Duke Nukem Forever was a huge disappointment for a lot of Duke Nukem fans. However, there was a version that impressed everyone back in 2001. That version of Duke Nukem Forever was powered by Unreal Engine and was meant to be a more serious/dark game. And according to Frederik Schreiber, VP at 3DRealms, that version is 90% complete.
As Frederik Schreiber claimed, this 2001 version packs 14-16 hours of gameplay and it played partly as an RPG in terms of goals. Players basically had Mission Objectives on their HUD and they could activate them, like quests. Furthermore, you also had an inventory with ID badges, keycards, etc.
In Duke Nukem Forever 2001, players meet and save NPCs, solve puzzles, and try and solve the mystery of what’s going on. Then they meet the infected EDF who’s attacking them and the story evolves from there.
Schreiber re-confirmed how dark that version was – at least for 2001 standards. There are scenes with lights going out, flickering in the distance, monster closets, screams in the distance. The game is also said to be very cinematic with rain for the most part and lightning strikes in the distance.
The game also offered players a bike, thus turning at that point into a semi open-world/hub title.
- The bike is probably the most impressive. !z2_l1 you get the bike and the game turns half open world/Hub style
- So you can drive out of vegas, and you get a loading screen.
- Different parts of vegas also have loading screens in between. But you get these missions from NPCs and then solve them (a bit like deus ex)
- Oh.. there’s also a subway in vegas you can take to visit different districts in the city.
Duke Nukem Forever 2001 featured 25-ish levels in single-player and 12 levels in multiplayer (with most of them pretty much done).
In order to prove his claims, Schreiber released the following screenshot of the directory of one of the builds.
According to Schreiber, the new renderer that 3D Realms implemented in 2002 resulted in ‘all the levels turning black and textures having to be recreated with normal maps.’ Those Unreal Engine levels were created with static lighting in mind and everything simply fell apart. As such, 3D Realms decided to scrap its previous work – once again as it did the very same thing with the Quake 2 version of Duke Nukem Forever – and start from the beginning.
Now what’s interesting here is that 3D Realms would like to release this 2001 version of Duke Nukem Forever, however, it appears that this may never happen due to licensing issues. Currently, Gearbox owns the rights of the Duke Nukem IP and in a Twitter exchange with Randy Pitchford back in April 2017, the CEO of Gearbox claimed that they could offer a license to 3D Realms, however, nothing has happened since then.
The ball is in your court. Let's be professional about it – Duke needs and deserves a hit.
— Frederik Schreiber (@Freschism) April 13, 2017
Cannot fund you, you know that – not our business. Happy for you to have best-in-class license deal. Make proposal to Steve. Not my court.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 13, 2017
What’s really baffling here is that Devolver Digital did release for free some older alpha and beta versions of the classic Shadow Warrior that were sent to them by 3D Realms. Apparently, 3D Realms is not willing to pay for a license for Duke Nukem Forever or it simply cannot secure funds so it can finish it?
Sent @devolverdigital a few old @ShadowWarrior Alphas, alongside a ton of old concept art, ads, assets, etc. Thanks for releasing this guys! pic.twitter.com/TB2GDgp5M3
— Frederik Schreiber (@Freschism) May 19, 2017
Schreiber also claimed that he has 6 builds of Prey from 1995 to 1998, though – and contrary to Shadow Warrior – these builds have never seen the light of day.
I've ensured preservation. I have around 6 builds of Prey (from 1995 to 1998). All working nicely, as part of our old archives.
— Frederik Schreiber (@Freschism) October 24, 2017
Kudos to our reader ‘James Fowler’ for providing us the information.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I thought that the game was in development hell. And the trailer shown at E3 was just pieces put together for the trailer and nothing had been done on the game. Now it seems that it was 90% done? How is it this information is only coming out now?
its probably fake news and they will do a kickstarter to finish and release it but in reality they just make it and say this is what they have been sitting on.
How could they do a Kickstarter? 3D Realms don’t own the rights and the author of the news story stated an incorrect fact – Randy never offered them a licence for Duke Nukem Forever. Randy offered them a Duke Nukem licence if Rad Rodgers was received well, it was, and they were offered one but couldn’t get funding. Apparently they were talking about doing a low budget platformer a few months ago but that’s it.
