[Mike Norvak]

Hi everyone, as many of you already know Randy Pitchord joined the forums and is willing to have a conversation with the community or someone representing it. I just want to start this poll to make sure everyone's requests can be heard, and to keep brief and concise. That's it.

Feel free to ask any request, I'll add it to the poll. Just rember to stay concise.

[NNC]

1. Please release at least one old Duke3D beta (preferably from the state where it was close to the final version but had some cut levels like Sewer and Sweeney, or Birth levels in an altered state)

2. Please convince Allen Blum and Levelord to join the community. Also try to convince them to not give up mapping for Duke 3D. Maybe even you should try mapping again. Your Birth levels were pretty good.

[Shaq Fu]

As much as I wish to wish to move forward. I also feel like DNF's history and the older builds are something too legendary to remain buried.

Hypothetically, if any previous builds of DNF are released -- Perhaps it might be best for it to be available only to owners of Duke Nukem Forever on Steam. The files can reside in an "Extras" folder.

This might give some people who never bought the game some incentive to do so. I'm not sure though just throwing random thoughts out there.

[Mike Norvak]

What da heck, the poll got somewhat lost, anyway reentered the questions and I added new points.

[spessu_sb]

I voted for the obvious, early DNF builds and or duke's enormous tool (level editor) released.

I would really really appreciate it if the shown DNF from millenium was able to come to life and all the questions surrounding it were answered. Releasing the builds would solve alot of the questions and indeed as someone already stated, it kinda is too big of a historical thing to be just buried and forgotten.

If not any of this is possible, is it possible to not abandon DNF 2011 and give support/modding tools for it? So that it could be fixed from the weaponlimit etc regen healths that were in conflict with the game's goals. Especially seeing as now Classic gameplay is really starting to comeback. Doom 4, Quake Champions, Prey (reboot) and hell.. even the next industry biggest franchise game Call of Duty got rid off regenerating health against all the odds. Would certainly give an opportunity to improve the current Duke Nukem reputation if DNF were to have modding tools and thus people were able to fix certain things in it that it was very much criticized for.

https://www.gamespot...o/1100-6449627/

[HulkNukem]

How about the possibility of Duke being licensed out to smaller indie studios, like if Voidpoint were to make a new Build engine Duke game or another studio made a Manhattan Project style project.

[Micky C]

 spessu_sb, on 13 May 2017 - 11:52 AM, said:

If not any of this is possible, is it possible to not abandon DNF 2011 and give support/modding tools for it?

I really don't think it's worth the effort doing anything with DNF 2011 at this point. I'm sure the editor side of things is a mess. One of the big motivations for it is having a modern 3D engine to have legal Duke modding on, however we might as well wait for the next Duke game and have mod tools for that instead. The DNF engine is relatively poorly optimized compared to more established engines.

One of Randy's arguments against doing anything with the Duke 3D or DNF betas is that it's not worth the cost investment. However I put it to him that it should be possible to find a way to allow dedicated fans to do all the work for little or no money.

[HiPolyBash]

 Micky C, on 13 May 2017 - 05:37 PM, said:

However I put it to him that it should be possible to find a way to allow dedicated fans to do all the work for little or no money.

I would say the best thing to do would be to pass a handful of builds of Duke Nukem Forever at significant development milestones like the last Quake 2 engine build, the most complete build before the new lighting system in Unreal, and a couple of random builds like the final build before the game was cut up to run on consoles and had the two weapon system put in to Hendricks266, TerminX or someone like that to filter through to ensure that there is nothing in them that shouldn't be released or could cause issues and then do an unsupported release to the public and let the fans work on it.

It would be a good PR move, it would give the community something to play with, it would fulfill a lot of curiosity, other companies have done similar things in the past, there's a lot of reasons why it would be a good idea. Financially it could be done with zero investment and the positive fan reaction and subsequent fan creations based on the builds would give positive press and opinion to Gearbox and give incentive to people to be more enthusiastic about Duke products from Gearbox in the future.

Getting the 2002 version of the game released in an unsupported fashion would do a lot to raise fans opinions on Gearbox and would be nothing but positive for the community. Imagine everything that could be done.

[Micky C]

Terminx and Hendricks are pretty damn busy, however there would be other skilled people in the community that might be able to do it, people who are more familiar with the quake and unreal engines as well.

