Prerelease:Duke Nukem Forever/2001

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Duke Nukem Forever.

To do: Sources for the random dev comments Screenshots, interviews, any/other things that need to be put here. Full links are needed in the blog posts to the various (now defunct) websites they link to. Move the trailer to the wiki to get past the age-restriction Comments by Charlie Wiederhold, Something Awful user Channel_F (who claimed to be an former employee) and Scott Miller about the E3 2001 Trailer.

2001 is a busy year for the Duke, with the game's second appearance at E3 that year, a lot of hype thanks to the trailer at said event and a tragic passing from the publishers. Basically everything seen here is present in the leaked builds from 2022.

January 2001

January 9th

Tim Wilson Joins Duke Forever Team

The final piece in the DNF staff puzzle has been put into place. Our new "Texture Grunt" is here, hard at work, and his web bio! Welcome Timothy Wilson to 3D Realms!

January 15th

George Broussard discusses the editor.

Brandon has been working on a little project the last couple of days that will be of interest to mod authors.

DNF will support UnrealEd 2 as it's primary editor. We plan to make the switch in a couple of days and Brandon already has UE2 loading DNF maps. UE2 is in C++ and not basic, so it's more stable and a little faster. We also no longer have to distribute clunky/confusing Visual Basic runtime libraries.
It will also be much easier to add new features to UE2 as it is better written and in the natural language of the game (ie not Basic). Some features we get from moving to UE2:

-New vertex manipulation tool.

-Brush clipping.

-Tools to remove backfacing textures.

-Drawn interpolation paths.

-Freeform polygon drawing tool w/ extrusion. (From next Epic game)

This is a good thing and gets us up to date with the state of the art of Epic's editing tools.

Thank Brandon for working on this from midnight till 8am Saturday night

Brandon Reinhart.

Freeform poly editing is like 2D shape editing but you create the polys in the actual 2D editor views. As opposed to using a seperate shape editing tool.

Note that these enhancements are to Epic programmer Warren Marshall's credit, not mine. I integrated the new editor and was quite impressed at how easy it worked out despite the numerous changes we've made to the game. All hails to Warren for making the new editor that much more modular. Now that the new editor is available to us, it'll be much easier for me to add our own custom features that our level designers request. I imagine that in the end DukeEd will end up diverging from UnrealEd 2 with us having new features relevant to Duke (and Epic of course having features relevant to their new game).

Anyway, I wouldn't have gone forward with the merge if I thought it would delay Duke. It went very smoothly and I'm in the process of adding back a few features we had added to the old editor. After that, I'll be maintaining the editor mostly on the weekends and my focus will return to gameplay programming.

It'll be called DukeEd and have its own splash screen and so forth. We wouldn't be so tacky as to have it be called UnrealEd :)

>>And when we asked George for this, he said no! Next time I want something in this game, I'm talking to the GreenMarine!

Haha, we've been busy up until now, and it was also previously thought it would take much longer to upgrade. Brandon looked at it and decided it was easy.

>>Now seriously, will UnrealEd 2 actually be the editor(not likely, but what GB said is a bit confusing) or will a few cosmetic changes be added to it and be called DukeEd or DukeEd 2?

We're using UE2 as a base, then adding our map/game format and duke editor specific changes on top of that.

January 16th

Org,

>>So basically what you're saying is that this new editor that you've switched to has more functionality than the previous which means that all the current DNF maps will have to be re-worked and re-mapped due to this change.

No. Not at all. The maps are 100% the same and the editor will change nothing. All it is, is a newere more stable version that's more up to date. The new editor will not cause any change in the maps. It will just make the mappers more effective since it's a better tool.

When you update from Photosop 5 to Photoshop 6, you don't re-do all the textures. Things just work better and there are some new features.

January 17th

>>And will we be able to port it to DNF,the Unreal/UT levels??

I think the map geometry will load in. But you'd probably have to re-texutre, light and re-implement functionality (triggers/actors) as our system is different.

January 24th

Broussard on multiplayer.^{Source Needed}

We're really not doing a Class Based CTF game. And we're not doing a tactical, anti-terrorist game like Counter Strike either.

But it will have "teams/sides" (2) and there will be "classes" on each team. At least we plan it that way - haven't really started yet - but soon.

January 29th

Gamecenter awards Duke Nukem Forever the Bermuda Triangle award. 3D Realms accepts this award with a checky blog post.

Duke Nukem Forever & the Bermuda Triangle

We love winning awards before a game even ships.

It's come to our attention that C|Net Gamecenter awarded us the "Bermuda Triangle" award for Duke Nukem Forever - in their words, "So this year's final, and most well-deserved, award--the Bermuda Triangle Award--goes to the can't-be-present-at-the-ceremony Duke Nukem and 3D Realms."

One thing the article mentioned needs correcting though...

"...Maybe the folks at Infogrames knew more than they were telling when they jettisoned Duke to the Gathering..."

