George Broussard has a .plan update talking about the lack of Duke4 information being released. In fact we've got more information about the lack of information than we have actual information about the game. Thats not a lot of information. The .plan also says that the next game they have wont even be announced until it gets close to release.

I think we can all recall the old Doom days, or Duke 3D, where a game came virtually out of nowhere and blew you away. You didn't have a list of all the locations, items, weapons and monsters. You just loaded it and went "Wow". We are returning to those days long past.

That being said, the Duke4 screenshots that are currently released are probably the only shots we're gonna be seeing of the game for a long while. You can also check out the interview with George Broussard conducted here recently.

3D Realms daddy GeorgeB posted on the Duke4 forums, saying that despite previous rumors Duke Forever won't be present at E3 in any form or shape. Here's a part on why

This is the same policy we had last year. We do not believe including DNF in the E3 dog and pony show will benefit our goal with the game, which quite simply is to surprise the player with unexpected content and gameplay. E3 can be a the great spoiler of game content and we believe this to be the case for DNF if we show it there.

Also, he mentions that they know everyone will go "vaporware" now, and they don't care :) But hey, at least we got these purty screenshots.

Dont usually follow the 3DR messageboards but this post in particular is pretty interesting with word that Duke4 will be offering location based damage and animations for enemies much like Soldier of Fortune.

UnrealCenter has scored a one of the  rare Duke4Ever related interview with John Anderson, level designer at 3DRealms. There arent a whole lot of details since as we all know 3DR is keeping a 'pretty tight lid' on information about the game. You should also check out the Shack George Broussard interview (and a follow-up) which is quite good. (You guys came up with the questions!)

Rest assured every person on the team wants to make the best FPS ever, and we’ve played them all and understand what that means. Duke has got a lot of very loyal fans and we don’t intend to disappoint anyone, we are a bunch of hardcore gaming perfectionists working very hard on finishing up this game.

The Duke4 screenshots that have been released are pretty damn impressive. Once E3 hits we can probably expect quite a bit more information on the game even though they arent doing a public showing. 8:30pm update: Frans over at BluesNews tells me this is an old story, and looking through the Shack archives spanky is right. Oh well.

The George Broussard Duke4 interview from yesterday got quite a bit of readers and responses. So much so in fact that George was kind enough to answer several follow-up questions from you guys that were in the comments on the story. There were so many answers that I gathered them up and put them all together on this quick document. Make sure and check out the interview so you know what he's talking about.

Shack>>How is Duke4 performing on D3D based 3d cards?

Broussard:D3D code is the same as UT's now. Clearly it needs work, and we'll see what we can do about performance. Also bear in mind that by the time DNF ships, cards will be even faster, so I'm not sure performance is a critical issue. DNF on a GeForce/Ultra card blazes. <snip>

The Ask A Developer interviews continue. Last week George Broussard agreed to answer questions submitted by you guys. Here is his interview which quite lengthy keeping in the spirit of the recent Matt Hooper interview. George covers Duke4 (of course), Prey, 3d engines, game violence, and Buffy among other things.

Shack: How robust will DNF's multiplayer component be out of the box? , How many different multiplayer modes will DNF ship with? , and How many multiplayer maps will the game ship with?

Broussard: Very robust.  We do not believe in shipping now and adding functionality later. Patches should be for bug, not gameplay.   I think we are planning 10+ multiplayer maps, but really we have to get down to making them and seeing how much time we have.  But I think anything less that 10 is a waste of time.

As for multiplayer modes, we're still talking about options.  We want to do a couple of different things other than DeathMatch, but we haven't decided yet. Some form of class based team play is appealing to us. <snip>

The new 3DRealms website is online sporting a spiffy new look. Of course I headed straight over to the Duke4Ever section of the page and spotted this new screenshot. Well, it's not actually new it was on GameSlice but now it's no longer exclusive. After that you can check out Charlie Wieder's profile which as expected has some quality stuff (Charlie makes me proud to have shared an apartment with him for about a year). Oh and if that Duke4 screenshot got you excited, here are the rest of the images in 1024x768.

On that note, I sent off the interview questions to George Broussard you guys came up with yesterday. Quite a few of them so I imagine it's gonna take him a while.

Well, that Matt Hooper interview went pretty well, so lets do it again. George Broussard (a owner of 3DR/producer of Duke4) was kind enough to agree to answer some questions by you guys. So here is your chance. If you've got questions about Duke4, 3DR, or whatever else you wanna ask GeorgyB just post it in the comments. Feel free to pick whatever topics you think George will answer. He'll pick through these later this week (after I sort out the spam) and answer you guys. I'm sure George has some opinion on the engine wars, internet play, etc etc.

