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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "IHBT, IHL, IWTTHAND". Apologies if you're not trolling.

Firstly, emule is open source.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Give me a valid use for bittorrent, apart for things like Distros?" Bittorrent has many legit uses... from your post it seems you realise this, but I'm not toally sure. However there are cases where there aren't official torrents, or the official torrents are being heavily hit after a release and so can't be accessed. I do agree that, sadly, the majority of usage is likely to be for copyright infringement, but I can still see it being useful for non-infringing purposes, and hopefully - unlike many other torrent sites - it won't be geared towards illegal content.

We will be doing geothermal. It looks like the best option will be 5-ft deep trenches for the ground loop; we don't have a large body of water nearby, and drilling down is apparently more expensive than the trench. We're in upstate NY, and I've been getting killed by heating in our current house. This is most of the reason we're going with straw bale--great insulation for the price.

On a more serious note, I'll probably stick up a web cam during construction; probably interesting to some of the geek crowd, and then I can repurpose it to monitor my christmas lights over the net. We could even use the web cam to direct a nail gun during construction, and then repurpose it to deal with any wolves that might come by!

Heck, with my video card I can only play Doom3 at 800x600 anyhow.

You must have a really ancient video card. Even my sister's old eMachine (1996!) can do better than that.

Nowadays, 800x600 is the base resolution you get if you don't bother to configure your system. (XP won't do 640x480 without hacking the registry.)

"The Source Engine once again takes the title and rightfully so as the most popular FPS multiplayer game Counter Strike was developed by Valve."

That was indeed an excellent idea, but I can neither find one of those again, nor did I hear anything as to why they were removed. At least it's something even an average gamer can relate to - practically making a middle-end PC into a game console - insert the CD, play the game.

Not "legal issues" again?

Judging from this, ID isn't particularly happy about allowing people to redistribute anything but the original installer, it's probably the same way with the rest...

Definitely, As the saying goes: Content is King.

It's the same reason that there are no Open Source computer games that compare to commercial games.

It's not because of the lack of technical skill.
There are plenty of people on slashdot who can create a 3d engine. And if you want a commercially successful one, there's a couple lying around here.

but the Art - the content is locked up tight.

That's where the true value is.

Buy Commander Keen. Quite possibly the best 2d platformer, until Abuse anyway.

link to id shop

You don't think Quake is "capable of producing quality machinima"? I remember there was a movie editor of some sort for the original Quake, that was the most amazing machinima to date! It might not be the greatest thing out there today, but it's freely available and open-source.

Id software MAY get attention here because they happen to open source their legacy code from time to time.

Slightly OT: But ATI just released new linux drivers that work with Doom 3, and according to the ID website, ATI cards are now supported with the new driver. I just played the demo through with the new drivers without a hitch.

I beg your pardon?

1.5 GHz for Windows OS, but for Linux:

Pentium III, 1Ghz
256Mb RAM
Kernel 2.4, 2.6 is recommended
glibc 2.2 and up

3D card:
NV10 or R200 minimum hardware
OpenGL hardware acceleration
64 MB VRAM

http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom//

Id Software does this. Unfortunately, the sales have been dismal on Linux/Mac. There is very little incentive for companies to do this at this point in time.

well... that's not HIS fault in the least.

Amazing, how can you say that, the guy is Technical Director for crying out loud. If the game is not all that good, you say is not "his fault".

Server: ftp.idsoftware.com
Slots: 100 available connections
Average throughput: 905.677 KBps
Filename: ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/doom3/source/Doom 3_SDK.exe
Modification time: 20041015215806
Size: 10106779 bytes

The game source (most everything but the engine source) is available for quake 3 here. This is usually enough to make a mod, since that is what you say you need to do. There are also level editing tools available at that same site. Also, there are rumors that the full source will be out at the beginning of 2005. I can't imagine that valve would give out any more than that!

