@@Directant That's no perfectionism. Brussard simply wanted the game to have the flashiest graphics back in a time when there was a new 3D engine every 6 months: he was like those guys that must have the latest iPhone on day one. Perfectionism would've been striving to make the game the best it could've been and, no, game are not just about the graphics. He had no real plan for DNF, so perfectionist he was not.
It would have been amazing to get that 2001 build as a full fledged game back in the day. The gunplay is amazing even for an in-progress build. I bet there would be even MORE memes about Duke than today. Another great deep dive into Forever's history!
After working on the current leak and trying to make something of it I tend to agree with Randy, I would be very surprised if the 2002 build is as complete as people hope it is.
It wasn't just Duke that died, it was 3D Realms as a whole. They could've been a major presence in the 2000's and onwards had the damn game came out in 2002-03. I want to put blame squarely on George Broussard, but I also want to put blame on whomever thought it was a good idea to put him incharge (probably Scott). George was good for ideas, but not for direction and he clearly wasn't a visionary as much as he was one who was trying to do the impossible by coattailing ideas from various other new games while also trying to supersede them at the sametime.
George and I were equals at Apogee (aka 3DR), so neither of us had meaningful power over the other. While I was working on projects like Max Payne 1 & 2 and Prey, George lead the internal DNF team. That's how we divided our duties. By 2003-4 I saw that DNF wasn't making the progress it should have been making, which is when I stepped in and arranged for Digital Extremes to take over development of the game, but George didn't want to lose his control over the project so as an equal partner he veto'ed that idea, which I personally knew was a big mistake. I then pushed hard for bringing in an external producer to help, and a few years later we finally hired Brian Hook in that role, who helped tremendously, but by then it was too late to save the project.
@@scottmiller1239 My mistake then, thanks for clearing that up. Yes, I do remember the story about Brian Hook being added to the games project at the tailend, Jay Brushwood brought it up in this interview with this TWiT podcast 11 years ago when the came out ruclips.net/video/EQLqjm_njhk/видео.html. Brian was a good addition, especially with his experience at 3Dfx, ID Software and with SoE's Everquest.
George Broussard saying they never should’ve made the 2001 trailer is hilarious to me. So it’s the fan base’s fault you showed us something awesome, then screwed around for another 10 years & delivered something much worse than what you had a decade ago?
my opinion on that is they probably wasted a lot of development time on that Trailer alone, kind of like the Halo 2 E3 trailer debacle... when time/resources could've been spent making the game and not setting up expectations... in the end, he still didn't deliver, but I mean there's probably a lot of sides to this long ass story lol
@@pariah87 You raise a really good point, I never thought of it that way! I.E. Focusing on that trailer slowed down work on things in the actual game. However, I can also see why they felt the need to make a badass trailer at the time. They were about 4 years deep in development & hadn't shown anything publicly in about 2 years at that point. Back in the day that was already an absurdly long time to be "actively" working on a single PC game, even if it was meant to be cutting edge. They needed to prove there was something behind the hype & at this point? There was actually still potential here. It's just a shame not very much of this era survived into the finished product.
@@wolfgangfrost8043 back in 2001, having the game of the show at e3 and just having a trailer there was a big deal... they ran into the same problem Rockstar has nowadays... too much money to be able to mess around with technology with no clear plan in sight
This is the same man that, while working for a million dollar company, released a statement saying that company "Needs to shut the fuck up" for daring to say they wanted the game to come out at some point.
@@pariah87 Halo 2 E3 debacle ?? Lol instead of that, let's talk about the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 (2012 & 2018) & Resident Evil 5 2005-2007 trailer debacle since both game ended up bad in a final releases
All they had to do was hire a bunch of people and force Broussard to commit to a single vision that was worked out with him and a few other designers/writers. Then they could've hammered it out and made so much bank.
they should have focused on the 2001 version and release that one instead. we would then had a good game rather than asubpar mediocre game one decade later, and on unreal engine, which meant more modding jus like the duke 3d was envisioned to be
I don't believe a bit, that Miller was the main and sole reason for the studio's downfall. Based on Broussard's known history and given how he reacted to some of the stuff on Twitter, it's pretty much telling who's fault it was. To me, it seems like Miller's fault was putting up with Broussard's shit for too long, letting it go to far.
This is what happens when someone really has passion for their work and wants it to be the most technically advanced thing on the market... But said person lacks the ingenuity of other creators to really make that happen. Duke3D was built on Build which was a competition to DOOM. DNF was in competition with... Everything. Which is fine! You release your game and hope people enjoy it and it looks like DNF had some truly incredible tech and ideas. But that person was still scared and they had the money to burn. Usually we get shafted by games companies rushing out what could have been an incredible game. DNF is the rare antithesis. A game that was probably incredible had the person lacked the funds to keep rebooting it.
That doesn't look like having a passion for your own work: it's more like wanting to be the coolest guy on the block at any cost. All Brussard cared for were the pretty graphics: he made everyone scrap their work the minute they tried to introduce a shader for real-time lighting in the game, just because the latest glorified tech-demo had it. Duke 3D was not a success because of its graphics: the Build engine allowed for a couple of things the Doom engine didn't, but the game was released the same year as Quake, which was a major technical breakthrough. Duke 3D was a success because of its ideas. DNF should've followed the same path with its eyes set on the goal of being a great game, not just a bunch of pretty images. Ironically, the released version, on top of being bland and generic as a game, it's not even technically impressive: its graphics are uneven but even at their best they hardly were top-notch.
