From time to time we see fan projects spring up that take advantage of IPs that fans don’t actually have the legal right to use. Sometime they’re served cease and desist letters; other times, they’re given the support of the IP owners. The latest such project involved an attempt to remake Duke Nukem 3D using the Unreal Engine 3.
After circulating some screenshots of a test map around the Internet, project lead Frederik Schreiber got in touch with 3D Realms’ George Broussard and Scott Miller in order to “start a conversation about the project.” Schreiber wrote on the Gearbox forums (via Big Download), “The shots managed to convice Scott Miller to a certain degree — But the project was only doable if Take-Two would approve it.” That led him to get in touch with Gearbox, and the project has since been given a personal non-commercial license to allow development to move forward.
Currently codenamed Duke Nukem: Next-Gen, the final game will be released for free and include both a three episode single-player and a multiplayer mode. You won’t need any other games to play it, as is the case when games are built on the Source engine as opposed to Unreal. And although there’s currently no release date set for the project at the moment, fans will be able to play the game prior to the final release. Schreiber wrote, “But we won’t hold back the experience until the final game gets released. We want to ensure that the entire community will play a part in testing the product in different phases. That’s why everyone will be able to play the first official Milestone Test. The first test will include a few maps, and the weapons, items, etc. included in those maps. This will be a Multiplayer Duke-Match Test.”
