[icecoldduke]

Wieder, on 02 June 2016 - 07:35 PM, said:

Depends on your priorities and what you are able to make for yourself out of the situation.

Given everything I know now and hindsight... I'd send quite a few developers I know and respect to 3DR circa 1998-2006.

You have vastly more experience then I do, I can only speak for my 6 or so years in the industry, which by no means compares to your experience. However in my personal experience thus far in the game industry when salary is cut and the delta is replaced with stock options(or royalties)...nothing good comes next .

[Fox]

icecoldduke, on 02 June 2016 - 09:25 AM, said:

That's why you never take royalties in place of a proper salary .

If it's for a big company, then yeah, expect to get screwed. I once read about how James Earl Jones was not paid for Star Wars. One of Lucas companies sued Lucasfilms, and "technically" Star Wars didn't make any money. So Jones didn't get any of royalties.

[MusicallyInspired]

Interesting. And yet he was always happy to come back and reprise his role. Even today.

[Hank]

@ Fox
Below is one another side of the story, from the actor
http://www.celebrity...s-chose-poorly/

[PokeThePower]

icecoldduke, on 02 June 2016 - 08:46 PM, said:

You have vastly more experience then I do, I can only speak for my 6 or so years in the industry, which by no means compares to your experience. However in my personal experience thus far in the game industry when salary is cut and the delta is replaced with stock options(or royalties)...nothing good comes next .

If you are measuring by mobygames/metacritic and only in the immediate moment.

My emphasis was on it depends on your priorities and what you make of the situation. If you can afford to take the risk and make something valuable out of the circumstance even if it doesn't pay off... then it can be a massive win even if you get no royalties. I used the time to become a better coder, designer, producer, etc. I developed relationships with a dozen or so people who almost all eventually settled in at Gearbox and have made a killing after our collective departure from 3DR... which was "collective" because of the relationships we had built while at 3DR.

I had gone 8 years on DNF and then 2 on Aliens when I decided to "get back into design" and was on the job market completely raw with a decade of nothing to show for myself. When interviewing at IW one of the lead designers there had actually had his first gig in the industry working on Wages of Sin (addon for Sin). I was his long distance mentor teaching him SinScript. He mentioned to the leads there "You know Charlie is the one who taught me how to script, right?" and that ended a several hour long debate over whether I was worth the risk. A 10 year old relationship on a "failure" game with some goofy kids working on the addon pack led to the critical jumpstart I needed to get my experience back on track.

I took all the freedom I had to experiment and expand my horizons at 3DR and had it sharpened at IW by being exposed to a level of quality development and thought processes I hadn't experienced up to that point... by a person I had originally taught a decade earlier.

Lots good came from taking those risks... they just don't show up on MetaCritic. But they do show up in the long term options I have professionally... which is why I'm very very happy to hear TX say there is hope of a successful plan and relationship with his current efforts.

There is a guy here at CA that I talk to occasionally about this sort of stuff and my number 1 advice is always to invest in making sure the people working with you today would be excited to hear about you applying somewhere they are a decade later.

Edit: But yes I do agree... if you are literally *only* at a place for the pay or the game title and you are on a low pay for royalties structure... it's probably best to move on if you have legitimate options.

[Kathy]

Fox, on 02 June 2016 - 06:35 PM, said:

They used 3 different engines in the first 8 years.

What was the third engine?

[MetHy]

They also worked on a "FPS sequel to DN3D" using Build, although it was not called DNF yet.

[Kathy]

Or with Q1 engine. But it shouldn't be counted since it was just messing around.

[deuxsonic]

The earliest screenshots are mock-ups done with the first Quake engine while they waited for the Quake 2 code. After some development with the Quake 2 code, they switched to Unreal engine 1. Then they upgraded to 1.5 (the version Unreal Tournament used.) For a while they continued working some engine changes they were getting from Epic into the codebase, like when Unreal Engine 2 (UT2003) became available and likely 2.5 (UT2004) as well. At some point they started doing major rewriting of the engine themselves and according to George in 2009 they had basically replaced the engine with their own code with the exception of UnrealScript and I think some of the network stuff. So now how do you count engine changes?

[Lunick]

Still 3? Quake > Quake 2 > Unreal 1

The game is a heavily modified Unreal Engine 1 game if you can barely call it that.

[Kristian Joensen]

There is no UT2K4 stuff in there: https://forums.duke4...-quotes-thread/

[Lunick]

As far as I can remember, only UnrealED 2.0 (turned into Duke's Enormous Tool) and Static Meshes were used from Unreal Engine 2. They really did make it a mess of their own stuff.

