[ETPC]

why was bombshell cut anyway? just because it didn't fit the post-2003 duke anymore?

[PokeThePower]

Jimmy, on 24 November 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

Interesting. I don't really remember hearing about the motel before. Is there any actual footage or screenshots of that out there? When I watch the official releases and even the leaks it seems to focus on Vegas and Morningwood the most. There is a lot of areas from the game throughout development that just haven't been shown off.

I don't think anything about it is public... it's just the sort of thing that those lurking here who have seen the old builds will know is accurate.

Jimmy, on 24 November 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

Have you played DNF/Doctor Who Cloned Me? How would the Lake Mead Shootout, the Canyon "Independence Day" Shootout, and the Dune Buggy play pen sort of area have fit into the game? Were those Bombshell missions? Was the motorcycle ever really a part of the game? It didn't make it into the final, and even leaked stuff doesn't show it off. Were a lot of the areas that ended up getting cut (even before Triptych had to make cuts) because Bombshell got cut out sometime in the late 2000s?

1) Have I played... Yes, a couple of times.
2) Cuts because of Bombshell... No... at no time was any level so dependent on Bombshell that it would get cut if she was removed from the game. Honestly past 1998 Quake DNF Bombshell was an ever increasingly irrelevant plot factor. She would come up in story discussions... but in terms of how the levels and puzzles were designed they never depended on her. They occasionally assumed her, but that's not the same thing as reliant on her.

Jimmy, on 24 November 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

If you've played the Doctor Who Cloned Me, is the brothel in there basically a shitty version of the Slick Willy? It sounds eerily similar to what you described, minus the Atlanta strip club interior and the Vampires motel.

They share almost no resemblance, though I wouldn't preface DWCM Club with shitty. I certainly think it's not as compelling as the OG motel + Slick Willy space, but it's an enjoyable space on its own merits and one of the parts I liked a lot in what was released.

Jimmy, on 24 November 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

How close is the progression of DNF/DWCM compared to what it was projected to be then?

Close enough to be recognizable as the same game to an outside observer just given a vague description of each mission.

Jimmy, on 24 November 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

I've always gotten the impression that Area 51 was in the middle of the game and the Dam was the finale. Could definitely be wrong here but that's the impression I even got from the released game. The narrative is so disjointed.

The Dam was almost always (possibly always always) the peak of Act 2 in normal story telling terms. The Dam blowing up and Duke being blown out and knocked on his ass falling from that height (which was the only thing that could put him on his back struggling) was originally the OH FUCK... even DUKE NUKEM is gasping for breath on the ground after stopping the Dam event... but NOW the full weight of the Alien invasion is coming down despite this "victory" for Duke and setback for the aliens... and it looks impossible to overcome. Classic Act 2 all seems lost moment.

When the game switched over to Duke being knocked on his ass every 15 seconds because a funny first person flipoff could be done it totally invalidated that moment's potential. I'm not sure that second act finale experience was ever implemented. Duke's first person knocked down/get up in the released content irritates me on the same level as the rat microwave Achievement moment in the Lady Killer.

Jimmy, on 24 November 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

And was Dr. Proton always supposed to be such a pushover? It's the most disappointing send-off in FPS history in my opinion. And really the whole story doesn't even make that much sense, if Dr. Proton is the bad guy, shouldn't he be working with the aliens? Why is he trying to defeat them? It seems shoehorned in there. I'm guessing Dr. Proton's original involvement was some X-Files-esque thing about alien human hybrids, because of the greys which got cut. Could be wrong about that though, just conjecture.

While I was there Proton almost never came up. So while I can understand your complaints... my honest reaction to how the later devs handled Proton is positive. We didn't have a legacy option they were rejecting like some of the previous stuff... it was open to anything and they at least made Proton interesting enough that I wouldn't mind more of their version of him in other games. I'm sure if I looked more closely and thought more than 2 seconds about it I might agree with you... but I'm not gonna. I liked his video pontifications enough to want to hear the next.