@@thermonuclearcollider4418 Brussard: (Sees new game with amazing stuff) Howly Shet, DeM GRAAAAAPHIX!!! Also Brussard: Write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN!!!
100% agreed! Easily one of the highlights of this year in my book, it was sheer fun to experience the skyrocketed hype and astronomical excitement over it.
It's hilarious that George Broussard calls Scott Miller a narcissist when it was Broussard that was seemingly never satisfied with the game in any of it's various builds because he was constantly trying to make it better than anything that was currently out at the time. If they could have just released a full version of the 2001 build sometime in 2002 or 2003 the fans would have loved it. I know it's more than just one person who sank the greatness DNF COULD have had, but the more I learn about this saga the harder it is to not lay most of the blame at the feet of George Broussard.
DNF release in 2001 could've easily rivaled or absolutely make a game like Return to castle Wolfenstein, Red Faction & Halo:CE (which were arguably the best FPS got released at the time) run out of their money for sure
taking into account that the 2001 build already had the first chapter basically completed with only needing some polishing, all weapons being practically finalized and the gunplay feeling as amazing as it is i need to agree with frederik, another year of developement and i feel that the game could be 90% completed
Great upload man! Your content is phenomenal, as a kid born in 86 I truly appreciate the coverage of the games I grew up with. It’s funny to think that I started off playing Duke 3D after Duke 1 and 2 as well as the Quakes and every mod you can think of for Duke 3D. When Half Life came out and later CS and Day of Defeat I got heavily involved into the MP aspect and than MOH AA and COD as well. During this ENTIRE time, I was expecting Duke Nukem Forever to come out and it never did. Honestly when it finally released I had graduated high school and was well into my 3rd year in the Army as an 11B and just didn’t care. I literally just played it for the first time a few weeks ago and while I don’t believe it was as horrid as all the reviewers claimed, it definitely wasn’t worth the wait.
Duke Nukem Forever's tragedy is that pretty much any of these builds would've likely sold well and been better received than what we actually got from Greasy Randy Pitchford. Still can't believe that I was still hyped for Aliens Colonial Marines after trying that disaster, but hey, I used to like Gearbox lol. Given all the indie/retro FPS games drowning the gaming market, you'd think one would try to be like OG Duke Nukem and have an unapologetic 80s/90s masculine badass protagonist. But nope.
I too uses to like Gearbox, they did decent work. Still did up to Borderlands but they F'd over SEGA taking their money and putting it into Borderlands instead of Aliens Colonial Marines.
@Mud Kip, I did like Boderlands 1 and it was their great Brothers In Arms games that gave me hope Aliens Colonial Marines would be awesome too. Randy is literally human trash. Still can't believe Gearbox made my favorite Half Life game, Opposing Force.
Hello Framerater, I’ve watched your video regarding to DNF development timeline and such, and I’m excited to say that your worked is of major admiration and inspiration to me, never have I saw such a complete covering of a videogame development timeline. Never had I found such an incredible channel as yours when it comes to these topics, and I appreciate your work done so far. Most of these pictures you showed here are of major interest to me as well, most importantly, those concept art pieces of Duke on various outfits; where did you found all of that 2001 era concept art? I’ve been looking for it for ages, yet I’m unable to find most of Dan Panosian sketches related to DNF. And no better place to ask for this information than to someone as informed, good at finding and documenting as you. Apologies for such a big wall of text, but I’m saying what I feel about your incredible work, I’m excited to see more of your uploads! Cheers!
Frederick is completely wrong on the 90% complete claim. Randy is much closer to being right. Fred is just simple-mindedly looking at the assets and thinks 90% is there. But he's not thinking about all the code, polish, testing, story, cutscenes, multiplayer stuff, etc that would have been needed to actually make a good game--something that didn't even happen when Gearbox took over. Fred simply wasn't there for any of this and he thinks looking at builds makes him some sort of a expert. But the builds don't tell him anything about the end goals of the game, which far exceed what was eventually released as DNF 2011. Even the released DNF itself isn't 90% of the 3D Realms intended version of the game--it falls way short.
Imagine that alternate reality where DNF comes about in 2002-2003. What could have been, and 3D Realms might still be making games. Too bad Chris Broussard seemed to get in the way
Bravo, dude. It blows my mind someone can put together and organize the history of this game so neatly. In my opinion what you did is better than pretty much anything made by zelda fans or dinosaur planet fans as far as documenting/doing a timeline of events concerning these betas go. I'll be looking foward to part 3
2001-2002 version looked very promising. The fans just wanted a new FPS Duke related game to play, but they got caught up with striving for better techonologies and we ended up with the shithole the 2011 version is
The DNF from this timeframe, even if incomplete looked amazing. I'd not care if it came out later when HL2 and Doom 3 were dominant as D3D wasn't exactly the most high tech thing when that came out. It's weird to me that they made the final product so stripped down and resorted back to D3D stuff. This early DNF had a lot of great ideas and helps make Duke Nukem 1 and 2 fit in with the newer, more 'edgy' Duke more nicely. Real shame.
