Duke Nukem Forever 2001 Build Discussion

[Tomboy Respecter]

I got this from the Doom thread on /vr/. Someone did a full playthrough of the DNF leak:

https://mega.nz/file/ZGAB0Cgb#2eTlEA_AZ7EUHCrNsVqjgWAF7-xMWbr6Lz7Yytek06U

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

I've heard the "it's just a glorified tech demo" critique moreso of Quake II (as an aside, Halo totally ripped off its visual aesthetic from Quake II and I refuse to believe otherwise), but the first Quake is pretty solid and advanced the FPS genre in a big way. For one thing, you could finally look up and down!

I've never played Blood so I can't comment on that game, it looks decent though.

Honestly play it its one of the best games ever made also quake 1 was actually supposed to be even more ambtious i mean it was a completely different game that had rpg and melee mechanics and was gonna have stuff like zero-g walls and list just goes on

 

[Foltest]

Ah, ok, it actually slipped my mind that Prey was as much vapour ware as DNF for a while.
Wasnt it supposed to use idtech2 for a while, too? Vaguely remember some screenshots in a gaming mag from 99 or so.

/edit: ok no, misremembered that.

Off topic, but prey (06) has one of the best opening in video game history.
It is a shame that you can’t get it on steam now.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I've heard the "it's just a glorified tech demo" critique moreso of Quake II (as an aside, Halo totally ripped off its visual aesthetic from Quake II and I refuse to believe otherwise), but the first Quake is pretty solid and advanced the FPS genre in a big way. For one thing, you could finally look up and down!

You can look up and down but you can't look absolutely straight up or the game will crash. It was part of an old speedhack. Maybe it's redone in source ports.

 

[The Ugly One]

I've heard the "it's just a glorified tech demo" critique moreso of Quake II (as an aside, Halo totally ripped off its visual aesthetic from Quake II and I refuse to believe otherwise), but the first Quake is pretty solid and advanced the FPS genre in a big way. For one thing, you could finally look up and down!

I've never played Blood so I can't comment on that game, it looks decent though.

Quake II was a full game, with a complete single-player campaign and multiplayer. Quake III was a glorified tech demo, especially compared to Unreal Tournament. Blood is my favorite FPS of the 1990s, hands down.

 

[Foltest]

Quake II was a full game, with a complete single-player campaign and multiplayer. Quake III was a glorified tech demo, especially compared to Unreal Tournament. Blood is my favorite FPS of the 1990s, hands down.

Would say that Quake III is more noteworthy for the tech. There are too many games that use Quake III engine.

 

[Beautiful Border]

Quake II was a full game, with a complete single-player campaign and multiplayer. Quake III was a glorified tech demo, especially compared to Unreal Tournament. Blood is my favorite FPS of the 1990s, hands down.

Oh, I absolutely wasn't knocking Quake II, I loved it. But it does seem like the game is often dismissed, for some reason.

 

[The Ugly One]

Oh, I absolutely wasn't knocking Quake II, I loved it. But it does seem like the game is often dismissed, for some reason.

I think it might be because the aesthetic got old. The later levels don't really look that much different than the earlier ones, and the environments weren't interactive at all. By contrast, the Build Engine games just felt a lot richer, even if they weren't full 3D.

 

[ZMOT]

What's a good game engine? I want to know because I've seen this said about a lot of them and then there's devs who move away from their own engines. Is it even possible to code a good game engine these days? Every story I hear sounds like all game developers just barely slap together a functional product with broken tools and somehow we have a thriving industry that rarely results in a Cyberpunk fiasco.

"good" is relative and in the end moot anyway. the engine is a tool that needs to fit your project, shit like cyperpunk happens when you have incompetent/mismanaged people handling said tool. look at it like this, if a contractor blows a hole into your wall, who you gonna blame, him or the hammer? best hammer in the world wouldn't have changed the outcome. a good contractor can use even a shitty hammer to do an acceptable job, especially if you never look closer or under the hood (although it might take longer and involve a lot of cursing).

inhouse vs general engine is mostly down to money, not how "good" the engine is. there are a lot more people that know unity/unreal (or even c#/c++), meaning a lot bigger pool you can hire for cheap and replace, than having to run your own department you have to pay appropriately to know and improve your engine, otherwise you get something like cp2077 or bf2042. it's basically another form of outsourcing, and you know how much companies love that shit. in return they have much less control and depend on an outside company, which is hard to quantify in numbers, same way the h1b pajeet looks a lot more attractive on paper with how much money he's gonna save. I guess it's all worth it if said company suddenly becomes competition semi-based on your tech requests (see: bluehole and poopg/fartnite)...

