Duke Nukem for Ever, refait parler de lui. J'avais un ami français qui avait travaillé en tant que graphiste chez 3D Realms sur les premiers épisodes. Douce époque...
Les chanceux ayant pu essayer Duke Nukem Forever à la Penny Arcade Expo ce week-end ont remarqué que Duke ne porte désormais plus que deux armes à la fois. George Broussard (de 3D Realms, qui ne participe plus au développement du jeu) tente de calmer la colère des joueurs
dans les commentaires de Shacknews
, expliquant que c'est un choix de gameplay fait par 3D Realms et non pas par Gearbox.
Yeah, blame us for it if you want. It may change in the future and I don't know what will happen with it, but it was us. I stand by it too, as you cannot discount designing games for a modern world and part of that world is consoles where the bulk of the sales can be. And on those consoles you have a controller. We tried for a long time to support lots of guns but we simply could not find a nice way to map it to a controller, despite trying 4-5 designs. We gave it enough time and decided to stop swimming against the current and adopt what was basically the "standard".
It's not 1996 anymore.
This is general and not pertaining to dnf...
That's a valid path if you can swallow the development effort to design two systems and maintain them. There are still issues with everything filtering down to a controller with 14 buttons and how to map the game to that, even on pc, where people may play with a controller. Sometimes you get mutually exclusive problems that are hard to solve. What if you need the dpad for weapon selection ala Orange Box, or Gears or something? What if you are using the dpad to select inventory items? Ok so you do a radial menu where you hold right bumper and then select guns with the left stick. But, right bumper was off hand grenades and that's the best place for it? It's a house of cards, so imo, unification is the best path. Some call it dumbing down, but really in most cases, it's just good design.
Beyond that there are design issues. IMO, combat encounters are more interesting and fun if you are given an arena and lots of weapon choices. As you move around the arena you can pick and choose what you like. The key is to offer the player lots of choices so that all play styles are supported. The player should not be frustrated at having to leave their favorite gun behind as long as you offer it again in the near future, so they can get it again. In fact, in lots of cases that's a win because you create this little feedback loop of addiciton and reward as you give them their fix :)
Pendant ce temps, Tramell Isaac, l'ancien directeur artistique de 3D Realms donne dans son blog (ici et là, merci à Jerc pour les liens) plus de détails sur les rôles exacts de Triptych Games (un studio monté par des anciens de 3D Realms) et Gearbox Software dans la finition de DNF. Selon lui, le développement de la version PC de Duke Nukem Forever a été continué (et pratiquement terminé) par Triptych Games dès la fin du développement interne chez 3D Realms au printemps 2009. Quand Gearbox a racheté la marque Duke Nukem et les droits sur le jeu, Gearbox a alors aidé à finir la version PC (et financé Triptych) et développe depuis les portages sur Xbox 360 et Playstation 3, tout en peaufinant les trois versions.
En clair :
- 3D Realms ne participe plus à Duke Nukem Forever et n'a plus aucun droit dessus
- Les anciens employés de 3D Realms sont pour la plupart partis chez Triptych Games et Gearbox Software
- Si Duke Nukem Forever est un jour terminé, ce sera en grande partie grâce à Triptych, qui a continué le développement seul dans son coin...
- ...mais sans l'argent de Gearbox, ça n'aurait au final pas donné grand chose.
Source : No Frag
