Merry Millennium from 3D Realms

No real game news here, but all of us here at 3D Realms wish to pass on our wishes for a happy holiday season to everyone out there. We hope that everyone has a good time this season, and more importantly, a safe time. In this vein, we'd like to share our 1999 Christmas card with everyone. It was sent out to friends and family (and the like) of the people here at 3D Realms as well as some other people (I wonder if Bill Gates will actually read his).

Anyway, the picture to the right can be clicked on to see the full Christmas card including a special Duke Nukem Forever Holiday poem on the inside.

We expect 2000 (our 13th year in the gaming business) to be our best yet, with the forthcoming Duke Nukem Forever & Max Payne. Also, the revision to our web site, which has been delayed slightly will appear in January, along with some other stuff we haven't told you about yet. Just remember. If you go out, stay safe. We want you back playing games with us next year. If you need a ride during the Millennium New Year's celebration, call a cab! (Here in the Dallas area, AAA will tow you and your car home for free). Oh yeah, our games are Y2K compliant. :)

This will be the final news entry for the 3D Realms site for 1999, as I (Joe Siegler) will be on vacation next week and won't be back until Jan 2nd. Unless there's some major happening, I don't plan on updating while I'm on vacation. Happy Holidays everyone! Here are the links for the pages of the card:

1. Cover
   
2. Page 2
   
3. Page 3
   

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:54 PM

Rise of the Triad is Five!

December 21, 1994. 2AM. Several of us were at Apogee HQ coding our first in house produced 3D game, entitled "Rise of the Triad". Things are going well in the final push to release the game. Then, in a move right out of some sort of Stephen King novel, the entire area suffered a power blackout. It was rather eerie, it really felt to us at the time like id Software was out at the power distribution boxes for our neighborhood with wire cutters. :)

During the hour or so delay, we lounged around in the programming room, some of us slept, and others went down to the lobby of our office building and shot off water rockets (All Hail "The Avenger").

Eventually, the power came back on, and the work commenced towards the final push towards v1.0 shareware was back on. Especially considering we thought the power would go out again at any second. It didn't, and somewhere around 4 or 5 in the morning, the upload of #1ROTT.ZIP began to Software Creations.

Today is the 5 year anniversary of Rise of the Triad, our 3D action shooter released on December 21, 1994. This game was groundbreaking, with several innovations that were copied in games that came after it. Some of the items that were used first in Rise of the Triad before any other game were:

* Parental Lock of objectionable content
* Random game enemies (the same enemy wouldn't always be in the same spot when you replayed the game)
* Non linear episode progression (ending one specific level wouldn't always take you to the next one)
* Jump pads (used most recently in Quake III)
* Bullet holes in walls
* Ability to jump on top of objects in a game
* Live Remote Ridicule (insult people in a LAN game using a microphone - forget those built in insults!)
* Enemies that play dead instead of just dying immediately.
* Rocket jumping
* Capture the Flag

There's a lot more than this, too. A lot of these don't seem like much, but at the time, most of these things hadn't yet been seen in a 3D action game. If you're into ROTT and game history, then you owe it to yourself to check out these pages:

1. "Rott in Hell" - The definitive history of the best deathmatch game of all time (by Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen)
2. ROTT Worship Site - Up to date goings on with ROTT from a fan perspective.

Rise of the Triad was the game that had the largest amount of user level editors created for it (there were four that we're aware of - this remark refers to one of our games, not any game). Not only that, Rise of the Triad was the first game that we released the same level editor that we used to make the game to the public! Not all that long ago, we released six levels for Rise of the Triad that had never been released (well, freely) before. If you missed these levels (The Lasersoft levels), make sure to check 'em out.

If you've never played ROTT before, or you have played ROTT before, why not break out the game and give it a whirl again in honor of it's fifth birthday? The shareware episode (as well as all the other files mentioned above) are available from our Master Download page. Check it out, and get retro! If you're interested in more history of this sort, check out our Milestones & History page, as well as our Detailed Release History page.

