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Something new for the website
A note from the 3D Realms Webmaster, Joe Siegler...
"For years I've been doing the news on the 3DR site the same way, but I've decided to get with the times and put the 3DR news archives in a content management system, and not do it the old way. My "old way" was to manually create the pages in Microsoft Frontpage, and then upload them to the server. While that worked, it was a pain if I wanted to edit from home, or needed someone else to do an update. Making this move is mostly a benefit for me in terms of maintenance. And going forward it will make it easier to do certain things I have planned.
Now that this has launched, I wanted to add a few thoughts about the new system, and point out a few things.
- First off, a major MAJOR thanks goes out to Kev_Hectic from our forums who helped me out in getting the old news into the system. Without his help, this project would probably still be ongoing. Thanks Kev!
- I've decided to add some color for the subjects of the stories to make 'em stick out a bit more. The old system had the same font as the body of the story in white, which I didn't think "stuck out" enough - not enough attention was drawn to the subject. The colour choice is a match with other colors on the page layout, so it fits in that regard (meaning it's not something like bright green which would be bad).
- The biggest benefit to you the site visitor is that you can search the old news now, which wasn't possible under the old system (at least internally, anyway). The search box is at the bottom of the page.
- Speaking of old news, the news now goes all the way back to the start of our website. I discovered some old news from Summer of 95 to Fall of 97 that I thought was lost. In our old format, the earliest news story I had was October of 1997 (our site went online in July of 1995 originally). We weren't doing "news stories" from Oct of 96 through 97, but the ones we did before that were thought lost. But thanks to the magic of archive.org, I was able to fully restore our news history, going all the way back to the initial launch of our website on July 7, 1995. The index link is also at the bottom of the page.
- All the stories say "posted by Joe Siegler". One of my ideas going forward is that news stories might be posted by folks here other than me. However, all the existing stories needed to be entered into the system, hence the usage of my name.
- Another reason for doing this is that I'm going to have the 3D Realms site listed as a news source in Google News. I've done that with some non 3D Realms sites I'm involved in, and thought it was a good thing for here as well.
- Some fonts have changed - the font used for the body of the text is slightly different than it was before, and some spacing has been put between lines of text to make it more readable for some folks who have said the existing one was too small in the past.
- There is also now an rss feed link for the site news which you can use in anything that can read rss files. That link is at the bottom of the page.
I find it hard to believe that our website has been going for a decade now. You can tell the scope of our news stories is different in 2005 than it was in 1995. Look at some of the announcements from the earliest days and how little they actually said. We didn't even announce the release of v1.0 shareware of Duke Nukem 3D (Jan 29, 1996)!
So let me know what you think - you can join in the discussion on our forums with the link below. Overall, it shouldn't be THAT different from what came before - I spent some time making the software mimic the existing site as it existed."
Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:02 PM
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Happy New Year
It's now 2005. Time to start the new year off with some cool fan submissions we've had sitting around for awhile. There's quite a lot of good submissions this time around. This update includes the usual submissions like wallpaper art and Duke Nukem sketches. Those are always cool to get.
However, we have some slightly different submissions this time around. We have a guy who dressed up as Duke Nukem for Halloween, a fan who made his own Max Payne action figure, and a few other odd game mods. A Christmas mod for our old Secret Agent game, and an Easter mod for our old Crystal Caves title. There's also some user levels for Shadow Warrior entitled "Santa Wang". The old game mods don't stop there, as we also have a Hocus Pocus Christmas mod, and a new episode for Cosmo!
