Doom III Officially Announced

Jacek Fedorynski writes "The end is near. First, id Software's site is updated for the first time since the Quake II times and now they officially announce Doom III!" If you recall, there were some screenshots released last year, but I don't think there's been much since then - these are probably out of date.

Comments

great!

[The-Pheon]

Now i will have a replacement for solitare at work.

hope they include a "Boss Key" ;O)

Re:great!

[smaug195]

I am soon to start working on a First Person Shooter for a new company. In fact one of the things I purposefully put in design mode was a panic button for single player mode. Not sure whether to have it pop up a screenshot on screen, or pause and minimize(the screenshot would be customizable, and it would probably be faster *shrugs*) anyhoo, just letting you know your concerns are heard ;-).

Re:great!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Alt-Tab?

Re:great!

[Warped-Reality]

another thing: (assuming this is going to be a Windows based game)

Have your game NOT show in the taskbar (nosy bosses might notice) but as a systray icon (smaller and less noticable) preferably with a non-gamer-related (or user selectable) icon

Re:great!

[Decimal]

hope they include a "Boss Key" ;O)

Yeah. Just type IDKBA. (I.D. Kick's Bosses Ass)

1st

[jchristopher]

FIRST FRAG

Super

[smaug195]

Now another god knows how many years until it comes. I am all for quality software, but I'll take a few bugs to frag now :)(I am impatient, but hey who isn't).

Re:Super

[Anonymous Coward]

release date 4th quarter 2002 atm

tip

[Anonymous Coward]

dont buy a GeForce Ti4mx if you want to run Doom 3. Carmack has said it wont work well with it.

Re:tip

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your ideas interesting and would like to subscribe to your
newsletter

Now I'll have to....

[parkanoid]

Overclock my geforce2 above boiling point, like that guy who opened a dimensional rift with his CPU.

Re:Now I'll have to....

[MisterBlister]

I know that was just a joke, but no amount of overclocking will give the GF2 pixel shaders, and without pixel shaders your experience with Doom 3 will be very disappointing.

Re:Now I'll have to....

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop making us Geforce 2 people feel bad.

but no amount of overclocking will give the GF2 pixel shaders, and without pixel shaders your experience with Doom 3 will be very disappointing.

(sadly) ooh

Re:Now I'll have to....

[Anonymous Coward]

If it makes you feel better, you could overclock your GF2 and probably get fairly close to the performance of a GF4MX.

I guess I'm in the minority

[cbensinger]

but I'd rather see something new than yet another Doom game. Yeah the graphics will probably be impressive and all; but I just can't see the attraction to rehashing the same concepts over and over. I suppose I'm no better as I have Civilization 1, 2, & now 3; but even though I've enjoyed each game in the series none was as good as the first there is just too much repetition in the series (and in any series really).

Seems like the resources that'll get dumped into Doom 3 could be put towards something new and exciting; although I guess in the economic climate the easy decision is to revisit what's been successful...

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[glwtta]

Think of the resources as being put towards a big part of many new and exciting (and many more boring and repetitive) games - the engine will mostly likely be licensed by many companies over the next few years and will contribute to the development of interesting games... hopefully.

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

The resources you waste being a whiney pretentious troll on Slashdot could be used to do something useful, too, but I certainly don't have any expectations.

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[travail_jgd]

The Doom 3 engine is being used for Quake 4 (being developed by Raven Software).

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[nomadic]

The only thing is Id just isn't far enough head to deserve all the press they get. I'm not knocking them; they do make the best 3d game engines around. But their competitors aren't nearly as behind as people would like to think.

Usually you can't tell which engine a 3rd party game uses, anyway.

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

Czech out that Croatian and Swede games Sturmovik, Serious Sam, and Rallisport...

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[mallie_mcg]

Seems like the resources that'll get dumped into Doom 3 could be put towards something new and exciting; although I guess in the economic climate the easy decision is to revisit what's been successful...

