New details on the Duke Nukem Forever 2001 build

[D4NUK1]

5 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Or maybe they should just ditch Duke Nukem altogether and focus on Bombshell instead. I have not played her eponymous debut title, but while I have my issues with Ion Fury (starting with the title), I consider the game to be essentially Duke Nukem 3D 2.0, without the baggage.

That's up to 3DRealms, if anything, Ion Maiden was also going to get a style 3D ala Duke Nukem Forever.
But i can't replace Duke Nukem that easy, both him and Shelly are great Characters.

 

 

[Rudolph]

Huh, I did not know about Motherflakker. While I am not entirely sold on the title, it is already better than "Ion Fury".

 

Who knows, maybe 3D Realms could capitalize on the hype surrounding the DNF2001 leak to revive Motherflakker and turn it into a full-fledged game.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Rudolph

[Biodegradable]

3 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Spoiler: You can actually piss from inside your brain. That's a good joke.

 

Pee is stored in the motor cortex.

 

[Dark Pulse]

1 minute ago, Biodegradable said:

 

Pee is stored in the motor cortex.

 

Postal Dude is jealous of that capability.

 

Also, when you realize DNF would've had piss-on-demand years before Postal 2.

[Dark Pulse]

Launching the editor gives the DNF logo instead, but it seems that at one point it had this alternate splash.

 

 

Were there any other anime nerds at 3DR at the time? I wonder if this was Lee's doing...

[ReaperAA]

6 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Heck, Red Faction actually came out in 2001 and did almost everything Duke Nukem Forever 2001 intended to do (e.g. interactive environments, drivable vehicles, varied arsenal and bestiary, imitating Half-Life's design, etc.), yet it did not do exceptionally well.

 

Sure Red Faction wasn't as overwhelmingly successful as something like Halo, but it was still a very successful and well received game of its time (enough to warrant sequels).

 

6 hours ago, Rudolph said:

SiN tried to do something similar a couple years later and it bombed horribly while the Duke Nukem third-person shooter spin-offs are not remembered as fondly.

 

SiN wasn't as successful because it was released like less than a month before Half-Life. Everyone and their grandma was all over HL that SiN went under the radar. Those few who did get to play SiN mostly liked the game. And the reason why the Duke spin-off games are not remembered as fondly is because.... well they are spinoffs. Most Duke fans were waiting for DNF since that was the "big/main game"

 

The final DNF was a failure not because it had crass humour (though of course stuff like that line in the hive level didn't help matters), but mainly because it failed to meet the standards that the fans were expecting from the game after all the cool trailers over the years. Duke Nukem 3D was also primarily successful mainly because of its strong level design, interactivity and good gameplay with cool weapons and stuff. The one-liners were mere icing on the cake.

[Frost-Core]

Hey guys im back! im thinking of a master plan to defeat randy so ill get the build, be back with screenshots! also i've seen vids of people playing it and i see duke pee, does he pee or does he use a lightning bolt.

[Daytime Waitress]

23 hours ago, leejacksonaudio said:

A reminder, if it hasn't been posted here already - some music from the 2001 DNF era:

 

 

 

Getting big hits of Perfect Dark, Timesplitters and Unreal Tournament from this -  one hell of a period piece!

[Murdoch]

Finally got a copy of the build down and... a big old meh. Played for about 20 minutes and saw nothing particularly inspired or interesting. Janky as hell and rather uninteresting. Be interesting to see if the community tries to grab hold of it and work it into something that's not awful... and if Gearbox lets them get away with it.

[Rudolph]

5 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Sure Red Faction wasn't as overwhelmingly successful as something like Halo, but it was still a very successful and well received game of its time (enough to warrant sequels).

Then it would have made it harder for Duke Nukem Forever to stand out had it been released around the same time.

 

5 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Those few who did get to play SiN mostly liked the game.

I did not like it. The game starts off strong, but it gets tedious really fast.

 

In comparison, Half-Life only gets kind of insufferable towards Xen, which is very late into the game.

 

5 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Duke Nukem 3D was also primarily successful mainly because of its strong level design, interactivity and good gameplay with cool weapons and stuff. The one-liners were mere icing on the cake.

I have to disagree there.

 

Like SiN, it starts off strong, but then it introduces some really annoying enemies and the level design gets quite irritating - including many cheap deaths, awkward vertical fights and frustrating platforming sequences. The Pipe Bomb, the Freezethrower and the Shrinker are indeed cool, but the rest of the arsenal - while not bad per se - is fairly conventional and forgettable and the Laser Tripwire is useless most of the time.

 

All in all, I do not think it has aged as gracefully as Doom and also I am not sure it would have made as much of an impression without the Duke Nukem character and the lewd/referential humor. I have played through Doom so many times, but I usually give up on Duke Nukem 3D after the first episode.

