When was duke nukem forever first announced

This was however delayed by a month to June 10 internationally with a North American release on June Duke Nukem Forever was finally released after 14 years of development in Australia on June 9th Scott Miller was a lifelong gamer who released his text-based video games as shareware in the s. Miller found that gamers were not willing to pay for something they could get for free, so he came up with the idea of offering only the opening levels of his games; players could purchase the game to receive the rest of the game.

George Broussard, whom Miller met while he was in high school, joined Miller at his company, Apogee, which published and marketed games developed by other companies. While Miller was quiet, with a head for business, Broussard was an enthusiastic "creative impresario". Apogee a new brand name was made, 3D Realms in grew from a small startup to a successful corporation.

Among the titles they published was id Software's Wolfenstein 3D in Wolfenstein was highly successful, popularizing 3D gaming and establishing the first-person shooter FPS genre. By , Broussard began working on 3D Realms' own first-person shooter. After a year and a half of work, Duke Nukem 3D was released in January Among game aspects that appealed to players were environmental interaction and adult-oriented content—including blood and strippers. Buoyed by the success, Broussard announced a follow-up, Duke Nukem Forever.

Duke Nukem Forever was officially announced on April 28, , with the intention of releasing the game no later than mid Barely a year after the release of Duke Nukem 3D, the game's graphics and its game engine, the Build engine, were antiquated.

Broussard and Miller were flush with cash from the sales of Duke Nukem 3D and other games, so they decided to fund Duke Nukem Forever themselves, turning marketing and publishing rights over to GT Interactive. However, 3D Realms did not receive the Quake II engine code until November , and the earlier screenshots were mock-ups with the Quake engine that the team had made in their spare time.

The trailer showed Duke fighting on the back of a moving truck and firefights with aliens. While critics were impressed, Broussard was not happy with the progress being made.

The Unreal Engine was more realistic than Quake II and was better suited to producing open spaces—3D Realms had been struggling to render the Nevada desert. Soon after E3, a programmer suggested that they make the switch. After discussions, the developers unanimously agreed to the change, which would mean scrapping much of their work so far, including significant changes 3D Realms had made to the Quake Engine. Broussard said that the game would not be "significantly delayed" by the switch, but that the project would be back to where it was at E3 "within a month to six weeks".

Broussard also said that no content seen in the E3 trailer would be lost. Chris Hargrove, one of the game's programmers at the time, confided that the change amounted to a complete reboot of the project. By the end of , Duke Nukem Forever had missed several release dates and was largely unfinished; half the game's weapons remained concepts. Broussard shot back at criticisms of the game's lengthy development time as the price paid for developing complex modern games:.

Today's games are MUCH more complex. In Duke Nukem 3D all the characters were sprites. Today they are polygonal models, have to be skinned, and then animated or motion captured. A very long, tedious and complex process.

That means more time to develop. Note all the so-so [first-person shooter] games that didn't sell well in the last two years and you will see that they were simple compared to more complex efforts like Half-Life. A significant factor contributing to the game's protracted development was that Broussard was continually looking to add new elements to the game.

A running joke at 3D Realms was to stop Broussard from seeing a new video game, as he would want to include portions of it in Duke Nukem Forever. Later that year, Broussard decided to upgrade to a new version of the Unreal engine that was designed for multiplayer matches. Former employees recalled that Broussard did not have a plan for what the finished game would look like.

At the same time, GT Interactive was facing higher-than-expected losses and hired Bear Stearns to look into selling the company or merging it. Later that year, Infogrames Entertainment announced it was purchasing a controlling interest in GT Interactive. To placate anxious fans, Broussard decided to create another trailer for E3 —it was the first public look at the game in three years.

The video showed a couple of minutes of in-game footage, which notably showed the player moving in what appears to be Las Vegas and a certain level of interactivity the player buys a sandwich from a vending machine and pushes each individual button on a keypad with Duke's outstretched finger.

The trailer was impressive, and Duke Nukem was the talk of the convention; IGN reported on the game's graphics, saying, "Characters come to life with picturesque facial animations that are synced perfectly with speech, hair that swings as they bob their heads, eyes that follow gazes, and more.

The particle effects system, meanwhile, boasts impressive explosion effects with shimmering fire, shattered glass, and blood spilt in every direction [ Following the death of one of Gathering of Developers' co-founders and continuing financial problems, the publishers' Texas-based offices were shut down and absorbed into parent company Take-Two Interactive.

By , only 18 people at 3D Realms were working on the game. One former employee said that Broussard and Miller were still operating on a " mentality", before games became large-team, big budget development affairs. Because they were financing the project themselves, the developers could also ignore pressure from their publisher;[13] their standard reply to when Duke Nukem Forever would ship was "when it's done". It's our time and our money we are spending on the game. So either we're absolutely stupid and clueless, or we believe in what we are working on.

Many gaming news sites mailed Broussard, asking him to confirm or deny the rumor. After receiving no answer from him, they published the rumor as fact, but Broussard explicitly denied the rumor soon after. Soon after 3D Realms replaced the game's Karma physics system with one designed by Meqon, a relatively unknown Swedish firm.

Closed-doors demonstrations of the technology suggested that the physics of Duke Nukem Forever would be a step up from the critically acclaimed Half-Life 2.

Rumors suggested that the game would appear at E3. While 3D Realms' previously-canceled Prey made an appearance, the rumors of Duke Nukem Forever's appearance proved false.

Also, promotional art. Videos : Trailers, promotional videos for the game, portfolio videos showing individual contributions to the game. Audio : Versions of the Grabbag theme, outtakes by Jon St. John, audio podcasts. Text Docs : Statements by developers posted in forums,. Documents regarding various lawsuits faced by 3DRealms and Gearbox. When Prey is released late in only then do we believe there will be enough of an installed base to support sales of a high-end 3D hardware game.

Both games would have been hurt under that scenario. Scott Miller, head of Apogee, adds, "We want to give Prey as much space as possible, so this meant getting Duke Forever done early in , and to do this we need a ready-to-go, track proven engine. George Broussard, project leader for Duke Nukem Forever had this to say, "The switch to the Unreal engine was simply a business decision, and it came down to what we wanted to do with Duke Nukem Forever and how best to achieve it. It's important to note that this decision has nothing to do with id software or our relationship with them, which still remains very strong.

Fortunately, all of our game data will transfer very easily and we see being back to where we were at E3 within a month to 6 weeks. People who have seen the Duke Nukem Forever E3 video, or back room demo voiced concerns that some of the items they saw would be lost. We intend to apply the same ideas and efforts into the Unreal engine and push it until it breaks.