3D Realms Shutting Down?

[Briggykins]

Shacknews has it that 3D Realms are to be shut down, meaning curtains for Duke Nukem Forever (again). Don't know if it's been officially confirmed yet (tho there do seem to be some pretty reliable sources on there), but a big shame if true, if only because another big name has left the scene.

[Mark]

I read elsewhere that Slacknews was pretty much the only source for this. Having said that, the same article also claimed Borland still owned Delphi (which they don't), so take that as you see it.

[Feek]

It's on the beeb now, must be true.

[Belmit]

As much as I really wanted to see a new Duke game I'm almost glad it's pretty much over for them. You can't develop a game for 12 years and just smugly tell everyone it'll be done 'when it's done'. If someone digs them out and the game gets made then great, but frankly I'm beyond caring.

[NokkonWud]

Hopefully the game is passed onto a studio more passionate about the project.

[Zirax]

Well this is hardly a shock, 4-5 engine changes will get you this. After 12 years they finally stopped being able to pull the wool over execs eye's to get some cash.

I don't think another dev studio will pick this up. Even if they made a good game, the amount of flak and continual piss taking both before and after release wouldn't be worth it.

[Del Lardo]

Things that have happened since Duke Nukem Forever was announced (and subsequently died)



* In 1997, the fastest consumer internet connection was a 33.6 kbps modem. On average, consumer internet connections are nearly 1000 times faster in 2009.
* When Duke Nukem Forever was announced, the fastest processor available to consumers was a 233Mhz Pentium. Since its death the clock speed of consumer processors has increased over 16 times (32 times counting dual cores), and the fabrication process has decreased from 250nm to 45nm.
* In April of 1997, Google, eBay, and the term "weblog" didn't exist.
* Microsoft released 5 consumer-oriented versions of Windows.
* Since the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever Microsoft has released DirectX5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9.0c, 10, 10.1, and announced DirectX 11.
* The entire Geforce and Radeon lines of graphics cards are newer than Duke Nukem Forever, as well as both brand's predecessors, the Nvidia TNTs and ATI's RAGE.


Movies that were filmed, released in theatres, and have made it to DVD:

* All three Star Wars prequels.
* The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, with extended editions.
* Every Pixar movie aside from Toy Story.
* Every Marvel comics movie released.
* Each predictable twist ending of every movie by M. Night Shyamalan.


Misc:

* Britney Spears' entire musical career as a pop star has taken place during Duke Nukem Forever's development.
* The entire Harry Potter series as well as five movies.
* The two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity were proposed, authorized, announced, designed, launched and successfully landed upon Mars where they have been exploring the surface for over 2.5 years.
* The International Space Station was assembled and has been orbiting Earth for over 8 years.
* There have been five Olympic Games (three winter, two summer).
* Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France 7 consecutive years.


Things that have taken less time than Duke Nukem Forever's Development:

* The Beatles formed, released every single one of their albums and broke up. During this time they also toured the world several times.
* Led Zeppelin released 7 albums, 9 singles, and toured around the world, crossing international borders 27 times (not counting mainland Europe.)
* Calvin and Hobbes started in syndication, over the years became widely considered as the best comic strip ever made, then was ended by its creator.
* World War I
* The United State's involvement in the Vietnam War.



Not all of these facts are correct

[leowyatt]

I could have sworn there were DNF screenshots on the internet today

[divine]

There are.

Ex employees are releasing all sorts material from the last build before they went under. Screens, videos, storylines etc.

To be fair, it looks ****, it's running on the Doom 3 engine the screens have no AA, the shadows are crap the textures are low res, the models are basic.

If that was near completion, it would have been utter gash.

[Streeteh]

Divine, if the ones you are talking about feature a Monster Truck outdoors then they are old screenshots from a previous build. The 'final' build was running in a heavily modified version of the Unreal 3 engine. There's a animation video out there that, while running very cut down textures and backgrounds to accentuate the animations, still looks rather promising in my eyes.

I have a theory that MS will fork out the $5m that Epic asked for from Take Two in exchange for a contract for game completion within a certain time period and to make it PC/360 exclusive. I have no basis for this theory other than the fact that to MS $5m really isn't that much.