I think it might be because the aesthetic got old. The later levels don't really look that much different than the earlier ones, and the environments weren't interactive at all. By contrast, the Build Engine games just felt a lot richer, even if they weren't full 3D.

don't forget it's mostly orange and brown, even quake and gears1 felt more colorful (and it's not an engine problem, there were great custom maps which had none of that issue)

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I think it might be because the aesthetic got old. The later levels don't really look that much different than the earlier ones, and the environments weren't interactive at all. By contrast, the Build Engine games just felt a lot richer, even if they weren't full 3D.

In the opening area of Q2 a wall breaks or is breakable, don't remember which and that was probably Carmack being a bit salty. Leading up to Q1, after D3D was released, journos asked if Quake would have destructible walls like Duke, the answer was a flippant comment in the style of "our walls aren't that flimsy" or something like that.

 

[The Ugly One]

In the opening area of Q2 a wall breaks or is breakable, don't remember which and that was probably Carmack being a bit salty. Leading up to Q1, after D3D was released, journos asked if Quake would have destructible walls like Duke, the answer was a flippant comment in the style of "our walls aren't that flimsy" or something like that.

Also worth pointing out that when Q2 came out, very few people had 3D accelerator cards. I personally knew exactly one person in my entire circle of friends who had a Voodoo graphics accelerator, and he lived across town so I got to actually experience it maybe 3 or 4 times. So your average person experienced quake as being just as grainy and pixelated as Duke Nukem 3D, but the enemies were polygonal, so yay for that.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Also worth pointing out that when Q2 came out, very few people had 3D accelerator cards. I personally knew exactly one person in my entire circle of friends who had a Voodoo graphics accelerator, and he lived across town so I got to actually experience it maybe 3 or 4 times. So your average person experienced quake as being just as grainy and pixelated as Duke Nukem 3D, but the enemies were polygonal, so yay for that.

The software renderer of Q2 is both a blessing and a curse. The garish lighting is gone and running at lower res made it hard to see the models, including the weapons, jellying around all over the place. The downside was that in software it was just concrete grey and rust red/brown.

Kingpin might be the most unfortunate Q2 based game. It came out late enough(1999) that most everyone had a 3D accelerator of some kind, it looked good and being Q2 based at that time meant it ran fast enough that it could be played at 800x600 or 1024x768 at a high framerate by most of the people they intended to be their audience. It still used Q1/Q2 style vertex animation and at a high framerate and high resolution that looks truly atrocious.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The software renderer of Q2 is both a blessing and a curse. The garish lighting is gone and running at lower res made it hard to see the models, including the weapons, jellying around all over the place. The downside was that in software it was just concrete grey and rust red/brown.

Kingpin might be the most unfortunate Q2 based game. It came out late enough(1999) that most everyone had a 3D accelerator of some kind, it looked good and being Q2 based at that time meant it ran fast enough that it could be played at 800x600 or 1024x768 at a high framerate by most of the people they intended to be their audience. It still used Q1/Q2 style vertex animation and at a high framerate and high resolution that looks truly atrocious.

I'm still waiting for that Kingpin remastered and also Rise of the Triad remastered.

 

[Gravemind]

I'm still waiting for that Kingpin remastered and also Rise of the Triad remastered.

At this point, I'm willing to write the ROTT remaster off as vaporware.

Hard to imagine what could be taking THIS long just to make a decent modernized port of the game.

 

[Misconstrooey]

At this point, I'm willing to write the ROTT remaster off as vaporware.

Hard to imagine what could be taking THIS long just to make a decent modernized port of the game.