[deuxsonic]

Quake 1 and 2 (collectively id Tech 2) were very similar, and with GLQuake, probably more similar than Unreal Engine 1 and 2 so if all the Unreal stuff goes together then you could say they switched once since they paid id for id Tech 2 and then paid Epic for Unreal. They had some 2.0 stuff in there and then after that it gets murky.

[deuxsonic]

I can virtually assure you we will ship on this tech base and this engine and have no intent of ever upgrading tech again - George Broussard, July 29th, 2004.

LOL

[Kristian Joensen]

Do you know what changes/upgrades they did since then?

From what I can tell going by linkedin recommendations within a year of being hired (IIRC in about August 2006) Brian Lawson had added Xbox 360 support, added multi-threading support, rewritten the animation system and I think he was responsible for adding the terrain rendering system as well. Someone else rewrote the AI system. So yeah, there definitely were some non-trivial changes made, but did they amount to changing the tech base? I don't know.

Edit:

One way to look at it is to say that the game as shipped in 2011 certainly used the same tech base as as the December 2007 teaser which again seems to have used the same tech base as the Duke thumbnail in around January 2007.

[LaughingMan008]

Wow, holy crap, this topic has legs doesn't it? I didn't expect that. And I didn't expect this place to have upvoting and downvoting either. LOL. Amazing, this is a high stakes positing environment! Alright then. Well, despite some not liking what I had to say on certain points, I stand by them. It's no wonder that we have some conflicting views on what/who Duke is. He's not super defined as a character, so we can all read different things into him and view him different ways. I like having that in a character like him. I think it's one reason Doomguy and Gordon Freeman have remained so popular over the years, because you can read so much into them. Even more than you can read into Duke cause they don't talk. But personally, I do see Duke as more of a dumb joke character, but that's me. Obviously Yahtzee saw him that way too. And you can argue up and down about who gets Duke and who doesn't get Duke and what was off and what was not off, but everyone is going to see things in a different way. George and a lot of people here think Duke as a character is a super cool dude. I don't. I think hes kind of a buffoon, but that's why I like him. He's lovable. I like dumb action movie parody. As for the comment about him not touching the Holsom Twins with a ten foot pole...
I really don't get that, because I really don't think he has any standards at all, but again, we've all read different things into him. But I digress on this point. We see him totally different, obviously.

Humor and parody has always been a big part of Duke Nukem, so it's only obvious that they try and take that route with Duke Nukem Forever, from the story perspective. But I think the whole school of.... "here's a reference to a popular thing, isn't that funny?" type of comedy only gets so far. You need to do more than that, and Duke Nukem Forever didn't. It worked in 3D cause there was so much less of it and it was so much more casual. Like seeing the OJ Simpson chase on the TV. You either have to dial it back, and just let it be a casual thing you don't really talk about, or dial it way way up and go into it deep and mine the humor from all the aspects of it that are funny and absurd. I think DNF could have done with being more absurd. Needed more Blood Dragon in it. Either that, or indeed make it just like the new Doom and have the plot be something that is ignored as much possible. I don't know though, if that would work for Duke as much as it worked for Doomguy. That's one of the points in voiced protagonist vs silent protagonist that's kind of hard to figure.

Don't really have anything more to add on the subject of Gearbox and 3D Realms business. The specifics of that whole mess is well known and covered.

Oh, and TerminX, thanks for responding!
I do hope you and Mr. Pitchford are able to work this out, as I'm quite anxious to see and play this collection, especially because of the aforementioned PS1 and N64 content. It looks like an impressive bit of work and I hope you're able to reap some rewards from your hard work.

[MusicallyInspired]

This conversation was going on before you made this thread. One thread was hidden and another one started before yours. You're just giving us a new platform to hold the same conversation.

[TerminX]

MetHy, on 03 June 2016 - 02:35 AM, said:

They also worked on a "FPS sequel to DN3D" using Build, although it was not called DNF yet.

Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I've found zero evidence of it in any of the stuff 3DR sent me.

DNF at the time (late 1996) was a sidescroller, which we have, and there were about 50 voxels made by Dirk Jones (also in late 1996), which we also have, but they were clearly intended for an additional patch to Duke3D and not for any other game. Ken confirmed to me personally years and years ago (in 1998) that there was indeed a Duke Nukem 3D v1.7 patch with voxels and ROR worked on for a short time and then scrapped. I think those voxels and the not quite functional ROR code found in the "extras" directory of the original Duke3D source code distribution are about all that remains of that. At one time Dirk posted several of the voxels and labeled them as for DNF, but I'm fairly certain he was remembering incorrectly--all of the voxels are Duke3D items in the Duke3D palette, he started working on them after version 1.4 was sent to manufacturing but before it was actually released (so... mid-October 1996), and Ken said the sentry drone voxel was really cool in-game in the scrapped patch.