Nothing was jettisoned. 3D Realms initiated the deal with GT at E3 2000 and worked for months to get the game moved to a new publisher. Obviously Take 2 saw something interesting in DNF or they wouldn't have paid a gazillion dollars for it. Once Infogrames bought GT we noticed a change in company atmosphere and philosophy and we thought Duke's politically incorrect antics would be better served elsewhere.

But thanks for the award C-Net, we will cherish it.

February 2001

February 1st

When asked about the prospect of a PlayStation 2 port of the game, Broussard states the following:^{Source Needed}

We will do a PS2 port if:

- Based on economics a port makes sense.
- A technical evaluation determines that the PS2 can run the game without removing too much content.
We will not start any DNF ports until the PC version is nearly done. XBox and PS2 would be the prime candidates at this time to consider.

February 22nd

Broussard talks farther about console ports.^{Source Needed}

XBox should be a given based on the specs.
PS2 would be nice, but the 32 meg limit is tight. We'll see. We'd like to do this one.
We'll see once the game is close, what platforms make the most sense and go from there.

February 23rd

The official Duke Nukem Forever FAQ hosted on Dukeworld is updated.

Duke Nukem Forever FAQ Updated!

Dukeworld has updated the official Duke Nukem Forever FAQ with some more tidbits that were posted on our forums recently by George Broussard. Check it out.

If you're interested in Duke Nukem Forever information, the Dukeworld Official DNF FAQ is the best place to learn about it. If your question isn't in there, then the information probably isn't known.

February 27th

Broussard discusses the specs.^{Source Needed}

Yeah, the game will run on a P450/Voodoo 3. Are you gonna like it? I dunno. It's gonna run slower than UT for sure. We have higher poly counts on everything, more textures and in general just more.
Time marches on and so does technology and minimum systems.
We are doing everything we can to squeeze performance out and make it as playable as we can, but there is only so much to be done.
Most games today run pretty crappy on P450s/Voodoo 3's. And it's going to get worse as time goes on.
A P450/Voodoo 3 is a couple generations behind what is currently available and it's on the trailing edge of hardware. I don't think you can even buy a P450 in a store today.

March 2001

March 1st

Reinhart discusses his plans for when the game is released.^{Source Needed}

I totally want to write up a bunch of small mods for DNF after it's done. I also want to write extensive documentation for the script code. That was one thing Epic never pulled off...the mod community ended up writing all the tutorials.

March 11th

Broussard recommends hardware.^{Source Needed}

...I recommend a P700+, GeForce 2/Voodoo 5 (we're working hard to ditch glide and ship with awesome D3D support), and 128 Megs RAM.

March 12th

Brossard discusses various technical things and the demise of 3DFX.^{Source Needed}

3Dfx is dead and gone. Glide is dead, and their cards are dead. People should start moving to GeForce 2's/GeForce /Radeon's. Voodoo cards won't make it past Xmas.

We chose D3D over OGL because Epic's D3D drivers are in better shape than the OGL ones. Two tech programmer's jobs for the remainder of the project is to do one thing - make DNF scream under DX8 and GeForce /GeForce 2 class cards. DNF currently runs well under DX8 and we're doing things like bringing our particle systems and other visuals over from Glide. The editor is now D3D only and software rendering has been dropped from the engine (with a slight speed boost). It's out goal to have Glide totally exercised by E3 or before and be pure D3D with everyone running on GeForce 2's. That's completely realistic. By moving to DX8 we gain access to new features we can take advantage of. We're not going to have time to do it all, but there is a possibility of things like bump mapping on characters, and some vertex shader effects. These are things that Glide prohibited, but are fairly simple in DX8. A P450/500 class machine is definitely on the low end of currently available hardware. If you are happy with a game's performance on it, then that's great. Different people have different thresholds for performance. All we can do is optimize as best we can and see what happens.

May 2001

May 1st

3D Realms states that the trailer to be shown at E3 has started production.

DNF E3 Video News Update

No, this is not some kind of sick joke on our site visitors, we actually have some Duke Nukem Forever news to report. Work has begun on the video to be shown at this year's E3 in Los Angeles. George Broussard has posted an update on the progress made on the video at our forums. Here's what he had to say.

Well, we recorded the video footage. It took us about 3-4 hours, then we went to dinner. We came back and were about to rip the shots from the digital video, when we noticed - the sound was all too low. DOH! In our excitement to record footage, we neglected to check the sound levels. Sigh...

At 3am we finished re-recording all the footage...again But it went faster since we had a dry run.

We ripped shots from one hour of tape and we'll do the second hour tomorrow. We're going to have a lot more shots than can fit in the video, but it's always good to have more.

The guys from Gathering that are editing the video have their equipment setup in our conference room. We'll be working closely with them Tuesday to cut the video together, then we hope to polish/tweak it and be done Wednesday.

Will keep you posted. I think you're all going to like it a lot. The DNF team has put an incredible amount of work into what you are going to see.

