Seven years in development... and it ends up good.

[A Black Falcon]

Galleon: Islands of Mystery, by the makers of Tomb Raider. They left after making the first Tomb Raider, refusing to make a sequel in a year... too bad the game's only for X-Box, though. I seem to recall that at some point it was for PC... maybe originally? :(

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/536/536097p1.html

Hope for Duke Nukem Forever? :D

[EdenMaster]

Hope for Duke Nukem Forever? :D

I seem to recall reading a joke in one of my gaming magazines...

"What's the difference between Ellen DeGeneres and Duke Nukem Forever?"

"Ellen came out."

:D

Honestly, if you ask me, DNF is vaporware. It'll never see the light of day. What a Duke-tastrophe...

[Great Rumbler]

*golf clap*

Really, though, I'm happy that Galleon is finally coming out despite the fact that it's an Xbox exclusive.

[A Black Falcon]

Galleon was 7 years in development, EM... DNF is now close to 7 1/2 years into it. There HAVE been games that came out after 8+ (which it will be by the time it's out) of development. Not many, but it has happened... I do want to think that DNF will actually come out some day. I've always liked Apogee...

And yes, it is definitely nice to see Galleon come out. But I wish that they hadn't dropped the PC version.

[A Black Falcon]

Hehe...

"We're confident that DNF will be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, game of 1998. And this confidence is not misplaced." - Scott Miller, 1997

"Duke Nukem Forever is a 1999 game and we think that timeframe matches very well with what we have planned for the game." - George Broussard, 1998

"Trust us, Duke Nukem Forever will rock when it comes out next year." - Joe Siegler, 1999

"When it's done in 2001." - 2000 Christmas card

"DNF will come out before Unreal 2." - George Broussard, 2001

"If DNF is not out in 2001, something's very wrong." - George Broussard, 2001

"DNF will come out before Doom 3." - George Broussard, 2002

http://www.johnromero.com/phpubb/viewtopic.php?t=2606

In their defence, George Broussard.

http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/sh...93&fpart=1

After scrapping basically the first 3-4 years of work, I feel we will be in the ballpark for making a modern fps that's this ambitious, with a 25 man team.

Quote:
My point is just this: in two years the perverbial DNF landscape hasn't changed from a fan's perspective. We have no more information and no reason to believe it is closer to release than it was then. Everyone Hell, over three years ago after E3 2001 everyone believed it was going to be released in 2001 for certain.


That's certainly true. But we're not trying to convince anyone of anything at this point.

Quote:
It's unlikely they had to scrap *everything*. For example, the story, level design, and gameplay all tend to evolve throughout development (unless Broussard determined the direction was way off). Tech can also be added to, etc.


Pretty much a 95% scarp. All the art has been redone. Not one pixel of the 2001 video remains. Some levels have been updated or kept, but they were just early shells anyway. In short, pretty much a full re-start.

Quote:
True, it was exactly 4 years and a month from the "our next project will be doom" announcement until the "doom3 is gold" announcement. However, id was still working on Quake 3 Team Arena which wasn't released until the end of 2000 so I don't suppose DooM 3 development was really started until after that.


Still looking at 3.5 years form the best team in the industry with arguably the best technical director. If it takes them 3.5+ years, then it's easy ti understand the rest of us taking a little longer as we take our lumps and learn some things the hard way.

They essentially restarted the game after 3 or 4 years of development, which makes the timetable more understandable... :)

[OB1]

Glad to see Galleon getting good reviews after all these year, I was always interested in it.

And the whole DNF situation is a joke. What a complete waste of time and money.

[Great Rumbler]

Those DNF quotes are very sad...

[A Black Falcon]

It's certainly had an epic development cycle, that's for sure...

And yes, those quotes are kind of sad. :)

[OB1]

Those guys at 3D Realms are either geniuses for getting their publisher to pay them for no work, or complete idiots for creating a new game every two years and never finishing anything.

[A Black Falcon]

No, they don't need money from publishers. It's self funded... they are only spending their own money. :) See, they had a lot of years of success as Apogee, then Duke 3D was a huge hit, and then they started spinning off liscences for console Duke games... PSX, N64, GBC, GBA, N-Gage, PC (Manhattan Project, the sidescroller a year or two ago), etc... and then they helped make and publish Max Payne and then sold the rights of the series for tens of millions... so no, they don't exactly need money from anyone, their publisher (which is Take 2, by the way) included. :)

[OB1]

Hmm, I didn't know that. Then they're even more nuts.

[A Black Falcon]

(Galleon) ... and the team dissolves.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/07/14/...02624.html
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/08/06/...04290.html

[OB1]

Wow, too bad. Well at least they were able to finish the game. It's always sad when talented developers lose their jobs.

[A Black Falcon]

I don't know if they lost their jobs or if the team decided to dissolve after the game was done... I thought they were an independant studio so if it was about money generally they'd be dependant on how well their game sold. That obviously isn't the case here.

But what do you think of the main developer of this studio going back to work on Tomb Raider...

[OB1]

He is? I didn't read that whole article. That's great news, Tomb Raider has sucked forever.

[A Black Falcon]

That was in the second article. He (Toby Gard)'s going to Crystal Dynamics.

[OB1]

Well maybe he can un-suck Tomb Raider.

[A Black Falcon]

I don't know, seems like a tough task, and Tomb Raider has been going in a downward spiral ever since he left... oh, six versions ago or something?

[OB1]

I've never cared for TR, not even the first game due to its shitty controls, but I think he can make it work.

[A Black Falcon]

The first Tomb Raider got very good reviews... almost won PC Gamer GOTY... fortunately Civ II beat it, but it almost won. I didn't like it that much though, based on playing the demo for not very long... yeah, maybe with time it seems better, but it just didn't really intrest me.

[Great Rumbler]

I never had too much interest in any of the games, not even the first one.

[A Black Falcon]

I remember playing the first game's demo and not really seeing why it was getting such great reviews... oh, it was okay, but mid A quality?

[OB1]

The grid-based controls were horrendous.