Eli Hodapp’s large collection of words.

I should probably update my Duke Nukem Forever list.

Duke Nukem Forever is a computer game that has been under development by 3D Realms since its announcement on April 28th, 1997, originally slated to use the (then) state of the art Quake II 3D engine. (3D engines are the underlying framework under video games which handle the rendering of the actual graphics. Using a preexisting 3D engine greatly speeds game development because since all the code is already there to handle all the graphics, the development studio mostly only has to worry about building maps, creating models, designing textures, and scripting the game together.)

A few months later, screen shots were published in PC Gamer magazine, along with an intended release date of mid-1998. Excitement grew in May of 1998 when a few short video clips of Duke Nukem Forever were shown at E3… Surely a final release of the game was right around the corner!

Just about when mid-1998 arrived (June, specifically) 3D Realms announced they were changing 3D engines to Epic’s Unreal engine. George Broussard, the producer and co-creator of the Duke Nukem series insisted that this change would not cause any significant delay, despite all logic pointing to the contrary. Switching 3D engines is a serious development move, and really can be equated to swapping an engine in a car with overall severity. Also at this point, Broussard assured everyone Duke Nukem Forever would see a 1999 release.

1999 came and went, Duke Nukem Forever saw another engine change, this time to an updated version of the same Unreal engine they were working on. 3D Realms even released a Duke Nukem Christmas card, insinuating a 2000 release. Not surprisingly, the year 2000 came and went without Duke Nukem Forever. Another Christmas card was released, this time hinting at a 2001 release.

In the summer of 2001, 3D Realms released the most substantial proof to date that Duke Nukem Forever has ever existed in any form- a two and a half minute game play trailer. In 2002, 3D Realms hired new programmers, and decided instead of switching to another 3D engine, they would just develop their own, making this the fourth engine change since the initial announcement of the game. Broussard eventually came out to say that at this point, “95%” of the already designed levels had been scraped, and had they remained on track they would have been “two years” off from releasing Duke Nukem Forever under the Unreal engine.

In early 2003, the CEO of Take Two, 3D Realms’ publisher announced Duke Nukem Forever would be released by the end of the year. This eventually changed to “by the end of 2004″ and then “in the beginning of 2005.” In September of 2004, GameSpot.com revealed a rumor that Duke Nukem Forever had made its fifth 3D engine change, this time using the Quake III engine. Broussard denied the rumor, but announced only a few days later that they had switched to a different physics engine for the game.

Since then nothing of note has really happened, mostly drama between 3D Realms and Take Two which isn’t very interesting. Out of all this, the only thing we’ve even seen that provides any proof that anything is even happening anymore with Duke Nukem Forever is a small (and I mean SMALL) 200×125 image of a supposed screen shot which was posted on several 3D Realms job postings online.

The list originally developed from a few usenet postings and several scattered postings on various forums where people were listing things which had been accomplished during the development cycle of Duke Nukem Forever. Everything from video game consoles, manned and unmanned space flight missions, wars, massive political shifts, and other crazy things were drawn out in great detail as taking less time. Needless to say, this amused me greatly and I figured I needed to compile all these different factoids, come up with a ton of my own, and make one unified list somewhere.

Every once in a while someone will catch wind of the list and it will pop up on a forum somewhere, or even the front page of Digg. (I believe it’s been front page material 3 or 4 times, with literally hundreds of thousands of diggs total.) It has been in PC Gamer magazine in both the USA and the United Kingdom version, it is part of Wikipedia (both online and CDROM edition), and I couldn’t even begin to tell you where else it has been that I haven’t been made aware of.

The funny part is, even with the millions upon millions of unique hits the list has generated, I’ve yet to reach the minimum dollar amount for any of the online advertisers the page has to actually send me a check. This really makes me wonder how some of these sites on the internet can exist solely off AdSense revenue.

Ah well, either way, if you’re bored or at all interested, check out the list. If you have anything to add, the official list contact information (a fancy way to say the email address which automatically gets filtered to my “DUKE LIST” folder) is duke@a-13.net. All I ask is don’t send me sports related stuff unless it’s really substantial or entertaining.

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