Duke Nukem Forever....

Duke Nukem Forever was in development for more than twelve years--but the project finally died for lack of money recently (it was less than six months ago, I believe).
 
Uh, is this a joke? DNF was in development on and off for more than 10 years. The most recent version (the one you linked to) was pretty much cancelled recently. We may see elements of it come back in a future Duke Nukem release but it won't be Duke Nukem For-never.
 
Geez sorry.... I was in jail for half the year last year (DWI)...So I've been outta the loop for certain things....But yea that's a shame it was totally cancelled...that trailer looked awesome!
 
It is a shame, it's a crazy development story that will probably never full come out.

Still, I do feel like no matter what happened they would have missed the boat by more than a decade--the time to release a new Duke game was as quickly as possible after Duke3D, when the franchise was a big deal.
 
It's an awesome trailer...He's sittin there smokin a cig....liftin weights... Real Bad Ass...But true it would have been better after D3d....I wonder if it's because 3drealms doesn't have much revenue comin in. I mean that's the only 3drealm genre of game I even know of.
 
After the lifting-weights and using steroids in a secret bunker for many years... There have still been some updates. Still Duke Nukem is an icon, since the very first platformer I was hooked on early ID/Apogee games. Commander Keen, Duke Nukem 1 and 2, Halloween Harry, Hocus Pocus, Wolfenstein and Catacomb series...

When the shareware version of Duke3D first came out it already featured some screenshots for a game called "prey", and that also eventually took ten years of development. Do I still await duke? No, I'll play Serious Sam instead...

When will we get a new Wacky Wheels, with shootout arena's and not just racing...
 
The sad story of Duke Nukem Forever is fairly well-known in Internet circles... but then there are lot of iconic things I tend to miss as well, so I don't blame anyone for not knowing it.

I only Duke Nukem I ever played the original 2D platformer. It was quite fun, not sure if I still have it somewhere...

Wacky Wheels always felt like a Mario Kart clone to me... but it was fun all the same.
 
One thing to remember is that while it took 10 years or more for games like Prey to finally come out, the final game isn't even close to the same one that was originally announced. Some of the concept art assets may have stayed the same but over all, the actual game wasn't necessarily worked on consistently for those ten years.

In the case of DNF it also had to do with switching engines a few times but over all, for the investment that was made the end result would have been ultimately disapointing. No matter how good it was, the fact that people have it in their head that there's 10 years of work that is actually going to show in the end product would ultimately lead to disapointment. Honestly, did anyone think any of the stuff that leaked after the game was canceled (by people working on it trying to get alternate funding basically) actually looked good?

There's a major lesson here though for fan projects that think they need to continually adapt to the latest tech/engine and visual bells and whistles and to keep adding new features on a whim. Projects, whether commercial or for fun, will go nowhere without clear vision of the end result.
 
In a way, i suspect that Prey was the nail in the coffin for DNF, it was clear after 5 years that both Prey (which remember was a quake engine game and was announced in 95) and DNF weren't going to be anything like the games originally promised, but while DNF kept giving us sneak peeks every 2 years or so, which frankly wiped out any remaining interest by converting it into a long running joke (see serious sam's comment about blondie) prey at least dissapeared until the release date.

Then prey pretty much failed (I liked it, but critically and commercially it was very poorly recieved) and 3drealms took a major beating from their stock holders over it. Following another poor release, it was only sensible to ditch the white elephant that was DNF, even after 12 years and hundreds of millions of dollars. (especially since they will have been given the option when prey failed to excite customers, of getting DNF out of the door soon or losing it, when 3drealms failed to get it finished, the shareholders killed it.)
 
Madman said:
shareholders
Click to expand...

This is cute... but I'd like to point out one thing. Private companies do not have shareholders. A good portion of their funding was strictly internal, or so it was claimed. There were no shareholders nagging to get the goods out the door and while Take-Two wound up with the publishing rights in an interesting manner they had no say or actual pressure over them. No big bad men made 3D realms screw up for the past 12 years.
 
Which was likely a big part of the problem--unlimited money and time is as much a blessing as a curse. You need some kind of oversight, something forcing you to keep working towards shipping the project.
 
Madman said:
(see serious sam's comment about blondie) prey at least dissapeared until the release date.
Click to expand...

SSAM found "blondie", somewhere on the later levels when you find the coat of "the duke", you just follow that path and there he euhm... is?
The screenshots I saw from Prey were from something like the "build engine", or the heavily modified "Wolf3D" engine they still used in ROTT, certainly not from the quake engine.

3 years for development for a brand new game is normal. In the days of Duke Nukem 1 and commander keen 1~3 you could do it by yourself, with artwork becoming so complicated, and game critics... If they were to start rightnow on a new wing commander game, if you have enough manpower behind it, -maybe-, you'll get it done in 2 years.
 
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