Duke Nukem Eternally’s 2001 construct seems on-line, might absolutely leak in June

The story of Duke Nukem Eternally’s improvement gave the impression to be tied up in a bow when the sport lastly launched in 2011, a whopping 14 years after it had been introduced. However the first-person shooter that was finally cobbled collectively by Gearbox Software program, crappy because it was, did not essentially present the sport’s complete story.

Arguably the sport’s most well-known trailer got here at E3 2001; it confirmed off a bombastic, explosion-filled romp by means of Las Vegas that really regarded like a playable online game, apparently rendered in that period’s model of Unreal Engine. This week, we have discovered simply how playable that model of the sport was—with a minimum of one in every of Duke Nukem Eternally‘s unique creators backing up its authenticity.

“A smattering of take a look at ranges”

The sport’s newest leak, posted to 4chan on Sunday and extensively shared by Duke Nukem fansite duke4.web, seems to be manufactured from unique 2001 code and property. It features a one-minute video of first-person carnage in a really Duke-appropriate surroundings of a strip membership referred to as “Slick Willy.” The sequence was apparently performed and captured by the construct’s leaker.

As well as, the leaker prompt that the construct’s playable recordsdata, supply code, and official map editor could possibly be launched in June—which might coincide with the E3 trailer’s twenty first anniversary—and responded to numerous 4chan doubters by posting extra pictures based mostly on their requests. These included screengrabs of the construct’s file and folder lists, together with pictures from different sections of the sport and a higher-res peek at “the redneck from the E3 trailer.”

Although this week’s video solely contains three demonstrated weapons (pistol, shotgun, semi-automatic rifle), the leaker prompt that almost all choices within the video’s weapons-list interface are useful, except for “the chainsaw and the freezer.” It is unclear if the sport recordsdata have been manually patched to work on fashionable PCs or whether or not gamers might want to pull out era-appropriate PCs with correct drivers, OSes, and {hardware}. (Optimistic retro players might wish to pillage their closets for spare GeForce 6600 XT GPUs, simply in case.)

Shortly after the video and its associated screencaps made the rounds, former Duke Nukem Eternally venture lead George Broussard confirmed its apparent authenticity on Twitter, telling followers that “the leak seems to be actual.” He stated that whereas it might be playable, it should not be checked out as a sport, “only a smattering of barely populated take a look at ranges.”