3D Realms Shuts Down, Doomguy Gets Revenge

[bardcat]

all lies.

[Udderdude]

Xtife said:

This unfortunately is something I see happening to ID Software soon as well.

Yes, because we're all still waiting for Quake 2 to come out.

wait what

[Snarboo]

Looks like some level renders and concept art has leaked. Not really much to show other than generic scifi stuff. It reminds me of Deus Ex for some reason, though.

[Lord_Z]

:(

I bet DNF was just a few weeks from release too...

[Udderdude]

Snarboo said:

Looks like some level renders and concept art has leaked. Not really much to show other than generic scifi stuff. It reminds me of Deus Ex for some reason, though.

Looks like areas from the original game except all .. new and next gen. No clue how it'd play.

[Technician]

I'm hoping another studio that has some solid discipline will hire the DNF team. It would be a real shame for this to do down in history a complete flop.

At least Joe Siegler has Black Sabbath to fall back on.

[printz]

What? Weren't 3dRealms and Apogee by now two distinct entities? And wasn't Apogee actively working on a game called Duke Nukem, whose whole trailer was a flashing logo and Duke Nukem protagonist?

It's confusing!

[Jello]

Yes 3D realms was part of Apogee. The legal name was Apogee Software LTD. But at this point they are distinct corporate entities, 3D Realms was Broussard and company, who's sole existence was to waste money and tap on a keyboard when the executives came in to see how work on Duke Nukem Forever was coming. Apogee is fine, they've made money off of the various Duke spinoffs that have come out in the last 12 years. Take Two however owns the rights to Duke Nukem now, so the former DNF team can't actually finish DNF now. They could probably take whatever work (read: semen soaked tissues) they have and finish it up, but they would have to remove any reference to Duke Nukem.
Hopefully Take Two will send whatever work that has been done, and they legally own, off to Rockstar to finish up. Considering they're publishing the Max Payne games now, and they have a decent sense of humour, they could probably finish the game and make a decent one out of it. Plus they actually seem to be able to finish a game.
I think the worst thing that could happen at this point is another developer hiring the same team to finish the game. Quite frankly, if they haven't finished the damn game in 12 years, they're not going to. Best to take whatever ideas and work they've done and hand it off to someone that can complete it.

[kristus]

Well. Most of the people working on DNF seem to have been hired between 2004 and 2007
http://www.3drealms.com/bio/staff/index.html

[Necros20]

It seems as if 3drealms has never been a very competent developer. According to wikipedia the only games they've really developed were Duke Nukem 3d and Shadow Warrior. Any other games they've either produced or published. They couldn't even complete Prey so they outsourced development to Human Head Studios.(which BTW was founded by a group of former Raven Software employees)

[MRB_Doom]

Bye bye baby.

[Xtife]

udderdude said:

Yes, because we're all still waiting for Quake 2 to come out.

wait what

Some people would disagree with me here, but I believe doom3 was there last great game. What have they done since then? NOTHING. When did doom3 come out? 6 years ago?

They have announced new stuff now that will take them a few years to do, but somehow I feel the games that they make won't be very good anymore. It's not like the IDSoft of old where the ideas were original and had never been done before, now that all the competition has done it already, what can they possibly do that would be new?

Sure they haven't had a game that was in development for 12 years, but somehow I see them going slowly tits up if these games don't do well for them. Not hardcore bankrupt tits up, but maybe John will just retire and do his aerospace stuff full time (He did say it would happen at some point)

[Szymanski]

Jello said:

Take Two however owns the rights to Duke Nukem now, so the former DNF team can't actually finish DNF now.

I understand they only have the rights to publish DNF, they don't own the whole Duke ip.

[esselfortium]

Xtife said:

Some people would disagree with me here, but I believe doom3 was there last great game.

O_O You don't say!

[Reevys]

Xtife said:

Some people would disagree with me here, but I believe doom3 was there last great game.

I would. Doom II was their last great game.

[Udderdude]

Xtife said:

Some people would disagree with me here, but I believe doom3 was there last great game. What have they done since then? NOTHING. When did doom3 come out? 6 years ago?

6 years != 12 years, and they've put out enough stuff in the meantime to stay in business. Their new engine is going to be out soon. They'll license it and make a shit-ton of cash as usual. id isn't going anywhere.