I have a feeling that it will look sweet and be enjoyable. Look at QuakeIII not really that much different from QuakeII (ok so the AI improved, and there were not single player "levels"), but really down low there were not that many enhancements on QII, excepting visual boundries being pushed. The QIII engine was licenced to other companies and we have things such as MOHAA, and IDs on RTCW based on the QIII engine. Along comes DoomIII, new engine, takes advantage of new technologies, starts to push the envelope a little visually, same plot, same style of play, perhaps slightly better AI. Overall not a huge change really but it too will spawn other games that push the envelope in other ways by licening the engine.

Personally I will wait and see how well a GeForce4 Ti4x00 goes before i invest in either the game or the card its self, as I love visual things, game play is good too, but i will play a really good looking game compared to a crap ugly one. (UT and QIII, UT did it for me, but i *was* addicted, but @ lans, QIII is more popular and rocks just as much!).

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[blair1q]

Watch the forecredits on those competitors' games. Most of them will credit Id Software somewhere.

--Blair

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[ninkendo84]

Well, if theres one thing I do like about id software, it's games like quake, doom, heretic, hexen, etc. If i wanted a new genre-expanding game to come out, i'd look elsewhere besides id software, because making point-and-shoot games like doom is what they're best at. There's nothing wrong with one company sticking to one style, and that's exactly what id does, and more power to them!

Re:I guess I'm in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting something. How long it has been since id made a single player game. id did not make RtCW, Gray Matter did.
Up until Half Life, stories were not expected. Action games were just that: action. You cannot compare the future to the past and say that the past should have predicted the future.
They didn't "stick to one style". They did what they could, and pushed boundaries of technology. With doom, they invented the concept of "atmosphere". With wolf 3d, they invented the concept of "first person shooter". With the Quakes, they invented the concept of "user modification".
Not to mention that there has only been ONE single player game made by id without John Romero. That would be Quake 2, which had a large focus on multiplayer. Judging from Daikatana, the "toss enemies at you and shoot like hell" could be contributed to him.
Doom III has a heavier focus on single player, and with the new concept of "story driven shooter". Add an 80% new crop of developers, and I fail to see how Doom 3 could follow in the footsteps of the simplicity of Doom 1, even if they tried.
Doom 3 will inevitably have a better story and better gameplay to go with its fantastic graphics.

And with the action-horror genre, graphics are important. More specifically, LIGHTING is. Lighting sets mood and atmosphere, which are the #1 most important elements in an action-horror game.

DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Phexro]

The mere thought of a new DOOM game is certainly exciting, but... RtCW ruined any joy I could possibly have replaying the old Wolf3D games - there's such a massive gap between high tech 1992 and high tech 2002.

I have many fond memories of playing DOOM late at night with the volume cranked way up, and it was the game that gave me my love for horror games (Silent Hill, etc) - but could DOOM 3 destroy the replay value of the original DOOM games?

I think the only saving grace is DOOM's atmosphere - I remember getting jumpy a few levels into episode 2. The graphics in Wolf3D couldn't really present an atmosphere like that.

What do you think?

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[parkanoid]

I would have to agree with you about wolf, but ID is promising that it won't happen with doom 3. I personally would still prefer if they made a game without tying it to one of the most successful games in history merely for the name.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[glwtta]

New games more advanced than old games? Well yes, it's pretty hard to argue with that, though I don't quite see the point. Would you like new games to look as bad as old ones?

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[cptgrudge]

I too remember playing DOOM for the first time on my cousin's computer a long time ago. It was daylight out but the atmosphere of the game just gave you...an insecure feeling. DOOM II was (sorta) more of the same, but ever since then it seems that the games that have come out, though they have better effects and realism, are just not the same.

I suppose all us twenty-something old timers need to keep in mind that DOOM came out when we were young and malleable, and we've been playing these games all our lives. Maybe we've become desensitized. Anyone younger care to say what they feel on DOOM vs a more recent FPS?