That was posted very early this morning (around 6AM), and then the team went to catch some sleep. This afternoon, the God guys returned to the office, and we bring you these two shots of the '01 DNF video in production (click on either for a larger image):

May 3rd

Tragically this month, Douglas Wayne Myres Jr., one of the co-founders of Gathering of Developers passes away from an asthma attack. GODGames releases a eulogy on their website the following day. 3D Realms would post a tribute of their own as well. Myres had helped work on the trailer that was to be shown at E3 this year. He would receive an acknowledgment for his contributions in the final game when it released 10 years later.

May 4th

While the news of Myres' death would be announced, some good news was shared. 3D Realms announces the trailer is finished and will be ready to show off at E3.

DNF Video Complete!

George Broussard has posted another update on our forums re: the DNF E3 video. It's been completed, and is ready for show.

We think you're gonna like it.

May 7th

Planet GeForce would publish an interview with Miller.

PGF: Duke Nukem 3D had a lot of humor built into it, i.e. references to popular news items, computer games and one liners from famous movies etc. Will Duke Nukem Forever have a strong humor element built into it?

SM: Of course! That’s a big part of what makes Duke Nukem games fun.

PGF: Duke Nukem Forever uses the Unreal Tournament engine; will Duke Nukem Forever feature a strong online multiplayer aspect?

SM: Yes, DNF will support multiplayer.

PGF: Duke Nukem Forever has been the subject of ridicule due to it's long development period. What do you have to say in response to this criticism?

SM: I remember John Cameron being ridiculed from going way over schedule and budget on the making of Titanic–the studio even tried to cancel the movie. People only ridicule when they don’t have all the facts and knowledge of those on the inside.

PGF: Duke Nukem 3D allowed users to make and share custom maps and mods. Are you making an effort to insure that Duke Nukem Forever will allow for users to create maps, mods and conversions?

SM: We’ll do our best to again support mod and map makers with DNF.

PGF: Will you release a shareware copy episode of DNF, or run a public beta test of it?

SM: The current plan is to release a shareware version.

PGF: Are you planning to set Duke loose on the X-Box? If so, will it be a straight port?

SM: We’re looking into this now, but we don’t have definitely plans yet.

PGF: Thanks Scott, and good luck with Duke Nukem Forever.

May 15th

Scott Miller updates his .plan file, stating that 3D Realms will be preparing to leave for E3.

May 15, 2001

Most of the company is leaving for E3 tomorrow. Really looking forward to a fun show. Will finally get to see the Gamecube and Xbox, though I'm not expecting much from the Xbox and still hold on to my prediction from a year ago (in this spot) that it will be the number three console behind the PS2 and Gamecube.

Looking forward to seeing a long list of PC games, like Warcraft 3, Raven's 3D games (consistently very good, one of the underrated developers in the industry), Return to Castle Wolfenstein (especially since Apogee was involved with the first one, nearly 10 years ago), Dungeon Siege (lame generic name, but I think this will be a killer game), Unreal 2, Anachronox, and there are always cool surprises, too.

I'm hoping for a good reaction for our DNF and Max Payne videos, plus Max will have backroom demos going on and those are always fun to sit in on to see the press' reaction. Also, for Max, it'll be a great way to get a reading on what people think of this nearly finished game while there's still a little of bit of time for some tweaking.

The DNF and Max videos will be available on the Internet May 17th, the first day of the E3 show, so for those fans not at the show, we didn't want to leave you out of the fun. Also, CNN requested and received a copy of both videos, so they might appear (in part) on TV, too. (CNN usually has decent coverage of E3.)

Hope you're able to see what we've been up to

May 16th

3D Realms states that it will leave for E3.

Off to E3

In about 30 minutes, 3D Realms will be off to the airport to go to E3.

The Duke Nukem Forever & Max Payne 2001 Floor videos will be released tomorrow online. Please note THAT THEY WILL NOT BE ON THIS SITE UNTIL WE RETURN FROM LOS ANGELES - Don't come here looking for them until next Monday.

They will be released around 10AM Pacific time tomorrow the 17th - which is the same time the show opens. The idea is that y'all online will be able to see it around the same time folks on the show floor can.

Make sure to hit all the popular game news sites - most of them have been contacted directly with the video, and even if they haven't, I'm sure they'll grab it from one of the sites that did get it almost instantly!

Have a great weekend, and enjoy the videos!

May 17th

The iconic E3 2001 trailer for Duke Nukem Forever debuts, celebrating the Duke Nukem Franchise's 10th anniversary. The trailer was made as an intentional reference to the trailer of The Phantom Menace. Included at the end is a tribute to Myres and the infamous phrase: When it's done.

Despite how amazing this trailer is, it was highly staged as shown with the leaked builds. Broussard would go on to say that the trailer was a smoke and mirrors presentation that 3D Realms shouldn't have done.

May 24th

3D Realms brags about awards at E3

Duke Nukem Forever "Best of E3"

In addition to the Max Payne award above, we also have a report that Duke Nukem Forever was given the best of E3 award by gamersclick.com. This is interesting, considering Duke Nukem Forever wasn't at the show. The only thing at the show was the DNF trailer, which you can download from our site here.

