford is an asshole. And a shyster. It's well known by now that he's an asshole. For numerous reasons. BUT, he didn't actually do anything wrong with Duke Nukem Forever. He wanted to give 3D Realms the ability to actually put the game out as they intended it to be, and he did that by giving them money in exchange for future rights. Some might say that's exploitative, but that's business. And it wouldn't have happened if not for the fact that....

2. 3D Realms were incompetent. They got treated way better, and got more out of it all than they deserved. I have discussed this before, and what some people seem to fail to realize, is the last game that 3D Realms created themselves, was Shadow Warrior. Back in 97. Every other game they were involved with after that, they outsourced to other people when they couldn't get it done. Including Prey, which was in development for 10 years before they shipped it off to Human Head, who finished it in 10 months. It is a MIRACLE that they got Duke Nukem Forever done, even with Gearbox's money.

3. I feel compelled to mention this bit because of a comment in this thread. The whole thing about the game being written by 2 women. Look, I am NOT some SJW person, by far. Trust me on that. I could not be farther away from that annoying crowd, but I don't think they were a problem. Duke Nukem Forever was text book Duke Nukem, story wise. Whoever those 2 women were, they got it, and what Duke Nukem was about. Sadly, that is the problem. Duke Nukem is a parody of a character. So the whole story and game treating him like the greatest thing since sliced bread, it didn't really ring true to me. I remember one Yahtzee Croshaw, a semi popular video game reviewer who also writes comedy books and the like, actually auditioned for the role of script writer on Duke Nukem Forever. He created a script that was very video game parody, and cast Duke as a clueless buffoon. George said "Oh no, that's not what this is about. Duke Nukem is cool and always the smart one and its all the stupid things that happen around him." Yahtzee personally could not disagree more with what a Duke Nukem story should be about, and I agree with him. Putting the char on a pedestal and making him this almost Mary Sue quite figure isn't interesting at all. There's a reason Duke Nukem 3D worked so much better. Less story. Less places for it to slow down and just wallow in hero worship. More just funny quips and action.

Personally, I really like Duke Nukem as a character. I think he's cool. But he's also a dumbass. That's WHY I like him. He doesn't have to be perfect for me to like him. In fact, being perfect makes him less interesting. He's a big dumb action hero guy, he should act like one. For all the references and tropes the series likes to twist around and play with, they leave the biggest one untouched. They don't wallow is wacky ENOUGH.

But these are just my two, or three, or maybe four cents on the franchise as a whole. I just want to finally be able to play the " Plug 'n' Pray" on a computer, that's why I'm here.

[MusicallyInspired]

LaughingMan008, on 02 June 2016 - 06:47 AM, said:

Duke Nukem Forever was text book Duke Nukem, story wise. Whoever those 2 women were, they got it, and what Duke Nukem was about.

Noooooooooooo.

[icecoldduke]

Kathy, on 02 June 2016 - 12:30 AM, said:

They wanted publisher because they weren't in capacity to do so(agreement was from the 90s, when without publisher you couldn't properly release a game).

Do you have evidence? Why did they switch to Take two from GT Interactive?

deuxsonic, on 02 June 2016 - 12:09 AM, said:

Inheriting a game in bits and pieces, the team had their work cut out for them. Building the narrative script, dialog, NPC behavior, music, and a great deal of content from the ground up.

They should have ditched all the story and went with Doom 2016 style. It took id what 2 years to make the Doom 2016 reboot? If they just went that route in 2009, then its possible the ip would still be with 3dr. Games that have story cost a shit ton to make and players just skip through all of the cinematics anyway. Ditch the narrative script, ditch the npc dialog(except for duke talk), take the assets you have already made, and design a fun set of levels.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yes, I think we all agree that's what they should have done. But they didn't. Unfortunately, they really believed in the direction they were headed.

Really, I don't mind it. I love the Half-Life 2 approach. It just wasn't done as well and apparently everyone else is done with that style of gameplay. Maybe that's why we haven't seen HL3 yet...

[mechmorphix616]

A lot of conflicting views here. Some that GBX botched "3DR's vision" by simply patching up Triptych's results without care to narrative, and others that they should have simply abandoned narrative altogether... which would have been contrary to 3DR's vision, since DNF was intended to have significant plot elements from early on. Charlie Wiederhold has shared plenty of concepts on this board regarding this.

Personally I think all of this counterfactual speculation is wishful thinking. It's public knowledge that the level design and gameplay mechanics were botched down as part of the "cutting is shipping" policy in the middle of the 2007 build's development cycle. The 2009 screenshots and videos show the game in a state not radically different from the final product, though with Vegas levels at night time, a better Duke model and more consistent blood decals.