The Linux paks were not included in the Win32 1.1 release. But you can drop the Linux game pak file in your base/ directory: Linux 1.1 game file for win32 servers

Bittorrent from id

To Hell with working ,
Doom3 Linux binaries are out!!

Look here:

Doom Linux info page

Even got torrents for the binaries and demos!

By for now,
I'm off playing.

I think it pretty much exemplifies how hard Linux gaming is to set up, when you have an entire Wiki engine set up for one FAQ.

I'd guess it'll be the same as my experiences - a variety of minor problems depending on what hardware you have, in particular ATI users getting shafted.

In fact: "Currently, the game will not run correctly on ATI cards using the fglrx driver. However, the ATI developers are working on new driver releases, and eventually the game will be supported." but DRI drivers might work, and either way the future looks promising.

Also 5.1 surround support isn't currently available. Depressing, but hopefully set to improve :)

Contrast Doom 3 levels with the level designs in Quake 2. I'll never forget the alien scientists doing Mengele-style operations on the Marines, while they cried out "Make it Stop!"... now THAT was FUCKING SCARY.

The dark corridors do their job, this is an incredibly scary game
Sorry, I disagree. Yes, even after setting the Brightness control to a pretty high value, I am still left asking: why the fuck did I shell out the cash for a Radeon9800 Pro, just to see a fucking 90% BLACK SCREEN?

There are quite a few 3d engines out there. The biggest I guess are Crystal Space 3D, Genesis3D, OGRE, Toque (Tribes2), Quake and Quake II. Of course there are others to fill certin niches like Yeti or ExoEngine and libraries like DevLib and G3D for those who want to write their own engine, but don't feel like they need to implement yet another file loader. I'm not sure why 0.7 of Irrlicht was worth mentioning on /. as it is isn't clear what its roll is compared to those other engines.

I was at Siggraph 2004 and attended a round table on "how will you (game developers) feed next generation games". The problem is going from a Playstation1 to Playstation2 many developers found games now took roughly 2 to 3x the man years to create. But profits didn't really go up that much to compensate. This has happened every console generation and will happen again with the up coming generation. PC games don't have clear generations, but the same concept applies.

The main ideas were to reuse content. For example if you're making a Matrix game, get the 3d models from the movie instead of making your own and start from there. Or if you're making a port try to reuse as much as possible. Future games will have a lot of computer generated stuff which is artist guided instead of artist created so that one artist creates a forest instead of creating a bunch of leafs on a single tree.

A big surprise to me was open source wasn't mentioned until somebody asked. A company like id will implement something cool like unified lighting for all objects first, but a year later everybody has their own implementation of it. Every year has something like this that gets the anual lens flare award; colour lighting, ground clutter, normal mapping, rag doll physics, etc. Yawn. Every company spends all this time re-implementing the exact same technology. All developers can read the same papers from Siggraph, Eurographics, or GDC and then discuss them on the same mailing lists so there is plenty of open sharing happening already. So I was surprised to hear none of the guys at the round table thought open source would really be useful to help save them money in the future other than for rather basic things like zlib, lua, etc.

It sure would be nice to see some engines reach commercial quality to used in some good games instead of getting more and more re-implementations of the foundation, which /. apparently is finds interesting. Once it happens there will be a huge snow ball effect where it picks up a LOT of developer attention. Maybe in five years one of the existing engines will reach a level of maturity that it can start to be really used and then in another ten we'll see it catching on like GNU/Linux is now?

Don't those applications that they were running( Quake3, Gimp) have native ports.
I'm not saying its vaporware, but I could see someone trying to show off the software using the native ports instead of the "hardware virtualization"

It would obviously be more impressive/credible if they tried it on programs sans native ports.

According to this page it seems to already be available.

The trouble with open sourcing the engines is that you can no longer charge those licensing fees

Quake is available as open or closed: "For teams that dont want to operate under the GPL, were now offering a "non-GPL" QUAKE engine license for a flat fee of $10,000 per title". As long as you own all the source, you can license your stuff under as many licenses as you want, for pay or not.