ETPC, on 01 December 2020 - 09:25 AM, said:

why was bombshell cut anyway? just because it didn't fit the post-2003 duke anymore?

Too much development complexity and cost vs just replacing Bombshell with Duke in all the moments she might have appeared would be my best broad stroke explanation. Even when it was assumed she was the hero of a mission during development, the LD/Scripter still worked on the level no differently than if it was Duke Nukem playing through the same space. So in order for her to survive during a cutting is shipping mindset, she would have had to been so pivotal to the narrative that she couldn't be cut.

Why Dylan become so critical to the ladies who wrote the released narrative though... will always remain a mystery to me.

[ETPC]

idk if this has been asked already (and i may have asked you when i emailed you before) but was the quake 2 stuff actually ever anything beyond prototypes and tech demos? it seems like there is a narrative out there that all the quake/quake 2 era DNF dev was just messing around but....i find that exceptionally hard to believe.

[Kyeb]

Hey Charlie,

Just curious, am I right in thinking these screens are from the Duke's Penthouse levels? What was with the congratulates banner for Duke? From the other leaked screens I guessed the game starts similar to the released DNF we got (Duke going on a TV show and then the aliens attacking shortly after)

Thank you for your insights!

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[Hendricks266]

ETPC, on 01 December 2020 - 09:25 AM, said:

why was bombshell cut anyway? just because it didn't fit the post-2003 duke anymore?

InnervateInna, on 02 December 2020 - 08:24 AM, said:

Too much development complexity and cost vs just replacing Bombshell with Duke in all the moments she might have appeared would be my best broad stroke explanation. Even when it was assumed she was the hero of a mission during development, the LD/Scripter still worked on the level no differently than if it was Duke Nukem playing through the same space. So in order for her to survive during a cutting is shipping mindset, she would have had to been so pivotal to the narrative that she couldn't be cut.

Why Dylan become so critical to the ladies who wrote the released narrative though... will always remain a mystery to me.

I was under the impression that Bombshell was intended to serve Dylan's role, but the switch happened after the rights to her character were retained by 3D Realms as part of the Asset Purchase Agreement. </outsider viewpoint>

[PikaCommando]

After watching this video of someone putting final DNF sounds into the leaked gifs, I'm wondering; how much of the sounds and music in the released DNF stayed all the way since the 2001 era?

[vini1264]

PikaCommando, on 02 December 2020 - 11:59 AM, said:

After watching this video of someone putting final DNF sounds into the leaked gifs, I'm wondering; how much of the sounds and music in the released DNF stayed all the way since the 2001 era?

In DNF files there are sounds and some videos with the .bik extention that are probably from the 2001 era and have been repurposed in the final game. As for the music, there's the lenoman theme and lenoman grabbag composed by Lee Jackson that are dated from 2002, and the only music files that have a date in it, so my guess is that all the other musics have been composed exclusively for the final game.

[Futuretime23]

Well I can tell you that a_impact/explosions has ExplIncoming06, which is the jet going to crash sound from the e3 2001 trailer (0:52)

[vini1264]

There's the file dcave_lkhotel.bik in Textures/bik that shows a different layout from the Duke hotel and doesn't match the one present in the final game and it's very low res, there's also ezcam_screensaver.bik and ezmail_screensaver.bik that certainly are from the 2001 era too.

[PokeThePower]

ETPC, on 02 December 2020 - 09:06 AM, said:

idk if this has been asked already (and i may have asked you when i emailed you before) but was the quake 2 stuff actually ever anything beyond prototypes and tech demos? it seems like there is a narrative out there that all the quake/quake 2 era DNF dev was just messing around but....i find that exceptionally hard to believe.

I do need to reply to your email.

Quake 2 was not built thinking it was just prototypes. So devs were building assuming that was what they were working with as is. However the all too famous tech switch makes it so that the stopping point of all the Quake work was cut off and nobody can claim that went beyond demo work.