Anyway, their award goes to Duke Nukem Forever, in their words:

DNF had a great showing at E3, backed by an awesome demo video. The game still has a few months until release, but it's shaping up to be an awesome FPS. It was just too good. A single demo movie, showing off the rewards of four years of labor, stunned the gaming community.

Yeah. Duke's back, baby, and don't you forget it. 3DRealms has been working on this bad boy for years, and at E3, they finally gave the public a little peek into the game. Amazement ensued, and everyone who had previously been shouting, "Vaporware, vaporware" was silenced. The first-person shooter genre is advancing faster than any other, technologically, and DNF is at the top of a very large heap of hot-looking shooters.

In addition, they also gave 3D Realms the best PC developer award for the show. Here's what they had to say about us:

With Duke Nukem Forever and Max Payne on display, George Broussard's boys had a huge show. It's not often that a developer can make everyone walk away from a show with their jaws wide open, but 3DR did it.

TTH: For the record, tell us your name, position, age, current projects, yada yada.

John: Hello, my name is John Pollard. I'm 26 years old. My position here at 3D Realms is programmer on Duke Nukem Forever. I'm mainly working on interactive stuff for the game, and occasional engine tweaks.

TTH: How did you get into game design?

John: Sometimes I think I'm a game designer, but I'm more of a programmer, with a lot of ideas :) I knew I wanted to start programming when I was 10 years old, so I just started programming all the time. About 5-6 years ago, I uploaded an engine demo on Compuserve, and Eclipse Entertainment founder David Stafford saw it, and asked me to work on their next Engine. I know I always tell that story, but it's pretty cool going from a grocery night stocker, to an engine programmer :)

TTH: How's it like working for the great 3D Realms?

John: It's really cool. The guys here are great, and really talented, and it shows. There is a lot of history here, and you can feel it when you walk down the halls and look at all the posters of past 3D Realms games :).

TTH: What's an average workday like? e.g. Get caffeine, code until the break of dawn, etc?

John: I come in, check my email, and then either start on the next thing on my list, or what I was working on the night before :) Rinse, repeat...

TTH: Any ideas when DNF will be ready? (Anxiously awaits a "When it's done!" response ;)

John: Hehe. I wish I could say :)

TTH: What kind of car do ya drive? ;)

John: I currently drive a 1999 Nissan Pathfinder.

May 25th

Another blog post discussing E3.

Best of E3 Awards

It's turned out to be a big news day, so let's get to it.

Voodoo Extreme has handed out their best of E3 awards, and they gave awards to two of our games. First up is Duke Nukem Forever, which they list in their Top 20 games of the show. They had this to say about DNF (which they listed first on their list here).

The movie that 3D Realms released of the game was nothing short of remarkable. The last time we saw Duke was a couple years back using the Quake 2 engine. With Unreal, the game looks generations better, and if the trailer is any indication of what the final game will be like, we should be in store for something very special.

They also included three screen shots, which were just dumps from the E3 video. Then, they also awarded Max Payne "The Winner of the Voodoo Extreme Best of E3 2001 Award" . That's a very cool award, and they had this to say about Max Payne..

Max Payne was back at E3 this year and is looking better than ever. Unlike last year when Max's moves consisted of some simple slow motion spins, Remedy has expanded Max Payne's gameplay to full-blown "Matrix" effects, where Max can literally slow down the speed of combat and perform dives, dodge bullets and other amazing feats of superhuman prowess. Graphically, Max Payne was stunning. The weapon models are all based from real-world counterparts, and the entire world uses photo-realistic textures as source material, making the maps almost as gritty as the seedy underbelly of New York City itself. Using hand-painted story boards to tell the tale of how Max Payne went from a good undercover cop to a man wanted dead by the mob (and worse), Remedy combines still images, with full voice acted dialogue to tell the story's torrid tale. Max Payne is currently in heavy QA testing, and should be released early this summer, or "when it's down" (you know, whichever comes first).

Head over to Voodoo Extreme, and check out their E3 awards today!

Voodoo Extreme also held an interview with Broussard.

Voodoo Extreme - First, are you and the 3D Realms team pleased with the way the game video turned out?

George Broussard - We're completely pleased with it. Especially considering we recorded the footage and editied the video within about a 5 day window. We were a little annoyed that the CNN version leaked a day early, but that concern was quickly put to rest once we read the online response.

Voodoo Extreme - The most impressive part of the movie for me was the outstanding character animation. What have you done to create such photo-realistic characters?

George Broussard - All the textures in the game are from photo source. We actually bring people in, dress them up and take digital photos of them. Then the art is mapped pretty faithfully onto the polygonal characters.

Voodoo Extreme - What's the purpose of the bar code below the general and soldier's eyes in the movie?

George Broussard - To help establish the game in the near future and be a little different from realism today.

Voodoo Extreme - I couldn't help but notice that we don't actually see Duke himself in the DNF footage. Why did you decide not to show his DNF look in the game?