It was this long wait and false claims that was the biggest lesson to gamers to not listen to hype, dont believe their "this year" claims, if they dont have an actual release date, it means nothing.
Episodes? The leak doesn't operate in Episodes. There are chapters though. Oh and Vasquez wasn't the driver; I'll go further in depth, with some other things that i wished you went further on. The car ride chapter (Highway To Hell) is the third chapter, and there were 2 drivers; (The EDF Sniper that drived you in the E3 Trailer was only there so it wouldn't look weird.) The first i'll talk about is Hadji Cab / Hadji Drum, he was a reference to the Johny Cab from Total Recall - essentially imagine that character in Duke Nukem Forever, but if he was Muslim and Mexican. There's some voicelines for him that go unused, and an earlier design of him closer to how Johny Cab looked in Total Recall. Although he doesn't appear in the game much, he appears in the first Slick Willy level. The second is Elvis, he was a friendly Pigcop. He seems to have been a friendly Pigcop that would first appear in the pirate ship level of Lost Wages (although he doesn't appear ingame; you have to go into the editor. He does appear in an unused variant of the first Slick Willy level, wich combines the first and second levels together and has working objectives (a blurb about the objectives; If you go into the scripts of the Objectives List it, programmer commentary says they decided not to implement it, but left modders to decide if they wanted to implement it into their own mods post-launch). Not all enemies are unused; the Bellowsaur isn't (It appears in Heat Wave, Abandoned Mining Facility Part 2 aka a single time in the campaign), but they are unfinished and seem to have been based on the Bullsquids from Half Life, with an unused eating animations (for anyone who has never played Half-Life, Bullsquids have a low chance of eating meat.) and a Gust Attack. The Adult Snatcher is a almost finished enemy found in some areas of the EDF HQ;They're the adult version of Snatchers, much more deadly and fast. They had a attack where they would dig underground and leave a burrow, but the burrow mesh doesnt appear. They also had a ranged attack where they would summon 3 orb thingies to damage the player. The Sandworm's behaviour is mostly unknown (while they can be spawned in, they have no AI), but they were enemies and there was a gigantic one that you got swallowed by. It appears in a scripted sequence seen in the E3 trailer, in the third level of Ghost Town (press E on the Sandworm to begin the scripted cutscene.) The Tesla Raptor is a completely unused enemy, with no AI or scripts; they do have animations and a mesh. Unused animations for it indicates that they were gonna have a electric attack. It has a ton of concept art from 2000 or so, wich may imply that the Tesla Raptor was an late addition into the leak. The Heat Wave chapter was gonna have animals; Butterflies, Bats, Coyotes, Gila Monsters, Scorpions and Rattle Snakes. The Coyote seems to have had a cut Snatcher variant, as there is mentions for it in MESHES.txt (a text file that describes wich meshes were removed or added. There's some Quake 2 leftovers, such as the textures for Bombshell and Duke Nukem, a Tank, what may be the textures for the Helicopter Bombshell entered in the E3 1998 trailer, a robot bartender, but that's about it. The barcode on NPCs was specifically for the EDF, if you look at some of the other friendly NPCs such as Tim (The Hoover Dam Guide from that 1999 screenshot) or Gus, they have no barcodes. Looting corpses is a general thing you can do with basically anything that is alive, you can loot the corpses of Vultures and K-9 but they only have money for them. I wouldn't describe that as a RPG mechanic, infact the leak seems to have very little to basically null implications of a RPG mechanic. The piss key (F) was a key for testing the rope physics.
@@FrameRater The editor allows you to see meshes, but it hates long directories. Move the entire leak to the main C: / what your computer has for main directory and it should boot up.
DNF release in 2001 could've easily rivaled or absolutely make a game like Return to castle Wolfenstein, Red Faction & Halo:CE (which were arguably the best FPS got released at the time) run out of their money for sure
I haven't been much with the Duke Nukem community, but I have been an avid member of the communities for video game prototype stuff, so I wonder; Between the released 2011 game, and the 2001 prototypes, which version of DNF do y'all prefer, truly?
The september 2002 build, which is said to be the most complete build of the 2001 version we all wanted. Next would be the Quake 2 build, which looked pretty different from the later builds in story and levels.
You´re meaning to tell me that If not for take two, there´s the slight, relatively small chance that forever could´ve ended in the hands of GodGames, later on Devolver Digital? Imagine the possibilities of that timeline...
@@Gatorade69 Bit of a late response but yeah, most of the original founders later created Devolver, with their first published games being the Serious Sam titles
Framerater, would be be ok with me uploading a video that's all the parts of this series stitched together? I swear I would credit you in the description.
George Broussard is the reason why Duke Nukem as a franchise doesn't exist anymore and I'm honestly to this day baffled why people still point to Randy as the blame for it. Randy was busy putting forward his own work for his own game company and saw a point to try and help a franchise he liked meanwhile George did anything in his power to make sure DN died with him. Randy's comments about how the old DNF stuff could release were entirely reasonable. You expect the most controversial game in the history of Take Two's existence to just have another release of unfinished content just like that? Hell Randy is one of the more community focused people in the gaming industry with him geniunely approaching and talking about issues with these stuff.