 

In a way, it is like Mortal Kombat, which owes its reputation more to its controversial content (i.e. the fatalities) and less to its gameplay.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Rudolph

[Redneckerz]

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

In a way, it is like Mortal Kombat, which owes its reputation more to its controversial content (i.e. the fatalities) and less to its gameplay.

Yeah no, that's just patently false. The interactivity of Duke3D was a big selling point back in the day.

 

You probably don't know because you usually give up on Duke Nukem 3D after the first episode.

[Kityn]

George Broussard is mad at Scott Miller:

[Mr. Freeze]

Everything Scott wrote is either verifiable or plausible to where I believe it and George's only response is name-calling.

 

lmao

[Rudolph]

On 5/11/2022 at 11:24 AM, Redneckerz said:

You probably don't know because you usually give up on Duke Nukem 3D after the first episode.

Calm down. I have played through the game and I know for a fact that it does not get any more "interactive" than the first Episode.

 

Yeah, drinking from water fountains or viewing camera footage is funny the first five minutes, but it does not add much to the gameplay in the end.

 

Anyway, pagb666 just uploaded his playthrough of the first level:

 

 

Honestly, after watching this, I cannot help but feel like Duke Nukem Forever was always going to be at best mediocre. Compared to Hollywood Holocaust, it looks super linear and boring, it takes forever (haha) to get a better weapon than the starting pistol and the enemies are completely generic. Even if the game was to become more open and dynamic later on, it is still a terrible way to start your game.

 

I guess my Blood II: The Chosen comparison was accurate after all...

Edited May 30, 2022 by Rudolph

[BGreener]

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Then it would have made it harder for Duke Nukem Forever to stand out had it been released around the same time.

 

“DNF wouldn’t do well because things like Red Faction didn’t do well.”

“Actually it sold well enough to warrant a sequel.”

“Okay then, DNF wouldn’t have done well because it would have a hard time standing out.”

 

Um, okay, now this worries me. You made the initial claim that things like Red Faction didn’t do well. Upon being told it did well enough to warrant a sequel, you 180 in your next post now claiming DNF would have a hard time standing out against games like Red Faction. You’re desperately grasping at straws to reinforce your ideas, and have inadvertently shot your credibility in the foot. That is immensely concerning.

[Rudolph]

52 minutes ago, BGrieber said:

“DNF wouldn’t do well because things like Red Faction didn’t do well.”

I am going to ignore the nasty personal attacks this time and assume you misrepresenting my arguments for a third time in a row is a coincidence...

 

I said Red Faction did not do exceptionally well, something that even ReaperAA acknowledged in their counterargument. And yes, if Red Faction could not do exceptionally well despite doing all these things, then chances are, Duke Nukem Forever would have not done as well either, as it would have greatly suffered from the comparison with releases like Red Faction and Halo and upcoming titles like Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry - in addition to disappointing Duke Nukem 3D fans, which it was bound to if the leaked build is any indication.

 

I suspect the reasons why Duke Nukem Forever 2011 sold so well are the highly-deceptive marketing, morbid curiosity from players who wanted to see the disaster for themselves and also possibly because 2011 just was not a great year for first-person shooters - even RAGE disappointed! - and thus Duke Nukem Forever did not have much competition to worry about.

 

9 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Sure Red Faction wasn't as overwhelmingly successful as something like Halo, but it was still a very successful and well received game of its time (enough to warrant sequels).

This reminds me that Red Faction II came out the year after, in 2002. It was so bad they would not release another Red Faction until 2009 - which was not even a first-person shooter. This shows you just how unforgiving the industry can be and how a single bad title can kill an otherwise successful franchise, at least for a while. I wonder if Red Faction II's failure played a role in Duke Nukem Forever getting delayed...

 

In hindsight, though, it is kind of a miracle that Halo did so well, given how bad the opening level and basically all the interior levels are. I tried to replay it recently as part of the Master Chief Collection and it was such a chore to power through. I guess being a Xbox exclusivity really helped there.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Rudolph

[Frost-Core]

Hey guys! im having a issue with the duke nukem build, when it boots it goes to fullscreen showing me a black background, i want to run it in windowed using a command how do i do that?

EDIT : just edit default.ini and make StartupFullscreen and UseFullscreen false, and now i have the crash, please help :

Edited May 11, 2022 by Frost-Core

[SplinkWizard]

I hope there are no more complications. I'm pretty excited to see where this goes.

13 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Launching the editor gives the DNF logo instead, but it seems that at one point it had this alternate splash.

 

 

Were there any other anime nerds at 3DR at the time? I wonder if this was Lee's doing...

The Menu customization tab for mine was full of softcore porn. I think the devs were super horny making this lol.