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's still creepy. I'm a youngun now, and though its hokey and made with comparatively simple graphics, I still get startled easily by it

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash buddy: Nothing is EVER going to recreate that gameplay for you again.

At least not in an fps. You're used to it, you've seen it before. It's just not going to creep you out like it did the first time. DOOM was one of the firsts in the field and was revolutionary. You're hoping that this brings something new to the field, like the original DOOM did....but you want them to recreate the original DOOM atmosphere. Near impossible to do.

I'm sure that they'll try to recreate the creepy DOOM atmosphere, and they'll probably do a pretty good job of it. Hopefully they'll provide experiences like we had with the original DOOM for the up and coming gamers who'll have this game as one of their first killer games. The only difference is that they'll have absolutely bad*ss graphics this time around.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't play the new game, then.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Ozwald]

> What do you think?

Yep, this should easily delay the next Duke Nukem by 5 years.

Ozwald

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope ID will bering back the old time quality greatness that they used to have with their games...like quake,doom,hexen and heritic.

Remember all those cool ass huge levels,hidden levels and secret rooms? Man I miss that kind of quality..Quake 2 wasnt even what I would call a classic ID game...ahtough it was ground breaking in the graphics department.

Hopefully ID doesnt screw up and make another stupid ass game like quake3 or rtcw.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Thing 1]

Anyone younger care to say what they feel on DOOM vs a more recent FPS?

I was a couple years out of college when Doom came out. I remember distinctly two events:

1. Playing Doom enough that when I came to a window in the game, looking down on the courtyard (which I always thought of as Jeremy, possibly because that Pearl Jam album had just come out then) -- and I sat up straighter and craned my neck to see what was out the window.
2. Walking down the halls of my workplace -- looking for guns and ammo.

The first is cool because the game had no z-level -- there could be raised floors, but there could never be anything under them. For a game with no z-level to make me believe it enough to crane my neck is impressive.

The second is just freaky, and I think I may have scared some people discussing it at lunch. ;-)

To answer your question, I enjoy Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, but they don't "grip" me like DOOM did.

One of my favorite games lately has been Sacrifice, which has a somewhat-first-person-view (camera is behind the wizard). The best part is to have an easily-mapped "pause" key (I use "x" since movement is with the WASD method). Then you can really direct your creatures to their fullest extent -- many of them have powers that, during the heat of battle would be difficult to activate. Pausing makes a huge difference in the outcome. ;-)

I tried Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but it was very dark and jerky. Perhaps that was just the beta version; I deleted it.

I think it's like heroin or cocaine or any number of drugs for which the body develops a tolerance: it will never be as good as the first time. It cannot be, because of the chemistry involved. Similarly, I've already been surprised by a videogame. I'm not sure it'll happen again, at least not to the same extent. And I miss that. Guess I'm just getting old.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[bobv-pillars-net]

When I caught myself sidestepping around corners, I decided it was time to start sleeping at night instead of playing Doom.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[thomas.galvin]

If naming the game Doom 3 is really such a problem for you to the point that it ruins the replayability of earlier Dooms, call the game Quake IV or Phexro's Whining Nightmare, or whatever you want, and STFU.

The name isn't the point; it's that the next time you play Doom, you are goning to be comparing it to this new game, whatever it's name may be.

For example, I love Final Fantasy 7 (yeah, flame away, I was never a fan of the older ones). The CGI movies in particular were absolutly stunning. I recently played through some of the game again, and you know what? Those movies aren't quite as stunning as they once were. They look blocky and cartoonish compared to the other games I have since played. Is it still a fun game? Sure. But it no longer has that "holy crap, how did they do that" factor. Doom 3 may very well (forget it, it will) do that to its FPS ancestors. C'est la vie.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

"all us twenty-something old timers"

Please, don't forget us forty-something...