What, Duke Open world experience, dark moody athmosphere and even las vegas metro system. Huh this is like Far Cry II etc combined to one epic game with side missions and shittos. I'd like to have that GAME!!! :D
25:56 scott miller was the only one with some brains to realize what do and what not and the one that still cared about the ip. broussand and bitchford were just confused manbabies
I love the build engine games, but I feel they were never ahead. Duke 3D in example is a clearly unfocused game, that tries to reach too many different references and sources of inspiration. It clearly feels like a bit of a patchwork where a group of people were pushing for the inclusion of each owns references and preferences. Compare that with Doom.. a highly focused and consistent game. Fewer weapons and enemies, but all very consistent style and gameplay wise. Fewer weapons but each with its own highly refined role. Even the AI amazing and can still surprise you today (i.e. with the infighting). It’s a style of gameplay and design that survives the passage of time. Build games - for all that I love in them, from Duke to Shadow Warrior, from Redneck Rampage to Blood - all suffer from a certain clunkiness, jank.. the weird random spikes in difficulty, the reliance on hitscan enemies.. they are just not games as refined as Id games where. And I think most players knew this. I never had the perception they were “ahead” of everyone else (maybe except for the interaction, but again even that was usually inconsistent across levels and episodes).
I dont know why people praised the leaked build. This is not a product at all. When HL2 was leaked (2003) we saw some general vision of the game, working mechanics, levels, scripts, etc. And it took more than a year to finish all this. DNF was 90 % finished? Really, people saw what they want to see. That was just a banch of maps and weapons barely connected to each other, and thats it. This is not even an alpha version, this is a prototype. Pardon my meh english.
"Endangered Species" didn't actually die out when it was cancelled, it turned into Vivisector: Beast Within.
_A baby! A human baby!_
George Broussard truly was the architect of Duke Nukem's downfall.
Too much cocaine
Curse of perfectionism
@@Directant And cocaine.
@@Directant That's no perfectionism. Brussard simply wanted the game to have the flashiest graphics back in a time when there was a new 3D engine every 6 months: he was like those guys that must have the latest iPhone on day one. Perfectionism would've been striving to make the game the best it could've been and, no, game are not just about the graphics. He had no real plan for DNF, so perfectionist he was not.
He was known as "George Bullshitter" on the forums for a reason
It would have been amazing to get that 2001 build as a full fledged game back in the day. The gunplay is amazing even for an in-progress build. I bet there would be even MORE memes about Duke than today. Another great deep dive into Forever's history!
this, they should have stopped at that and published what they got, it would have defeinitly be a much better remember game than what we have now
It would age probably better as well. Since the legacy of Forever left is interesting development and untapped potential.
After working on the current leak and trying to make something of it I tend to agree with Randy, I would be very surprised if the 2002 build is as complete as people hope it is.
I've been following the Restoration Project's progress. I'm blown away by what you guys have already managed to do with the tools you have available.
Good luck with the project, that trailer you posted looks excellent
It wasn't just Duke that died, it was 3D Realms as a whole. They could've been a major presence in the 2000's and onwards had the damn game came out in 2002-03.
I want to put blame squarely on George Broussard, but I also want to put blame on whomever thought it was a good idea to put him incharge (probably Scott). George was good for ideas, but not for direction and he clearly wasn't a visionary as much as he was one who was trying to do the impossible by coattailing ideas from various other new games while also trying to supersede them at the sametime.
George and I were equals at Apogee (aka 3DR), so neither of us had meaningful power over the other. While I was working on projects like Max Payne 1 & 2 and Prey, George lead the internal DNF team. That's how we divided our duties. By 2003-4 I saw that DNF wasn't making the progress it should have been making, which is when I stepped in and arranged for Digital Extremes to take over development of the game, but George didn't want to lose his control over the project so as an equal partner he veto'ed that idea, which I personally knew was a big mistake. I then pushed hard for bringing in an external producer to help, and a few years later we finally hired Brian Hook in that role, who helped tremendously, but by then it was too late to save the project.
@@scottmiller1239 My mistake then, thanks for clearing that up. Yes, I do remember the story about Brian Hook being added to the games project at the tailend, Jay Brushwood brought it up in this interview with this TWiT podcast 11 years ago when the came out ruclips.net/video/EQLqjm_njhk/видео.html. Brian was a good addition, especially with his experience at 3Dfx, ID Software and with SoE's Everquest.
@@scottmiller1239 why the barcode tattoo on the character's faces?
@@ZimingHong84 Just because we thought it's be a cool thing for future military people to have. Not too much thought was put into it, honestly.
@@ScottMiller-sm9rn Cool!