P.S.. Yeah - I'm free!!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:28 PM

Gamespy Looks Forward to DNF & Max Payne

The Gamespy site is currently running a piece all week entitled "Gamespy Preview of 2000". Each day this week, they are posting what they're looking forward to from several games over a few different genres. For example, Monday the 20th was Action games day, today is Strategy games day, and Friday is a hardware preview.

Two of our games made their article, both on the Action Games day; Max Payne & Duke Nukem Forever. Here's a bit of what they had to say about each:

Duke Nukem Forever: Duke Nukem Forever will use the beautiful Unreal Tournament engine from Epic, while keeping the sheer Cool Factor(R) that made Duke 3D such a hit. In this latest Duke installment, expect to see Dr. Proton and his evil cohorts, law (ahem) enforcers, and, hopefully, lots of scantily clad women who like dollar bills. Also expect lots of classic Duke quotes, as well as new ones. Hail to the King, baby!

Max Payne: Remedy is taking pains to deliver a realistic game, going as far as to send a team of artists to New York City to get ideas for environments. You can also expect top-notch graphics from Max Payne as well, since it is an accelerated-only game. If action gaming with an action movie theme is what sends your heart pounding, then Max Payne may be what you are looking for.

There's more on both of these games at Gamespy's Preview of 2000, so make sure to check it all out today!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:33 AM

The Millenium's Biggest Games

There's no question Duke Nukem Forever is one of the most anticipated games; perhaps the real question is whether it's actually going to come out in 2000. 3D Realms gave us the first glimpse of the game in November, and based on the screenshots, it looks like the long time in development has been well spent on detailed character models and realistic Las Vegas-based locations. Since the release of Half-Life I haven't seen a good traditional single player action game. For 2000, it looks like Duke Forever has the best shot of any game at one-upping Half-Life.

This is what Geoff Keighley of Gameslice has to say about Duke Nukem Forever in his article entitled, "2000 Platinum: The Millenium's Biggest Games". In the article, Geoff covers a total of six upcoming games in the next year. Some of the others he mentions are The Sims, Anachronox, Halo, Diablo II, & Warcraft 3.

Make sure to check this out, as it covers a lot of games that not only Geoff is looking forward to, but several of us at 3D Realms are as well!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:38 PM

Top 10 Game Predictions

Then in October, 3D Realms released the first screen shots of Duke Nukem Forever, and they were amazing. It appears that 3D Realms has modified the Unreal engine extensively, because the shots showed us things that we thought you couldn't do with Unreal. (The coolest shot has to be the one of the soldier with the tentacles erupting out of his body.) Just seeing them rekindled our love affair with gaming's favorite cigar-chewing, wisecracking ass-kicker. In Duke Nukem Forever, Duke gets to run around his favorite city in the world, Las Vegas. This time he must stop archenemy Dr. Proton and his alien allies from taking over the world. Aside from the formidable arsenal of weapons, Duke can also jump into vehicles and run bad guys down. We just can't wait to get a load of the one-liners in this one

The above is what C|Net's Gamecenter has to say about Duke Nukem Forever in an article they call "Top 10 Game Predictions for 2000". The piece lists what they predict for various titles such as Halo, Diablo II, The Sims, & Warcraft 3. Make sure to check it all out to see if what they think will be important for 2000 is what you think will be important for 2000.

One major omission - they failed to mention our other big game, Max Payne.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:39 PM

3D Mark 2000 Released

A few days ago, 3D Mark 2000 was released over at the Mad Onion site. Here's a small tidbit from the press release that describes pretty well what the product is all about:

3DMark2000 is one of MadOnion.com's online benchmarks - smart benchmark products that have an Internet back-end. This Internet back-end, or database, contains thousands of results collected via the Internet. With online benchmarks, users will be able to compare their results with data collected from other users around the world.

3D Mark 2000 is using the same technology engine that is being used in the upcoming 3D Realms title, Max Payne! This is a very small preview of what some of the technology in Max is capable of. If you haven't already checked out 3D Mark 2000, then you should do so today! Furthermore, if you're interested in learning about Max Payne, make sure to check out the Official Max Payne Web site today!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 7:42 AM