George Broussard - He's not modelled yet. In any case I don't think we would have used him. We didn't really want Duke in the video as the whole thing was from his perspective. We even opted not to include any voice clips from Duke. We liked the idea that the video was strong enough to stand on it's own, without Duke. Besides you do see his hands in a few places :) (Editor's Note - and his boot crunching stuff)

Voodoo Extreme - There are a lot of interactive elements shown in the video (the food machine and the pinball game) . What other kinds of interactive elements can we expect in the full version?

George Broussard - We're not really talking about those things as we don't want to ruin everything for the fans. But you saw only a small sample of what's currently in the game, not even counting what's yet to be done.

Voodoo Extreme - There are also a lot of air vehicles shown in the video (Jet fighters and helicopters and the like). What air vehicles do you have planned for the full version and will Duke get to fly them himself in the game?

George Broussard - Same as the last answer. We need to maintain surprise.

Voodoo Extreme - The level design is looking great, especially of Las Vegas itself. Has it been hard to capture the real look of Vegas in the game?

George Broussard - Allen Blum re-worked the outside Vegas maps a couple of times, trying different things to get the effect of a big outside city without having it run really slow. We also took a couple of trips to Vegas just to get photo source, so from the art side, it's not that difficult to get the look.

Voodoo Extreme - Who or what is that exo-skeleton in the movie? :)

George Broussard - More surprises for later.

Voodoo Extreme - In one of the vehicle scenes, it looks like a person is controling the vehicle while Duke is firing. Does that mean there will be NPCs in the game that will help Duke out?

George Broussard - We have plenty of NPC interaction. It won't be just Duke moving through a world killing the bad guys. There will be other people to interact with.

Voodoo Extreme - Now that the movie is completed, is it safe to say you guys are going into stealth mode again until you are close to completing the game?

George Broussard - Yes. This is the first interview I've done in several months and probably the last for a while. We're going back into work mode to finish the game, so you won't hear much from us in the near future (except on message boards we can't seem to stay out of) :) We're glad people enjoyed the video and hope that it gives them some glimpse of what we've been working on.

Thanks, George!

July 2001

July 17th

MacSoft would announce in a press release that it would handle an official port of Duke Nukem Forever for the Mac.

Leading the lineup is the much-anticipated sequel to Duke Nukem™ 3D, Duke Nukem Forever. Developed by 3D Realms, and published by Take-Two Interactive (Nasdaq: TTWO), Duke Nukem Forever features the latest technological advancements in the industry. Using the enhanced version of Epic Games’ Unreal™ engine, Duke Nukem Forever is part four in a series of games featuring Duke Nukem as the hero. Its predecessor, Duke Nukem 3D, became one of the top selling games of all time. Duke Nukem Forever features a former nemesis, Dr. Proton, who’s mission is to dominate the world. It’s up to Duke Nukem to foil Dr. Proton’s master plan with an arsenal of weapons and quick-wit.

July 31st

Soapbox.net holds a quick Q&A with Broussard.

Now lets get to the meat of the questions shall we! "Where the heck is DNF"? Most people are saying that its "Vapoware"! Is this true? Duke Nukem Forever has been in development longer than any other pc game in history.

DNF is as much vaporware as people claimed Max Payne was. It's been in development since early 1998.

Most developers have come out with the dreaded "When its Done" response to when a game will be released and I've noticed that DNF also carries that same label. Could we at least get a "Year" that it will be released? Maybe something like "1st half of 2002"?
No. We've been doing "when it's done" for 5-6 years and we won't change now. People just have to be patient and play other games. Then they will be pleasantly surprised one day :)

It would really be a shame if DNF took the same route as Daikatana in taking TOO long to be realeased. I sure hope this is not the case.
People scream for games to be released quickly, then when they are and they are buggy or unfinished or need 10 patches, people ignore them and move on. These are just games. It's not as if it impacts anyone's life because some take longer to make than others. All you can do in the end is look at the game once it's released and see if it's something you want to play.

August 2001

Owing to Myres' death earlier in the year and continuing financial difficulties, Take-Two Interactive, GODGames' parent company closes their offices in Dallas and moves them to Take-Two's offices in New York.

August 2nd

Soapbox holds another quick Q&A, this time with Scott Miller. Miller is asked the same questions as Broussard was last time.

Now lets get to the meat of the questions shall we! "Where the heck is DNF"? Most people are saying that its "Vapoware"! Is this true Duke Nukem Forever has been in development longer than any other pc game in history.

DNF is in the proverbial oven, but one day the timer will go off and it will be a great feast for all. :-)

Most developers have come out with the dreaded "When its Done" response to when a game will be released and I've noticed that DNF also carries that same label. Could we at least get a "Year" that it will be released? Maybe something like "1st half of 2002"?
no response from Scott

It would really be a shame if DNF took the same route as Daikatana in taking TOO long to be realeased [sic]. I sure hope this is not the case.
Well, it's a genuine misconception to think that a game that takes several years has a good chance of being awful. Personally, I tend to think the opposite -- when craftsmen spend a lot of time on a product it seems like it will be a better product. But oddly, there's a myth in the game community that long development results in bad development. It's happened that a few games that had longer development times have not turned out so well, but it happens much more often that game with short or normal development times end up doing poorly.