This is a persistent misnomer of game development and success though... most shipped features start out as a crude approximation of intent. Sometimes what the developer thought was still work in progress ships and everyone loves it exactly as it is and any attempts to "finish" it ruin it. There are plenty of games which ship with features that other games would consider only up to prototype/messing around quality yet sell gang busters and build huge followings that other devs who developed their features beyond prototype messing around never even dream of reaching.

Kyeb, on 02 December 2020 - 10:50 AM, said:

Just curious, am I right in thinking these screens are from the Duke's Penthouse levels? What was with the congratulates banner for Duke? From the other leaked screens I guessed the game starts similar to the released DNF we got (Duke going on a TV show and then the aliens attacking shortly after)

Yup, those are all from quite early Duke Penthouse levels... predominately owned by Keith Schuler back then. I am just backward guessing here but I *think* the Congratulations banner was regarding the opening of the Lady Killer. The premise was the casino was undergoing its grand opening thus the legacy of the talk show opening inside the casino, the fans hording outside, the blow to Duke's ego being attacked at that moment, etc.

Hendricks266, on 02 December 2020 - 11:40 AM, said:

I was under the impression that Bombshell was intended to serve Dylan's role, but the switch happened after the rights to her character were retained by 3D Realms as part of the Asset Purchase Agreement. </outsider viewpoint>

Huh... I had never considered that angle, that the post 3DR to GBX era involved some contention over the rights to Bombshell. I had always assumed that happened long after the DNF plot was in the bag but could be wrong so doesn't discredit what you suggest. However while I was there (up to 2006)... that was of course never a consideration... and I've never heard any hints that content was cut because Bombshell was cut. However where Dylan came from is a complete and total unknown for me. I only understand him as a creation of the post 3DR shutdown crew and didn't exist prior to that point.

Do we have any indication that Dylan was a character that George originally conceived of and had as part of his story? I might have overlooked/forgotten evidence that Dylan is a George creation vs a post 3DR crew creation.

PikaCommando, on 02 December 2020 - 11:59 AM, said:

After watching this video of someone putting final DNF sounds into the leaked gifs, I'm wondering; how much of the sounds and music in the released DNF stayed all the way since the 2001 era?

It is sometimes astonishing to the point of zen to reflect on how much art and audio from 2001 era shipped.

[Ninety-Six]

InnervateInna, on 02 December 2020 - 07:23 PM, said:

The premise was the casino was undergoing its grand opening thus the legacy of the talk show opening inside the casino, the fans hording outside, the blow to Duke's ego being attacked at that moment, etc.

That explains it. To be honest that always bothered me in the release since I couldn't understand why there was apparently an entire talk show studio in the casino yet it seemed to be the first time Duke was brought in as a guest.

[Kyeb]

On the subject of old art and audio finding its way into the final release, here is one example of art used from the 2001 build finding its way into the final release. I'm sure there is many other examples as Charlie stated, but we'll never know without been able to compare.

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[ETPC]

InnervateInna, on 02 December 2020 - 07:23 PM, said:

I do need to reply to your email.

haha, no worries. i haven't had the time to do anymore research, anyway, with school crushing me. i was hoping to talk to other people over the holiday break and maybe ask better questions (and also figure out how to not come across like a headhunter like ruben thought i was)

[Hendricks266]

InnervateInna, on 02 December 2020 - 07:23 PM, said:

Huh... I had never considered that angle, that the post 3DR to GBX era involved some contention over the rights to Bombshell. I had always assumed that happened long after the DNF plot was in the bag but could be wrong so doesn't discredit what you suggest. However while I was there (up to 2006)... that was of course never a consideration... and I've never heard any hints that content was cut because Bombshell was cut. However where Dylan came from is a complete and total unknown for me. I only understand him as a creation of the post 3DR shutdown crew and didn't exist prior to that point.

Do we have any indication that Dylan was a character that George originally conceived of and had as part of his story? I might have overlooked/forgotten evidence that Dylan is a George creation vs a post 3DR crew creation.

Maybe instead of "switch" I should have said "replacement" or "invention of Dylan". I don't recall any mention of Dylan in the whole-game plot outline spreadsheet that was posted in 2009.