Would be sweet to actually see the various iterations of DNF. I’d love to see the build that used the Q2 engine as well.
>Apparently, 3D Realms is not willing to pay for a license for Duke Nukem Forever so it can finish it?
I remember following the tweets back then. The licence has nothing to do with Duke Forever. Slipgate wanted to do a Duke Nukem game but couldn’t get a licence, Randy said if Rad Rodgers did well he’d offer them one – it did well and he offered them one but they can’t get funding for it.
I found this thread which seems to be the source of a lot of this information: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/have-any-of-the-builds-of-duke-nukem-forever-ever-leaked.120567/
Seems that the game was almost done at the end of 2002 but they put a new lighting system in that threw them off track. They thought it’d be a simple process but ended up having to rebuild the game as the textures looked like crap with generated normals and tried to get it back to where it was until 2004 and ultimately threw it away and started over on the version that was released. Seems the whole thing is a hindsight situation. The 1998 version (Quake 2 engine) had very little completed and what was in the 1998 trailer is almost everything that existed. The “2001” version was in development from late 1998 to December 2002.
Interesting details in the thread like:
– You could send emails in-game…like real emails. The game would connect to a pop3 server and send mail from dukenukem@3drealms.com using an interactive in-game computer
– RPG elements like looting corpses and discovering secondary objectives by talking to NPCs
– Compared to the final game levels were massive and open with alternate paths
– Every weapon has alternate fire or ammo types
– Had 20+ tracks completed by Lee Jackson ready to go
Sounds like the Duke Forever I always wanted after watching the 2001 trailer.
On Gearbox’s talent, I still wonder why the original writer of Borderlands 1 shuffled off and was replaced by disastrous Anthony Burch.
A game that would be so much better with a remaster & an expanded dub (of the original dialogue), but I don’t trust Gearbox to do that nowadays.
But, as much as I like BL1, I can’t forget that Gearbox lied about what it would be, and ripped off the artstyle from another work in the 11th hour (shafting their original artist in the process).
I really enjoyed Borderlands 1 and still replay it every few years but Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel…….not so much.
DNF’s disappointments should be chalked up to Gearbox’s changes to the game.
DNF was too underrated. It’s not the Second Coming, it’s just a good fps shooter
Did Gearbox really changed the writing? And what’s so bad about it, Duke is no Shakespeare :D?
Yes yes, but like I said this wouldn’t have happened if 3DRealm actually did their job and released the game. So their incompetence was also to blame.
Pitchford is a piece of dogsh#%. What a fraud.
it was said previously that trailer was completely scripted and nothing like that was done or even close to being done. wtf. someones lying.
Or you can just anonymously release the game and that’s that. No! you have to get international recognition! and now you are exposed and cannot release anything at all because Randy will come after your a**!
Maybe one day we will see this build leaked on AssemblerGames. But most of those f–kers likes to charge money for their builds. Quite ilegal!
They know people will pay money for nostalgia, and that’s the road they are taking along with the new 3dbuild game Ion Maiden
dnf and that failed moba/shotter game both flopped hard. rumor is they are near bankruptcy.
DNF didn’t flop, per se.
It sold quite a bit. It was a critical disaster, but it sold decently well.
Take-Two Interactive actually went on record saying that it “would prove to be profitable for the company”
I remember that 2001 unreal engine version trailer, game looked amazing back then, and atmosphere was very dark and violent. That was DNF that I waited for, and if they would finish and release that version even today, I would still want to play it.
” BEST TRAILER I HAVE EVER SEEN”
“exactly as I wanted.”
Same here
and now you hear that it had all the things you didnt knew you wanted, like making the game deus ex with vehicles….. GODAMN IT I AM SO PISSED, LET ME PLAY IT.
I have waited for that game since forever :P, and I’m still willing to wait a little bit more :). I think if enough people will want that 2001 version, there’s always a chance it will be complated and released.
Even by looking at this 2001 trailer I could tell that game code was made with passion and attention to details on pair with the best FPS games ever made. That game had and still has so much potential, duke nukem + deus ex elements + horror atmosphere and maybe even half life (area 51 always reminds me half life black messa facility on the desert).