But by and large, the Modern Military Shooter tropes were all in place. Furthermore, the "narrative" hardly made the game better. It was simply more artificial padding along with the bad physics puzzles and tight area crawling that made DNF such a frustrating experience. We have absolutely no idea whether adding the cut DLC in the main campaign would have made the game more tolerable. Given the horrific pacing the rest of the thing had, it might not have. The DLC *in isolation* felt better, but that's simply because it was a distilled and remapped version of the main campaign with far less gimmicks to artificially extend its length.

Oh, and Allen Blum was in this whole thing from the start. He was just about the only person who would have known what 3DR's vision was. Yet he appears to have greenlit many of the design decisions leading up to the final game, per the linked podcast interview above.

Yeah, 3DR's vision just wasn't that good by the end.

[----]

LaughingMan008, on 02 June 2016 - 06:47 AM, said:

Whoever those 2 women were, they got it, and what Duke Nukem was about..

To me they were the opposite of what Duke Nukem is about.

They were a complete disaster. The Duke in DN3D wouldn't even touch something like the Holsom Twins (or whatever they are called) with a three months old fish.

[HiPolyBash]

icecoldduke, on 02 June 2016 - 06:52 AM, said:

They should have ditched all the story and went with Doom 2016 style. It took id what 2 years to make the Doom 2016 reboot? If they just went that route in 2009, then its possible the ip would still be with 3dr. Games that have story cost a shit ton to make and players just skip through all of the cinematics anyway. Ditch the narrative script, ditch the npc dialog(except for duke talk), take the assets you have already made, and design a fun set of levels.

I absolutely loved the latest Doom game and part of the reason why is that it was light on story..it was there but it was never forced but having said that games like Bioshock and Max Payne wouldn't be nearly as well received, respected, and enjoyed if they did not have brilliant stories and dialogue accompanying them. It all depends on the sort of game it is.

The issue with the released version of Forever as far as story and narrative goes is that in its rushed state it was so obviously stitched together and had rather untalented people write around it so it sort of made sense...the result of this is absolutely atrocious dialogue that isn't witty, funny, or at all interesting and often comes across as insanely stupid and pointless. I think if Gearbox had actually made the effort to complete the game as intended at the very least every line of dialogue from every character in the game wouldn't have come off as pants on head retarded.

The game in its final state demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding as to what the character of Duke Nukem is supposed to be. He isn't supposed to be a straight up parody, he's supposed to be a wise cracking, alien killing bad ass. In Forever they try to spin the character in to straight up comedy and parody when he's always been bad-ass with a bit of wit in a world with touches of humor not a big flashing sign pointing at something saying 'LOOK AT THIS AND LAUGH'. For all the missteps that Duke Forever took under George Broussards guidance this is one thing that he clearly understood given the mentions in the Jay Brushwood interview where they talk about George saying 'he's not supposed to be funny, he's supposed to be badass' and the old footage of the DNF Launch Party panel where everyone is sort of laughing at George saying that it's silly he thinks Duke is supposed to be a more serious character.

To put it in a few words a Duke game with a story can work it's just the story and the forced cutscenes in the final version of Duke Forever were awful, the dialogue was shit, the story in the game is pointless overall and it was just boring poor attempts at humour that slowed the game down to a crawl. If you want to imagine a Duke game with a cool story that would work go watch the 2001 E3 trailer and imagine that as a game. That's something that would work. I would never want a Duke game with constant cutscenes breaking up missions but a level of context with cool badass characters communicating what's happening in the world and a story that's giving purpose to the players actions would be nice. It's all about balance. On one hand you don't want story being slammed into your face constantly in a way that completely halts the game but on the other hand you don't really want a completely pointless romp through levels with no real context. I think Prey did it well. There were moments of story and a handful of cut scenes but it very rarely drifted into the space of being invasive in a way that really killed the pacing and the gameplay.

Story in action FPS games can work, it just has to be done well and not forced down your throat constantly. See: Wolfenstein The New Order, Shadow Warrior (2011), Prey, Doom (2016), and so on...it all depends on the type of game, the level of story that is being aimed for and the way it's delivered. Wolfenstein The New Order is one of my favorite examples of striking a fantastic balance between gameplay and story. The gameplay is no holds bars, sprinting around levels dual wielding automatic shotguns massacring everyone but then the story and cutscenes deliver a surprisingly brilliant story. It's well rounded for what it is. The latest Doom game although light on story also handles its overall narrative extremely well. There's less than a dozen moments in the game that halt the game specifically for story with the majority of the story being delivered through elements throughout the environment in the game and the basic story being extremely brief and explained in a way that doesn't slow down the game.