Check out all these new additions as well as all the fan items we have had already over at our "Fan Stuff" page.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:00 AM
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The Fans Create
It's been ages since we dipped into our mailbag for a fan stuff update, but today we're doing just that. There's been a big update to our fan stuff page, which includes several cool things. Amongst them we have:
* Two Max Payne fan videos
* Max Payne fan art
* An odd Max Payne / Commander Keen crossover art
* Duke Nukem fan art by an 11 year old
* Many other items
There's plenty of other items for you to check out besides these, so hit our fan stuff page, and see 'em all. And if you have a contribution of your own, send it to us, we'll stick it online!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:00 PM
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New Forum Software Available
Since 1998, we've been running the same forum software - "The Ultimate Bulletin Board" (later renamed UBB.Classic). For the longest time this software has served us pretty well. However, with the pending release of Max Payne 2, a project that had been on the back burner for some time now has been implemented. We've changed forum software. The UBB.Classic has been retired on our servers, and we've switched to UBB.Threads.
Threads is a MySQL/PHP based forum software package from the same folks who put out Classic - Infopop. The primary reason this software change was made was due to the increased traffic load expected when Max 2 hits the streets. We didn't want any problems with the server dying, crashing, or things of that nature, so the forum software needed to be upgraded. Why? Because classic is a forum software that uses flat files on the server - everything is a text file somewhere that has to be opened/closed/written to. All that traffic generates a large load on the server, and "classic" would not be able to handle the stress. So we switched to "UBB.Threads".
Threads has a ton of new features that we didn't have available to us with the old format. Here's just a sample of some of the cooler new features:
* Avatar uploads - no more worrying about your server going down and your avatar not being displayed.
* Favorite Threads / Post Reminders - In your "My Home" area on the forums, you can track your favorite threads on all of our forums in one place.
* Ignore User - Someone on the forums bothering you? Ignore 'em - you won't see their posts anymore.
* Better thread control - You can display how many, and in what order you want a forum's threads displayed as.
There's a ton more, check out the "UBB.Threads Info & Assistance Forum" for all the details, and to discuss the software change.
A big thanks goes out to J.C. over at ubbdesign.com for his help in getting the new look of the forum down. Check out ubbdesign.com for your custom forum design needs. Also, a shout out goes to Dave & Rick over at Infopop for helping out with my problems in getting things going.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Big Update to the Fan Stuff Page
This evening we've got a big update to our fan stuff page. This is a page where we list submissions that our fans send us. Today's update includes several very cool Duke Nukem Forever wallpapers, some Max Payne art, the Max Payne Hero video - there's even a couple of fan submissions for Commander Keen! Check everything out at our fan stuff page!
And remember, if you have something you'd like up there, email it to us, or post about it in our forums!
--------
Posted by Joe Siegler at 6:20 PM
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More Fan Stuff
One other piece of fan stuff that got missed the last time around. It's a pretty cool Max Payne Wallpaper - you can check out the thumbnail here:
There's loads of other fan stuff available for you to check out over at our Fan Stuff page!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:00 PM
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Max Payne Walkthrough Online!
We've had many requests for a Max Payne walkthrough - and we've had many requests on how to get through specific levels posted on our web forums, and now we can deliver. Available right now over on the Official Max Payne web site is a full tutorial, covering all the levels of the game, as well as the game's secrets! If you are stuck in an area of Max Payne, you now have an online resource here on our sites that you can make a reference to. The walkthrough is available at http://www.3drealms.com/max/walkthrough/p1c1.html.
It's a very detailed walkthrough - with tons of screenshots that have arrows and other visual tips - make sure and check it out today. A big special thanks goes out to Charles Adams over at xezol.com for doing all the work on the tutorial (screenshots, text, etc). Charles was kind enough to allow us to carry the walkthrough on our web site.
You can also purchase the Official Max Payne Strategy Guide (from Amazon.com) if you would like a book tutorial of the game - make sure and check that out, too!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 6:30 PM
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A New Batch of Fan Stuff!
Wanted to take this opportunity to say "Oops!" for a Halloween submission. We had this picture sent to us in time for Halloween, and neglected to get it online in time, so we wanted to say a big hi to big Duke fan Jason Savage - all decked out (or is it "Duked" out) in his Duke Nukem costume. Check it out here (you can click on the thumbnail for a larger picture.