EDIT: I checked, and the 2009 DNF World Chart mentions Bombshell 13 times, Dylan 0.

[Futuretime23]

Minor correction there, the leaked world chart is from July 29th, 2008.

[William Beavis]

Kyeb, on 03 December 2020 - 06:58 AM, said:

On the subject of old art and audio finding its way into the final release, here is one example of art used from the 2001 build finding its way into the final release. I'm sure there is many other examples as Charlie stated, but we'll never know without been able to compare.

Well, they said they had taken oodles of high res photos for references, so why would they waste what they could use for textures? Might as well implement it in a higher res and normal mapped form than create new materials from scratch.

[PokeThePower]

Hendricks266, on 03 December 2020 - 03:17 PM, said:

Maybe instead of "switch" I should have said "replacement" or "invention of Dylan". I don't recall any mention of Dylan in the whole-game plot outline spreadsheet that was posted in 2009.

EDIT: I checked, and the 2009 DNF World Chart mentions Bombshell 13 times, Dylan 0.

Rgr Rgr... well honestly if it was due to some sort of rights concerns I would have expected them to just switch to differently named female badass. Dylan strikes me strongly as something that the folks who wrote the plot post 3DR dissolution truly believed in vs just dropping the role in the story entirely (which would have been easier and gone unmissed).

Though... guilty confession... shrunk Dylan is almost worth the cost of him through the rest of the story.

[OpenMaw]

ETPC, on 01 December 2020 - 09:25 AM, said:

why was bombshell cut anyway? just because it didn't fit the post-2003 duke anymore?

Bombshell was in the game as late as 2009 when she was an EDF member. Her role in the released DNF was taken by Dylan. Originally she was to be the lead stripper in the strip club (the one you do the minigame errands for.) When you came out of that level you would be playing AS Bombshell and kill a Dukebot. When Gearbox was acquiring DNF, they had pulled Bombshell out of the game at the behest of Scott Miller, likely to preserve the idea for future projects.

In a way I'm glad she was pulled from the final version of DNF. She would have been an incredibly generic character by all accounts.

[PokeThePower]

OpenMaw, on 04 December 2020 - 05:19 PM, said:

Her role in the released DNF was taken by Dylan.

I just still don't see it. Bombshell's role in the universe and narrative was never a sidekick.

Even your description of her role in 2009 sounds quite different (though has hints of regarding the strip club) what I last interacted with. It is so fundamentally different from Dylan. I can see post-3DR and GBX being asked to cut Bombshell... but Dylan didn't slot into her role at all. He's an entirely new creation. Bombshell wasn't standing around waiting to comment on Duke's actions... that's pretty much the complete opposite of anything she represented. She was consistently an independent operator that would be more accurately described as competing with Duke toward solving the same problem.

Dylan is only Bombshell in as much as he's the third most prominent member of the EDF relative to Duke and Graves and everyone else. But even then he's not that because of his competency like Bombshell, but just his screen time.

I dunno, I just think the post 3DR writers for DNF really thought Dylan represented what Duke fans wanted and truly believed they were delivering a character behaving in a world that Duke fans identified with.

[Outtagum]

InnervateInna, on 04 December 2020 - 11:58 AM, said:

Though... guilty confession... shrunk Dylan is almost worth the cost of him through the rest of the story.

[OpenMaw]

InnervateInna, on 04 December 2020 - 05:59 PM, said:

I just still don't see it. Bombshell's role in the universe and narrative was never a sidekick.

Even your description of her role in 2009 sounds quite different (though has hints of regarding the strip club) what I last interacted with. It is so fundamentally different from Dylan. I can see post-3DR and GBX being asked to cut Bombshell... but Dylan didn't slot into her role at all. He's an entirely new creation. Bombshell wasn't standing around waiting to comment on Duke's actions... that's pretty much the complete opposite of anything she represented. She was consistently an independent operator that would be more accurately described as competing with Duke toward solving the same problem.