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, Kityn said:

George Broussard is mad at Scott Miller:

George B:

• Does not like the (very) vile responses given when commented on the leak and keeps a clear heading
• Scott posts his side of the story.
• George B: ''Yeah scott's a bit of narcissist''

This is real classy George. If you still have this much resentment over a 20+ year old build, then you officially have turned into the Grumpy Gamedev, other accomplishments nonewithstanding.

 

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

Calm down. I have played through the game and I know for a fact that it gets any more "interactive" than the first Episode.

But that's not what you said. All i did was quite literally repeat your very own statement.

 

Quote

Yeah, drinking from water fountains or viewing camera footage is funny the first five minutes, but it does not add much to the gameplay in the end.

You are looking at this with a 2022 lens and not with a 2001 one for DNF 2001. Or even a 1996 one for Duke 3D. This stuff was pretty unusual back in the day.

 

That it doesn't impress you is on you, but that has nothing to do with its legacy.

 

Quote

I guess my Blood II: The Chosen comparison was accurate after all...

Said absolutely nobody ever. Look Rudolph i get it that you are dishing out your takes here and especially how it should be better as if you know how development works, but fact of the matter is - DNF 2001 is a unfinished build. Enemies don't enact. Some stuff from the trailer is literally nothing but a scripted sequence with no gameplay.

 

The devs at work didn't had much other choice because reiteration came upon reiteration. After the 2001 build, George B saw Doom 3 and thought that had to be in DNF aswell. Cue the delay, to the point where 3DR ended up saying ''Lets rewrite the entire renderer then''

 

The clear cut facts are that this DNF 2001 has a good chunk of gameplay loop and a good chunk of baselines that need work. And then you need to work the gameplay in. That's all there is to it.

51 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

In hindsight, it is kind of a miracle that Halo did so well, given how bad the opening level is. I guess being a Xbox exclusivity must have really helped there.

You find it a miracle it went so because the opening level sucked?

 

I think Halo did so well because its control scheme became the standard, its visuals are technically intricate, and the gameplay is timeless.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Redneckerz

[Spooner5020]

I think it’s funny how people are judging this as if it were a finished game. I mean sure you COULD judge DNF based on this, but clearly this was not the finished product. This was only what they had that was playable at the time. I still think this is much better than the game we got years ago. That thing almost felt like a parody of Duke.

 

I hope someone will try to finish this version up. The source code is there to use.

[vyruss]

Got all of the dev environment setup to build it.  Will try building after finished with work for the day and give results.  Windows XP takes fucking ages to install in a VM.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

You are looking at this with a 2022 lens

Nah. I get excited looking at the Half-Life 1 alpha and beta content, I am fascinated by STALKER's early builds, but what I am seeing from the Duke Nukem Forever 2001 leaked build strikes me as extremely underwhelming. 

 

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

But that's not what you said.

That is absolutely what I said. I think that LA Meltdown is Duke Nukem 3D's strongest episode, which also showcases the game's main selling features.

 

It is a tough act to follow, and I do not think the subsequent episodes do it particularly well: Lunar Apocalyse trades LA Meltdown's gritty urban setting for some bland space station environments, introduces some particularly annoying enemies and platforming sequences and does not add much in terms of interactivity; Shrapnel City has you return to LA, so in that sense, it feels like a bit of a rehash of LA Meltdown, but now it features Lunar Apocalyse's annoying enemies and the level design feels nowhere near as strong or memorable as LA Meltdown.

 

So yeah, by the time I beat E1L5: The Abyss, I feel like I am pretty much done with the game and I see little reason to keep playing.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Rudolph : Changed E1L4: Toxic Dump to E1L5: The Abyss. My bad!

[mrthejoshmon]

I think it's rather amusing that we really be in here judging a leaked beta build on the merits of it being an actual game and not the fact this is an infinitely interesting look into history that people who actually care about game preservation, documentation and exploration definitely appreciate.

 

This is a mid shooter, most half finished projects are, I'm here because this is development history, thousands of curiosities and discoveries have laid in wait amongst these files and only now do we get to dissect them.

[Gibbon]

You’re comparing an unfinished dev build that probably had about 8 months of development on it with early stalker builds after years of dev time.

 

You are also failing to understand that they had to get used to a third party engine compared with GSC who made their own.

 

Less time learning an engine = more time actually developing content.

 

Rudolph if you don’t like it, don’t play it.  Crying on here ain’t gonna change that.

[Redneckerz]

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

Nah. I get excited looking at the Half-Life 1 alpha and beta content, I am fascinated by STALKER's early builds, but what I am seeing from the Duke Nukem Forever 2001 leaked build strikes me as extremely underwhelming. 

Okay, noted.

 

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

That is absolutely what I said.

God you are daft. But i usually give up on Duke Nukem 3D after the first episode.

 

Now that obviously suggests you played more, but you aren't saying that with absolute certainty.

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

I think that LA Meltdown is Duke Nukem 3D's strongest episode, which also showcases the game's main selling features.