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[algernon7]

I think we were still naive enough to be bowled over by that atmosphere. That's all id is providing - atmosphere, in a sense. The first person is our best attempt at a 'human simulation', and the engine is the world we operate in. That's what was impressive, and it kept our attention because we were so lost in the illusion of another space. I realize I'm stating the obvious there. Now, however, even as it becomes more immersive, the illusion require more sophistication. Personally, I can't wait until the first good everquest/quake hybrid shows up. I'm not really a fantasy buff, but the move from being completely combat-based to an alternate persistent reality will be huge, IMHO. Then we'll start having our quake and eating it too. -groan-

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[weird mehgny]

The first is cool because the game had no z-level -- there could be raised floors, but there could never be anything under them. For a game with no z-level to make me believe it enough to crane my neck is impressive.

DOOM *did* have a Z-level, obviously. It is a common misconception that it didn't. There was a technical limit in the virtual representation of a level, but it would've been the same even if a game used three-dimensional coordinates for all vertices but for rendering or clipping reasons didn't allow two rooms above each other.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, have you seen Doom 3?

I'm very much like you except for one difference: I think Doom 3 will be awesome. Have you read Carmack's notes on what's going in there? The graphics more more than just impressive, he's really pushing the techonology (as usual).

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

...it will never be as good as the first time...

Wolf3D
Doom
Half-life
Deus-Ex

Just wait a while, something as good as the first time will come along.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[dvdeug]

One of my friends is a huge first-person shooter fan, but it gets him in trouble; when running around corners, he will instictively try to strafe around the corner. Unfortunately, he's too uncoordinated to strafe and run at the same time . . .

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[yason]

DOOM *did* have a Z-level, obviously. It is a common misconception that it didn't. There was a technical limit in the virtual representation of a level, but it would've been the same even if a game used three-dimensional coordinates for all vertices but for rendering or clipping reasons didn't allow two rooms above each other.

For the technical side, Doom used 2D vertices to create 2D polygons, called sectors, which in turn had the attributes of ceiling height and floor height. So your map would always be 2D but Doom could render the floors and ceilings of a sector to any height.

Also, there are well-known techniques to trick the Doom engine to have two stories present on a particular place of the map, or even three stories. Creating several bridges on top of and crossing each other is possible, too.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[|_uke]

I remember playing quake for a large sum of time once... my brother tried talking to me and I was trying to move the mouse to look at him.... LOL.. did not work so well eh? :)

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[nzhavok]

I had a similar experience with the original diablo. When I woke up in the middle of the night and started trying to kill the bats flying around the room. After that I decided to get some real sleep instead of just 6 hours between bouts of diablo :)

Also 7th guest creeped me out one time when I was playing it about 4am, surprising since it's a puzzle game, guess it was the sound fx

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Ripsnorter]

I know what you mean. Doom didn't scare me as much as Hexen did tho. The swamp monsters used to really get the heart rate going, never knew where they were going to pop up next. Then I tried to play HexenII but it didn't have the same effect.

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, except for once in Duke Nukem.

I was crawling through a "hidden" air vent, and popped out in a room with a lot of stuff hanging from the ceiling. The movie "Seven" had been released the year before, and I realized they were air fresheners. I had seen a bed when I first came in the room, and I honestly turned toward it slowly, bit by bit, trying not to pee myself. That was awesome :)

System Requirements

[betanerd]

I wonder how high the system requirements will be on this one. Athlon XP-II 42891+ 10354 Gig of PC9600 Ram ATI Radeon Plus MAXX Pro 98500 And That is for low rez. - -

What, another *space marine* game?

[GeorgieBoy]

Hmm. Think the storyline might be different this time? My guess is the same old, same old. . .but as long as they keep the cliche exploding barrels from the original games (Doom, Doom II), I'm sure it will play like a charm :-)

Re:What, another *space marine* game?

[Ravagin]

Think the storyline might be different this time?

If you recall, the first DOOM was space marines vs Hell. In the grand tradition of Dante's divine comedy, DOOM 3's space marine protagonist will take on the mildly rude legions of Purgatory.

