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Jan
03
Interview with DNF CG Artist Joe Wampole
Joe Wampole, who worked on Duke Nukem Forever, was the senior CG artist (lead character artist) at 3D Realms. According to his resume, his key achievements included creating "... function, movement, special abilities, weapons, ... concepts, modeling, normal map generation, and texturing for characters." He's been kind enough to give us an exclusive interview for all the DNF fans out there.Q1) When did you work at 3D Realms and what were your duties?
I worked at 3D Realms from 2002-2006 and was the sole character artist for the majority of my employment there. Duties included some concept, building, texturing, skinning, and a bit of outsource management for most of the characters in the game at that that time.
Q2) What led to you becoming employed at 3D Realms?
In 2000, I was working at Terminal Reality and we had just finished a project. The company was scrambling to get another contract with a publisher and things were looking a little bleak so I submitted my portfolio and resume to 3D Realms as I had been an enormous Duke Nukem fan and 3DR was somewhat local.
They weren't looking to hire at that time, but luckily TRI secured a deal with Majesco to produce a game we'd been pitching about a half-vampire named BloodRayne. So for the next 18 months I worked as Lead Designer on BloodRayne.
After BloodRayne shipped, George Broussard contacted me and asked if I was still interested in working at 3DR. Being the huge Duke fan I was, I went for an interview and to check out the game. I found out the 2001 trailer was obsolete as they were almost completely rebooting with new tech to achieve results similar to recently released Doom 3. I was excited about working on DNF and getting the chance to work with cutting edge tech for the art so I jumped on board.
Whew...this is a doozy of a question.
In my almost 14 years as a developer at a number of different companies and projects, DNF was at times the coolest project to work on and at other times, the most disorganized and frustrating.
Nearly every month or so included fairly major changes. For design, there was no real comprehensive design document and it seemed like whatever the new cool thing in movies or games was, drastic changes were mandated for DNF. Whole levels would be restarted or completely thrown out.
For art, tech was also changing on a constant basis so we'd have a huge campaign to increase polycount and/or texture sizes for a while only to follow that with a campaign to decrease...and repeat. There was a lack of foresight, planning, production, and leadership making it impossible to make significant progress.
Yet, periodically we'd get awesome new features that immensely enhanced what we could do with art - or cool new gameplay features like being able to write an autograph in a book in real time.
Q4) Have you played the final version of Duke Nukem Forever and if so did you enjoy it and were there any assets that you'd worked on that had remained in-game?
Heh, I know this won't go over well, but I actually haven't played the final game. With limited time on my hands and after reading the harsh reviews it's honestly hard to be motivated to play. I highly doubt there are any assets I made still in the game considering the 5 years of development that continued after my departure. But, I am absolutely looking forward to what Gearbox can do with the franchise!
Q5) Scott Miller has said that between 2001 and 2007 alot of work happened but without direction, during your time at 3D Realms what was your experience with this?
This is related to the amount of changes the project went through mentioned above. Beyond that, the team was arguably too small for a triple A title and without the right management and direction it felt more like we were a mod community than a professional developer. Don't mistake that to mean that the team didn't work hard. We were passionate about the project and we definitely had some awesome features and moments of genius but without a cohesive unification it didn't gel together.
Q6) The final version of Duke Nukem Forever was met with harsh criticism, what are your thought on this having personally worked on the game?
Duke Nukem is more than just a game - to many people, including myself, he is a character to love - in the way people have favorite super heroes or action stars. But just like the multitude of terribly written comic books and comic book inspired movies, the name and image of a favorite character alone can't carry the media. Seeing what was happening in the development first hand was disheartening. And, unfortunately, I don't think anyone can argue that the game shouldn't have turned out better with more than 10 years of development behind it. Still, some fans have told me they had a good time playing the game experiencing it for what it is, flaws and all. That's great and it's good the hard work is appreciated.
Q7) What were your feelings when 3D Realms released their staff in 2009?
I felt terrible for the team. Some of those guys had been on the project for years and had to deal with so many issues during the development of the project, only to end up jobless with little to nothing to show for it.
In addition, some of the team went on to form Triptych Games and worked for about a year, if I'm not mistaken, with their own money to finish Duke Nukem Forever. Yet, in all the media news about Take Two suing 3DR, Gearbox buying the rights and finishing DNF, etc., it seemed like the work that the guys at Triptych did was somewhat overlooked.
In any case, I'm glad the game finally shipped and the IP is now in the hands of a company that can do something with it. I have high hopes for Duke returning to his highly entertaining glory.
Q8) Were you a fan of Duke Nukem 3D and, if so, what is your favourite map?
Absolutely...as mentioned before a couple times, I was an enormous Duke 3D fan. Long ago, I had my pc themed with Duke Nukem sound bytes and made my own Unreal Tournament skin for the red team that was - you guessed it - Duke Nukem. My favorite maps were the ones based in more common, "recognizeable" locations - theater, Dukeburger, sex shop, strip club, etc.
Q9) What's your favourite Duke Nukem oneliner?
Ahh...Duke's one-liners...
Related tangent: there are plenty of games with a silent protagonist. The thinking behind that is the player is the main character, so in the game, the main character doesn't speak. The problem with that is I, as a person, can and do speak. So those games feel detached, unrealistic, and audibly empty when my character doesn't make a peep when all the crazy stuff happens around me. Also, it actually makes me feel like I'm a servant to the other characters in the game when all I can do is follow orders and directions. I feel I have no will of my own. To me that's less immersive than playing a character with personality.
That said, Duke's one-liners are one of the most appealing things about Duke Nukem - he's the ultimate B-movie action star and it's hugely satisfying as the character takes pretty much what I'm thinking and says it with over-the-top gusto. I become him (or he becomes me) while playing the game.
My favorite one-liner is "I'm gonna put this smack dab on your ass". It's simultaneously cheesy, hilarious, and bad ass. And to this day, I'll still say, out loud, in raspy Duke voice, "Where is it?" when looking for things at my house or on the hard drive or network on my pc.
Q10) During your time at 3D Realms you must've worked on many awesome looking beasts, care to show us some?
Well, they seemed awesome at the time 
But video game characters usually don't age well as technology advances so quickly. Seriously, they're 5-8 years old now! Anyway, I hope the fans find the renders interesting from a historical standpoint at least.
But video game characters usually don't age well as technology advances so quickly. Seriously, they're 5-8 years old now! Anyway, I hope the fans find the renders interesting from a historical standpoint at least.Thanks for the interview!