I've talked to several developers at other companies recently, and there are in fact several super hit games that have been released in recent years that had much longer development times than the public is aware of -- those developers smartly didn't announce the start of development so the public wouldn't know the development length. That's a tactic we're doing in the future, too (and maybe we're doing it now, but we can't tell you <g).

August 21st

The first of the leaked 2001 builds complied. This build of the game is quite unfinished, with a lot of empty test maps.

Menu of the August 21st build (restored).

September 2001

September 13th

3D Realms proposes a letter of agreement to Mark A. Rein, vice president of Epic Games allowing the use of levels from Unreal and Unreal Tournament as deathmatch levels for Duke Nukem Forever's multiplayer. Rein would sign and agree to this proposal on the 19th. Ultimately of course no maps from either game were ever used in the final release.

(left side of document, bottom to top) 3D Realms Entertainment P.O. Box 496389 Garland. TX 75049 Tel 972.271.1765 Fax 972.278.4670 www.3drealms.com (A 3D Realms logo is present in the upper left corner)

LETTER OF AGREEMENT

September 13, 2001

Mr. Mark Rein
Epic Games
5511 Capital Center Drive #675
Raleigh, NC 27606

Re: The use of Unreal game levels within Duke Nukem Forever

Dear Mark:

This letter of Agreement formally gives Apogee Software, Ltd. (d/b/a 3D Realms Entertainment) permission to use certain game levels (a.k.a. "maps") from the PC versions of Unreal and Unreal Tournament, given the following three conditions:

o The levels will only be used in Duke Nukem Forever, a game being developed by 3D Realms, and published worldwide by Take-Two Interactive.

o The levels used will be those approved by Epic and created by Cliff Bleszinski.

o The levels will be used only for "deathmatch" levels within Duke Nukem Forever.

Sincerely,
(Scott Miller's signature)
Scott Miller
CEO
Action Entertainment, Inc.
General Partner of Apogee Software, Ltd.

Agreed and approval by:
(Mark Rein's signature)_________________________19-Sep-2001
Mark Rein, Vice-President, Epic Games, Inc.________Date

(Source: Tweet by Scott Miller)

September 25th

Please tell us something about 3D Realms. What have you done between Duke Nukem 3D and Duke Nukem Forever?

Scott Miller: After Duke 3D came out in May of 1996, we then spent the rest of the year working on the expansion set of levels, the Plutonium Pak. Then for most of 1997 we helped the external studio that was making Shadow Warrior finish their game by bringing them in-house and having the Duke 3D team do much of the necessary work. Early in 1998 work started on Duke Nukem Forever (DNF) but as of August that year we changed engines, which meant starting from scratch. So, the current incarnation of the game has been in development for three years.

We’ve heard a lot about international troubles at 3D Realms (break away of team members, cancellation of the whole project...). Was Duke Nukem Forever really in danger and is everything ok now at 3D Realms?

Scott Miller: I’m not sure where this talk of troubles has come from but it’s not accurate. Only a few people have left the DNF project since it began, and in those cases they were released because they didn’t fit with the team. The last person we released was well over a year ago. There’s been no strife with the development, nor any danger of cancelling the project.

How is the atmosphere in the team at the moment?

Scott Miller: The team is very excited with the game’s progress this year, which has been astonding now that most of the foundamental coding is done and all the gameplay is falling into place.

How many programmers, artists, musicians and level designers worked on Duke Nukem Forever on the whole?

Scott Miller: The team has 20 developers currently. You can read all about them on our site: http://www.3drealms.com/bio/index.html

In a few words: What is Duke Nukem Forever all about?

Scott Miller: All we’ve said about the game is that the story has connections with Las Vegas rather than Los Angeles this time around. We’ve crafted an intense story with many surprises. I can practically guarantee than any fan of Duke 3D will love DNF.

At this time, the legendary Dr. Proton is again the great villain, who, as everybody knows, didn’t occure in Duke 3D. Are there any direct connections between the stories of Duke 3D and DNF or are they completely different stories. In other words... do we see pigcops and enforcers again?

Scott Miller: First, Proton may or may not be in DNF. That might be something we changed in the story, or it might still be intact. ;-) As for a connection between the two games, all I can say is that DNF occurs after Duke 3D.

(Continuing on the next webpage.)

How much story do you put into DNF and how will it perpetuate during the game. Do the actions of the player have direct influence on the course of the game? Or do you lay more emphasis on action and the story is just tacked on the games tail?

Scott Miller: We view story as being extremely important, as it was with Max Payne. And I don’t mean a tacked on a frivolous story, but one that provides deep meaning to the characters and their motives. This is one of the many areas in which we’re trying to raise the bar.

Unnecessary to ask, if you have changed something about Duke himself. Or did you do, after all ...?

