Duke in Trouble?

1up reports on rumours of trouble at 3D Realms, the long-term developers of the Duke Nukem Forever project. The duke project is apparently in jeopardy, according to the buzz, as several key developers have left the company for greener pastures. 3D Realms webmaster Joe Siegler has responded to these rumours, saying on the message boards "It's internal business - all employee departures and comings have always been that way. This is nothing new. People have left before, IT IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS. It's the way it goes ... There's honestly nothing to be concerned about. People leave. People come. There's staff on the project you don't know about."

The List

[inotocracy]

Has yet to be posted, so I shall do just that, things that have occured since the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever [a-13.net]:

Popular Video Game Series Releases
Final Fantasy:

* Main Series
o Final Fantasy VII
o Final Fantasy VIII
o Final Fantasy IX
o Final Fantasy X
+ Final Fantasy X-2
o Final Fantasy XI
o Final Fantasy XII
* Cell Phone Games
o Before Crisis: Final Fantasy
o Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
o Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode
* Tactics Series
o Final Fantasy Tactics
o Final Fantasy Tactice Advance
* Crystal Chronicles Series
o Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
o Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
o Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearer
* Remakes
o Final Fantasy Collection
o Final Fantasy Anthology
o Final Fantasy Chronicles
o Final Fantasy Origins
o Final Fantasy I & 2: Dawn of Souls
o Final Fantasy III DS
* Games Featuring Final Fantasy Characters
o Ehrgeiz
o Kingtom Hearts
o Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
o Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix
o Kingdom Hearts II
* Movies, Anime Series & Concerts
o Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within
o Final Fantasy: Unlimited, Entire Series
o Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
o Final Fantasy: Dear Friends, Entire World Tour

Grand Theft Auto:

* Grand Theft Auto
o Grand Theft Auto, Gameboy Color Port
* Grand Theft Auto
* Grand Theft Auto: London 1969
* Gr

Re:The List

[4D6963]

In April of 1997, Google, eBay, and the term "weblog" didn't exist.

eBay was founded in 1995. [wikipedia.org]

Mac OS switched to UNIX...

Actually I guess we can say Mac OS had switched to Unix earlier with A/UX [wikipedia.org]

I swear, I really don't have anything better to do at 8:47am than to check your facts ;-)

Re:A theory of late games and program development

[ScrewMaster]

Well, maybe not completely impossible ... but the reality is that code tends to move from elegance to thorniness, and not the other way 'round. Call it ScrewMaster's Rule of Developmental Entropy. Fixes for this and fixes for that: over time the code will be inelegant as hell yet reliable and perfectly functional, but nobody in their right mind would dare try to rewrite it because nobody remembers why all those hacks and patches are there. I deal with that a lot in some of the older code I have to support and maintain. I wasn't the original coder, and I'd love to dig in and rewrite some of the stuff that truly offends my engineering sensibilities. I don't dare, however, because if I did I'd miss some of the special cases taken care of by all the thorns, wreak havoc amongst our customers, and would probably end up spending just as much time to make my new code work as well as the old. At which point, it would be just as thorny anyway.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that it is very difficult (if not impossible) for even a very good, clean, thoughtful initial design to account for all the eventualities that a codebase will have to face. You may truly want to leave that code cleaner when you leave, but odds are that time pressure alone will sometimes leave you with what you know in your heart is a hack. Trying to do everything perfectly all the time takes forever, which is unacceptable in most production environments. 3DRealms may be different in that regard. Certainly they don't mind giving their developers all the time they need.