[MetHy]

LaughingMan008, on 02 June 2016 - 06:47 AM, said:

3. I feel compelled to mention this bit because of a comment in this thread. The whole thing about the game being written by 2 women. Look, I am NOT some SJW person, by far. Trust me on that. I could not be farther away from that annoying crowd, but I don't think they were a problem. Duke Nukem Forever was text book Duke Nukem, story wise. Whoever those 2 women were, they got it, and what Duke Nukem was about. Sadly, that is the problem. Duke Nukem is a parody of a character. So the whole story and game treating him like the greatest thing since sliced bread, it didn't really ring true to me. I remember one Yahtzee Croshaw, a semi popular video game reviewer who also writes comedy books and the like, actually auditioned for the role of script writer on Duke Nukem Forever. He created a script that was very video game parody, and cast Duke as a clueless buffoon. George said "Oh no, that's not what this is about. Duke Nukem is cool and always the smart one and its all the stupid things that happen around him." Yahtzee personally could not disagree more with what a Duke Nukem story should be about, and I agree with him. Putting the char on a pedestal and making him this almost Mary Sue quite figure isn't interesting at all. There's a reason Duke Nukem 3D worked so much better. Less story. Less places for it to slow down and just wallow in hero worship. More just funny quips and action.

I thought there was nothing wrong with DNF's story. It makes sense after DN3D's events, and there still is parody and it's never taken first degree serious, and I never thought it was a burden for gameplay.

A great proof that the story doesn't take itself seriously with the whole "put Duke on a pedestal" thing is that the forklift section does not feel out of place with the story and tone. I mean come on, forklits are fucking ridiculous, but in DNF, it fits perfectly. In Alone In The Dark, which took its story very seriously, the forklift was out of place. Forklifts don't lie.

Noone here will tell you he sees Duke as a clueless buffoon. The Duke Nukem tone is somewhere between serious action movie hero badass, and parody, but if you go too far on whichever side of the line, you're out of tone, and that Yahtzee script certainly sounds like it is; and I honestly doubt George Broussard pictured Duke 100% first degree serious either. I feel like this must be some exageration on Yahtzee's part because for him it's probably easier to claim that the creator of Duke doesn't get Duke, rather than to admit he was out of tone.

So you understand my point of view on the "Duke Nukem tone done right", to me it's close to Ash VS Evil Dead and to the comic book series Brit (at least for the first 2 volumes, up until the series went full comic book super hero shitfest).

[Kathy]

icecoldduke, on 02 June 2016 - 06:52 AM, said:

Do you have evidence? Why did they switch to Take two from GT Interactive?

Evidence to what? They switched to GoD because GT was being bought.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

LaughingMan008, on 02 June 2016 - 06:47 AM, said:

Whoever those 2 women were, they got it, and what Duke Nukem was about. Sadly, that is the problem. Duke Nukem is a parody of a character. So the whole story and game treating him like the greatest thing since sliced bread, it didn't really ring true to me.

Was this quote from an otherwise well-written post really worth downvoting the post twice over? Seriously, I've seen worse content on here that goes otherwise unnoticed.

I'm also not going to make any sort of comment regarding the gender of the writers of DNF (I'm not one to resort to ad hominem attacks, you asshole ), but as far as the game being well-written? No, just... no.

[Kathy]

fuegerstef, on 02 June 2016 - 07:25 AM, said:

They were a complete disaster. The Duke in DN3D wouldn't even touch something like the Holsom Twins (or whatever they are called) with a three months old fish.

He wouldn't, but the general perception of Duke Nukem, I think, changed through the years and he was presented as a twisted parody of his former self. It wasn't good, but it was expected. He was the Duke Nukem of "balls of steel" fame and "that game with strippers". Giving him a better personality would have required more time, skill and proper vision, which you probably couldn't have had by working from home with handful of people and family members serving as writers for free.

[HiPolyBash]

MetHy, on 02 June 2016 - 07:50 AM, said:

The Duke Nukem tone is somewhere between serious action movie hero badass, and parody, but if you go too far on whichever side of the line, you're out of tone, and that Yahtzee script certainly sounds like it is; and I honestly doubt George Broussard pictured Duke 100% first degree serious either.

So you understand my point of view on the "Duke Nukem tone done right", to me it's close to Ash VS Evil Dead and to the comic book series Brit (at least for the first 2 volumes, up until the series went full comic book super hero shitfest).

This basically puts it perfectly. Gotta maintain the equilibrium. Duke Forever went waaaaaaaaaaaaay too far into parody/comedy territory.