George Broussard saying they never should’ve made the 2001 trailer is hilarious to me. So it’s the fan base’s fault you showed us something awesome, then screwed around for another 10 years & delivered something much worse than what you had a decade ago?
my opinion on that is they probably wasted a lot of development time on that Trailer alone, kind of like the Halo 2 E3 trailer debacle... when time/resources could've been spent making the game and not setting up expectations...
in the end, he still didn't deliver, but I mean there's probably a lot of sides to this long ass story lol
@@pariah87 You raise a really good point, I never thought of it that way! I.E. Focusing on that trailer slowed down work on things in the actual game.
However, I can also see why they felt the need to make a badass trailer at the time. They were about 4 years deep in development & hadn't shown anything publicly in about 2 years at that point.
Back in the day that was already an absurdly long time to be "actively" working on a single PC game, even if it was meant to be cutting edge. They needed to prove there was something behind the hype & at this point? There was actually still potential here. It's just a shame not very much of this era survived into the finished product.
@@wolfgangfrost8043 back in 2001, having the game of the show at e3 and just having a trailer there was a big deal...
they ran into the same problem Rockstar has nowadays... too much money to be able to mess around with technology with no clear plan in sight
This is the same man that, while working for a million dollar company, released a statement saying that company "Needs to shut the fuck up" for daring to say they wanted the game to come out at some point.
@@pariah87 Halo 2 E3 debacle ?? Lol instead of that, let's talk about the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 (2012 & 2018) & Resident Evil 5 2005-2007 trailer debacle since both game ended up bad in a final releases
All they had to do was hire a bunch of people and force Broussard to commit to a single vision that was worked out with him and a few other designers/writers. Then they could've hammered it out and made so much bank.
they should have focused on the 2001 version and release that one instead. we would then had a good game rather than asubpar mediocre game one decade later, and on unreal engine, which meant more modding jus like the duke 3d was envisioned to be
I seriously can't wait for that Restoration mod to finish. It would be a blast to play this.
I don't believe a bit, that Miller was the main and sole reason for the studio's downfall. Based on Broussard's known history and given how he reacted to some of the stuff on Twitter, it's pretty much telling who's fault it was. To me, it seems like Miller's fault was putting up with Broussard's shit for too long, letting it go to far.
The fact that it was 90% complete baffles me how they just decided "eh, scrap everything".
It's actually kinda scary how close the old builds are to the final version's early game
This is what happens when someone really has passion for their work and wants it to be the most technically advanced thing on the market... But said person lacks the ingenuity of other creators to really make that happen.
Duke3D was built on Build which was a competition to DOOM. DNF was in competition with... Everything.
Which is fine! You release your game and hope people enjoy it and it looks like DNF had some truly incredible tech and ideas.
But that person was still scared and they had the money to burn.
Usually we get shafted by games companies rushing out what could have been an incredible game. DNF is the rare antithesis. A game that was probably incredible had the person lacked the funds to keep rebooting it.
That doesn't look like having a passion for your own work: it's more like wanting to be the coolest guy on the block at any cost. All Brussard cared for were the pretty graphics: he made everyone scrap their work the minute they tried to introduce a shader for real-time lighting in the game, just because the latest glorified tech-demo had it. Duke 3D was not a success because of its graphics: the Build engine allowed for a couple of things the Doom engine didn't, but the game was released the same year as Quake, which was a major technical breakthrough. Duke 3D was a success because of its ideas. DNF should've followed the same path with its eyes set on the goal of being a great game, not just a bunch of pretty images. Ironically, the released version, on top of being bland and generic as a game, it's not even technically impressive: its graphics are uneven but even at their best they hardly were top-notch.
@@thermonuclearcollider4418 If it where released in 2006 it would have been a nother story. But 2011 with mid 2000s tech.... no go for most
@@thermonuclearcollider4418
Brussard: (Sees new game with amazing stuff) Howly Shet, DeM GRAAAAAPHIX!!!
Also Brussard: Write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN!!!
As someone born in the early 2000s it's really interesting to see the history of old games like this that I didn't get to experience
Don't worry, this one us 90's kids didn't get to experience either 🙂
The Broussard is rising, his power ever shifting.
EDF-209? Just one letter off from Robocop's ED-209...
Duke Nukem Endangered Species didn't completely get canned, as it came out eventually as Vivisector.
Watch Civvie11's video on it if you haven't.
George was spending more time on Twitter than anything else. He’s obsessed with it
The Leak was the best release ever.
100% agreed! Easily one of the highlights of this year in my book, it was sheer fun to experience the skyrocketed hype and astronomical excitement over it.
You kicked this docu series out of the park baby
It's hilarious that George Broussard calls Scott Miller a narcissist when it was Broussard that was seemingly never satisfied with the game in any of it's various builds because he was constantly trying to make it better than anything that was currently out at the time. If they could have just released a full version of the 2001 build sometime in 2002 or 2003 the fans would have loved it. I know it's more than just one person who sank the greatness DNF COULD have had, but the more I learn about this saga the harder it is to not lay most of the blame at the feet of George Broussard.
Been waiting for part 2, great series. Never knew how deep these roots go, interesting to see.
We were robbed of the 2001 DNF. Thank you for this video :)
the leak is still out if you want to try it out
@@Zontar82 I still haven’t played the leak but I’ve watched a LOT of it and it’s absolutely fantastic.