Looks like they already did that. This page lists the Quake 3 source as download.

I don't know where you've been for the past 15 years, but nobody does low level programming for games anymore.

Everyone uses Renderware . Just look, over 500 titles released or in development use Renderware and it's not that old. That's 1 in 4 titles (I'm reading this from the site). Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City uses Renderware. Peter Molyneux's The Movies uses Renderware. Broken Sword 3 Sleeping Dragon uses Renderware. Everyone friggin' uses Renderware. And you know what? They aren't all the same game. Hell, even SEGA, Sony, and Konami and featured clients of Renderware.

Oh, and lets not forget Epic Games or id Software . And don't forget, these are not just for first person shooters. It's a 3D engine with underlying network code. I don't even want to think about how many games used the Quake engines over the years.

To say these development-houses-that-rely-on-high-level-develop ment-tools are suffering would be laughable. I'm laughing right now even. They are the highest profit games companies on the planet you fool!

Well, I just went to idsoftware.com to see if they had an online payment option. All you can do is order the phyical game from id, and they want to charge $7.50 for shipping! Every other retailer on earth will send me the game for cheaper. I already have the game, I just want id to get their fair share, $55, not $62.50. Screw the shipping. They should set up an online payment option and just sell valid cd-keys for $55. This is really not much that different from how Doom 1 was distributed.

" I'll be most impressed when they have a Cartoon Physics Engine."

I'm not sure whether to laugh or to scold you... Some people clearly thought you were trying to be funny, although I would suspect that since you posted anonymously, you were actually being serious.

At any rate, John Carmack is a pretty decent coder, but I'm not sure who this Jon Carmack person is.

I'm going to buy Doom3 from id directly at the id Store. When there's a game I really get a lot out of (or plan to in this case), I try to buy directly from the developer to give them as big a cut of the pie as I can. They get full SRP instead of what's left from the middle man.

My way of thanking companies that still create good titles.

Good news for LithTech, GameBryo, Unreal Engine, Source Engine, id Software licensing and so on. All the other options available to middleware-using developers now that they have a good reason to make a switch.

"The DOOM 3 engine ushers in a new rendering paradigm that allows id and our licensees to bring cinema quality visuals to game players in real time," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "We look forward to further enhancing players' audio experience by working with Creative to leverage their EAX ADVANCED HD audio technology in the DOOM 3 engine."

"Working together with id Software, an industry icon, provides Creative with an exciting opportunity to enhance one of the hottest game engines around," said Hock Leow, CTO of Creative Technology. "We look forward to the challenge of implementing EAX ADVANCED HD Multi-Environment technology within the Doom 3 engine, and subsequently working with id to make these enhancements available to their licensees. We are also pleased with the agreement relating to Creative's patented shadowing technique and id's cutting-edge 3D graphics DOOM 3 engine."

Hmm, this press release seems rather pleasant in tone. I don't get the impression that they were coerced into anything. When I check id's website though I don't find the press release on the front page, nor do I see Creative listed in their "Friends of id" section. Perhaps they are just a bit behind on updating their website while working to release Doom 3 on time?

"The DOOM 3 engine ushers in a new rendering paradigm that allows id and our licensees to bring cinema quality visuals to game players in real time," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "We look forward to further enhancing players' audio experience by working with Creative to leverage their EAX ADVANCED HD audio technology in the DOOM 3 engine."

"Working together with id Software, an industry icon, provides Creative with an exciting opportunity to enhance one of the hottest game engines around," said Hock Leow, CTO of Creative Technology. "We look forward to the challenge of implementing EAX ADVANCED HD Multi-Environment technology within the Doom 3 engine, and subsequently working with id to make these enhancements available to their licensees. We are also pleased with the agreement relating to Creative's patented shadowing technique and id's cutting-edge 3D graphics DOOM 3 engine."