Would you think it would do well in a 1996 environment?

 

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

 

I feel like I am pretty much done with the game and I see little reason to keep playing.

So.... you..... usually.... give.... up.... on.... Duke Nukem 3D..... after..... the..... first.... episode....

 

But if i literally say this to you, as in, i literally repeat your own statement, i need to ''Calm down''.

 

There is no heads or tails in that line of thinking Rudolph. Its almost as if you are mad that i used the same words as you. But you didn't copyright your comment.

[D4NUK1]

4 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

I think it's rather amusing that we really be in here judging a leaked beta build on the merits of it being an actual game and not the fact this is an infinitely interesting look into history that people who actually care about game preservation, documentation and exploration definitely appreciate.

 

This is a mid shooter, most half finished projects are, I'm here because this is development history, thousands of curiosities and discoveries have laid in wait amongst these files and only now do we get to dissect them.

And in a way, a clousure for the Duke Nukem fans,  it's feel something familiar as Half Life Epliste 3, where at least we got some kind of direction, but here, we got a overwhelming achivement, and even if for newer or people not so fan of Duke Nukem, does not remove the merit that's something great that hapened with this franchise from a long time.

EDIT: Also, Duke Nukem EP.3 it's one of the best way to end a classic FPS Game, so much better ending than DOOM 1 Inferno, and almost got better than Doom II Endings levels (In my Opinion) so don't disrespect the level with the great Firetruck section.  

[Rudolph]

28 minutes ago, Spooner5020 said:

I think it’s funny how people are judging this as if it were a finished game.

I guess I just do not see how the finished game could have improved upon the existing material without scrapping it altogether.

 

The drawn-out navigation through the burning casino, the bland shootouts with EDF troopers on a rooftop and the sequence where you have to baby-sit a flashlight-carrying NPC through a dark level infested with zombies would have always suffered from the comparison with Hollywood Holocaust, which almost immediately drops you in the middle of the action and allows you to quickly acquire new weapons and use them to approach the level in different ways. Ironically, Doom 3 would later do more or less the same as what that first level of the leaked build did, which proved controversial at the time, but at least, it had a memorably oppressive atmosphere and lighting effects that still look fairly good today.

[Rudolph]

12 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

God you are daft.

That is enough out of you, George Broussard.

 

11 minutes ago, D4NUK1 said:

Duke Nukem EP.3 it's one of the best way to end a classic FPS Game, so much better ending than DOOM 1 Inferno, and almost got better than Doom II Endings levels

I disagree. Classic Doom's boss battles suck, sure, but by Duke Nukem 3D's own standards, the battle with the Cycloid Emperor is really underwhelming. E1L5: The Abyss has you fight your way through a long and arduous level culminating in a climactic fight with the Battlelord; meanwhile, E3L9: Stadium just drops you in the middle of a stadium and all you have to do is to shoot at the boss until it dies.

 

It is so simple and anticlimactic that Duke Nukem Forever 2011 remade it into its tutorial level!

[Spooner5020]

4 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I guess I just do not see how the finished game could have improved upon the existing material without scrapping it altogether.

 

The drawn-out navigation through the burning casino, the bland shootouts with EDF troopers on a rooftop and the sequence where you have to baby-sit a flashlight-carrying NPC through a dark level infested with zombies would have always suffered from the comparison with Hollywood Holocaust, which almost immediately drops you in the middle of the action and allows you to quickly acquire new weapons and use them to approach the level in different ways. Ironically, Doom 3 would later do more or less the same as what that first level of the leaked build did, which proved controversial at the time, but at least, it had a memorably oppressive atmosphere and lighting effects that still look fairly good today.

What did you think of the Doom betas and alphas? If going by those would you have said Doom was going to be a great game or a mediocre game? If I only had the betas to go by I would have thought Doom was always going to be a mediocre game, but today it’s one of my favorite that I play almost every day. You can’t judge the 2001 game based on an unfinished version. 

[Gibbon]

3 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I guess I just do not see how the finished game could have improved upon the existing material without scrapping it altogether.

 

The drawn-out navigation through the burning casino, the bland shootouts with EDF troopers on a rooftop and the sequence where you have to baby-sit a flashlight-carrying NPC through a dark level infested with zombies would have always suffered from the comparison with Hollywood Holocaust, which almost immediately drops you in the middle of the action and allows you to quickly acquire new weapons and use them to approach the level in different ways. Ironically, Doom 3 would later do more or less the same as what that first level of the leaked build did, which proved controversial at the time, but at least, it had a memorably oppressive atmosphere and lighting effects that still look fairly good today.

So you call it bland and yet earlier you praised half life.  A game which starts you off hitting things with a crowbar and babysitting scientists.  In fact a quarter of the game is shooting, babysitting, shooting, babysitting.

 

Try taking off those rose tinted glasses.  It helps.