DNF release in 2001 could've easily rivaled or absolutely make a game like Return to castle Wolfenstein, Red Faction & Halo:CE (which were arguably the best FPS got released at the time) run out of their money for sure
What I wouldn't give for every build to leak one day... It's one of the most fascinating development stories in gaming history.
taking into account that the 2001 build already had the first chapter basically completed with only needing some polishing, all weapons being practically finalized and the gunplay feeling as amazing as it is i need to agree with frederik, another year of developement and i feel that the game could be 90% completed
Great upload man! Your content is phenomenal, as a kid born in 86 I truly appreciate the coverage of the games I grew up with. It’s funny to think that I started off playing Duke 3D after Duke 1 and 2 as well as the Quakes and every mod you can think of for Duke 3D. When Half Life came out and later CS and Day of Defeat I got heavily involved into the MP aspect and than MOH AA and COD as well. During this ENTIRE time, I was expecting Duke Nukem Forever to come out and it never did. Honestly when it finally released I had graduated high school and was well into my 3rd year in the Army as an 11B and just didn’t care. I literally just played it for the first time a few weeks ago and while I don’t believe it was as horrid as all the reviewers claimed, it definitely wasn’t worth the wait.
You covered this really well... My go-to when the leak happened and I needed explanation
This is turning into a great series. Maybe you could cover fan development of this game too
Great video! I am obsessed with the DNF development timeline. I hope we'll get to see all the different builds one day...
It's great that this series exists (will exist) to document all these shenanigans
Hopefully well get more of these versions, specially the 2002 version.
Duke Nukem Forever's tragedy is that pretty much any of these builds would've likely sold well and been better received than what we actually got from Greasy Randy Pitchford. Still can't believe that I was still hyped for Aliens Colonial Marines after trying that disaster, but hey, I used to like Gearbox lol.
Given all the indie/retro FPS games drowning the gaming market, you'd think one would try to be like OG Duke Nukem and have an unapologetic 80s/90s masculine badass protagonist. But nope.
I too uses to like Gearbox, they did decent work. Still did up to Borderlands but they F'd over SEGA taking their money and putting it into Borderlands instead of Aliens Colonial Marines.
@Mud Kip, I did like Boderlands 1 and it was their great Brothers In Arms games that gave me hope Aliens Colonial Marines would be awesome too. Randy is literally human trash.
Still can't believe Gearbox made my favorite Half Life game, Opposing Force.
We can't have 80s/90s masculine badass protagonist today anymore because ppl are too sensitive
@@Laki99000 Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat says 'hi' Besides the 80s/90s masculine stereotypes died way back in the mid to late 90s.
.
Guess you forgot that Johnny Cage, a masculine 80/90s existed and is still beloved today.
ain't no way I'm this early for a Framerater gem.
Hello Framerater, I’ve watched your video regarding to DNF development timeline and such, and I’m excited to say that your worked is of major admiration and inspiration to me, never have I saw such a complete covering of a videogame development timeline. Never had I found such an incredible channel as yours when it comes to these topics, and I appreciate your work done so far.
Most of these pictures you showed here are of major interest to me as well, most importantly, those concept art pieces of Duke on various outfits; where did you found all of that 2001 era concept art?
I’ve been looking for it for ages, yet I’m unable to find most of Dan Panosian sketches related to DNF. And no better place to ask for this information than to someone as informed, good at finding and documenting as you.
Apologies for such a big wall of text, but I’m saying what I feel about your incredible work, I’m excited to see more of your uploads!
Cheers!
I think it was in the guidebook, thanks for watching and the nice comments!
@@FrameRaterthank you Framerater for your reply, I wish to you a good day and happy holidays!
You can't trust a word that comes from Randy's mouth.
Nor Broussard's, either.
Nice fresh take on the duke forever history
I'm not sure if Duke suffered more on the hands of Broussard or Randy. Ughhhh...
@@SuperGreenqueen randy just finished what was done up til that point, randy is a snake but lets blame him fot shit he actually did
Where did George put all those Duke chips? These are the chips on the tables in Lady Killer. They are not available in collector's editions.
He's still hoarding them until they release the best possible duke nukem version
Wow thanks I was waiting for this video
Frederick is completely wrong on the 90% complete claim. Randy is much closer to being right. Fred is just simple-mindedly looking at the assets and thinks 90% is there. But he's not thinking about all the code, polish, testing, story, cutscenes, multiplayer stuff, etc that would have been needed to actually make a good game--something that didn't even happen when Gearbox took over. Fred simply wasn't there for any of this and he thinks looking at builds makes him some sort of a expert. But the builds don't tell him anything about the end goals of the game, which far exceed what was eventually released as DNF 2011. Even the released DNF itself isn't 90% of the 3D Realms intended version of the game--it falls way short.
Seeing Duke in a scientist outfit is pretty funny to me.
Megadeth did an awesome version of the Duke Nukem theme song, I used to have the album.
Imagine that alternate reality where DNF comes about in 2002-2003. What could have been, and 3D Realms might still be making games.
Too bad Chris Broussard seemed to get in the way
16:21 FrameRacist 🤧
George Brussard is an absolute clown and singlehandedly ruined the Duke Nukem series.