On the distant moon of Pluto, a top secret government project goes horribly wrong, opening a portal into Purgatory itself! Heathens, unbaptised babies and who knows what else have been set loose, and only you can save humanity.
And they killed your rabbit.

Re:What, another *space marine* game?

[Anonymous Coward]

And they killed your rabbit.

"For the last time, Trix are for kids!"

Re:What, another *space marine* game?

[SoftwareTechie]

[...opening a portal into Purgatory itself! Heathens, unbaptised babies and who knows what else...]

Unbaptised babies go to limbo so there's no need to fear demon infants strangling you with their umbilical cords.

-----------

Re:What, another *space marine* game?

[Ravagin]

Damn! I knew it wasn't a good idea to try religious humor late at night.

Just did some quick research, and there seems to be some confusion over the matter. Apparently, the official protocol ("element of faith" as one site put it) for unbaptized babies is Purgatory, but the generally held belief among theologians and others is limbo. Seems some Pope made a statement at one point that utterly confused the matter. Boy, those popes.

Purgatory, limbo, heaven, hell... so confusing... give me Hades any day, or simple reincarnation....

Re:What, another *space marine* game?

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFLMGDAO!!!

Yay for tech demos

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Each id game is pretty much a tech demo for what we should expect to see in the intervening years between games- I don't expect much out of Doom III- but it's a harbinger of the next Half-Life.

Re:Yay for tech demos

[tswinzig]

Each id game is pretty much a tech demo for what we should expect to see in the intervening years between games- I don't expect much out of Doom III- but it's a harbinger of the next Half-Life.

Speak for yourself. For many people that enjoy deathmatch over single player, the id Software games are king. I still prefer Quake 3 Arena over any other for deathmatch.

Re:Yay for tech demos

[Anonymous Coward]

> it's a harbinger of the next Half-Life.

except that valve can't code for shit, and id can.

Re:Yay for tech demos

[denzo]

Well, considering that he never mentioned purely singleplayer qualities in the first place, I would have to say he's right. Half-Life gave rise to Counterstrike (a mod of a mod of the Quake engine), which I am sure became much more played in the last two years than Quake and Quake II combined; and before Counterstrike was Team Fortress Classic, which I remember being the rage in early 1999.

And by the same token, I'm sure all the Quake III-based games (such as RtCW) are getting much more multiplayer action than Quake III itself.

Quake III has been boooooring for multiplayer. Its only strong point was a good mix of weapons and to-the-point deathmatch levels. Other than that, it's not much to write home about. It's more for the purist, serious type of deathmatchers like Thresh.

All the real multiplayer innovations have come from above mentioned games (Counterstrike for its counter-terrorist vs. terrorist conflicts; and RtCW for objective-based play... and don't forget all the innovative multiplayer modes of Unreal Tournament).

Re:Yay for tech demos

[ziggles]

It's more than a tech demo for me. I enjoy id's games, not just their engines.

Re:Yay for tech demos

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see any demos there. The new site looks like it's only about 10% done, but then it might be the proxy blocking a bunch of ActiveX shit.

Re:Yay for tech demos

[Anonymous Coward]

Each studio only has room for one mega-hit a few hits a a lot of flops. Half-Life... hmmmm... seems to me they already did the facility thing. What's next?

Counterstrike: Ali Quesadia (The last terrorist)
Rules: Terrorists only have one player on the team. The rest are Counter Terrorists.

Ali: Please Mr. America, don't hurt me, I'm just a little boy!

The Counter Terrorists: Give up Ali! We've got you surrounded! You Ali Qesadia scum are gonna die!!!

Ali: But I'm only a boy!

The Counter Terrorists: 9-11!!!!!!! {{hail of bullets}}
Roll credits

Re:Yay for tech demos

[Anonymous Coward]

No proxy here and most of it's missing or crawling with bugs.

Re:Ho hum. Looks lame.

