3DR and Gearbox Settle Duke Nukem Lawsuit

Remember this? Here’s the amicable conclusion!

JOINT STATEMENT BY 3DR, INTERCEPTOR, AND GEARBOX

Gearbox Software, 3D Realms and Interceptor Entertainment have resolved their differences; the parties have voluntarily ended all litigation between them.  (Make sure you check out online slots and free slots for fun.  Keep a sober mind and do not forget to have fun. Somewhere ahead, the jackpot maybe be waiting for you.)

From Mike Nielsen (3D Realms CEO): “When Interceptor acquired a license to develop ‘Duke Nukem Mass Destruction’ (‘Duke Nukem Survivor’) from 3D Realms, we did so in good faith and were not aware of any conflict. We never intended to cause any harm to Gearbox or Duke, which is why we immediately ceased development after Gearbox reached out. To secure the future of Duke, 3D Realms has agreed with Gearbox that a single home serves the IP best. And as big Duke fans, we’re excited to see what Gearbox has in store for the ‘King.’ As for our own games, we’re eager to complete development of the ‘Bombshell’ game and get it in the hands of our fans.”
STATEMENT BY FREDERIK SCHREIBER

I’m really happy that the lawsuit between Gearbox, 3DR, and Interceptor has come to an end. Right now, I, along with my Interceptor colleagues, are busy making the finishing touches on “Bombshell.” We can’t wait until you guys can play it!

Now that the lawsuit is over, I’d like to say a few things about my history with Gearbox, and hopefully clear some things up. I’ve been a huge Duke fan for many years, and the original Duke Nukem 3D was a big influence on me and my career in this industry that I love.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to Gearbox for allowing me to work on Duke Nukem Reloaded. I decided to cease production of Reloaded in 2011 to establish Interceptor and work on Rise of the Triad.

I want to make it clear now, once and for all – It was my own decision to pull the plug on Duke Nukem Reloaded, even though we were fully allowed to continue development. I respect Gearbox for supporting a young developer, and I’m glad we can now put this behind us.

I look forward to completing development on “Bombshell” and—as a long-time fan of Duke—I’m excited to see what Gearbox has in store for the ‘King’!
STATEMENT BY GEARBOX

Gearbox Software has voluntarily ended its litigation against Interceptor Entertainment and 3D Realms, and wishes to keep the terms of its settlement confidential except to confirm that Gearbox Software is the full and rightful owner of the Duke Nukem franchise.

Gearbox Software appreciates the sentiments from Interceptor and 3D Realms’ representatives. Gearbox Software President Randy Pitchford said, “I genuinely appreciate Mr. Nielsen’s and Mr. Schreiber’s statement and sincerely offer my best wishes to Interceptor Entertainment and 3D Realms towards their future success and, as someone who was part of the 3D Realms team when Bombshell was first imagined, I am excited to see what they have in store for us with their game.”

[Source] [Forum Discussion]

Bombshell Prequel Using Build Engine

Confirmed! Says Fred of 3DR:

It’s stand-alone, first episode shareware (Classic Duke 3D Model). Exclusive first access to the beta comes with pre-ordering Bombshell.
I came up with the idea with Scott Miller early this year, and reached out to Richard and Evan. We have assembled a dream team working on it.
Actually a few of the posters in this thread are active developers on the project.

 

Thats it for now – You’ll have to wait for the OFFICIAL reveal for more info. 😉

[Source & Discussion]

Gearbox has made a start on a new Duke Nukem

Speaking at this year’s Develop, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford has said he wants to make a new Duke Nukem game, potentially via second developer. Hopefully, not taking as long to complete as the now legendary 14 year development that finally gave us Duke Nukem Forever.

“I did not acquire the franchise merely so people could experience Duke Nukem Forever,” explains Randy, adding, “that was, sort of, the toll to pay to give Duke Nukem a chance at a future.” What that future might be is still in the early stages he explains, stating that the studio’s “done some concept development.” However, he also said making a new instalment would be a challenge as “Gearbox is very busy.” Instead, he suggests that “a faster way would be if the correct developer would become interested and we’d work with them.”