Bravo, dude. It blows my mind someone can put together and organize the history of this game so neatly. In my opinion what you did is better than pretty much anything made by zelda fans or dinosaur planet fans as far as documenting/doing a timeline of events concerning these betas go.
I'll be looking foward to part 3
George Broussard calling Scott Miller a narcissist just proves how hard that clown is projecting his narcissism onto Miller
Frame, you're the best content creator of YT, i hope you know that.
I love the early builds a ton, these are amazing too
Negaduke vs Jimmy Negatron. Who wins this epic battle?
how about The Nega Chin
Can't wait to see more Duke related stuff in the future! Always bet on Frame
Thank you kindly for the donation. =)
Part 3 please
Another great video on a great game! 21:33 Duke driving down the road, lol.
AWESOME!!! PART2 IS HERE!
2001-2002 version looked very promising. The fans just wanted a new FPS Duke related game to play, but they got caught up with striving for better techonologies and we ended up with the shithole the 2011 version is
14:18 or Alien-like, because Valve team never invented facehuggers, it did H.R.Gieger.
True, although Broussard's admitted a lot of the game's ideas were inspired by Half-Life.
The DNF from this timeframe, even if incomplete looked amazing. I'd not care if it came out later when HL2 and Doom 3 were dominant as D3D wasn't exactly the most high tech thing when that came out. It's weird to me that they made the final product so stripped down and resorted back to D3D stuff. This early DNF had a lot of great ideas and helps make Duke Nukem 1 and 2 fit in with the newer, more 'edgy' Duke more nicely. Real shame.
excited for part 3!!
9:59 I don't think it is acknowledged enough how much this trailer did to establish the legacy this game would go on to have.
19:11 is a direct reference to John Carpenter's The Thing
Wish we got the 2001 version 😪
George was Duke’s ultimate antagonist
It was this long wait and false claims that was the biggest lesson to gamers to not listen to hype, dont believe their "this year" claims, if they dont have an actual release date, it means nothing.
The barcode cheeks are actually cool, and really fit into my setting. I'm stealing it
Episodes? The leak doesn't operate in Episodes. There are chapters though. Oh and Vasquez wasn't the driver; I'll go further in depth, with some other things that i wished you went further on.
The car ride chapter (Highway To Hell) is the third chapter, and there were 2 drivers; (The EDF Sniper that drived you in the E3 Trailer was only there so it wouldn't look weird.)
The first i'll talk about is Hadji Cab / Hadji Drum, he was a reference to the Johny Cab from Total Recall - essentially imagine that character in Duke Nukem Forever, but if he was Muslim and Mexican. There's some voicelines for him that go unused, and an earlier design of him closer to how Johny Cab looked in Total Recall. Although he doesn't appear in the game much, he appears in the first Slick Willy level.
The second is Elvis, he was a friendly Pigcop. He seems to have been a friendly Pigcop that would first appear in the pirate ship level of Lost Wages (although he doesn't appear ingame; you have to go into the editor. He does appear in an unused variant of the first Slick Willy level, wich combines the first and second levels together and has working objectives (a blurb about the objectives; If you go into the scripts of the Objectives List it, programmer commentary says they decided not to implement it, but left modders to decide if they wanted to implement it into their own mods post-launch).
Not all enemies are unused; the Bellowsaur isn't (It appears in Heat Wave, Abandoned Mining Facility Part 2 aka a single time in the campaign), but they are unfinished and seem to have been based on the Bullsquids from Half Life, with an unused eating animations (for anyone who has never played Half-Life, Bullsquids have a low chance of eating meat.) and a Gust Attack.
The Adult Snatcher is a almost finished enemy found in some areas of the EDF HQ;They're the adult version of Snatchers, much more deadly and fast. They had a attack where they would dig underground and leave a burrow, but the burrow mesh doesnt appear. They also had a ranged attack where they would summon 3 orb thingies to damage the player.
The Sandworm's behaviour is mostly unknown (while they can be spawned in, they have no AI), but they were enemies and there was a gigantic one that you got swallowed by. It appears in a scripted sequence seen in the E3 trailer, in the third level of Ghost Town (press E on the Sandworm to begin the scripted cutscene.)
The Tesla Raptor is a completely unused enemy, with no AI or scripts; they do have animations and a mesh. Unused animations for it indicates that they were gonna have a electric attack. It has a ton of concept art from 2000 or so, wich may imply that the Tesla Raptor was an late addition into the leak.
The Heat Wave chapter was gonna have animals; Butterflies, Bats, Coyotes, Gila Monsters, Scorpions and Rattle Snakes. The Coyote seems to have had a cut Snatcher variant, as there is mentions for it in MESHES.txt (a text file that describes wich meshes were removed or added.
There's some Quake 2 leftovers, such as the textures for Bombshell and Duke Nukem, a Tank, what may be the textures for the Helicopter Bombshell entered in the E3 1998 trailer, a robot bartender, but that's about it.
The barcode on NPCs was specifically for the EDF, if you look at some of the other friendly NPCs such as Tim (The Hoover Dam Guide from that 1999 screenshot) or Gus, they have no barcodes.