2011 release was almost like game made for casual gamers (kids), comedy atmosphere (horror atmosphere was gone), and even grahics design was different. Just compare character models from 2001 version with 2011 version, in 2001 version characters looked very believable, like people, not like plastic clowns in 2011 version.
To be honest I like to pretend DNF 2011 version doesnt exist :P. My dream scenario is to get original 2001 unreal engine 1 verison for nostalia
reasons, plus fully remastered version in Unreal Engine 3/4 version on
top of that. I think ALL PC PLAYERS WOULD STILL WANT TO GET COMBO LIKE THAT.
Battleborn’s failure definitely doesn’t help their situation. Development+Server upkeep costs are not cheap
I wouldn’t mind if “someone” would “accidentally” leak that build
He wasted all of that money on Battleborn.
Change the name of Duke Nukem to Nuke Dukem, release the game, profit!!
In light of them selling nostalgia games like Ion Maiden, doesn’t surprise me if this ends up being released one way or another.
nonlinear action rpg duke nukem with sidequests, vehicles and open world
AHHHH FUUUUUUU
16 hour long, very cinematic
ffuuuuuuuuuu
I am so pissed right now. Why cant we just have nice things?
Wait a sec…. isn’t this the same build that was supposedly just “a vertical slice, for trailer purposes, there was no game there” – or some other very similar statement. Hope this build sees the light of day. Was the more impressive trailers for the game. Still looks awesome today.
In the last 17 years since 2001 when I first saw this trailer…I have watched atleast a 100 times and enjoyed it everytime. This version looked absolutely epic…it would be an absolute blast to play even if it were released today!
F** U GEARBOX…and F*** U PITCHFORD!
I tried to double-click on the second last file…but F*******! Its just a screenshot! 🙁
I remember being excited for Duke Forever after seeing that trailer and reading about it in magazines back in the day. Id love to finally play it.
Great read.
hmm interesting… I kinda doubt that they would scrap a game that is basically beta, but who know. Keeping finger crossed for a release – would kill to see 2001 in action, whether its good or not. Also those Prey build would be interesting to see
Just release the s h 1 t and stop speculating, we need this.
that’s the 2001 trailer. In 1999 there wasn’t any new trailer. The Quake 2 trailer is the following one from 1998.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omOPjBoClw0
>Apparently, 3D Realms is not willing to pay for a license for Duke Nukem Forever so it can finish it?
I remember following the tweets back then. The licence has nothing to do with Duke Forever. Slipgate wanted to do a Duke Nukem game but couldn’t get a licence, Randy said if Rad Rodgers did well he’d offer them one – it did well and he offered them one but they can’t get funding for it.
If it had been 90% finished they would have polished and released it. I doubt it. There must have been some serious issues with it. Even 3DRealms wouldn’t scrap a whole game and never release it just because they couldn’t get nicer shadows to work in it.
Part of the problem is that they had some SERIOUS hype to live up to. They were really trying to get this game to be amazing. Making it look just “on-par” would have been a problem.
Plus you have to remember how quickly 3D graphics were still growing back then. If you made a game meet 2001 standards but release it in 2003, it’s going to look like crap.
And finally, from what I can glean, it looks like there is a little bit of mis-remembering. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was actually talking about the game in 2002 or maybe a little later, and it looks like this wasn’t just a “quick change” that screwed it all up, but they spent a bunch of time trying to fix it. If that’s the case its far more reasonable, because then you might be talking about it being another year before they hit shelves so they could polish everything up plus printing time, and that’s just to make everything look like what was already three-year-old graphics.
When the 2001 trailer released, people were talking about being impressed by the barcodes on people’s faces not looking blurred. Imagine a game built to those standards trying to release against Half Life 2.
I won’t purchase anything from Gearbox. They can rot in hell for all I care. I’ll vote on how I feel about them with my wallet.
so basically holding DUke hostage.
The realisation that game was 90% done made me depressed
If it’s 90% done is it possible to finishit, are files leaked or not
So put up a Kickstarter campaign!
You’ve got tens of thousands of fans who would PAY MONEY to get a completed 2001 version!
Put up a kickstarter to prove the public interest and get the funding you need to finish the job!