In other fan news, we've updated our fan stuff section to include the latest submissions (and there's a lot of them). There's some more cool stuff in there this time around, including some ASCII Keen art, a Duke Nukem Nascar car, a kick ass Max Payne wallpaper, as well as tons of new Duke fan art!
Make sure and check out the fan stuff section for a lot of cool items - if you have something to contribute, send it in, and we'll get it online the next time that section is updated! Sorry to those who sent in submissions and thought they were lost - they're not - all our pending submissions are now online. If you sent us something, and it's not here, please resend.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:15 PM
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Our New Server is Online
If you can see this message, then you have reached our new server. As you probably have read, our web forums have been down, and that was due to our old crappy hosting solution. We were having problems with our old box being too slow, and then the Max Payne videos came out, and it died a horrible, screaming death. Anyway, after much work and deliberation, our new server is up and online right now. Our forums have also returned. The new box is a major screamer, and as such, the slowness of the past is gone. We've also got a great new host, and we are ready now.
One change in this new box is that it allows us to finally do what we want, we're not bound by the silly restrictions of some of our previous web hosts. Most of this is background stuff, but it should allow us to be more flexible in the future should future demand or other issues come up. Due to this change, we've slightly altered the location of the forums. There is a new location for the forums - so if you used to have them bookmarked, you'll need the new location. That new location is this:
http://forums.3drealms.com
The forums are live now, so check it out now, and it's good to be back!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:15 PM
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Netscape 6 News Tab
Also with the new site is a new feature designed specifically for Netscape 6 (or Mozilla) users. If you have used these browsers, you should be familiar with the tabs available on these browsers. Anyway, we now have a news tab available for these browsers. You can add this to your copy of Netscape and quickly look and see the most recent news headlines without having to load our entire web site.
If you have Netscape 6, 6.1, or Mozilla, you can click on the Netscape 6 tab below (or at the bottom of this page), and you can view this. If you don't have these browsers, you won't be able to use this feature, although I'm told that Internet Explorer v6 will have a similar such feature - if that does happen, I'll program a tab for that browser, too.
NOTE: This feature no longer is on the site as of May 2005, it's been replaced with an RSS feed for news.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:15 PM
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Back & Ready To Go
From our Webmaster, Joe Siegler.. "Well, as you have seen, not much has happened on our site this past week. The reason for that is I was away on vacation, and as such when you don't have a computer, you can't do anything. Anyway, I'm back today, and after spending a lot of the day plowing through an enormous pile of email, I turned my attention to the new web server. As you've probably noticed, our forums are down - that's because we got completely overwhelmed by server load, and the rather underpowered server died under a level of traffic that would choke a horse. However, our new "mega server" is in, and is right now in the process of being configured. Gotta do all the fiddly stuff like tweak Linux, Apache, etc.. We anticipate it being ready to fly in a few days - we'll have some more updates on that when it's up and ready to go.
While I was away a few things happened - the news stories below cover the major happenings during the past week. Check 'em out."
Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:45 AM
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More Fan Stuff
 Today, we updated our fan page with some more submissions from the fans out there. Today's batch of submissions brings us some Duke Nukem sketches, a couple of Commander Keen drawings, as well as parodies such as the Yoda/Duke picture shown to your right.
We also have a few Winamp related downloads. There's a DNF skin collection download, a Rise of the Triad Winamp skin, as well as a Shadow Warrior fan song, which was made in the mold of our own Lo Wang's Rap.
Make sure and check out all these things, as well as our older fan submissions at our fan page today. We're always looking for more fan items, so if you have something you think we should have on our pages that you've created, check out the details on our fan page.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:20 PM
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More Fan Art!
This week, a very cool Commander Keen piece of artwork was posted to our forums. It's one of the Bloogs from Commander Keen. What's Commander Keen? Check it out over at our Keen1 or Keen4 pages. There's some classic gaming goodness in these games. Check 'em out if you've never done so.
