So I'm trying Duke Nukem Forever for the first time. It's !@$!@'ing appalling.

It came out in 2011, and it runs like complete piss.

4K, I get <30 FPS in a menu system that is literally doing nothing but showing a static image and playing an upscaled video in the background.

In windowed mode? It doesn't support more than 720p. That's right. 2011 on a PC. 720p.

In fullscreen? It crashes all the time when you try to switch the resolution. But it doesn't crash gracefully to desktop. Nope. It just freezes, while still "capturing" the mouse cursor. So you have to do some WIN+TAB multi-desktop keyboard gymnastics to switch viewports to the second screen and you STILL don't have a mouse.

So the SECOND day (today) I tried to play the damn game, I get through the first level... it's a boss. You defeat the boss with guns. Then you have to run up to it while it's passed out, climb on top with 'e', and then press SPACE really fast to rip a pipe (heart or air flow) out of its body.

First, let's discuss the gaming holocaust that combining the legacy of Duke Nukem... with a fucking QUICK TIME EVENT.

"Press F to pay respects.", anyone?

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But not only that, but, just like !@$!@ DAMN FAR CRY 3, the !@$!'ing quick time events? (Where you press a button fast enough to "win" the event.) You know, something INSANELY SIMPLE to program correctly? Just like in Far Cry 3, in Duke Nukem Forever, it doesn't !@$!@$'ing work.

And, adding insult to injury, the game only supports CHECKPOINT saves now (WTF?!), and, there's no checkpoint right before the quicktime event! So every time it !@#$!'S YOU, you have to re-fight the entire boss again. ... and of course, you don't even know if it'll work that time.

When I have to GOOGLE HOW TO FIX YOUR GAME, your game is officially sh!t. Especially a game that came in out 2011 (and Far Cry 3, in 2012).

And as always, there's NEVER an official response from a developer on how to fix that crap. The best you get is people say "Well, try tapping it faster." (Really? Jack-ss, I wrote a forum post before simply trying to "tap it faster"?) And the others say "turn on VSYNC" "lower your resolution" and "rebind your jump key". What the !@$! would lowering my resolution help?

This game came out in 2011!!! Windows 8 (same as Win10 essentially) was already out in 2011! And 64-bit systems were the norm by then. So what @$!@'ing excuse could they have for it not working except being terrible programmers being run by a terrible company? It's not like we're going from Windows 98 to Windows 2000/XP with a completely different kernel or going from 32 to 64-bit systems. The ecosystem hasn't changed.

There is NO excuse for us to not be living in a age of renaissance where everything "just works." I can play a DOS game that was written for a 16-bit CPU just fine. I can play games designed for a freakin' console, just fine. But somehow, games that run through standardized APIs that mostly haven't changed in a decade, and they crash all the time. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Duke Nukem Forever is a fun kind of bad. Like watching a summer camp skit, you know it's campy, but that's what adds to the fun. That being said, I never finished Duke Nukem Forever... but maybe I should give it another go.

Duke Nukem Forever

I loved the game. Didn't have any of the problems you describe, and that is on my system which had an nVidia GT240 in it, not exactly top of the line video card, even for 2011.

I do wish the world was more open as was originally planned. But I liked it for what it was.

As I said, as you discover wormholes, your travel times are immensely reduced as some take you to the other side of the galaxy. If you don't have the time to explore and discover them, there are maps online that show you where they are now.

And of course, if you wish to find them on your own, as I did, you should upgrade your navigator's skills first, as at certain levels they can detect wormholes easily.

But that sort of game isn't for everyone. This generation is probably too impatient for it. It's very similar to Star Control 2, in fact, SC2 was inspired by it, some say a ripoff, but the two are definitely different in important ways. It's too bad we don't seem to see more games like these anymore.

The Starflight creator... worked on Star Control 2. So whoever they are, they're pretty stupid. MASS EFFECT, on the otherhand, is a straight up AAA rip off, of Star Control 2. Hell, the damn ending is 99% Star Control 3 as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Johnson_(game_designer)

Hahahaha Allegro.cc did that crappy thing that takes 20 minute to post so you can hit the edit button. And I forgot.

Duke is fun. You're an old fart, like me, so you might like "2.5D" graphics. That is, Doom. Sprite enemies, with polygon worlds.

Duke has INSANELY better levels, enemies, and fun than Doom. The levels are interactive. Doors can be opened or re-closed. Faucets can be activated and give you a single hitpoint. You can flush a toilet. You can push buttons that activate doors. You can view cameras. You can go outside.

It was also the first FPS game that really had full 3-D environments. (System Shock 1 might count but if you play both, you'd know SS1 is insanely slow paced compared to duke and counts more as an RPG than FPS. And it had almost no floor-over-floor levels.) You could, for the first time, have floors that were on TOP of each other. Doom only let you fake it. You could never be on a platform above something, looking down. Duke had tons of other features too. Better lighting. Way more interactive map trigger support.

The monsters are hilarious and tongue-in-cheek. The first badguys you fight are cops. Except they're pig... cops.