Scott Miller: Duke is Duke.

In my opinion Dukes greatest gift to the world is his big mouth ;-) Gags like „Hail to the King, Baby“ or „Your face, your ass...what’s the difference?“ influenced millions of players. Will these classics be part of DNF again and will there be more cool gags?

Scott Miller: We believe that humor, gags and one-liners are a significant part of Duke’s appeal, so you will definitely see this continued in DNF. For example, Duke shoots alien with rocket launcher, splashing its guts across the wall. Quips Duke, “Oops, I did it again.”

3D Realms is well-known as a grand master for biting sense of humor in 3D-shooters. I hope you have continued this tradition in DNF, because since Shadow Warrior there wasn‘t much in the 3D-genre to laugh about.

Scott Miller: Again, you can count on us biting often and biting hard.

Btw ... laughing ... Do you agree with me, that sense of humor is a very rare good in the 3D-genre. Or is it your opinion that the situation is ok the way it is?

Scott Miller: We learned that even in the most hard-core action movies, there are funny lines that keep the entire experience from being too dry and solemn. Without humor, the entire experience can become numbing and less intense, so humor at the right times actually helps the intense and scary parts be more effective.

The absolute most ingenious weapon of all times can be found in Duke 3D...the shrinker (especially for deathmatch it is always a laugh!). Do you keep it up, and what about Dukes arsenal in general?

Scott Miller: I think fans will love the weapons in DNF, but that’s about all I can say. ;-)

With Shadow Warrior you have proved that you take interactive levels, vehicles etc...pretty seriously. What do we have to expect in DNF?

Scott Miller: You saw the E3 video, right? I think that answers your question. :-)

Which current 3D-shooter could be most possibly comparable with DNF as far as the feeling is concerned.

Scott Miller: That’s a very good question. There’s absolutely no FPS game that comes close to the experience DNF will deliver. Nothing out right now even comes close.

(Continuing on the next webpage.)

How much time (for an average player) takes Duke Nukem Forever (singleplayer).

Scott Miller: Although there’s not an accurate answer for this question now, because the game isn’t done, I’m guessing it’ll be the typical length for a first-person shooter.

Tell us something about Bombshell! Is she just an (attractive) accessories, an active help during the fight (like the sidekicks in Daikatana) or is she even essential for the game outcome? Has the player the possibility to go through some adventures as bombshell.

Scott Miller: If I answered this question, I’d ruin one of the greatest surprises in the world of gaming. Well, maybe not. But I better not take the chance!

Do we encounter Go-Go-Girls again in DNF? ;-)

Scott Miller: I hope so!

An important criterion these days is the AI of the enemies. In which way does DNF orientate... simple-minded hordes like Serious Sam/Doom or smart die-hards like in Unreal/Half-Life/NOLF.

Scott Miller: Duke would tell you that all aliens are simple-minded punks. But in reality they are pretty smart, though they haven’t yet figured out that Earth is the one planet you should just leave alone—but they keep coming back to get their butt’s whipped. Go figure.

A few months after starting the production you changed from the Q2 to the Unreal-Engine. The reasons for this were extensivly explained anyway (so we do not ask again). Concidering the now very long time of the development did the switch really pay off?

Scott Miller: It paid off because had we stuck with the previous engine, the game would have even taken longer, and it wouldn’t look nearly as good as it does now.

In which aspects did you expand/enhance the 3D-engine? Does your version of the 3D-engine have something in common with the original at all?

Scott Miller: It has a lot in common, but there’s also a lot that’s been improved. The game engine will be as good as any currently on the market when the game is released, much like Max Payne, also in development for several years, doesn’t look dated but in fact looks cutting-edge.

Which modern 3D-technologies (Curved Surfaces, T&L;, DX8-Features...) are part of the engine. Is there any danger that DNF could be technological not on the newest level, or are you always adapting to new developments?

Scott Miller: Most of the technology we added to the engine directly enhances gameplay, but other than that I can’t say much ...

Which opportunities do you think has Duke Nukem Forever on the market? After all your competetors have already reached the next step of the evolution for 3D-Engines and for concepts.

Scott Miller: The primary goal with DNF is to set new a standard for highly interactive gameplay, much as Duke 3D did when it arrived.

(Continuing on the next webpage.)

How much emphasis do you lay on online-playing in DNF. Which modes will come along „out of the box“? Which online-functions will be implemented in DNF?

Scott Miller: DNF will support online multiplayer games. Can’t say much more.

The Unreal-Code should be well known among the Modder-community. Will the modified DNF-code be released so there can be aditional mods?

Scott Miller: We’ll do everything possible to encourage and help the modder community.

Think of the long (and for sure expensive) time of development of DNF, don't you have doubts that you'll get the costs back?

Scott Miller: Not at all. Even if DNF sells one quarter the units that Duke 3D sold, we’ll be very profitable. A big reason for that is that we’re getting a much better royalty deal with this game.