You can also check out more fan submissions at our fan stuff page. Lots of coolness there. Thanks to all who have sent in fan submissions - there's tons of cool stuff still to come. Visit our fan stuff page for details on how to send us submissions.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:30 PM
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Big Update to the Fan Art Page!
It's been a few weeks since the last update of our fan page, but people have been sending in things since. Today we posted all of them - it was a pretty large update. We posted 7 pieces of Duke Nukem fan art, a Duke skin for Quake III Arena, a piece of Commander Keen art, as well as a Windows background based on Duke Nukem Forever.
There's tons of cool things there - you should check it all out. We also take submissions - if you have some fan art or an item based on one of our games or characters, send it to us! We're always looking for more things for the fan page! Here's a few samples from today's update to the fan art page - for the complete update, check out the page.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:30 PM
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More Fan Stuff
Today we bring you some more fan art sent to us. We have three new pieces of fan art - and a Duke Nukem / South Park parody.
The three pieces of fan art are on our Fan art page right now. First up is a piece of art by Tom Sweeney which portrays Duke firing two guns. Second is a a piece by Markus Meiritz entitled "The Real Duke Nukem", and last but not least is a Quake 3 model by Jesper Thrane of our very own Duke Nukem. Jesper's model is shown here - you can click on it to be taken to the fan art page where you can see the other two, as well as three other positions of this Duke skin.
Also online recently was a Duke Nukem meets South Park Flash movie. check that out over at the Newgrounds site. It's rather silly, although for some reason, Duke Nukem is green. Thanks to Ross Baker for pointing this out.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:45 PM
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More Fan Art
Over the weekend, we got two pieces of fan art submitted to us, and we're showing them to you today. First up is a Duke Nukem cartoon written by Mark Stewart. It shows Duke's irritation with a programmer. Mark had this to say about his toon: "Here is a little peace I painted up for you last night. The art work was done by me using Paint Shop Pro and a mouse. As you can see by the picture I think Duke is getting a little impatient, don't you think?"
Second is an original piece of art by Martin DeMontfort - this one shows Duke blasting a pig cop on the sidewalk. Martin tells us this about the art - "My name is Martin deMontfort and I'm 16. Duke Nukem 3D is my all time fav game so here's a picture I painted using acrylic for the
background and water colour pencils for the characters."
You can click on either of the thumbnails here to see a larger version. Also, make sure to check out our fan art page, where we have several other submissions from other users.
 
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:40 PM
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More Fan Art
Today we bring you some more fan art sent to us by our fans.
First up is this piece of Duke battling some enemies drawn by Rayne Gallows. In his own words,
"I was somewhat bored yesterday so I drew a picture of Duke Nukem Battling some baddies. I did it off the top of my head." Check it out - you can see a larger version by clicking on the thumbnail here.
Second is this piece sent to us by Randy Ford - a long time entrant in our Camera Captioning Contest. He said "I made this .jpg for a Desktop Theme I am putting together. Hope you like it!"
Here is the background picture below. Kind of reminds me of the Fesarius from the Star Trek episode "The Corbomite Maneuver".
We have a lot more fan art on our site - check out our Fan art submissions page. If you have anything you'd like to submit, please let us know about it.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:20 PM
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Camera Captioning Contest #100
Our Camera Captioning Contest has been updated - a bit late. Last week's contest ran an extra week due our webmaster being sick. Anyway, the new contest posted today is the 100th contest we've run. The first one was done back on May 28, 1996! - We've been running these contests now for over four years straight.
For those who don't know, the contest is where we take a (usually) silly picture involving some 3D Realms employee, and put it up on the site. You send in your entries, and the one we pick as the winner gets a free $35 gift certificate for use on Apogee/3D Realms games, as well as a Duke Nukem: Time to Kill T-Shirt.