[High Treason]

The only thing I would be interested in is if it somehow kicks life into the possibility of Duke 3D prototypes somehow, but I'm not holding my breath and won't be disappointed as I've given up on them anyway - I wrote about my thoughts on this once and see no reason to do so again. Otherwise, my Pentium is always ready if it does happen some day.

I think our best hope here would be to aim for just a few notable milestones and not everything ever, there are probably hundreds of builds that don't change much and thus wouldn't be that interesting to look at anyway. I think that most of us would be willing to pay for them or even attempt crowd funding any legal costs, but I don't know how much that would count for. In my mind there are four major iterations prior to the retail release, so perhaps choose something from them - the way I see the timeline is:

> NoobDuke - The one with that really nooby weapon graphics and likely not far away from that Stadium shot we say, clearly what became LameDuke.
> LameDuke - We already have that one.
> Advanced LameDuke - My personal favorite. Like LameDuke but with early versions of Episode 2 bleeding in, almost feeling like the aliens should be there, pig cops started appearing and more music tracks. That 95-05-07 build looked very interesting.
> Pre-Retail - Essentially the retail version prior to being refined for release, approaching the 0.99 Beta we've seen already.

Honestly, I lost any and all interest in DNF long ago, often forget I own it and consider my final purchase of a new game to have been in 2009 - The Sims 3 - whilst ignoring everything that came later. I genuinely have no interest in playing new games anymore, at all, so it's not just Duke.

It would still be cool if we got anything at all and I mean that broadly, including things like the World Tour patch or just information about things, whatever, as I could at least respect the effort on Gearbox's part.

[Player Lin]

I don't really care JSJ doing old style or new style of Duke voice(seriously, it really doesn't metter, even if Gearbox want to find other VA to do Duke voice and the result not totally out of place then I'm OK for sure), but I voted all other options.

And I see Alpha/Beta/dev. things are bonuses, if they want to release then I'm happy but if they don't then whatever. However yes, it still bitter due this thing was became unsure when whole Duke IP transferred to Gearbox.

[MetHy]

I think for this thing to be organized, the most important thing at the moment is "who it's gonna be".

Forge got it right in the other thread

 Forge, on 13 May 2017 - 07:34 AM, said:

So along with their Duke 'wants', people should be including a list of who they want to represent the community?

Shouldn't be someone who is a suck-up - kinda hard to talk when they have a mouth full of Randy's cock.
Shouldn't be someone who is a hater - Randy's not going to listen to someone who will do nothing but kick him the balls (he can go to twitter for that)
Shouldn't be someone who's only going to serve their own self interest - by taking advantage of the situation to try to sell their ideas and services for employment or monetary gain.

I'd recommend Trooper Dan

But he forgot something: should be someone who knows what he's talking about.
This is why, as far as the DN3D betas are concerned, it should be the most knowledgeable person on that subject. The person who digged through the betas the most, but also who understood the situation clearly when things got 'cancelled', and who is able to understand Gearbox's point of view on something like this.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that person would be Hendricks.

As for the questions themselves, I feel it is important to let Randy know that despite all the backlash and the nitpicking, Alien World Order was awesome, and that we would love to see more new official DN3D maps, but the priority of that question would obviously be lower than the DN3D betas.
Personally I don't give a damn about old DNF builds. I'm here for Build and DN3D.

[NNC]

 High Treason, on 13 May 2017 - 06:56 PM, said:

The only thing I would be interested in is if it somehow kicks life into the possibility of Duke 3D prototypes somehow, but I'm not holding my breath and won't be disappointed as I've given up on them anyway - I wrote about my thoughts on this once and see no reason to do so again. Otherwise, my Pentium is always ready if it does happen some day.

I think our best hope here would be to aim for just a few notable milestones and not everything ever, there are probably hundreds of builds that don't change much and thus wouldn't be that interesting to look at anyway. I think that most of us would be willing to pay for them or even attempt crowd funding any legal costs, but I don't know how much that would count for. In my mind there are four major iterations prior to the retail release, so perhaps choose something from them - the way I see the timeline is:

> NoobDuke - The one with that really nooby weapon graphics and likely not far away from that Stadium shot we say, clearly what became LameDuke.
> LameDuke - We already have that one.
> Advanced LameDuke - My personal favorite. Like LameDuke but with early versions of Episode 2 bleeding in, almost feeling like the aliens should be there, pig cops started appearing and more music tracks. That 95-05-07 build looked very interesting.
> Pre-Retail - Essentially the retail version prior to being refined for release, approaching the 0.99 Beta we've seen already.

