Duke Nukem Forever, Vaporware to In-Game Screen Shot
To say that Duke Nukem Forever has been a long anticipated first person shooter is an understatement. In 2003 Wired magazine came up with a special Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award just to award it to 3D Realms for its Duke Nukem Forever project.
But a screen shot has surfaced recently on a job posting for 3D Realms showing a screen shot of the recently re-re-reworked version of Duke Nukem Forever.
According to 3D Realms: "...That's an in game, real-time shot of Duke standing in a random hallway. It was really done as a small teaser for a job ad on Gamasutra. Nothing more",
Excitement for DNF Might have gone the way of DiaKatana
John Romereo was a video game superstar in 1996 when he embarked on the creation of his own video game company called Ion Storm. He developed a name for himself developing Doom and Doom II with John Carmack and ID Software. Romero and Ion Storm had promised a revolutionary new game called DaiKatana which incited universal excitement across all video gamers of the day. Romero set a lofty release date of Christmas 1997 and used the deep pockets of parent company EIDOS to fund his project.
DaiKatana was demoed at E3 in '97 but graphics only used software mode, meaning it didn't take advantage of the APIs used in graphics accelerator hardware that was fast becoming all the rage. Graphics looked hopelessly dated compared to ID Software's own Quake II. The Quake II engine developed by Carmack's ID Software used all the latest tricks in 3D graphics hardware. Romero decided if he couldn't beat his old partner he would join him by using the source code for the Quake II engine to revamp his Daikatan project.
After a series of blunders Ion Storm finally released DaiKatana in April of 2000. Needless to say audiences were under-whelmed. DaiKatana had become synonymous with disaster. Ion Storm was the victim of a software development perfect storm which delayed the game for three years.
Duke Nukem Forever has been in production since 1997 believe it or not – does this sound familiar? Many fans of Duke Nukem 3D have come view the Duke Nukem Forever project in the same light as DaiKatana. Delayed, reworked and in production for so long most people dismiss it as a software project that will never go gold. Apparently developer 3D Realms has switched DNF from the Unreal graphics engine and now to the Doom III engine.
I'm willing to give it a shot whenever it's finally released. I am not one who can resist the call of the Duke hollering: "Come get some!" So, I'll be there – even if the results are less than impressive. Why? Well, simply because when you run out of bubble gum - what else is there to do?
