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posted by hubie on Friday May 13 2022, @02:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-mean-there-really-was-a-game-in-development? dept.

Two submitted stories talk about new developments in the DNF saga. Both stories are much longer than can be summarized here, but are worth the read (and pictures):

Duke Nukem Forever's 2001 build appears online, may fully leak in June

The game's latest leak, posted to 4chan on Sunday and widely shared by Duke Nukem fansite duke4.net, appears to be made of original 2001 code and assets. It includes a one-minute video of first-person carnage in a very Duke-appropriate environment of a strip club called "Slick Willy." The sequence was apparently played and captured by the build's leaker.

In addition, the leaker suggested that the build's playable files, source code, and official map editor could be released in June—which would coincide with the E3 trailer's 21st anniversary—and responded to various 4chan doubters by posting additional images based on their requests. These included screengrabs of the build's file and folder lists, along with images from other sections of the game and a higher-res peek at "the redneck from the E3 trailer."

Shortly after the video and its related screencaps made the rounds, former Duke Nukem Forever project lead George Broussard confirmed its apparent authenticity on Twitter, telling fans that "the leak looks real." He said that while it may be playable, it shouldn't be looked at as a game, "just a smattering of barely populated test levels."

We have played the lost Duke Nukem Forever build from 2001

Earlier this week, a retro game leaker teased '90s shooter fans with something they'd never seen before [...] Was this an elaborate fan-made fake of Duke-like content in a dated 3D engine, or would this turn out to be the real deal?

We thought we'd have to wait until June for an answer, as this week's leaker suggested that the build and its source code would be released to coincide with the 21st anniversary of the game's tantalizing E3 2001 trailer. But after this week's tease, the leakers decided to jump the gun. On Tuesday, 1.9GB of Duke Nukem Forever files landed on various file-sharing sites (which we will not link here), and Ars Technica has confirmed that those files are legitimate.

As it turns out, this is a surprisingly playable version of Duke Nukem Forever from October 2001, though with so many bugs and incomplete sections, that's not saying much. Most of this content, which includes moments from the aforementioned E3 trailer, was shelved by the time the game reached a cobbled-together retail state in 2011. So we're finally getting a closer look at how the game could have turned out differently if it had launched closer to 2001.

Now that the code is out, do you think the community can finish the game in a state that will live up to its original promises?


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @02:56PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @02:56PM (#1244747)

    If hobbyist developers pick this up, it should be a playable game by the 2040s.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @03:18PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @03:18PM (#1244756)

    There's also legality issues. The game would still need to be reverse engineered unless they decide to officially open source the license. Legally, it would be a mess as there's a significant chance that the assets from the final release wouldn't even work with the 2001 source code anyways m

    • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday May 13 2022, @03:29PM (4 children)

      by epitaxial (3165) on Friday May 13 2022, @03:29PM (#1244762)

      Who cares? Just distribute as a torrent.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @03:33PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @03:33PM (#1244764)

        You're not going to finish a project like this on a torrent site. It's a massive undertaking.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @05:13PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @05:13PM (#1244781)

        Who cares? Just distribute as a torrent.

        People are uploading the leak everywhere, including several different submissions at Archive.org!

        I would urge caution, however, as one/some of the anonymous people uploading it may include a rootkit or something in there, who knows!

        What a time to be alive!

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Saturday May 14 2022, @02:13AM (1 child)

          by stretch611 (6199) on Saturday May 14 2022, @02:13AM (#1244870)

          I would urge caution, however, as one/some of the anonymous people uploading it may include a rootkit or something in there, who knows!

          Looking on the fact that it was initially uploaded to 4chan, I wouldn't be surprised if the initial upload didn't have a rootkit already.

          --
          Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2022, @03:41AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2022, @03:41AM (#1244886)

            > Looking on the fact that it was initially uploaded to 4chan, I wouldn't be surprised if the initial upload didn't have a rootkit already.

            Was it uploaded to 4chan? I thought it was announced/discussed/leaked via 4chan by way of anonfiles free file hosting. Do they run anonfiles?

            The last thing the "leaker(s)" should have done prior to uploading it to anonfiles is use GPG to sign the top .rar file, and include SHA512SUMs also signed by GPG. That's just for a chain working back to the original leaker(s). I hate it when people leak stuff and don't put the effort into it to provide checksums and a signed file.

            I understand neither of the above options provides any level of real world trust, but when you have people downloading it from anonfiles and distributing it several times by several people to places like archive.org, with no original sums and/or sigs it just further makes it more likely the "couriers" of said leak may pass something *special* along with it.