Maybe there were a couple of weeks in there where someone thought they were going to make another, entirely different Build game, but the voxels we've found were constructed steadily between mid-October and mid-December, when the stuff on Quake started.

[deuxsonic]

Are those voxels the ones available in ReaperMan's pack?

[MetHy]

TerminX, on 03 June 2016 - 09:58 AM, said:

Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I've found zero evidence of it in any of the stuff 3DR sent me.

DNF at the time (late 1996) was a sidescroller, which we have, and there were about 50 voxels made by Dirk Jones (also in late 1996), which we also have, but they were clearly intended for an additional patch to Duke3D and not for any other game. Ken confirmed to me personally years and years ago (in 1998) that there was indeed a Duke Nukem 3D v1.7 patch with voxels and ROR worked on for a short time and then scrapped. I think those voxels and the not quite functional ROR code found in the "extras" directory of the original Duke3D source code distribution are about all that remains of that. At one time Dirk posted several of the voxels and labeled them as for DNF, but I'm fairly certain he was remembering incorrectly--all of the voxels are Duke3D items in the Duke3D palette, he started working on them after version 1.4 was sent to manufacturing but before it was actually released (so... mid-October 1996), and Ken said the sentry drone voxel was really cool in-game in the scrapped patch.

Maybe there were a couple of weeks in there where someone thought they were going to make another, entirely different Build game, but the voxels we've found were constructed steadily between mid-October and mid-December, when the stuff on Quake started.

I'm basing this on Wieder saying 3DRealms was still working with Build after DN3D and SW, there is one of his posts here somewhere mentionning "as much RoR as your computer could handle" among other things, and also based on a magazine interview where it says they were working on a sequel using Build (and they weren't being confused with Atomic Edition, because both were mentionned). Maybe they didn't use the word "sequel", I'd have to find it again, but it seemed pretty clear they were working on another Duke Build game.

IIRC the interview date from between 1.3 and 1.4

Then again Wieder wasn't with 3DRealms at the same time as that interview, and also maybe the guys in the interviews were ahead of themselves and were only fucking around with Build with no real plan behind it.


A sentry drone voxel sounds awesome, although I guess only non animated enemies or enemies with very few frames like the sentry and the turret would have gotten a voxel version.... A pigtank voxel would be great, since the thing is so obviously flat.
I guess it's not even possible to "animate" a voxel, although I'm sure it must be possible to replace every frame by a different model...?

[CatNapDreams]

LaughingMan008, on 03 June 2016 - 06:38 AM, said:

<snip> It's no wonder that we have some conflicting views on what/who Duke is. He's not super defined as a character, so we can all read different things into him and view him different ways.

Certain aspects of Duke Nukem are extremely consistent however... and these consistencies were not carried over into Duke Nukem Forever.

LaughingMan008 said:

I think it's one reason Doomguy and Gordon Freeman have remained so popular over the years, because you can read so much into them.

Not really... is like a song with lyrics that actually have no meaning, so each person can DECIDE what the character is, because there is nothing there. People like that because it is more comfortable because the character becomes whatever you think it should be.

LaughingMan008 said:

Even more than you can read into Duke cause they don't talk.

Less actually. The amount of expression in the human voice determines are very large percentage of how someone perceives said person.

LaughingMan008 said:

And you can argue up and down about who gets Duke and who doesn't get Duke and what was off and what was not off, but everyone is going to see things in a different way.

In the discussions I have seen, people are usually sensitive to different parts of Duke 3D's personality, and are usually talking about different aspects as opposed to actually seeing him different ways. The character is very consistent (defined) in certain ways, while some ways might not be defined at all.

LaughingMan008 said:

George and a lot of people here think Duke as a character is a super cool dude. I don't. I think hes kind of a buffoon, but that's why I like him. He's lovable. I like dumb action movie parody.

In Duke Nukem 3D, he wasn't dumb, and his coolness isn't self-aware. Coolness is of the observer... if it lies within the observed, it is ego. Duke was aware of his capabilities... confidence, the key word. In other words, Duke 3D Duke is cool to the player because he is capable, not because he is trying to "act cool". In Duke Nukem Forever, he was "trying" rather than being himself and that resulting in the observation of "being cool".

LaughingMan008 said:

Humor and parody has always been a big part of Duke Nukem, so it's only obvious that they try and take that route with Duke Nukem Forever, from the story perspective.

