Duke Nukem Forever 2001 Restoration Project [WE WANT YOU!]

[ETPC]

3 hours ago, Kyle07 said:

Or whoever knows how Doom 3 did look like in 2001? In 2002 Doom 3 had already the "sick" lighting. But in 2001? I could imagine that Doom 3 was in an early state in 2001, which is not comparable with the alpha from E3 2002.

 

But it's again only a guess.

 

well there was that macworld demo, that's prob what they were showing devs. and 3d realms *had* to have gotten a demo(s) seeing as they licensed it for Prey 06

[Kyle07]

Ohh I forgot the Macworld demo! I remember now.

 

[Nevander]

12 hours ago, Mr. Freeze said:

 

wow already deviating from 3DRealms' vision smh

To be fair, what the hell was their vision? Did they ever have a single clear one?

[taufan99]

1 minute ago, Nevander said:

To be fair, what the hell was their vision? Did they ever have a single clear one?

Pretty sure that's the joke.

[ReaperAA]

On 11/8/2022 at 11:13 PM, Kyle07 said:

I can imagine that DOOM 3 and Half-Life 2 were some of the reasons why the direction "to keep up" was followed. But its only my guess. Thought about that when I saw recently some Making Of material from id Software on YouTube. I can imagine that back then bringing an game with outdated graphics would mean potential failure.

 

I know that we today admire the graphics of 2001 DNF. But in the mid 2000s I can imagine that this was not so nice.

 

This is unfortunately true. As much as we like the DNF2001's graphics today, the game would have been seen as visually outdated back in the day had it released in same year as Doom 3 and HL2. Shadow Warrior (1997) was a commercial failure for this very similar reason as it was a 2.5D game when 3D was becoming norm.

 

And given that both Doom 3 and HL2 were originally planned and announced to release in 2003, this put 3DR in quite a bit of a situation in 2002 where they tried to change the render system so that it wouldn't look outdated against the other 2 games by 2003

[indigotyrian]

10 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

This is unfortunately true. As much as we like the DNF2001's graphics today, the game would have been seen as visually outdated back in the day had it released in same year as Doom 3 and HL2. Shadow Warrior (1997) was a commercial failure for this very similar reason as it was a 2.5D game when 3D was becoming norm.

 

And given that both Doom 3 and HL2 were originally planned and announced to release in 2003, this put 3DR in quite a bit of a situation in 2002 where they tried to change the render system so that it wouldn't look outdated against the other 2 games by 2003

 

I'm not so certain. Our best understanding says that an extremely close-to-gold version of DNF2001 was ready by mid-2002. If 3DR stayed the course and staffed up I honestly think the game could've shipped by Holiday 2002. While it's true that UE1 was showing its age by then, I still think what 3DR was doing with the engine would be enough to prop it up. Perhaps not cutting-edge but definitely not yesterday's leftovers.

 

Don't forget the rather extensive dynamic animation system, involving facial animations that (so I've heard) scared the shit out of circa-2001 Valve and probably was the original motivation for them to make the groundbreaking facial animation we got in Source.

 

Even if development stretched to 2003 I'm not sure the juggernauts would've arrived or had been as powerful. I have no reason to believe Doom 3 targeted 2003 except in perhaps super-internal SWAG estimates; never forget id Software themselves invented the "When It's Done" mantra. If Half-Life 2's beta didn't leak and we got it in 2003 then perhaps we'd see a serious competitor there, but a lot of what made Source so special (physics, materials, animations) was present in DNF2001 already in some form or another. The only other serious big-boy graphics powerhouse I'm aware of would've been UT2003, which was a flop anyway.

 

Of course this is all massive speculation based on a "what-if" asking what would've happened if 3DR didn't get spooked by a trash can casting its own stencil shadow so who knows.

[ReaperAA]

1 hour ago, segfault said:

I'm not so certain. Our best understanding says that an extremely close-to-gold version of DNF2001 was ready by mid-2002.

 

The leaked October 2001 build seems to be around 40-ish% (or 50-ish% if I am extremely generous) complete. And the work on UE1 version of DNF started at most a few months after E3-1998, so somewhere in mid-late 1998. Thus the leaked build was already around 3 years in development. At this pace, there was little chance it was going to be completed before 2003.

 

Of course I do agree that this is ultimately all just "what-if" scenario, when in reality 3DR just got scared out by "cool shadows"

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by ReaperAA

[Kyle07]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

 

The leaked October 2001 build seems to be around 40-ish% (or 50-ish% if I am extremely generous) complete. And the work on UE1 version of DNF started at most a few months after E3-1998, so somewhere in mid-late 1998. Thus the leaked build was already around 3 years in development. At this pace, there was little chance it was going to be completed before 2003.

 

After these years I can imagine that the motivation did already sink.

[ETPC]

if DNF shipped in 2003, i think it would have hit at the perfect time for FPS because it's biggest competition would have been the original COD and RS3 based on my memory of notable shooters at that time, and those were all focused on completely different things then DNF would have been. but alas. 

 

it's hard to keep morale up when your teams are creating amazing shit that you just throw in the garbage over and over because Shadow Warrior 97 didn't sell well. and also you don't want to hire any more people or work with contractors. and also your hourly pay is shit.

Edited November 10, 2022 by ETPC

[ETPC]

 

[Rudolph]

On 11/10/2022 at 10:37 AM, ETPC said:

because Shadow Warrior 97 didn't sell well.

