And now, the big news

My wife and I are expecting a baby! He or she isn't due until December, but we've just come out of the first trimester, and everything looks great, so now we're telling everyone.

Latest news on the pregnancy can be found here (yes, another blog).

Duke Nukem Never?

News is floating around the 'Net that the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever's studio, 3D Realms, has shut down (or been shut down) due to a lack of funding. Their website, which was up-and-running last time I looked (less than a week ago), is now coming up with a "This webpage is not available" message, though the forums still seem to be up.

DNF has been in development hell for the past 12 years, and has become the poster boy of vapourware, and the gaming world's longest running jokes (for example, linking the games initials with the status of a race car that fails to complete a race). 3D Realms has long stated (rather petulantly, I thought) its release date as "when it's done". Aside from some screenshots in the early days, the only news was a trailer released in late 2007 (which was also the topic of the first post in this blog).

Part of the problem has been the chopping and changing of technology midstream. Starting with the Quake II engine, 3D Realms switched to the Unreal engine in 1998, a newer version of the Unreal engine in 1999, Unreal 2.0 in 2001. The physics engine changed from Karma to Meqon. There was a very public spat between 3D Realms and their publisher, Take Two, and repeated no-shows at various tradeshows.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? With its long development cycle, DNF would have to have been something awesome, otherwise it would have been one of the most pilloried video games in history (though maybe not as much as Daikatana...). Duke Nukem 3D is widely considered a landmark game in the FPS genre, and much was expected of its successor, especially from its early screenshots. It's entirely possible that the game would have been released to poor reviews, which would have spelt the death knell of 3DR anyway.

But it could have been a good game, too. It looks like we'll never know.

Update: The 3D Realms website is back up, only to say goodbye (complete with staff photo).

The franchise is safe

We were lucky enough to get tickets to an advance screening of the new Star Trek movie (sister-in-law's husband won tickets, but it's on the night of said sister-in-law's birthday). It totally rocks (although one thing did bother me: [spoiler alert] Kirk goes from Iowa farmboy to starship captain in three years?!). It was also nice to see that Leonard Nimoy had a proper part in the movie, not a Leonard's-still-alive-and-we-got-him-in-the-movie part.

Fantastic short movie

Thanks to blue cat for the heads-up on this, here's an absolutely fantastic short movie:

Oh!

And thanks to Bezerk Raccoon putting up a post about her weekly ritual of checking up PostSecret. I've added it to my "blogs I follow" list, and I reckon it'll become part of my weekly ritual.