The levels are amazing. They're almost all based on real locations. The first level is a district and you end up going through a movie theater. You can shut the movie on or off. you can blow up the screen. By time you finish the level, you've actually turned the two safety keys ("TURN. YOUR. KEY!"), armed the blast cap for a demolition, and you watch (live, no cinematic) an entire building collapse.

All of that stuff didn't exist before Duke did it.

To this day, I have never played a game where I could blow up an entire building and watch it collapse, live. (No cinematic pre-rendered bullcrap.) Even though the game is set in the future or some alternate universe, it feels like a real, living place.

Wrap it all in a really funny, over-the-top, masculine character that spouts ripped off 80's action movie quotes (with no attribution) like "I'm here to kickass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of bubblegum." (from They Live by John Carpenter). The story is literally "Aliens invaded and stole all our babes" so Duke nukem has to go rescue the babes and kill the alien basterds. [sic] It's so simple, and yet, charmingly perfect for the "style" it is going for.

The weapons are fun too. You've got shotgun, rockets, etc. But you've also got a shrink ray and the biggest enemies now run around like little kids trying to avoid you. And when you get on top of them they explode as your character plays a "crush them with my stomping foot" animation. It also has an alternative fire that makes them bigger and they explode.

It also supports Mighty Foot mode. Pressing Q (I think?) lets you kick with your foot. But more hilariously, you can also use your foot as your melee weapon when you run out of ammo. Except... it's your other foot. So if you hold left click, AND, Q, you can walk around hitting people with TWO FEET. It's also super fun to run around and KICK every door open like a mad man.

Also, the foot has its uses too. A shotgun blast on harder difficulty won't kill a pigcop in one hit. BUT, a shotgun AND a kick will. So you'll quickly get the (fun) hang of it by blasting a guy around a corner, kicking, then turning to the next guy and blasting him, and kicking him in the face.

To this day, Duke Nukem's levels STILL strike me as some of THE most unique levels ever designed. You can literally tell someone "Remember the electric chair level?" and people know exactly what you're talking about.

And that's just what I remember off the top of my head. And it's not just nostalgia. I've literally beat the game like... 6 times and it's still fun.

OH, and the ENTIRE GAME SUPPORTS CO-OP.

Come to think of it, if anyone wants to play some co-op, holla. I'm going to be playing Duke again at some point for a let's play / series review.

[edit] The only game that oddly, comes close, to Duke? Postal 2. Duke was wacky, but it actually let you do way more interactive real-world stuff. Postal 2 also takes inspiration from Duke by using real-world locations (except it's a whole town!), has a wacky anti-hero (this time with an almost serial killer vibe), and the game is so dogged for being "evil" because you can do things like unzip your pants and pee on someone (or even pee into the air and get some in your mouth ahahha), the neo-cons / game haters / SJW types who never actually play games never even realized that you can beat the engine game without killing anyone. The game is actually like some sort of super philosophical experiment where every bit of "evil" you do is simply... because you want to, or, because you EXPECTED to do it thanks to all the over FPS games you played. You actually don't have to kill anyone at all. Also, it guest stars Gary Coleman. Damn, postal 2 is a good game.

ALSO, Postal 2 supports "Mighty Foot". A clear, direct, homage to Duke3D.

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WTF. That sucks.

Also:

The $20 one has a new episode by the original creators. However, it also DOESN'T include the old expansion packs and the audio is worse according to reviewers. I have not played it yet.

Megaton Edition was like $5 forever. It's a GREAT $5 game. If I had it on GOG, I'd just send it straight to you. But I have it on Steam.

Megaton Edition can still be found through... sites if you're willing to get them for free. Simply google "Megaton edition download".

I don't know. I think it's insanely stupid to not offer a game people want. It's like "Hey, I DON'T want to make money." IP law is so damn crazy.

Here's the trailer for Megaton that shows the typical graphics / guns/ etc:

The Megaton Edition can still be purchased from Steam key reseller sites, but the price is closer to $40. I'm sure the 20th Anniversary World Tour version will be plenty fine, but I don't feel like paying $20 for a 20-year-old game.

I just wonder why the developer and publisher didn't renew their agreement to sell the game after just one year on the Steam store (Megaton Edition). They brought it back the year later as the 20th Anniversary version, but the fact that it's missing the expansion packs is really bizarre.

I think if someone or a group of someones creates something with the intent to sell, so long as there's still a market for the product, they should have the freedom to milk it for all its worth. Is it greedy? Sure. But game-making isn't a charity. So while the game is 20 years old, and the market might be mostly dried up, I wouldn't feel right pirating it...

Megaton's IP was owned by Devolver. So when the old guys re-released their game, they probably bought the IP which included exclusive store rights to Duke Nukem.

I've seen Fallout 1 and 2 change to "Fallout 1/2 classic" on GOG. Same exact game but the IP switched hands. And you can't buy classic, so when I go to the store page, it goes to a 404 now.