Wait, really? That is the first time I hear about that.

[ETPC]

it only sold somewhere around 118k-119k copies by 2002 according to the NPD's

 

by comparison, Duke 3D sold around 1.25 million by 2002.

Edited December 1, 2022 by ETPC

[Rudolph]

I meant to say that I did not know Shadow Warrior 97's underwhelming sales affected Duke Nukem Forever's development.

 

It also seems hard to believe that it would even play a factor in the first place, seeing how Shadow Warrior 97 had very little to do with Duke Nukem in general. It would have been like Id Software cancelling Doom 3 because Quake III did not well or something.

 

Then again, given George Broussard's track record, I guess it is not that implausible of a claim...

[ETPC]

it's theorycrafting a bit, to be fair. there's not really any hard evidence we can point to, it's more "ok, what would have happened to cause Broussard's faith in Gameplay>Graphics to fall apart" and that's the biggest example, because they did so much shit to BUILD with SW (even Glide support!) but it died at retail. after that, Broussard became obsessed with DNF needing to be the best playing *and* looking game.

[indigotyrian]

It's kind of an open secret that Shadow Warrior was an embarrassment in the eyes of 3D Realms. I distinctly remember a pre-release screenshot of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project having a Shadow Warrior reference billboard in it, which was scrubbed from the game on release; posting this screenshot on the 3D Realms forums actually got someone in big trouble. They pulled out some excuse about how it "didn't accurately represent the game" or some such but the real reason was obvious.

[Rudolph]

Huh, I did not know any of that.

 

I was going to admit to not being surprised, given the fact that Shadow Warrior 1997 does feel more like a Duke Nukem 3D total conversion than anything... but then, I remembered that Blood came out the same year and seems to have done rather well. Curious.

[leejacksonaudio]

I got paid direct royalties based on the sales of Shadow Warrior 1997, and while I can't speak to any specific numbers, I can say this: I was not thrilled with my checks beyond the first one, and even the first one in retrospect was not mind blowing. Gather from that what you will.

[ETPC]

On 12/3/2022 at 6:52 AM, leejacksonaudio said:

I got paid direct royalties based on the sales of Shadow Warrior 1997, and while I can't speak to any specific numbers, I can say this: I was not thrilled with my checks beyond the first one, and even the first one in retrospect was not mind blowing. Gather from that what you will.

 

oof! that fuckin sucks because the score of SW97 is one of the best parts of it! 

 

btw, i forgot to post that we've released 0.1.5 of Bikini Atoll! 

 

https://www.moddb.com/mods/dnf2001-restoration-project/downloads/dnf-restoration-bikini-atoll-test-standalone-015

 

this is our tech base that dosen't have any of our new assets and changes and is just a really easy way to play the leak with lots of bugfixes and enhancements.

 

and, if all works out, we're putting out our First Slice by the end of the year! the First Slice will be the entire first chapter of DNF with all new assets, map changes, VO, combat, puzzles and more! 

 

really can't wait for y'all to get your hands on this. we got so much cool shit cooking. 

 

also hey if you're an animator and looking for a project, we need animators! come help rebuild Duke!

Edited December 5, 2022 by ETPC

[indigotyrian]

 

[Rudolph]

Nice to see a Red Faction-style Riot Shield. Hopefully, it is going to be more useful here than in the latter!

[indigotyrian]

9 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Nice to see a Red Faction-style Riot Shield. Hopefully, it is going to be more useful here than in the latter!

 

You'll be pleasantly surprised!

[BGreener]

WHOA THAT LOOKS GREAT!

 

Quote

December 21st "First Slice"

 

Holy crap! And thanks, too!!

[esselfortium]

This looks great!

[ETPC]

i cannot wait for everyone to get their hands on this aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[Kityn]

Damn! I'm It's looking good!

[Spooner5020]

Kinda off topic, but how much of the Quake 1 engine of DNF exists if at all? 

[PsychEyeball]

I'd say the answer is none at all? The game started development in the Quake 2 engine, then the project was scrapped and restarted in the Unreal engine.

 

Fun fact: the finished 2011 game runs on that same Unreal Engine 1 that powered the 2001 build, albeit heavily modified.

[Spooner5020]

10 minutes ago, PsychEyeball said:

I'd say the answer is none at all? The game started development in the Quake 2 engine, then the project was scrapped and restarted in the Unreal engine.

 

Fun fact: the finished 2011 game runs on that same Unreal Engine 1 that powered the 2001 build, albeit heavily modified.

I had heard it started development with Quake 1, but that they would implement Quake 2 elements later on. Yea there was a version that indeed did run on Quake 2, but unless I misunderstood they supposedly started with Quake 1.

 

You are probably right though that none of it exists. It sounds like they switched to Quake 2 pretty quickly.

[ReaperAA]

28 minutes ago, Spooner5020 said:

but unless I misunderstood they supposedly started with Quake 1.

 

You aren't entirely wrong. DNF actually did start on Quake 1 engine. However, the devs had not licensed the engine and thus had no access to the source code. 3D Realms had already licensed the Quake 2's engine in early 1997 and were just tinkering with Quake 1 (to get understanding of how true 3D engine mapping/modding works) while waiting for the release of Quake 2 (3DR had no access to it's code until it was released in late 1997)

[indigotyrian]

Come get some.

 

https://www.moddb.com/mods/dnf2001-restoration-project/downloads/duke-nukem-restoration-first-slice-10