Honestly, I lost any and all interest in DNF long ago, often forget I own it and consider my final purchase of a new game to have been in 2009 - The Sims 3 - whilst ignoring everything that came later. I genuinely have no interest in playing new games anymore, at all, so it's not just Duke.

It would still be cool if we got anything at all and I mean that broadly, including things like the World Tour patch or just information about things, whatever, as I could at least respect the effort on Gearbox's part.

One of the betas should be called: DukeWarm.

Btw. nobody echoed my nomination of Mikko Sandt yet. He is a knowledgable person who did fuck a lot for the community as he has the best map review base. Also for his contribution in leveldesign and game code for DNF2013. Gambini would be another good candidate, although he is a bit less knowledgable about the inner things.

[Micky C]

Inner things? Knowing how to code doesn't make you a good level designer, not to mention Mikko's code was relatively basic. Most of the level design in DNF 2013 was by Gambini, with only the dam by Mikko. He does know good level design though.

At the end of the day I'm not sure if he'd be interested in this sort of thing since he's not an active member of the community.

[jet_nick]

I think releasing beta materials, articles on Duke 3d would be a great gift for fans and a good way to approach or re-engage the community...

[Mark]

I've noticed that when the subject of releasing old DNF versions comes up, its always the 2001 version. Is that for technical reasons because it was the most complete of the bunch? Or is it because it had the most released trailer material and thus the most popular? Or is it because its lower tech and more appealing to the classic crowd? Just wondering. I'm for the release of any or all versions.

[Jenz/Amaka]

 Mark., on 14 May 2017 - 05:29 AM, said:

I've noticed that when the subject of releasing old DNF versions comes up, its always the 2001 version. Is that for technical reasons because it was the most complete of the bunch? Or is it because it had the most released trailer material and thus the most popular? Or is it because its lower tech and more appealing to the classic crowd? Just wondering. I'm for the release of any or all versions.

It still had old school graphics style that is still appealing compared to later revisions that have Doom graphics. Sharp pitch black shadows, shiny speculars everywhere with low poly models is very unappealing now-a-days.

[spessu_sb]

 Micky C, on 13 May 2017 - 05:37 PM, said:

I really don't think it's worth the effort doing anything with DNF 2011 at this point. I'm sure the editor side of things is a mess. One of the big motivations for it is having a modern 3D engine to have legal Duke modding on, however we might as well wait for the next Duke game and have mod tools for that instead. The DNF engine is relatively poorly optimized compared to more established engines.

One of Randy's arguments against doing anything with the Duke 3D or DNF betas is that it's not worth the cost investment. However I put it to him that it should be possible to find a way to allow dedicated fans to do all the work for little or no money.

If the 2011 editor really would be so broken that it is completely irrelevant, would it be too much to ask that they'd then make a statement about it? We still haven't ever received actual clear yes or no about if it works or not, just mainly speculation or vague answers at best.

That part is completely true though that the engine is poorly optimized. I tried to disable the mouse accel in the .ini and game stopped working until I re-enabled it back.

Yes, I'm not really voting for to "release us the tools but make sure they work". I'm kinda rooting for "release them if you have 'em, and it's fine to release them in *as is* state" so that no spending of resources is required at all, making it most viable for them.

[Forge]

 MetHy, on 14 May 2017 - 12:56 AM, said:

But he forgot something: should be someone who knows what he's talking about.
This is why, as far as the DN3D betas are concerned, it should be the most knowledgeable person on that subject. The person who digged through the betas the most, but also who understood the situation clearly when things got 'cancelled', and who is able to understand Gearbox's point of view on something like this.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that person would be Hendricks.

I initially didn't mention anybody involved with the Voidpoint team because of the fallout over HTTK.
I felt there was potential for them to either be in the hater category, or the sell-my-idea/services group.

Randy later mentioned Tx specifically to head up the meeting from our side (just consider there's also the potential for partiality to include Voidpoint members if Tx is selecting the people involved)

If someone wants to recommend Mikko or Luciano - I would suggest it only for their successful marketing of their 2013 dnf tc. Their methods might work for future Duke releases.