[TheeXile]

udderdude said:

6 years != 12 years, and they've put out enough stuff in the meantime to stay in business. Their new engine is going to be out soon. They'll license it and make a shit-ton of cash as usual. id isn't going anywhere.

Isn't the basic technology behind their new engine already available elsewhere, though? The whole megatextures thing, I mean?

[printz]

I don't understand. Wasn't Enemy Teritorry(sp): Quake Wars after Doom 3? Also (w00t) made by id Software?

On a lighter note, Rockstar had made Lemmings :)

[DuckReconMajor]

printz said:

On a lighter note, Rockstar had made Lemmings :)

Heh, I was just playing Lemmings 2 like five minutes ago. Then I went to this page and the nostalgia almost made me cry ;{

Anyway, back on topic

Reevys said:

Doom II [...] great game.

lol

[Fulgrim]

3D Realms created a money pit developing DNF and imo that's what did them in. You can only redo some thing so many times before it starts costing you money and time. If they where smart they would have finished DNF in 2001 and released it in 02 or 03.Then they could have done the next Duke or Shadow Warrior 2 for this generation of gaming systems.

printz said:

I don't understand. Wasn't Enemy Teritorry(sp): Quake Wars after Doom 3? Also (w00t) made by id Software?

Nope, Splash Damage was the main dev team for Quake Wars. John Carmack modded the Tech 4 (Doom 3) engine for the game. As far as I know they guys at Id did have a lot of say in what went into the game. But, Spash Damage did most of the development.

[999cop]

This should come as no surprise to anyone who is aware of the severity of this economic recession. 3D Realms is another failing business model, just like GM, in the gaming industry, not making any money to begin with. Thank god that they didn't ask taxpayers for a bailout. I never gave a damn about Duke Nukem anyway.

[Snarboo]

3 minutes of game footage has been leaked. Most of it are level tests and animation renders, but what little there looked pretty badass.

[Revenant]

http://i40.tinypic.com/2iw0j92.jpg

[TheeXile]

Snarboo said:

3 minutes of game footage has been leaked. Most of it are level tests and animation renders, but what little there looked pretty badass.

So they were going for the "look down and see your own feet" approach? Meh.

[Udderdude]

TheeXile said:

So they were going for the "look down and see your own feet" approach? Meh.

I think that might be because the artist was showing off some of the stuff he personally did. I doubt you would have spent that much of the game watching Duke stumble around.

Too bad, it looks like it would have been playable at least. Oh well.

[Jonathan]

Bits look good, like when he's falling down the hole, and the fight in the stadium, but overall the art direction is very uninspiring. I've said it before, but when the original Duke was often bright and cartoonish, why were they making DNF so drab?

[pavera]

Maybe we'll see the whole game get leaked.

[fraggle]

The video is just a few fragments of gameplay; I'd be far more impressed if it was one long gameplay sequence. I suspect that this "leak" may just be a desperate attempt to get more funding.

[Zaldron]

Xtife said:

This unfortunately is something I see happening to ID Software soon as well.

Sure they haven't had a game that was in development for 12 years, but somehow I see them going slowly tits up if these games don't do well for them. Not hardcore bankrupt tits up, but maybe John will just retire and do his aerospace stuff full time (He did say it would happen at some point)

Wasn't Doom 3 their best selling game so far? They've since sold the rights to a movie, sold some licenses to id Tech 4, managed Quake Wars' development, expanded their staff to handle several projects, allowed Doom to be ported to XBLA in exchange of royalties, is overseeing the development of QuakeLive and Wolfenstein and is internally developing both Rage and Doom 4 with never before seen new technology.

If you think 'but I don't personally like their games any more' is a sign of economical collapse you're delusional.

[Zaldron]

TheeXile said:

Isn't the basic technology behind their new engine already available elsewhere, though? The whole megatextures thing, I mean?

Not really, there were some unfinished/cautionary hooks to something called MegaTexture in early id Tech 4, something that wasn't fleshed out until Quake Wars came out, but the mechanism is pretty much limited to terrain meshes, whereas id Tech 5 uses it everywhere (that being terrain meshes, static brushes, and dynamic models).

Not unlike the unified lighting method in Doom 3, it's the difference between having everything cast and receive shadows and selectively cast nice shadows for just the NPCs.