Dylan is only Bombshell in as much as he's the third most prominent member of the EDF relative to Duke and Graves and everyone else. But even then he's not that because of his competency like Bombshell, but just his screen time.

I dunno, I just think the post 3DR writers for DNF really thought Dylan represented what Duke fans wanted and truly believed they were delivering a character behaving in a world that Duke fans identified with.

I'm not really giving you an opinion here, this is what is described in the 2009 leaked documentation. She is described very specifically in the DNF development documentation that was leaked. Her reveal in the campaign as we know it is described exactly where we meet Dylan in the released version. Right after the fat commander battle you run into Bombshell. The moment you meet Dylan in released DNF? That was originally Bombshell. She fought with you on the Vegas Strip. Later, she was in the Strip Club as Duke's fever dream fantasy. Then you played as her while Duke is having his dream, and she, not Duke, would be the first to encounter and kill the Duke bots. The two characters were supposed to work together through the dam and ultimately reach the Father Ship.

This isn't post 3DR stuff. This is how they had her setup in the game. The really funny thing is when Bombshell's concept art was released for Ion Fury, they used a scan I took of my DNF art book featuring Bombshell.

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[Jimmy]

This is why it seems to me like whole portions of the game were just cut or redesigned to accommodate Duke instead of Bombshell or any alternative player character. I mean really the narrative of DNF doesn't make much sense from Duke Dome to Mighty Foot, it's clear that it's just cobbled together with bullshit paste.

[PokeThePower]

OpenMaw, on 04 December 2020 - 06:26 PM, said:

I'm not really giving you an opinion here, this is what is described in the 2009 leaked documentation. She is described very specifically in the DNF development documentation that was leaked. Her reveal in the campaign as we know it is described exactly where we meet Dylan in the released version.

Yes I understand. I'm failing to communicate. That moment as you exit the Lady Killer is a natural moment to meet an important character no matter how many decades back you go in development.

Dylan though... the role he played is completely alien to Bombshell. I won't disagree that due to momentum a character introduction post Lady Killer was maintained, and post 3DR that meant Dylan. However... there is nothing about the role Dylan played, the personality he displayed, the interactions he had with the player, that indicated him as a Bombshell replacement.

I guess it's semantic though... Dylan might have plugged into every critical moment called out in the 2009 plot where Bombshell was mentioned. So Dylan represented the positional vector replacement of Bombshell, but otherwise was an entirely new creation designed to fulfill entirely different narrative purposes. Dylan comes across to me as a character that a person coming along later thinks is what the target audience wants, has holes, and finds ways to fit him in.

[PokeThePower]

I think this is the best way to resolve the disagreement.

• Bombshell's position in the story was replaced by Dylan.
  
• Bombshell's role in the story was never replaced.

EDIT: I just don't get this perception that Dylan is dude-bro bombshell. He at best shows up at some of the the same times as past references, but otherwise is entirely a Triptych/GBX creation, narrative style, treatment of the audience, etc... and inserted at moments of convenience. Double emphasis on treatment of the audience.

[OpenMaw]

InnervateInna, on 04 December 2020 - 06:52 PM, said:

I think this is the best way to resolve the disagreement.

• Bombshell's position in the story was replaced by Dylan.
• Bombshell's role in the story was never replaced.

Granted, and I wasn't really arguing that point. Dylan isn't Bombshell. Though, with no ill intent, I honestly doubt the Bombshell you worked with during your time on the project is reflective of what she was when Bryan Hook/others took over in 2007-2008. I think they did basically turn her into more of a buddy cop movie character. What I remember reading from the materials is that she was intended to verbally spar with Duke, but ultimately the two characters were working back and forth. You have to think, she was excised from the game between 2009 and 2010, very hastily, and pretty much once the PC version of DNF was "done." As in, they had what they had and couldn't really do more. I remember there was something posted on Facebook back then that showed something going on with the Bombshell trademark. So she was ripped out of the game last minute and Dylan was hastily pasted in there as a loud mouthed DudeBro. Dylan, as her successor, was very hastily thrown into the game. There are a lot of aspects to the plot and gameplay that indicate that. In the breakdown and concept art.