[High Treason]

How about Puritan? He's not generally around here and has never put his foot in all the hate him, hate that and sell whatever side of things. He does know Duke though and as he misses all the self-interest that others might have, which seems to be an area of concern, he could probably keep a fair, level and overall neutral approach to discussing anything put forward to him. Either that or someone like him, Mikko indeed being a good candidate.

[Forge]

realistically if Tx is heading this up on our end it's going to be him, Hendricks, Yatta, & maybe Trooper Dan.
It'd be nice if we could get Charlie and James Stanfield involved, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Sanek]

+1 for James Stanfield and Trooper Dan...and Hendricks266.

 Nancsi, on 14 May 2017 - 02:19 AM, said:

One of the betas should be called: DukeWarm.

Btw. nobody echoed my nomination of Mikko Sandt yet. He is a knowledgable person who did fuck a lot for the community as he has the best map review base. Also for his contribution in leveldesign and game code for DNF2013. Gambini would be another good candidate, although he is a bit less knowledgable about the inner things.

I don't think that Mikko is a good candidate. The fact that he host a review site doesn't mean that he knows anything about the inner works of a game industry and it's abilites. DNF TC was succesful just because of it's title (remember MRCK's map?), and it wouldn't get as much press coverage if it would be called "2001 Map Pack" or smth like that.

[Mr. Tibbs]

I would be over the moon to even see some gameplay videos from the 2001/2002 iteration of DNF. I think just seeing a snapshot of what the game was during that time would provide the last piece of closure to the whole DNF saga.

[Danukem]

 Forge, on 14 May 2017 - 09:35 AM, said:

realistically if Tx is heading this up on our end it's going to be him, Hendricks, Yatta, & maybe Trooper Dan.
It'd be nice if we could get Charlie and James Stanfield involved, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

+1 for TerminX, Hendricks, and Yatta.

I would like to remove my own name from contention, though. I'm not all that interested, it would be hard work (if done right), and I can't commit to wading through all the potential questions and becoming knowledge enough in the relevant areas.

imo what would be good for a fourth member is a "regular guy" who is not too technical, but knowledgeable and excited about Duke games, and not an asshole. It doesn't have to be anyone who is thought of as a leader. I wouldn't worry too much if it's someone who said negative things about Randy in the past -- I'm sure Randy has better things to do than keep track of that and probably doesn't give a fuck at this point.

[K1n9_Duk3]

This doesn't seem to be a high priority to anyone here, but I'll post it anyway:

If the only reason for Duke Nukem 1 and 2 still not being available on GOG.com (or other digital stores) is that they contain outdated copyright notices and ordering information, I would gladly fix these issues for free.

Getting clear permisson to reverse-engineer Duke 1 and 2 would be a bonus. This would allow me to fix the remaining issues in ReDuke and resume development on ReDuke II.

[Tea Monster]

I'd like to know why the mod tools were not released for DNF. Was it due to the tools being a mess and nobody wanting to pay to get them cleaned up for public release? Or was it some decsision against modding in general by either 2K or Gearbox?

Not trying to affix blame. I just want to know why after all these years.

[Micky C]

If you ask me it was probably a combination of those reasons.

[Minigunner]

My view on things like beta material is that, well, relations between the Duke community and Randy have kinda been soured, and there should be a trust between the two built up until Randy feels comfortable to give the green light. He allowed TerminX and Hendricks to show off quite a few things here and there, which is good news so far.

That aside, personally I think the best thing would to bridge the views on how Gearbox sees Duke and how the community sees him. There's a lot to consider regarding his character, the gameplay, themes, ect. and if we know Randy's beliefs and he knows ours, that would be a significant step towards a better future for the franchise.

[Mike Norvak]

I added new questions to the poll, so delete your votes and vote again if you feel like.

I think I included almost every topic and issue from both threads in the poll, tell me if you think there's anything that can be added. I really wish the most voted points in this list can be discussed with Randy.

[Player Lin]

 Mike Norvak, on 16 May 2017 - 07:14 AM, said:

I added new questions to the poll, so delete your votes and vote again if you feel like.

I think I included almost every topic and issue from both threads in the poll, tell me if you think there's anything that can be added. I really wish the most voted points in this list can be discussed with Randy.

Re-voted, still all options but not the new audiences standards one.