Those are the normal rules. However, given that this is Contest #100, we've decided to spice it up a bit. Normally, we only give away a prize to the #1 winner - this time we're giving out prizes to Winners 1-5 (with #1 getting the best prizes). Furthermore, the rules for submissions for this contest are slightly different. Here's the stuff we're giving away:
1. First - Duke Nukem Forever E3 T-Shirt Autographed by Scott Miller & George Broussard, a Duke Nukem baseball cap, plus a Duke Nukem pen & coaster set
2. Second - Choice of Duke Nukem Forever T-Shirt or a Duke Nukem hat plus a pen & coaster set
3. Third through fifth - Duke Nukem pen & coaster set
In addition to these prizes, all the winners will receive with the usual coupon we give away for every contest. The picture itself is shown above (click on it for a larger version). However, the rules for submission will be slightly different than usual. Normally, we don't give guidelines as to what you can submit, but this time it will be a little more challenging. If you look at the picture, some pretty easy (and obscene) captions come to mind. The rule this time is send us your best non-obscene caption for this picture. The best winners from this batch will be selected as prize winners.
That's about it for this special contest. A big thanks go out to the folks who regularly enter the contest and those who just do it once in awhile. A few times over the four years we've thought about canceling the contest, but the pleas of the folks who enjoy it keep it going.
Thanks for visiting our site, and make sure to tell a friend!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:30 PM
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Headed to E3
This will be the last update of our site until next week, as we're all headed to E3 tomorrow morning. As updating from E3 will be difficult to impossible (for us), we're not planning on doing any of that - we'll have .plan updates and some pictures I'm sure when we return next week.
And no, Duke Nukem Forever will not be shown at the show. We're just going for a vacation.
Make sure and check out 3D Portal's E3 News site for the latest on E3!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:40 PM
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3D Realms Online Store Now Open!
This morning, The 3D Realms Online Store officially opened for business! Available now, you can order games and items direct from 3D Realms online.
This new store (hosted by Yahoo shopping) will let you order items from us as if you called us on the phone, faxed us, or wrote us a letter. In addition, selected older titles are available for immediate download (one your credit card has been processed & charged). Here's a few highlights from the store's functionality:
*The online store will be an extension of our already existing ordering system. In other words, you'll be able to place orders online in addition to calling us, faxing us, or mailing in your order and have it shipped to you.
*In addition to being able to place orders to be shipped to you, selected registered titles will be available for immediate download from the store.
*You can mix these orders - in other words you can place orders that have both items to be shipped to you, and items to be downloaded in the same order.
*The items in the online store will match the product line that you can order from our 800 line.
This means that previously discontinued titles will remain discontinued.
*We will accept Visa, Master Card, American Express, & Discover.
*We will ship anywhere in the world that we're legally allowed to by the US Government.
One cool thing about the store being hosted by Yahoo Shopping is that you can (optionally) interact with all the other stores that use Yahoo Shopping. Some of the other Yahoo Shopping clients include the Denver Broncos & Atlanta Falcons football teams, the Houston Astros & Minnesota Twins baseball teams, FAO Schwarz, Ben & Jerry's, rederick's of Hollywood, FTD Flowers, NASA, Miramax Films, and a whole lot more.
You can visit the store today by clicking here, or via the Online Store icon that appears at the top of every page of our web site.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:30 PM
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3D Realms Online Store to Launch May 1st
When this version of our web site was launched last month, one big piece of the puzzle was not ready for launch at the same time. Well, after several delays, the online store is finally ready to launch! We will be launching the store some time next Monday May 1st. Here's a few details about the store itself (in response to several questions that we've received about the store):
*The online store will be an extension of our already existing ordering system. In other words, you'll be able to place orders online in addition to calling us, faxing us, or mailing in your order and have it shipped to you.
*In addition to being able to place orders to be shipped to you, selected registered titles will be available for immediate download from the store.
*You can mix these orders - in other words you can place orders that have both items to be shipped to you, and items to be downloaded in the same order.
*The items in the online store will match the product line that you can order from our 800 line. This means that previously discontinued titles will remain discontinued.
*We will accept Visa, Master Card, American Express, & Discover.
*We will ship anywhere in the world that we're legally allowed to by the US Government.
