The development of Duke Nukem Forever has begun in 1997. Now it's 2005 and we're still waiting. Although it had a very successful trailer (at that time), the game has been delayed from year to year, mainly due to several changes of the underlying engine. All this time, the release date hasn't changed at all; it still is, as we all know, "when it's done".

Last year brought some good news, at least it appeared so: the game supposedly had entered the final development phase, the gamers' hopes were starting to build up. And then it happened: Half-Life 2 hit the shelves, sporting Valve Software's stunning game engine dubbed "Source". This, of course, made 3D Realms change their mind yet another time.

This year a company called AGEIA completed the acquirement of Meqon, the physics engine middleware 3D Realms were using in Duke Nukem Forever, and re-launched it as a new product, called AGEIA PhysX Processor.

According to VE3D, 3D Realms' George Broussard confirmed this move may cause development delays: "We're just now hearing about this, too. On the surface I'm not too happy about it as we were getting to a very very stable point with our physics and nearing a point of being tech complete, and just working on polish.

We'll see what happens, but we're certainly not interested in the prospects of moving to a new SDK - again"

I bet they aren't interested. If there's a company that can push "when it's done" even further, then 3D Realms is the one.

AGEIA Acquires Meqon Research


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