JS> I don't know if there's one "of choice", but our Coke machine has
 JS> these things in it:
 JS> Coke Classic
 JS> Diet Coke
 JS> Caf Free Diet Coke
  AKA Water.  :-)
 JS> Sprite
 JS> Barq's
  The one with bite!  My favourite root beer.
 JS> Nestea Iced Tea
 JS> Some sort of Orange Drink (not Orange Juice, though)
  Minute Maid?  Five Alive?
 JS> Why?  Epic doesn't have a track record here.  We do, so we can afford
 JS> to say nothing more than "When it's done".  Prey and Duke Nukem
 JS> Forever were just voted #2 & #3 most anticipated games of the year
 JS> according to OGR magazine.  And this is by the readers, not the mag
 JS> people.
  Yeah, you can afford to keep it a secret, but you're also driving us all on 
the "outside" nuts!  :-)  You don't have to reveal EVERYTHING, just juicy 
tidbits.
  Maybe I need to get on the "inside."  If you're looking for an in-house 
playtester, I'm your man!  Don't forget that if you hire me, I'll shut up 
here.  Tempting?
 JS> Perhaps, but the reaosn the "we aren't saying anything" about the game
 JS> issue is the fact that other companies are out there and theieve your
 JS> ideas.  Your idea is romantic, but it's not realistic.  It won't
 JS> happen.
  But the problem is that if they rip off some ideas, their game will 
probably come out after yours - and therefore, the money will still go to 
you.  Even so, there are some pieces of info you can reveal anyways, like 
whether DNF will have coloured lighting.  You won't suffer any tremendous 
losses in revenue from that.
 JS> Yawn.  We'll never do these, they add NOTHING to the game, and take
 JS> away development time.  The person doing that work could have been
 JS> better used doing something cooler.   Cutscenes suck.  Period.  You'll
 JS> never convince me otherwise.
  What about the good folks at id?  They did a superlative intro to their 
game, which blends nicely into the start of the action itself.
  And cutscenes DO have their place, but as id has caught on, they're 
generally only useful at the beginning and end of a 3D shooter.  When a 
person finishes a game, they want a REWARD for all their trouble, not a brief 
"congratulations" or a little animation (even though the football kick in 
Duke 3D was fun).
  Oh, and what about Jedi Knight?  It would have been less interesting 
without the cinematic transitions between most missions.  They also 
integrated them nicely into the start and end of their respective levels.  As 
you grab the blaster from your foe in the intro movie, it shifts to the game, 
where the poor alien is reeling on the table and his friend is running away.
 JS> Good.  That's all we want you to know.  Besides, it's Duke Nukem, what
 JS> more do you need to know?  :)
  Easy: just how better Duke Nukem Forever will be over Duke 3D (and Quake 
II, for that matter)?  You can say "a lot," but that doesn't tell me why.
 JS> Stargunner was the final Apogee game, I don't remember offhand when it
 JS> came out, but it was in 1996.
  So Apogee is really just a publisher now, more than anything?  Guess they 
got swamped by the rise of 3D gaming.
 JS> I believe the target is a Pentium 133 with a 3Dfx board.  However,
 JS> it's still the better part of the year away (into 99, probably), so
 JS> final specs are unknown.
  Sounds quite reasonable for the release date, but I think it'll be closer 
to a P166 - id's Trinity is being targeted at Pentium IIs!
 JS> I play solo vs multiplayer 20 to 1.
  Yeah, but 1) Duke 3D is relatively old now, and 2) it didn't hold up that 
well in the multiplayer wars once Quake came out (you have to concede that 
much).  Back in Duke's "golden months," the ratio (especially for the public 
as a whole) would have been closer to 4 to 1.
  By the way, do you have a free TEN account?  I would imagine so, since you 
helped make two of their star titles.
PS  Is Tom Hall really as psychotic as all those pictures (such as in the Ion 
Storm ad) portray him to be?  If so, I might want to avoid putting in a 
resume at Ion.  :-)
 
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