ZylonBane on 7/9/2010 at 00:01
Quote Posted by catbarf
Not that I'm defending the developers, since if they were good at their jobs it wouldn't take ten years to make the damn game, but now I imagine they won't get much credit for the game.
Hey, fuck you. The reason DNF didn't get finished in all those years is because of incompetent
management. It only came as close to completion as it did in its final years because:
Quote Posted by Wired Magazine
One particularly crucial hire was Brian Hook, who became the project’s lead, a central boss operating directly below Broussard. Hook realized the challenge ahead: He was inheriting “a fractured and demoralized project that lacked direction, milestones, or cohesion,” as he later described it.
Hook, former employees say, also attempted something nobody had done successfully before: He pushed back on Broussard’s constant requests for endless tweaks and changes. And when Broussard complained, Hook held firm. He was the first employee to stand between Broussard and his beloved game, making it possible for the team to move forward without getting stalled by new requests.
(
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1)
Enchantermon on 7/9/2010 at 01:18
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Maybe Valve will outsource Episode 3 to them once DNF is finished.
Maybe, but Valve has been on a roll with HL2; I'd rather they keep it.
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
What would Opposing Force 2 be anyway? Adrian Shephard waking up in City 17?
Who knows? (
http://www.of2mod.com/media/) These guys, though, seem to have come up with what sounds like an interesting story that involves the Combine, but still seems to remain somewhat separate from HL2. I didn't know about this project when I made my post, and while it does sound promising, I do still wish Gearbox had done OF2 instead.
nicked on 7/9/2010 at 06:52
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Half of which, frankly, I am really glad about.
Yeah I wasn't saying these features are bad necessarily. They're all things designed to make playing with a controller easier. I'd like to think Duke Nukem's attitude and atmosphere are more reliant on crazy scripted events, amusing voice acting, giant monsters, etc. than gameplay mechanics, but we'll see...
ZylonBane on 7/9/2010 at 16:21
If Duke Nukem fails as a fun first-person shooter, then it fails, period. You have to get the basics right. Everything else is just gravy.
demagogue on 7/9/2010 at 21:11
It's hard to really understand the management's insistence here. It's like if there were only ONE rule of game development you had to know before all others, it's that feature creep is the evil to avoid at almost all costs... And to not only not defend the team from it but actually insist on it baffles the brain.
I wonder, though, if we aren't reaching a point where game engines are reaching diminishing returns and pretty soon there won't be anything another year or 2 in engine-tech can give you, and everything special about your game has to be design decisions (sort of like the early days). But I don't know. Maybe we still have another 20 itTech generations to look forward to and it never slow down...
CCCToad on 7/9/2010 at 21:22
Quote Posted by demagogue
It's hard to really understand the management's insistence here. It's like if there were only ONE rule of game development you had to know before all others, it's that feature creep is the evil to avoid at almost all costs... And to not only not defend the team from it but actually insist on it baffles the brain.
I wonder, though, if we aren't reaching a point where game engines are reaching diminishing returns and pretty soon there won't be anything another year or 2 in engine-tech can give you, and everything special about your game has to be design decisions (sort of like the early days). But I don't know. Maybe we still have another 20 itTech generations to look forward to and it never slow down...
I disagree. The same could be said of the film industry: the special effects quality of Hollywood isn't going to get better for a long time. However, that fact alone hasn't prevented the industry from being dominated by Michael Bay style cretins who are incapable of coming up with anything more interesting than pretty explosions.
ZylonBane on 7/9/2010 at 21:23
Quote Posted by demagogue
It's hard to really understand the management's insistence here. It's like if there were only ONE rule of game development you had to know before all others, it's that feature creep is the evil to avoid at almost all costs... And to not only not defend the team from it but actually insist on it baffles the brain.
It's not hard to understand at all if you read the article. Broussard was obsessed with putting out a game that was as technically ahead of the curve as the original DN3D. Since they had tons of capital, they got away with it for a long time.
Contrast with the original Half-Life, where a vaguely similar situation went right instead of horribly wrong. The first iteration of Half-Life (featuring Ivan the Space Biker) was pretty much entirely scrapped.
lost_soul on 7/9/2010 at 22:21
No, people just need to learn that better graphics and engines do not make a better game. As someone who has been playing for a long time, this is blatantly obvious. Just compare DX to DX Invisible War, Thief 1/2 to Thief: DS, Unreal to Unreal II, and others. Some of the most fun I've had in an online game recently has been in Urban Terror... a game that can run on an eight-year-old PC, dug out of the garbage. Of course I still play The Dark Mod and am excited to see how the Doom 3 engine can improve on the aspects that made Thief great.
There's a reason so many people still play Counter-Strike and UT99.
june gloom on 7/9/2010 at 22:47
Yeah, they're a bunch of ninnies who refuse to even look at anything new.
ZylonBane on 7/9/2010 at 23:02
Quote Posted by lost_soul
No...
No to what? Exactly which statement in this thread are you disagreeing with?
