2002

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

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion.
Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

To do:

ALL of Rienhart's relevant comments should be incorporated into the article
Source of Broussard's "DNF will come out before Doom 3" comment and the Karma physics engine announcement.
Everything else as well

Unknown#

In Wired Magazine's article, Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem a former employee would claim that Broussard had played The Thing and was then pressing for a winter-themed level. This would start a running gag at 3D Realms to stop Broussard from playing newly released games as to prevent him from wanting to add more features from them into Duke Nukem Forever.¹

April 2002#

April 2nd#

The Unreal Script file, dnDecorationFX_SoapDispenser_Drip is created by Charlie Wiederhold.

May 2002#

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project for Windows is shipped in North America on May 14th, and in Europe on June 14th. Interestingly in the games files is an image called dduke.jpg showing whatever this is. The background is from the Lady Killer Casino as it was seen in the game around 1999-2003, possibly meaning the developers may have had access to builds.

To do:
Add the version from the DLC as a comparison, Also add filename as well.

Also present in the game's files is this unused audio called du-masochist.ogg. This line would end up in The Doctor Who Cloned Me DLC albeit with a new take. I hate to kick my own ass, but it's gotta be done

August 2002#

3D Realms would include MathEngine's "KARMA" physics engine into the game.²

August 18th#

³ ⁴

InGaming: 3drealms bread and butter genre has been and continues to be first person shooters. With this genre being flooded with games at an almost constant rate, do you see the novelty wearing off? Or is innovation always going to keep things new with shooters.

Scott Miller: First, our bread-and-butter is not really first-person shooters, but character-based shooters, whether in first- or third-person. For example, on the console Duke has appeared in several third-person games, and Max Payne is third person.

As for the novelty wearing off, yes, this is the case. That's why it's increasingly tough to make it fresh, and that's why we're spending so much time, money and effort trying to do something groundbreaking with Duke Nukem Forever. We do not want to release cookie-cutter clone games.

InGaming: You've said in previous interviews that 3d Realms is about maintaining the quality of the brand, and for that reason DNF is being kept back to ensure that quality is kept. What criteria does the company follow in determining that they have met the quality goals that were defined?

Scott Miller: That's a tough question to answer. The meat of the answer is just that we have the highest quality standards for the Duke brand, and until we're absolutely happy with Duke Nukem Forever, it will not be released. In other words, we're not going to release it until we're positive we've developed a big hit. The Duke brand is far too valuable to us for us to ruin it with a bad game.

InGaming: Once a game is finished and on the shelves what, for you, marks the games success? Does the businessman in you count sales as a pure measure of good work, or does a games quality still count in this money driven world?

Scott Miller: Sales numbers are the real measure, because we're not interested in just making a critically acclaimed game like a System Shock or Dues Ex, which wins many awards but doesn't tear up the charts. We think we can do both: Make a critically acclaimed game that also snaps the weak necks of our competitors. ;-)

InGaming: 3drealms are of course working on their current major project 'Duke Nukem Forever'. Are there other projects in the works that the team is spending time on, or is the focus purely on DNF?

Scott Miller: Internally, we're entirely focused on DNF. I (and to a lesser extent, George) also spend time on several external projects, like Max, but these do not slowdown in-house development.

November 2002#

On November 7th, Broussard updates his .plan file with an ad for environmental artists.⁵

Developer Commentary#

on May 24 2021, Brandon Reinhart, a former DNF dev would post screenshots from an earlier build of the game on Twitter, seemingly from 2002. Unfortunately, his account was suspended not long after this.

A very old DNF development shot. This is probably from. 2002. Duke would sign an autograph in his novel. You could write whatever you wanted and the fans would be overjoyed. The pen he used was one of those mutli-color push tab things. I made a bunch of stupid features back then.

An early version of the autograph signing, also used to describe one of the game's biggest issues.

Another old DNF development shot. I implemented a piss key. You could press F and Duke would unzip and piss wherever he was. Here he is on a talk show pissing in the host's coffee mug. The piss stream looked better in motion, a little yellow rope particle system.

Another screenshot was posted on twitter by Reinhart, The text at the top reads:

Jay:So how do you feel about what the president? Do you think maybe you could've handled the alien invasion differently?

When asked, the developer elaborated a bit on the level order:

IIRC, the game opened with the Jay Leno interview, then Duke returned to his penthouse where the initial attack took place. He then climbs down the outside of his hotel for the vegas strip level.

(Source: Screenshots of the posts)

Screenshots#

Screenshots of the game from this year were released by Gearbox in the game's release in 2011.

References#

3D Realms News Posts

Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem - Wired Magazine, December 21st 2009↩︎
https://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Unreal_Engine_Versions/1 ↩︎
Interview with 3DRealms Scott Miller (page 4) - InGaming, August 18th 2002↩︎
Interview with Scott Miller - 3D Realms, August 21st 2002↩︎
George Broussard's .plan - PlanetQuake↩︎