There is distinction that is usually not made in references like this, that is critical, in my opinion. Is the humor within "Duke world", or in "real life, our world"? In Duke 3D, Duke was basically serious throughout, and the humor was almost entirely because of we see him in his world. He wasn't aware, as a character... he wasn't talking "to" us, or trying to impress an audience directly... what he did naturally as a character WAS humorous to the player. I like both versions of Duke Nukem for what they are, but I was fine with the Duke Nukem from 3D. I never played Duke Nukem Forever, but I have watched it played a great deal.

CatNapDreams

[Mblackwell]

Doomguy is silent but has a personality (based on game text and the status animations). Gordon Freeman is a blank.

[CatNapDreams]

Mblackwell, on 03 June 2016 - 03:13 PM, said:

Doomguy is silent but has a personality (based on game text and the status animations). Gordon Freeman is a blank.

Oh... I didn't know about the text. I play mostly on the GameBoy Advance and I don't think I have actually finished the game like that. I didn't know about the ending text about "where's my big fat reward and ticket home" and all that. LOL! Funny... and yes character defining. Thanks for the heads up.

CatNapDreams

[Hendricks266]

Can't forget his pet rabbit Daisy.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Hendricks266, on 03 June 2016 - 04:45 PM, said:

Can't forget his pet rabbit Daisy.

So much personality in that face.

[Jimmy]

Wieder, on 02 June 2016 - 07:25 PM, said:

What makes you think people didn't get fired for standing up to the OWNER?

Not just piddly manager. And for something they loved. Not shit.

Bugger off.

I've always maintained the Scott was the biggest problem with DNF, not George. He knew George was a bad manager and a money pit, and he never fired/replaced him.

[deuxsonic]

Jimmy Gnosis, on 03 June 2016 - 06:38 PM, said:

I've always maintained the Scott was the biggest problem with DNF, not George. He knew George was a bad manager and a money pit, and he never fired/replaced him.

This is the problem with nepotism. You're hiring someone because they're your family or friend, not because they're the most qualified for the job and then you can't get rid of them because they're a friend/family. It's why management in a lot of companies is so messed up -- friends of a senior manager get those management posts when they might be terrible at it. You look at these big corporations and who get top positions and nepotism is nearly always involved which hurts the company. Best policy I think is to ban it entirely for any level of management or senior position.

[Kathy]

George was co-founder, co-owner. Nobody hired him. It was his company/money to begin with.

[LaughingMan008]

MusicallyInspired, on 03 June 2016 - 06:39 AM, said:

This conversation was going on before you made this thread. One thread was hidden and another one started before yours. You're just giving us a new platform to hold the same conversation.

Yeah, I am noticing. Man, Ide have thought all this would have been settled by now. Duke Nukem Forever really is the gift that kept on giving, to everybody. Personally, I thought it was a fine game. Not great, not bad. Just.... ya know, a good, decent game. But the stuff that went on with it's development, it had zero chance of going over well and just standing on its own. People are going to discuss it like this forever, I guess. A pity. Maybe one day they can pull off their own Doom 2016 style revival, and Duke Nukem Forever will finally be thought of the way Doom 3 is now. "Eh, it's an okay game on its own, it's old news now." Probably the best that can happen.

And "CatNapDreams"
I don't actually disagree with most of what you're saying. That's how you have seen Duke and the games. So that's totally true as you've looked at it. The thing with stuff like this, games, stories, characters. Multiple people can see something totally different ways and all of them be correct. It's just perspective. And we do not share the same perspective. That's all. I just hope that we can agree, different views of him or not... we both like him and he's awesome. Heh.

I do disagree on the silent protagonist thing though. There is a reason that Doomguy and Gordon Freeman have become so popular, for what some would claim no reason. Because they don't speak. You say you can read less into them because they don't speak, and Duke does. But that's sort of the point. Duke does have a voice, some personality, and a character. The Doomguy and Freeman have NONE at all. That's what I mean by you can read anything into them. And why they become popular. Freeman can either be a scared, wimpy man, or a grinning sociopath who is enjoying mowing down the jocks who bullied him in high school. Doomguy can be a man in a rocket powered wheel chair or a notorious war criminal or that guy from the Doom novels. That's what I mean by read into. What you the player can come up with to explain who the person is. What YOU write as the story. The less characterization, voice, whatever you give the person, the more it's up to the player to read into them. Perhaps thats the key word there. Reading a character is seeing their personality, reading INTO a character is coming up with it yourself based on your own brain's unique impulses.

That said.... poor Daisy.

[Tea Monster]

LaughingMan008, on 04 June 2016 - 06:28 AM, said:

Man, Ide have thought all this would have been settled by now.

You're new here, right? :-P