Hmm, this press release seems rather pleasant in tone. I don't get the impression that they were coerced into anything. When I check id's website though I don't find the press release on the front page, nor do I see Creative listed in their "Friends of id" section. Perhaps they are just a bit behind on updating their website while working to release Doom 3 on time?

• everything they want runs only under windows

• everyone else runs windows, so should I.
  

Quake 3 Arena - 2000 - runs on a PIII 600 or so, requires a good 3d graphics card. Linux port

actually it flyes even on p2-350 with GeForce FX 5200

Return to Castle Wolfenstein - runs on a 1 ghz processor, requires a good 3d graphics card. Linux port (I think)

Linux port. and on the same p2, with all settings high, it flyes too.

I don't know about Doom 3, but Quake was coded in Objective C, which, as the name suggests, is most definitely object-oriented.

I think you're thinking of the original tool set that *was* written in Objective-C. If I remember correctly a lot of the original Doom code was developed on NeXT boxes too. Too lazy to find a reference for that right now though.

Retailers in the States will be allowed to pick up games starting at 12:01 AM on August 3rd. The official street date is actually August 5th in the U.S.A., but some of your favorite stores will probably have it early for those of you who have to have it first.

I've also seen the Doom Collection at Wal-Mart for $9.96, and I've seen Quake at Software, Etc. for $10 as well as the Quake II Quad Damage pack for $20. But, as most geeks won't set foot in these stores, you can buy the games directly from iD here. The Doom Collection is $30, and Quake is $25.

I'll admit that I did go to Wal-mart and (Gasp!) Software, Etc. for the three aforementioned titles though. I couldn't pass up a $40 price tag for five kick-ass games and three expansion packs.

You're right, they really should have done something important in the meantime!

Quake.

pfft, who cares.

I'm a geek so that means I don't run Windows. And I'm a real geek so that means I dont rely on Wine either.

ID Software has a Quake3 port available for Windows, linux, and Mac OSX. And Urban Terror works with them all.

If your really a geek and want to engage in some violent first person combat look no further than Quake3 and Urban Terror.

Yeah, I know, shameless plug for one of my favorite games in somebody elses game thread, sue me. :P

burnin

id.com is not the website for iD Software. idsoftware.com is.

1) Java has bounds checking for arrays, C++ doesn't. This is specified in the language. This affects performance.

2) Java has garbage collection, C++ doesn't. This is specified in the language. This affects performance.
Also, the specification of Java says that it should be compiled to byte code and executed in a JVM.
So the "language" certainly affects performance.

I believe I disagree with all of these.

When Transmeta's Crusoe launched, it was not widely known that they had the fastest native picojava processor on the planet.

To prove it, they compiled most of Doom down to x86 machine language, and then they compiled the exceedingly hot spots (rasterization) down to x86 for one executable and down to picojava for the other executable.

They both ran at the same speed.

You might say this is because Transmeta processors don't really run x86, but instead translate it to another format. That is correct. So does a JVM. So do Intel and AMD chips. Pentium processors haven't been native x86 processors since the original Pentium.

The trick to most on-the-fly x86 optimizations is figuring out when the strict x86 behavior is necessary, and when you can bend the rules. If you're in the middle of bending the rules, and the processor receives an IRQ or generates an exception, you need to dump everything on the floor and back up to the last time you had a valid x86 state, otherwise, as long as the x86 state is the way it's supposed to be at the end of the block or trace or however much you can get away with, it's all good.

This is true of Java bytecode as well. If you can simply trap out-of-bounds memory instead of doing an explicit bounds check on each access, your code will run very fast. If you get an exception, then it's back to the JVM. If you get lots of execptions, you can retranslate that particular block to do explicit bounds-checking and again manage to avoid calling the JVM.

If your garbage collector learns individual app behavior and tailors its behavior to a particular application runtime memory allocation track record, you can get superior performance to C++ new()/delete()'s compiled to x86, depending on how much time the app developer got to profile his memory management system, a task all too often overlooked in today's memory-is-cheap-get-it-to-market rush.