It doesn't help society, nor should it. What a great fantasy it would be if everyone help each other out for no reward, and if every product made was created to benefit society. It would be nice, but it's a fantasy. We will never live in a world like Star Trek. If given the opportunity, most people would not work, and they would not contribute to society; instead, they would be parasites that would suck it dry. You'd end up with a minority workers supporting the majority of those who don't work. This is already true to an extent in the welfare state.

Why should I bust my balls to make ends meet while part of my income goes to pay for others to live off of "the government's dime" and not work? I'm not wealthy by any means, but I'd like to be. I do agree that capitalism does sometimes run amok and is filled with corruption, but if I ever produce a product that is profitable, you can bet your ass I'll milk it for every cent it's worth.

I don't think that's true. Many people cannot sit still forever. They would find things to do. Hopefully they'd find the things they're actually good at and naturally enjoy, instead of being forced to do jobs they are bad at or hate.

That's not exactly the same. The people on welfare are at the bottom of society. It doesn't look good for them no matter what. A few will move up into middle class if they struggle long enough and work hard, but some no matter how hard they try are going to remain trapped where they are. It's easy to judge when you are born into a family that is already doing OK. But it's wrong to judge people that are suffering from social problems or are actually hindered from succeeding. It's impossible to know who is just being lazy versus who has given up on a world that has given up on them. I would wager that the people that were willing and able to work, even when all of their basic needs were met, would be enough to carry the ones that were unable or too lazy to contribute. Of course, our current definition of "work" isn't the only way to contribute to society. For example, mothers that raise offspring are also contributing to society. The world is not as black and white as we're lead to believe it is.

"Money cannot buy happiness." True wealth is appreciating the things that actually matter in our lives. Relationships. Family. Reproduction. To a lesser extent, hobbies and passions. If you are making enough money to pay your bills then you have all the money you really need. It would be ideal to have more "in case" you need it, like for a medical emergency, of course. But money corrupts so if we had too much of it we'd only squander it and potentially ruin our lives in the process.. Look at how "happy" Hollywood is. They're all standing in line for the noose. The whole point of wanting more wealth is to achieve sustainable living. Which is basically achievable for all of us if we were willing to spread it around, and did so with a system that prevented abuses/corruption. We may not have been able to devise one yet, but that's not proof that it cannot be done.

There's also the argument that the struggle is part of what gives our lives meaning. And that without struggle our lives lose meaning and purpose. That said, I think there are plenty of natural struggles to keep us preoccupied so we don't need to invent artificial ones.

Money is not a real thing. We made it up. The real question is do we have enough resources to provide for everybody on the planet. And I think the answer is easily yes, or at least, if we all cooperated it could be. The amount of "wealth"/power that the top 0.1% has accumulated is insane. It's probably more than enough to feed/cloth/house the entire planet for decades if not centuries. Certainly if we were to pool everybody's wealth/resources it could be. The Internet suggests that the total amount of "wealth" on planet Earth may have been something like $1.2 quadrillion (I assume US dollars). That's approximately $160000 per person. Mind you, that's probably only enough for a small to medium sized family to survive in Canada for maybe ~5 years or so. But in poorer nations that's probably more than enough for them to last 20 or 30 years, if not 50 or 100 years. Obviously there's too many variables to be certain of much of anything, other than, the richest people in the world are hording all of the power/motivation to get things done, and they certainly have not contributed enough to society to be worthy of their net worth.

I actually think that in some ways worse graphics are better because they come across as more abstract. The advantage to this is that your brain has to fill in the blanks, and no matter how powerful our computers get, our brains continue to be way more powerful (at least in ways that matter in this domain). When I was playing FFVII I wasn't seeing the blocky 3D models that the game actually has. I was seeing fully detailed world. It was too abstract to answer all of my questions, and so my brain had to "guess" on some of the details and fill in the blanks. And the result was wondrous. They did have FMV sequences with better graphics, but they were still pretty dull by today's standards, and they only showed to pieces of the world so you still had to do your share of imagining.

That's something that I think has been partially lost in today's AAA sphere. The graphics are detailed enough that there's not much room left for your imagination. As a result, the studio had better do a fantastic job of imagining and presenting the world to the player or it won't "pop" the way it could. There are games that do a great job of this, and there are games that fall short. The ones that fall short are in limbo. They're too detailed for the imagination to take over, but too vague to really communicate everything the player wants to know about the world. The result is that the immersion is lost. And for games that are not pure mechanical that's game breaking.

For the sake of conversation, let's say that such a system did come into fruition... So the basics are taken care of, but that leaves a few questions:

1. How would such a system be funded? How would it continue to be funded for decades or centuries thereafter? And how would that funding impact global trade?

2. Why would people working hard labor jobs (such as farming or construction) continue to do so if there is no monetary incentive to do so (assuming robots aren't doing all of that by the time such a system came into being)?

3. Is it reasonable to believe that everyone has something beneficial to offer to society? How do you define what is and is not beneficial, and wouldn't that lead to more of a utilitarian style of government?

4. What would you do with your time if you were a part of this system?

Also, I was watching a video about OpenGL and guess who I saw in the comments!

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