We've been eager to get this online, and we're know y'all have been waiting for it as well. It's just about here - it'll be ready to go next Monday - so make sure to check it out when it's online and open for business.
From Joe Siegler.. "If you have any questions, you can click on the Discuss the Story link above, and I'll try to answer them the best I can."
Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:45 PM
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The 3D Realms Webring
The Official 3D Realms WebRing is now open for business! What's a WebRing? Here's some text on that from the WebRing Home Page...
A WebRing is a way to group sites of similar interest together in a "Ring." Links on each page allow you to move from one site to the next, eventually traveling the entire Ring to end up where you started.
For awhile, there was a WebRing run by a user by the nickname of PCB. He is no longer involved in the community, and he turned over control of his WebRing to me, so I did a little work on it, and I'm starting what will be the Official 3D Realms WebRing. This will give us two kinds of sets of links for our games. We maintain our own list of links for various games(you can see those here). There will also be the new WebRing where you can add your own site to the list.
If you have a 3D Realms/Apogee related site, make sure and drop by the WebRing page today and sign up!
Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:02 PM
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New Web Stuff
This afternoon brings a few more minor enhancements to the 3D Realms Web site. Check 'em out...
*.plan updates - This update you can see right now on this page - it's a small plan update box to your left underneath the poll. This will contain the 6 most recent .plan file updates from the 3D Realms staff. It updates every 15 minutes, so you'll be right up to speed with everything we're saying.
*Web Forums - Our web forums have moved! For quite some time now, we've had them on a different server than our web site is at, but with our new web host, we finally have the server horsepower to run the forums right - so they've been moved to our new server. There's nothing new there, except that the URL is different. You need to update your bookmarks with the new location (click on the forum button to your left to get there). Also, if you're a returning user, you'll need to reset your preferences once you do get there.
Regarding the forum move - everyone's user records at the time of shutting down the forums yesterday has been preserved, as have all the messages (save for a tiny handful posted right around the time of the shutdown) are all here.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:30 PM
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New 3D Realms Site Launched!
From Joe Siegler...
"As you can see by reading this, our new web site has been launched! It's been a long time coming, but the new site has finally been released. It's very different than the last site we've had online, both in visual style, and in the content area. The new design layout was put together by Brian Cozzens, who did all the framework graphics as well - once again doing an awesome job in making everything look good.
In honor of the launch of the new web site, we've done something that has never been done in the 13 year history of the company - that is a comprehensive, across the board price restructuring of all of our games. Virtually every game in our entire product line has had it's price dropped, some as much as $35! If you've been thinking of purchasing some of our games, now's the time. Make sure and check out our Ordering Information Page for how to order from us, as well as updated pricing lists, and a new order form.
Speaking of purchasing games, one feature yet to come with the launch of our new web site is an Online Store. You will very shortly be able to purchase games direct from 3D Realms online and have them shipped to you. We had intended to have this feature launch with the new web site (this was the mysterious "Part 2" referred to in my .plan files), but some paperwork from our bank was holding things up, and we didn't want to wait any more to launch the web site, so we decided to hold off on the store a bit more until we're ready to go there.
There's much more that's new in our web site this time around than what's listed above. also a bunch of new items on our web site now that have never been here before. They are:
*Price Overhaul - It's worth mentioning again the price overhaul - if you haven't checked it out, check out our Ordering Info page for more details.
*.plan updates - You're familiar with the .plan update systems such as QuakeFinger, Blue's Finger, and Webdog. We now have our own plan updates that track our employees. They're available under Company Info.
*Quick Poll - Our old poll system was OK, but never really did what we wanted it to. Our new poll system which appears on the main page will be where you can leave your input on several relevant questions
*Banner System - The top of each page on our site now has "ad banners" - but they're for things internal to this site - they're not conventional advertisements as you know them, they'll be there to alert you to contests, sales, and other 3D Realms related information.