HP's Dynamo runtime actually proved that you can get better native machine language performance by running the native machine language in a runtime.

Modern JVM's aren't executing bytecode. They're making fully native x86 translations, and the x86 translations jump to each other. In fact, you're not really spending much time running the JVM at all. Your program is getting compiled, linked, and is running native. It's only going to the JVM when it has to.

The bottom line is that your Java perf is going to be wildly variable, depending on the quality of your JVM, and your x86 performance is going to be much less wildly variable, because x86 processors really became C++ bytecode processors several years ago. They're very carefully tuned to destroy benchmarks, particularly Winstone, which is a spectrum of bloated C++ Windows apps, a depressingly representative benchmark of what most of us run.

However, Intel and AMD processors can't see or remember beyond a tight window of x86 instructions. They will make the same optimization mistakes over and over again, no matter how many times you run the application. If your hot spots are longer than the size of that window, you lose. JVM's don't have this restriction. They see and can remember the entire application.

Nothing about x86 or C++ prohibits C++/x86 runtimes. This is precisely what Transmeta and VMWare are doing. They are both little companies and do not have the incredible muscle and financing of AMD and Intel, n

Well, if you're willing to pay $20 for this, then I guess that's your business...

Also notice how Wolfenstein 3D is $20, but for only $5 more you can get Return to Castle Wolfenstein. WTF? That's one hell of a $5 bill.

actually this[idsoftware.com] was the first fpp game in 3d. And there was also Catacombs 3d, basicly the same engine.

While I agree with most of what you said. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was made by id.

It wasn't a joke, it was fact =P

Quake III by itself was awful, the multiplayer was well defined but it was more of the same. Unreal Tournament did a much better job with gameplay

But look at all the Q3 licensed games that came out.

Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
Jedi Academy
Alice
Star Trek: Elite Force
Medal of Honor Allied Assault
Team Fortress II
James Bond 007: The World is not Enough
Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.

And I'm sure I've missed a few...

At $250,000 a license, they made a few bucks in just licensing
I've heard that the new Doom III license will be going for $1,000,000

id Software's Technology Licensing Program

I must say, I am truly impressed with the well developed arguments the Computer Scientists of slashdot have given for the superiority of their methodology vis-a-vis that of the mere code monkey. Why, with empirical support such as "IMHO," "Just my $0.02," and "In my experience," I'd say it is obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that a mere code monkey cannot hold a candle to a true blue Computer Scientist.

It goes without saying that the ability to architect a program of several hundreds of thousands of lines of complexity, a feat which is really no more difficult than the simplest of soldering tasks, is of infinitesimal value compared to the ability to prove an algorithm correct. And we all know that Knuth was really just kidding when he said that "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." What he really meant was that we should hoist high upon our shoulders and cheer onwards those gallant few who devote themselves to making that 5% of a program's code, wherein 95% its execution takes place, run faster; the natural corollary being that the mere code monkeys who design, implement, and debug the other 95% are to be fed gruel and enroll in indentured servitude to their sheepskin bearing overlords.

Throughout the course of history, every great leap in the progress of humanity has, without fail, been initiated by those who embraced the world created for them, and followed the One True Path to enlightement that the intelligentsia (whose motives and methods are obviously pure and beyond question) have laid out for them. That's why you never hear about relatively mediocre students revolutionizing the world of physics while serving as mere clerk monkeys in a patent office. That's why the company that almost single handedly revolutionized the gaming industry was founded by wise and studied sheepskin bearing patrons of the mighty Computer Science. That's why the most popular operating system of our modern age was created under the leadership of one with years of rigorous education and edification. Mere code monkeys amount to little more than a festering pile of monkey feces in this world!

Further, this is why the most popular language in academics is Java. Computer Scientists will settle for nothing more than the fastest language, with bare-metal access beyond compare, when writing their incredible and world definining algorithms and data structures.