George Broussard from over at 3D Realms updated his .plan file, as they are looking for a few more "environmental artists" to work on Duke Nukem Forever. "We're looking for artists that can take a basic shell of a level and detail it out with geometry that you will build and texture." More info here.

There is a Q&A with Scott Miller of 3D Realms on InGaming. Expect stuff on Duke Nukem Forever? haha! The interview focuses mostly on business and development issues.

SCS Software has published an editing guide for the Prism3D level editor, used for Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project. Thanks Blues News.

The Adrenaline Vault has an interview with Scott Miller up today. They ask him about the upcoming Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project game as well as Duke Nukem Forever and other Duke related things. Though of course do not expect to read anything new on DNF.

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project progress report that is :) The Avault has posted an update on this 3D action platform game which is due out in May or April. Though there's quite a bit of information, no screenshots are included (or have been released for that matter).

George Broussard posted the first piece of new Duke Nukem Forever info in quite some time over at the 3D Realms forums, saying that unlike many of the recent FPS games, Duke Nukem Forever WILL have bot support for multiplayer. Here's what he had to say

The bots understand and use our skeletal animation system and are proficient with 2-3 guns at the moment. We expect near full weapon proficiency before Xmas.

You can start a match, select how many bots you want to play against, tweak their settings and have a blast. We've setup games with nothing but bots and watched them fight it out and watched the score distributions.

We were initially a little concerned that getting the bots to UT's level would be difficult, especially with our animation system, but it was surprisingly easy. Jess got them in and online in about 2 weeks. The hard work is done, and now it's just polish issues like teaching them new guns, inventory items, and game types as we go along.

Bots were also a major concern of ours because a lot of fps games have been shipping without them (even Unreal engine based games), and we see bots as significant for the future of multiplayer gaming. We are firmly committed to delivering both a strong multi player experience, as well as single player. Full bot support is a step in that direction.

Player.At has posted a lengthy interview with Scott Miller of 3D Realms, who actually answers questions about Duke Nukem Forever. Pretty much all parts of the game are touched on, such as development length, graphics, quality of single player, multiplayer, jokes, interactivity and more. Of course, there is not a whole lot new that Scott reveals here but its still a good read.

In my opinion Dukes greatest gift to the world is his big mouth ;-) Gags like "Hail to the King, Baby" or "Your face, your ass...what’s the difference?" influenced millions of players. Will these classics be part of DNF again and will there be more cool gags?
Scott Miller: We believe that humor, gags and one-liners are a significant part of Duke’s appeal, so you will definitely see this continued in DNF. For example, Duke shoots alien with rocket launcher, splashing its guts across the wall. Quips Duke, “Oops, I did it again.”

Which current 3D-shooter could be most possibly comparable with DNF as far as the feeling is concerned.
Scott Miller: That’s a very good question. There’s absolutely no FPS game that comes close to the experience DNF will deliver. Nothing out right now even comes close.

GameSpot has a news item up reporting on Take Two's quarterly-report conference call today, where among other things, they talked about Duke Nukem Forever. It's not clear whether they were talking exclusively about the console versions or not, but Take Two apparently stated that the game will not be out until 2002, and will be released for both the Playstation 2 and Xbox consoles. Regarding N-Space, and their PS2 title Duke Nukem: D-Day, there wasn't anything specific mentioned, but the game has not been canceled, and it looks like N-Space will most likely be handling the console ports of DNF. Of course, even if the PC version is pushed until next year, it's still not technically a delay, since no release date was ever announced to begin with.

A couple of hands-off preview of Duke4 for those of you looking for any Duke4 scraps you can find. Check out what the PC.IGN guys and the VE guys are saying.

The Duke4 FAQ at Planet Duke has been updated, now that the original FAQ from the original 3D Portal site Dukeworld has been integrated on PlanetDuke. There's also some updated info with the Duke4 video released and all.

VE has an interview with George Broussard of 3DRealms discussing the Duke4 video showing at E3. Nothing really new revealed and a bunch of 'wait and see' answers but we know dognose will still read it.

A few days back when the Duke4 video was released ease_one put together a great post going over all the weapons that are shown in the video. I thought it was worth a post.

TripleHelix interviews John Pollard, programmer on DNF at 3DRealms.

It's the moment you've all been waiting for (after an unauthorized go by CNN), the Duke Nukem Forever E3 video has been released! We are hosting all 4 versions of the file. It comes in self executing bink and Quicktime format. The biggest file is 45mb and runs in 640x480 for about 2 and a half minutes. But really, what more do I need to say? Get downloading!

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Scott Alden from 3DR just phoned me to let me know that they will be providing the high quality Duke Nukem Forever movie to webmasters tonight instead of tomorrow because of the low quality video that CNN decided to put out. Check the comments for links, I can't get onto the shack server from here to put the video up. If I can stay awake much longer, I'll update this story with mirrors. Here's everyone's favorite rock-star programmer Scott making a post on Shack saying what I just said :-)

update Steve: Just got online, I'll make sure and get things done. Everyone thank Jack! :)

update Maarten: Steve and I have created this high quality movie for you guys while you wait. Enjoy!

update2 Maarten: Ok guys you can stop reloading. We just talked to Joe Siegler and 3DR is still planning for the release tomorrow morning at the start of the show.

Looks like giving CNN that Duke4 video didnt work so great. The CNN website has posted a very low quality version of the video here. You cant really see much at all but it gives you a little bit of an idea. I'd reserve judgement for tomorrow when the real videos get released. Thanks Cygnus X-1   Also try this link. Thanks CharlieManson

Scott Miller of 3DRealms has a .plan update discussing what he's looking forward to at E3 as well as announcing the Duke4 video will be released at the same time as the E3 show opening tomorrow (We'll have it here). Here's a bit:

[snip] I'm hoping for a good reaction for our DNF and Max Payne videos, plus Max  will have backroom demos going on and those are always fun to sit in on to see the press' reaction. Also, for Max, it'll be a great way to get a reading on what people think of this nearly finished game while there's still a little of bit of time for some tweaking.

The DNF and Max videos will be available on the Internet May 17th, the first day of the E3 show, so for those fans not at the show, we didn't want to leave you out of the fun. Also, CNN requested and received a copy of both videos, so they might appear (in part) on TV, too. (CNN usually has decent coverage of E3.)

This will be the first ever footage of Duke4 since the switch to the Unreal technology and first anything seen of the game since the batch of screenshots were released so long ago.

Some more Duke console games on the way as Take Two has announced they will be bringing Duke Nukem Forever to the Nintendo Gamecube console and they'll also be developing a Duke game for the Game Boy Advance. No release dates are given for these 2 titles.

Since so many of you are waiting for the Duke Nukem Forever E3 video, here comes the news from Joe Siegler (thanks Cygnus X-1). Instead of the previous plan of releasing the video after 3DR gets back in Texas, the video will now be released on the first E3 day (May 17). Yes, we will be mirroring all the versions of the file (low and high quality Bink, and low and high quality Quicktime). The last movie we saw from Duke4 was when it was running on the Quake 2 engine so things should be significantly different ;D

The 3D Realms website has actually been updated with some Duke Nukem Forever news. Ok so no, the game is not done yet, and no, there are no screenshots but it's an update on the video they are working on for E3 (which will be released to the public after the expo). Besides GeorgeB describing what they have done, there's also three (one, two, three) pictures of the video being edited.