He also commented on the last game’s less than overwhelming response, saying, “for 10 years it was promised as the greatest game that would ever be made. It was legendary in its vapourware status. So it had a particular pole of attention.”

Sources: [Eurogamer] [GamesRadar] (Thanks Jess, DkNkm, themaniacboy)

[Forum Discussion]

Duke3D HRP v5.4 Released

The community has managed again to add about 130 MB of additional content to the pack since September 2013. Even though this is impressive, the amount of stuff which is really new and noticable remains modest: There is a Luke Skywalker model for the famous secret in E2L8: Lunar Reactor now, together with a few new textures. Emphasis rather lies on enhanced maphacks support for more custom maps (now powered by a more flexible maphacks system implemented in recent EDuke32 releases), considerable progress regarding Polymer support for textures/models, and updates applied to some secondary models which had visually suffered throughout the years.

More info & download here on the official HRP website.


Bonus: I met with the 3D Realms team this week before E3. They demo’d Bombshell for me and it looked fun as hell. Left to right: Scott, Fred, Khaled, Yatta, Becky.

tubgirls

PC Gamer’s HRP Highlight

Duke4.net has been featured on a PC Gamer article which highlights how to run Duke Nukem 3D on Windows 7/8. Thanks for the heads up, Brad!

To run Duke at up to 1920×1400, first download and install the game from Steam or GOG. Then head to Duke4.net to download the high resolution texture pack. You want the full version, which weighs in at 870 MB as of version 5.3. This high-res texture pack is built on top of an open source port of Duke 3D called EDuke32. Once you’ve downloaded the texture pack, extract it into a new folder.

Mods? Oh yes, there are mods. ModDB is chock full of them, and there’s a giant repository of maps at Duke4.net. For a listing of maps with more details, there’s also Scent 88. Go to town.

Read the full article here!

3D Realms Office History Part 2

3drofficehistory_2

I forget what year it happened, but in the late 90’s we had a bunch of fans “invade” (their term, not ours) the offices. A couple of fans from our forums just showed up, and walked in and asked to see what was going on. At the time we didn’t have much in the way of security, and while George was generally nice to them, it did prompt some changes. After their stunt, we installed security keyfobs for the doors, so you couldn’t just get in without someone letting you in. That also extended to our next offices in a big way. I can’t recall if anyone tried again at the Broadway offices after that stunt, but they wouldn’t have gotten in.

[Forum Discussion]

3D Realms Office History

3drofficehistory

As you probably know, the offices of 3D Realms these days reside in Aalborg, Denmark. This is a relatively new development, as Interceptor bought the company known for such titles as Duke Nukem, Max Payne, Wolfenstein 3D, and many many others. We’ve decided to take a look back at the history of the offices that made up 3D Realms. We enlisted long timer Joe Siegler to write about this relatively unknown part of the company. This will be a series of articles (going through till 2015). This first part focuses on the original base of operations, the home of Scott Miller’s parents in Garland, TX.

[Forum Discussion]

EDuke32 Add-on Compilation

Since mid-2013, I had been working on a pack of Duke3D addons which can be easily run from within the EDuke32 launcher by using the grpinfo feature. The result is a collection of about 60 groupfiles containing about 670 levels, over 1.1 GB of data (uncompressed). It works really easily: It comes as an additional folder (“addons”) which contains all the groupfiles, you add -jaddons to your EDuke32 shortcut and see all the groupfiles in the launcher afterwards.

 

Please see the readme file for full details.

 

As of today, the project is finished! You can download it on the HRP website (scroll to the bottom of the “Download” section). Enjoy!

[Read More]

Happy 20th, Rise of the Triad!

rott20anniv

I moved from Pennsylvania to Texas in December of 1992.  I took a job with 3D Realms (then just called Apogee Software).  I left a company of 70,000 to come work for a videogame company in Garland of around 20 or so (most of that was order takers at the time).    I stayed there from Dec 1992 to May of 2009 when a bunch of us were notably laid off during the development of Duke Nukem Forever.   During all that time I either participated in or was witness to the development of a boatload of games.  But in all that time I was a true developer in just one of them.   That was Rise of the Triad.

Read the full story over at Joe’s blog.