You surely have done a bit of market research. Is the Duke still known among the young generation of players, or, because of his long absence from the PC-arena, is he just an idol for old veterans from Build-engine times?

Scott Miller: We’ve done no research, although we watch polls that game sites like Voodoo Extreme hold. And in VE’s very recent poll about game characters, Duke Nukem ranked as the number one game character by a wide margin, followed by Max Payne in the number two slot.

But even if Duke was an unknown, much as he was when Duke 3D came out, I still believe DNF would sell very well because of its high quality, innovate gameplay.

Will there be a version of Duke Nukem Forever for consoles?

Scott Miller: Nothing has been started yet, but I’m pretty sure ports of DNF will come out.

Your opinion: PC versus consoles- co-existence or gory rivalry? And how does the future look like?

Scott Miller: Fact: PCs are better at some genres, like RTS games, strategy games like Age of Empires, and shooters. Consoles are better at other games, like sports games. The reason for this boils down to the controllers. Nothing beats a mouse for certain games, and for other games nothing beats a console controller. So, I think both platforms need to exist to support a wide variety of games.

What do you think about current and on-coming consoles (Xbox, Gamecube)?

Scott Miller: I think that Sony and Nintendo will fight it out as the #1 console because both of those systems will have the most high-quality, console-specific, exclusive hit titles. Several exclusive hits are the most important thing a console must have to succeed, regardless of the technical superiority of the console platform itself. I’m very worried that the Xbox has titles that look like they’re better suited for the PC, such as Halo, which will play far, far, far better with a mouse/keyboard combination.

What do you think about your direct competetors like Unreal II, Doom3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Soldier of Fortune 2, and Max Payne in particular? Which one will be the most dangerous for DNF.

Scott Miller: None will pose a threat. Well, DOOM might pose a threat, but luckily for us it’ll be released well after DNF. I hope! By the way, those other games are all games I’m looking forward too, but I just do not see them covering the same ground as DNF. For example, which of those games will have humor, or a very cool action hero?

What are you doing the day DNF hits the shelves?

Scott Miller: It should be on shelves next Wednesday. Look for the pretty pink box with Duke holding flowers. He’s trying to make peace with the aliens in this game. (Or is he going to blow them to pieces, I always get that mixed up!)

The interview had a fifth and final page, but this wasn't archived and appears to have become lost.

October 2001

October 1st

The FAQ is updated for a second time this year.

Official DNF FAQ Updated!

The Official Duke Nukem Forever FAQ (by Abe Rahey of PlanetDuke) has been updated. It contains all the available information about Duke Nukem Forever - if you have a question about the game, go read this. If your question isn't answered there, well then - we haven't said anything out that yet, and the answer is either "When it's done" or "It falls under Area51 rules".

Seriously - Abe's DNF FAQ is a great source of information about the game, so go check it out.

Also, don't forget to check out the Apogee FAQ (an awesome source of info about our company history), as well as the other FAQ's we have in our FAQ area.

October 26th

The second of the leaked 2001 builds is compiled, it is much more finished than the August build but still nowhere near complete. The source code of this build is also complied as well.

Menu of the October 26th build.

December 2001

Broussard makes a post on the forums confirming bot support for the game.

It's been a really long time since we posted anything about DNF, so I thought I'd post this. We're happy to confirm that DNF will feature full bot support.

The bots are in and working now. Very well in fact. This was essentially one of the last major hurdles/features in our multiplayer plans.

The bots understand and use our skeletal animation system and are proficient with 2-3 guns at the moment. We expect near full weapon proficiency before Xmas.

You can start a match, select how many bots you want to play against, tweak their settings and have a blast. We've setup games with nothing but bots and watched them fight it out and watched the score distributions.

We were initially a little concerned that getting the bots to UT's level would be difficult, especially with our animation system, but it was surprisingly easy. Jess got them in and online in about 2 weeks. The hard work is done, and now it's just polish issues like teaching them new guns, inventory items, and game types as we go along.

Bots were also a major concern of ours because a lot of fps games have been shipping without them (even Unreal engine based games), and we see bots as significant for the future of multiplayer gaming. We are firmly committed to delivering both a strong multi player experience, as well as single player. Full bot support is a step in that direction.

References

To do: Incorporate/reference this information below into article.

• https://www.duke4ever.altervista.org/textdocs.html#interviews
• February 2001 interview with Scout Miller part 1 and part 2.
• Interview with a Max Payne fansite were DNF is discussed a little.
• https://web.archive.org/web/20010124070700/http://www.stomped.com/published/jcal979543437_1_1.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20011019194946/http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/news/0,10870,2809126,00.html

3D Realms News Posts

• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/01/stomped_intervi.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/01/ruben_cabrera_t.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/02/its_miller_time_1.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/02/its_miller_time.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/02/another_scott_m.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/03/dnf_programmer.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/04/welcome_john_po.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/04/joe_siegler_int_1.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/05/joe_siegler_int_2.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/05/were_back.html
• http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/12/merry_christmas_1.html
• https://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2001/04/high-tech_gamin.html