Darn! Now what will we make fun of?

--TheGoop

Duke Nukem Forever

Well, I've played the Daikatana demo (you can download the new demo based on the full game with SP and MP maps from GameSpot, etc. Its 100+MB though!) and its hard to believe it took 4 years for this. It looks -- and more importantly, plays -- only slightly better than your average Quake2 mod.

Oh well.

I'm sure Duke Nukem Forever will be a much better game...I was commenting more on the time-to-market rather than the quality of the release.


Also... is it just me, or do games based on existing engines seem to take much longer to write these days than games with their own engines? I realize that we are at a point where art, music, design, etc are much more time consuming tasks than the actual programming, but often the art in the original-engine game (Q3, Q2, Unreal, UT) is as good or better than what the licencees pump out...And the original games+engine releases seem to be hovering around 1 1/2 to 2 years for release whereas the licencees seem to hover around 3 years. And most importantly, the games based on existing engines tend to be far far far less fun overall than the original ones. With the notable exception of Half-Life of course.

Hmm!





Edited by - gmcbay on 4/22/00 3:29:46 PM

Edited by - gmcbay on 4/22/00 3:30:46 PM

>>> Also... is it just me, or do games based on existing engines seem to take much longer to write these days than games with their own engines? <<<

It''s just you. ;-)

Here''s the way it works:

Category [1] Games that are developed with a new engine generally take the longest to make, such as the four years it took to make Unreal, which was my most accounts an average game within a great engine. (Id''s games are an exception to this rule because Carmack is unmatched in work effeciency, dedication and focus, PLUS id''s games are very, very low in content.)

Cat. [2] Taking next longest to make are games with ambitious content and design goals, but use an existing engine. Falling into this category are games like Daikatana (3 years), Half-Life (2.5 years) and DNF (should be almost a 3 year project when done).

Cat. [3] Next are games that use an existing engine but are basically generic in design and content, without really raising any significant standards, such as Kingpin, SoF and Wheel of Time. You''ll rarely see these later games shatter the sales charts, except maybe for their initial few weeks of release.

(UT and QA3 are a mix of numbers [1] and [3], but much more of [3] than [1]. And sales for both of these games, though good, are far short of publisher expectations--I''ve talked to both publishers very recently about this so I know this first hand.)

BTW, within none of these categories can you be guaranteed a hit, but only the top two categories are conducive to mega hits.

Pretty simple stuff, when you think about it (as I''ve done for years).

Scott