Unrealcenter has posted an interview with Duke4 level designer John Anderson. Don't expect to see any new info on Duke though ;)

GameLinks.com has a preview of Duke4Ever. They include screenshots of the upcoming 3DRealms game that were released previously, you can check those out in 1024x768 glory here.

The Stomped at E3 site asked Scott Miller of 3DR whether they will be present at the expo. The entire company will be, but they will not be demoing Duke4 or Max Payne. Both will likely have a non-interactive video loop, if they will be present at all.

3DRealms has a job opening now for a programmer to work on Duke4Ever. As George mentions you'd be a fruit to not at least consider the job. In addition there are job openings that I mentioned last week at Ion Storm and id Software.

If you're keeping an eye on Duke4, George loves when we post about his messages on the Duke4 forum (hey it's just that we all want the game), so here's one from the thread "A few gameplay queries".

UnrealUniverse has an interview with 3DR skin and texture artist Ruben Cabrera talking about how he got to work at 3DR and, his current project Duke4Ever.

Another few posts by George Broussard in various threads. This thread on the official 3D Realms forums has George posting about the various moves in Duke Forever.

>>besides the usual first person attributes such as running, jumping, strafing. what other abilities are you going to give duke example guns akimbo, climb a rope etc;.

Duke will have several "moves" beyond the typical run, jump, climb ladder. We'll reveal them later, but there are 3-4 planned that I can think of beyond duck/duck-jump and they should add the fun of levels and getting around in them.

Another one was about the multiplayer levels.

>>what sort of style will DNF's multiplayer levels be in? none of the Half-Life, SiN, UT, or quake mp levels were too exiting. is there a chance that we will be seing some mp levels in the extraordinary style of Duke3d? those were the best. although i do like the idea that SiN and UT had of a level on a moving train, although neither pulled it off too well.

Every map designer on the game is a very good deathmatcher. They know what makes a fun map, and I have full faith in their design abilities. Beyond that the DNF levels will all be interesting real "places" with wome sort of hook. No crate warehouses or non-descript, generic, boring places to fight.

Haven't we all seen enough of that?

The best, most original DM map I've seen in 2 years was DM_Morphius in UT. Too bad most professional levels arne't like that.

A general rule for a bad DM level is: If you can't describe it by one key feature and have everyone know what it is, it should be redone. What's all this DM5 crap? I wanna say "Hey, let's play the movie theater level, or the strip club". That's far better.

He also posted on PlanetDuke on why it's taking so long and reaffirmed that co-op is just not a thing to count on in DNF, but since this news item getting big enough as it is I'll leave that to read for yourself. Remember, this is what we are waiting for.

Noticed two posts by George Broussard on the 3D Realms forums (thread 1, thread 2) answering to questions again about the development time of Duke4 which is starting to bug some people, and multiplayer gestures.

>>How long has SoF been in development? I mean I only recently heard about it like a few months ago, and now it's out. DNF hasn't come out yet and it's been in development for a long time, about 2 and a half years now or so.

Stop worrying. Trust me SOF appears to be pretty much a pure shooter. Nothing wrong with that, but get a pen/paper and write down what you "do" in the levels. I expect the list to be "Shoot guys, run around, flip switch".

Until a pure shooter like SOF sells a million copies we won't shift our focus from what we are trying to do on DNF.

>>Jeez people, don't assume just because something was in Unreal or UT it means it's gonna be in DNF. 3DRealms licensed the ENGINE, not the damned game. All they got was the CODE, NOTHING ELSE. The code to the core engine. None of the little extra crap like flipping off. That wasn't included in the original Unreal engine, it was an addition to it which was in the UT engine.

Just a little clarification...we have all the code to Unreal Tournament. We are 99% done with our patch from our DNF code base to UT's code base.

I think you can assume we'll keep animated taunts in the game. Especially since we have motion capture and we can do them all in an afternoon and share them across all the model skeletons in the game.

Another Planet site has opened it's doors, Planet Duke. To celebrate their opening they have an interview with 3D Realms project leader/shit filter George Broussard. They talk about the history of Duke Nukem (Today it is 4 years ago that the Duke3D shareware was released), and what's coming up in Duke4.

Charlie (truck driver) Wiederhold made a post to the 3DR BBS talking about co-op play and Duke4Ever. The game is focusing on single player more than anything obviously, since that is what made all the big sales for Duke Nukem. While talking about team stuff, Joe Siegler makes a quick post about CTF.

Charlie Wiederhold (he drives a truck) made a couple of postings to the 3DR BBS talking about Duke4Ever which might be of interest to you guys. He talks about lighting changing by time progression, and makes a followup if you keep reading.

The GameSpot folks have posted a history of DukeNukem article. It talks about the past-present-future of course and if you skip ahead to this page you can get a few more details on Duke4Ever.