[PokeThePower]

OpenMaw, on 04 December 2020 - 07:05 PM, said:

Granted, and I wasn't really arguing that point. Dylan isn't Bombshell. Though, with no ill intent, I honestly doubt the Bombshell you worked with during your time on the project is reflective of what she was when Bryan Hook/others took over in 2007-2008.

I was in pretty consistent contact with Hook during that time. It helped give him context to what he was working with and trying to resolve. Uncredited but he assisted with some of our tech efforts at GBX after the bulk of the group leaving 3DR joined GBX.

OpenMaw, on 04 December 2020 - 07:05 PM, said:

I think they did basically turn her into more of a buddy cop movie character. What I remember reading from the materials is that she was intended to verbally spar with Duke, but ultimately the two characters were working back and forth.

And that's the nuance. Our version was also sparring but ultimately working with you. But she was competitive not buddy, and I've just never seen any version of buddy buddy bro Bombshell.

OpenMaw, on 04 December 2020 - 07:05 PM, said:

Dylan, as her successor, was very hastily thrown into the game. There are a lot of aspects to the plot and gameplay that indicate that. In the breakdown and concept art.

And that's where I'm disagreeing. I think the people that put Dylan in had time to utterly gut the role Bombshell played and come up with an entirely new character to plug into the existing scripted spots, which better fit the sort of character they truly believed fans would like. I don't think they believed the Bombshell character was better than Dylan. Dylan isn't haste... they had tons of time on their own reworking the story and writing the dialog without any oversight from former 3DR bosses. I see nothing about the final outcome that indicates Dylan is just a "Well we did what we could..."... Dylan is an intended tip of the spear for what those developers believed was a better approach than anything they had to work from previously.

[PikaCommando]

Huh, Dylan never seemed like something that was put in because they thought fans wanted a dudebro sidekick to me. I always thought he's only in the game to mock dudebro characters in other games, namely Gears of War.

With that said, I don't see how Bombshell's inclusion over Dylan would've improved the game beyond providing an additional set of eye candy.

[ETPC]

InnervateInna, on 04 December 2020 - 07:16 PM, said:

I think the people that put Dylan in had time to utterly gut the role Bombshell played and come up with an entirely new character to plug into the existing scripted spots, which better fit the sort of character they truly believed fans would like. I don't think they believed the Bombshell character was better than Dylan. Dylan isn't haste... they had tons of time on their own reworking the story and writing the dialog without any oversight from former 3DR bosses. I see nothing about the final outcome that indicates Dylan is just a "Well we did what we could..."... Dylan is an intended tip of the spear for what those developers believed was a better approach than anything they had to work from previously.

jpg]

[Futuretime23]

Honestly, I think DLC Dylan is eons worse than main campaign Dylan. At least there he shows up only like 3 times.
DLC? oh boy. (and they actually increased his screentime when they reshuffled the entire dlc level order around.)

Because that's of course what the Duke series needs: an unfunny "dudebro" asshole who never, EVER, EVEEERRRR shuts up. (and with a high pitched voice when he gets shrunk down of course)

I especially liked it when the asshole triggered a tripmine in the elevator/platform whatever ride level and nearly killed me. On top of that, he told me to be careful AFTER triggering the mine.

I'm not sure if I hate the Holsom twins or Dylan more. Both legit are some of the worst video game characters I've ever seen.

[Aleks]

I on the other hand found both Dylan and Holsom twins characters to be spot on as what they were intended to be - an over the top parody. Duke's role - similarly to DN3D - was mostly limited to 1-liner points which were badass and "Clint Eastwood" style, so it was good to see a contrast like Dylan babbling his mouth non-stop as a mock-up of "dudebro" characters. And twins played quite an important role in the plot and led to the actually only scene where Duke kind of "cracked" being in rage for their death, plus his pick-up line "When did you two get back?" in "My Digs" was perfectly tongue-in-cheek.