Kinda just seems like most of what was announced at Realms Deep has sorta vanished. It was announced last year, Steam page put up, no news since then. Ion Fury expansion, Kingpin, the SIN remaster (I was actually excited for this one as I never played SIN), everyone at this point knows how poorly Graven and Wrath are going.

 

[Coolio55]

Kinda just seems like most of what was announced at Realms Deep has sorta vanished. It was announced last year, Steam page put up, no news since then. Ion Fury expansion, Kingpin, the SIN remaster (I was actually excited for this one as I never played SIN), everyone at this point knows how poorly Graven and Wrath are going.

There's been *some* news on Ion Fury: Aftershock. It's late but a welcome surprise because that game fucking rocks and it's almost from some bizarre parallel dimension where modern games are fun don't make you wish you were dead.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/562860/view/3122689629911497250

 

[SlipNHonk]

Dunno some people also think of duke when it comes to boomer shooters also doesn't quake have a bit of a dvisive reputation with some people either loving it or pretty much consider it a tech demo also nothing tops Blood

Even back then, lot of people saw Quake more as a 3D version of Doom and didn't do much for innovation. Yes, it refined the formula and is still enjoyable to this very day, it's easy to hop into, it's not too insanely difficult and not too piss easy, but I think the major reason its looked back at fondly outside of its online multiplayer, was because the engine was so versatile with John Carmack encouraging and promoting mods and full out conversions for it. On top of the fact that Carmack also allowed the engine to become open source by 1999, just a little over 3 years after Quake came out which allowed the game carry over from DOS/9x days. Build Engine never got the same treatment, partially due to the blame of its creator Ken Silverman who unlike Carmack was extremely difficult to work with and retired from the game industry after the Build Engine games came out. His work ethic was also not as cohesive with him slacking on many demands, where as Carmack was more than happy to do with ID Tech since lives and breaths programming. When Quake got complaints about the online capabilities, John Carmack released Quake Worlds within months. Without remasters of Blood/SH/Duke, we'd still have to rely on DOSbox ect rather than fan made source ports that have made Quake live well into the current era before it got its 2021 remaster.
This is Monoliths opinion of the guy back then when they split with 3d Realms during the development of Blood
Also great video to give you a summary of the initiation reception:

 

[SlipNHonk]

Ion Maiden has a shit protagonist with shit voice lines. The AI is pretty terrible and the enemies aren't varied. They tried to emulate that style but failed to remove themselves from modern game design. The jokes in the game are also lame. I don't know what they were even going for.

It was a decent game, but I agree the variation of enemies was a little drab, the weapons were too basic or didn't have that oomph factor, many of the secrets usually were incredibly meta to discover and lacked a proper pay off, and the protagonist's jokes and one liners were lame. Otherwise great aesthetic, awesome level design, and an impressive OST.

 

[Misconstrooey]

Even back then, lot of people saw Quake more as a 3D version of Doom and didn't do much for innovation. Yes, it refined the formula and is still enjoyable to this very day, it's easy to hop into, it's not too insanely difficult and not too piss easy, but I think the major reason its looked back at fondly outside of its online multiplayer, was because the engine was so versatile with John Carmack encouraging and promoting mods and full out conversions for it. On top of the fact that Carmack also allowed the engine to become open source by 1999, just a little over 3 years after Quake came out which allowed the game carry over from DOS/9x days. Build Engine never got the same treatment, partially due to the blame of its creator Ken Silverman who unlike Carmack was extremely difficult to work with and retired from the game industry after the Build Engine games came out. His work ethic was also not as cohesive with him slacking on many demands, where as Carmack was more than happy to do with ID Tech since lives and breaths programming. When Quake got complaints about the online capabilities, John Carmack released Quake Worlds within months.

Reminder that an entire text document from one of the leaked Blood alphas details a disgruntled developer's struggles with Ken and his horrible engine changes he pushed on the team mid development. Ken was goddamn gifted but he was also young, dumb, and stubborn as a mule.

 

[Mega Man II Intro - GB]

Reminder that an entire text document from one of the leaked Blood alphas details a disgruntled developer's struggles with Ken and his horrible engine changes he pushed on the team mid development. Ken was goddamn gifted but he was also young, dumb, and stubborn as a mule.

I wonder where I could read something like that.