*News Replies - As you saw at the top of this news update, we have added news discussions, a popular feature on many gaming news sites. You can reply to (just about) any news story you will see here on the 3D Realms site.
*Tech Support Area - We've decided to place the entire knowledge base about all of our games online. In the new Tech Support area, you can check out our answers to every known issue relating to any of our games. The information here is extensive, and has been built up over many years of the company's existence.
*New ISP - At the same time we've brought the site online, we've switched hosts. During the release of the Duke Nukem Forever screenshots, we realized we needed a better hosting solution, so we are now with a new company, with much better hardware and bandwidth. Details are on the "About this Site" page under Company Info.
*No Frames - Frames are gone. This is our first web site since 1996 that doesn't have frames in it.
One of the biggest goals with this new site design was ease of navigation. Our old design, while great in the beginning, grew into a bit of an unwieldy mess. For example, if you wanted to get to the Duke Nukem sound bloopers page, you had to click on "Our Games", then "Duke Nukem 3D", then News, and finally the bloopers page. On our new system, you click on "Games", and Duke Nukem 3D, and that's it! A lot of care went into the design of the new site's navigation. The goal was to make every piece of information on our site no more than two clicks away from any other piece. With very few exceptions, this has been achieved, and the menuing system on your left has also been trimmed down. Several other sections to the site that are still here have been revised to be more streamlined. These sections include the game catalog, personal bios, and other areas. There's too many minor changes to list here, but regular site visitors of ours will notice the changes instantly.
There's still more to come, too. Two features that are not ready with the site's launch are the aforementioned Online Store, and an update to the Virtual Tour. The old tour was great, and still is, but is wildly out of date both in terms of people who work here, and in terms of people changing offices here. Next week, the work to replace the Virtual Tour will begin in earnest, we hope to have that online by the end of the month.
It's taken a long time to get this new site up, and of all the site designs we've had in the past, this one is the best in terms of navigation, visuals, and content. This was the hardest to get done, and at the same time, by far the most satisfying. I look forward to a long time working with this new layout, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed putting it all together.
Also, since we're changing servers at the same time, you may find if you go to http://www.3drealms.com, you get the old server. This is normal behavior, as the DNS change wasn't made until about 4:15PM on March 2nd. It can take up to a week for some DNS servers to pick up the change, but there will be a message on our old server telling you where exactly to go. Eventually, you'll get here with the correct domain name, so keep trying http://www.3drealms.com - We don't recommend you bookmark the new IP address location, as it won't be needed shortly.
One final note - if you used to link directly to information on our forums, please be aware that a lot of directories have been changed, moved, or likewise. You should probably check out the new layout.
And to the folks who regularly visit our Web Forums... "Hey, it's done!"
Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:45 PM
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Website stuff
From Joe Siegler... "As many of you have noticed, not much has been updated here in the last couple of weeks. There's a few reasons for that. First, not a whole lot is going on news wise, and second, I've begun converting the web site again to a new web look.
As some of you may remember, I did this once before back in in late November, early December. After it was completed, the decision was made that it didn't look good enough, so the site went back to the drawing board. Last Wednesday the 19th, I got final approval for a new graphic design to the web site, and I started changing over the data from the old new site (which you won't see) to the new new site (which you will eventually see). As annoyed as I was at this prospect, I have to say, it's for the best - the newer design is much sleeker, and looks much cooler. Once I get done with the data conversion, it's on to one other small secret for the new web site (which is not Duke Nukem Forever), and then I'll launch. If all goes well, and there aren't any further problems, we should be ready to go with everything in a couple of short weeks.
Also, I forgot to mention the other day that I've extended the length of the current Camera Captioning Contest due to this - I don't have the time at the moment to sift through all the emails that have been submitted for the last couple of contests. Once I get a few minutes to do this, I'll post winners, and update the contest as needed. Thanks for checking us out during the delay, and we guarantee you that the new site will be something worth waiting for. It's much more streamlined, and is much easier to navigate than the current site you're seeing this message on."
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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