Looting corpses is a general thing you can do with basically anything that is alive, you can loot the corpses of Vultures and K-9 but they only have money for them. I wouldn't describe that as a RPG mechanic, infact the leak seems to have very little to basically null implications of a RPG mechanic.
The piss key (F) was a key for testing the rope physics.
Thanks for the details! I'll cover this stuff and reference your contribution in the full video when I get around to it. 🙂
@@FrameRater The editor allows you to see meshes, but it hates long directories. Move the entire leak to the main C: / what your computer has for main directory and it should boot up.
Thanks for the video bro 😁👍
The holy grail seems to be the 2002 build. Hope this gets released somehow. Thats the game that should have been. 20 years ago now. Yikes!
That will be the final answer as to what could have been.
DNF release in 2001 could've easily rivaled or absolutely make a game like Return to castle Wolfenstein, Red Faction & Halo:CE (which were arguably the best FPS got released at the time) run out of their money for sure
This game would have blown me away in 2001.
I haven't been much with the Duke Nukem community, but I have been an avid member of the communities for video game prototype stuff, so I wonder; Between the released 2011 game, and the 2001 prototypes, which version of DNF do y'all prefer, truly?
The september 2002 build, which is said to be the most complete build of the 2001 version we all wanted. Next would be the Quake 2 build, which looked pretty different from the later builds in story and levels.
well E3 IS a dog and pony show to be honest, especially nowadays
How do I get to do a “yeah framerater”?
Discord probably
Yep, Discord's the place!
You´re meaning to tell me that If not for take two, there´s the slight, relatively small chance that forever could´ve ended in the hands of GodGames, later on Devolver Digital? Imagine the possibilities of that timeline...
I know, right?
Wait, GODGames turned into Devolver ?
@@Gatorade69 Bit of a late response but yeah, most of the original founders later created Devolver, with their first published games being the Serious Sam titles
YEY!!!! It's out
Thank you for a thorough breakdown on this shit show
Awesome video.. I can't get enough of this
You should really make more videos like this someday
Excellent video, like!
A game could be made about this game's development story...
Duke Nukem: Endangered Species later repurposed to became Vivisector
Well, Duke Nukem Endangered Species Hunter was recently leaked by x0r_jmp. So at least now have access to another piece of lost Duke media.
Honestly heartbreaking
honestly would not of minded the mule sequence now.
hey dude do a video about yfms return
Framerater, would be be ok with me uploading a video that's all the parts of this series stitched together? I swear I would credit you in the description.
I rely on the ad revenue from these videos, so no, but thank you for asking.
George Broussard is the reason why Duke Nukem as a franchise doesn't exist anymore and I'm honestly to this day baffled why people still point to Randy as the blame for it. Randy was busy putting forward his own work for his own game company and saw a point to try and help a franchise he liked meanwhile George did anything in his power to make sure DN died with him. Randy's comments about how the old DNF stuff could release were entirely reasonable. You expect the most controversial game in the history of Take Two's existence to just have another release of unfinished content just like that? Hell Randy is one of the more community focused people in the gaming industry with him geniunely approaching and talking about issues with these stuff.
What, Duke Open world experience, dark moody athmosphere and even las vegas metro system. Huh this is like Far Cry II etc combined to one epic game with side missions and shittos. I'd like to have that GAME!!! :D
25:56 scott miller was the only one with some brains to realize what do and what not and the one that still cared about the ip. broussand and bitchford were just confused manbabies
aw no coming soon Serious Sam Feature
Are the people who say yeah framerater patreon members?
Nope, anyone can submit through my Discord server.
@@FrameRater Cool.
I love the build engine games, but I feel they were never ahead. Duke 3D in example is a clearly unfocused game, that tries to reach too many different references and sources of inspiration. It clearly feels like a bit of a patchwork where a group of people were pushing for the inclusion of each owns references and preferences.
Compare that with Doom.. a highly focused and consistent game. Fewer weapons and enemies, but all very consistent style and gameplay wise. Fewer weapons but each with its own highly refined role. Even the AI amazing and can still surprise you today (i.e. with the infighting). It’s a style of gameplay and design that survives the passage of time.
Build games - for all that I love in them, from Duke to Shadow Warrior, from Redneck Rampage to Blood - all suffer from a certain clunkiness, jank.. the weird random spikes in difficulty, the reliance on hitscan enemies.. they are just not games as refined as Id games where.
And I think most players knew this. I never had the perception they were “ahead” of everyone else (maybe except for the interaction, but again even that was usually inconsistent across levels and episodes).
YEAH, FRAME RATER
YES
Finally
Nice
The thumbnail looks like 1333
I dont know why people praised the leaked build. This is not a product at all. When HL2 was leaked (2003) we saw some general vision of the game, working mechanics, levels, scripts, etc. And it took more than a year to finish all this. DNF was 90 % finished? Really, people saw what they want to see. That was just a banch of maps and weapons barely connected to each other, and thats it. This is not even an alpha version, this is a prototype. Pardon my meh english.
you should stick these 2 videos so far into a playlist that I can play on a loop
2003 doom 3 build code
Can't wait for the Atomic Edition of these videos to come out with all the patches and DLC
8:40 - serious sam tfe music on background♥️
21:39 - sam 3♥️