[tyler6000]

you're officially irrelevant, dork.

Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[galaga79]

It will be interesting to see if they can retain the original Doom gameplay in a fully 3D engine. I recall in the original the gameplay was very arcade like with with lots of enemies to fight at once, and that was possible because sprites use up far less resources than high polycount models. However looking at the screenshots it appears the emphasis is less on large confrontations and more about creating a sense of supsense through lighting.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Anonymous Coward]

You got that right on the money. It takes at least a year to a year and a half for each ID Engine to produce an AWESOME game. Q2 had half-life(wow!) and Q3 now has Jedi Knight II (double wow!).

-jc@cs.washington.edu

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[ymgve]

Two words:

Serious Sam.

That game had TONS of enemies onscreen at once, all of them running straight for you. I guess there were 50-100 at most. If nothing else, it shows that even fully 3D games can have more than five enemies at once.

(but that doesn't mean Doom 3 will go for lots of enemies. And sometimes less is better. Remember Alien?)

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Anonymous Coward]

The Serious Engine is very good. Croteam also did a great job with making sure there were a lot of LoD models for map data and mobile data. Excellent work.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[MisterBlister]

You are correct in your last statement. They are going for the atmosphere of Doom, but not the original gameplay. Sorry, you can't have 50 medium to high polygon models onscreen while also worrying about all the cool lighting and shadow effects on current 3D hardware.

If you want that sort of gameplay in 3D (but without the Doom atmosphere), play Serious Sam I & II.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Glytch]

Better yet, remember the Alien Total Conversion for Doom 1? That was even scarier than Doom itself. The first level scared me the most. Less is better, as you said. :)

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[trauma]

John Carmack made some interesting statements in a video interview with GameSpot at last year's QuakeCon that support your observation. To (badly) paraphrase and summarize, he spoke at some length about striving for photorealism as opposed to "cartoony" graphics, and the necessary changes in gameplay that result. I remember particularly an observation that a game that approaches photorealism requires something more like real-world pacing in order to maintain suspension of disbelief; a character that runs Original Doom-Style at 80 miles an hour is jarringly out of place in a realistic virtual world. So yes, I would expect a less frantic, more suspenseful gaming experience.

I apologize for the lack of a relevant link, but all I have is a series of .asf files renamed for my convenience.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Anonymous Coward]

halflife was based on q1, not q2.

but I agree, games based on id's original games (and mod's of id's games) are better than id's original games (q1, q2, q3, d3).

q1 had ctf (the first ctf mod), qwtf, instagib (first insta mod), halflife, sin, a bunch of others
q2 had aq2, jailbreak, lmctf,datakanta(sp?) (eww)
q3 has rtcw, moh, jk2, sof2, urbanterror(q3ut2), ra3, etc...

conclusions: id rocks the engine world. john carmack is gawd.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[iangoldby]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. One of the great things about Doom I/II was the simplicity of the gameplay. Right hand on the cursor keys, left hand on shift-ctrl-alt-space. You didn't need any of this fancy look-up/look-down stuff.

It just worked. The game-play was king. It was all about atmosphere/anticipation and quick aiming. I guess I just can't get my fingers around the plethora of keys in the newer games—I spend more time fiddling with the mechanics of controlling the character than playing the game.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[tfoss]

and more about creating a sense of supsense through lighting.

Funny, the sense I got from the screenshots was: "it's just too damn dark to see anything in here."

-Ted

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that some code from the Quake 2 engine made it into Halflife.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[ringbarer]

Was that the one where there were no aliens whatsoever? You spent the entire level wandering around, jumping around corners expecting to be killed, only to find that you'd got to the end without a scratch.

A quality bit of work there, because it totally went against the 'Killfest' ethos of Doom, showing that the engine could be used for other experiences.

And the designer had a sense of humor. If you tried to obtain the BFG through the IDKFA cheat, the weapon graphic turned into a banner berating you for cheating.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Anonymous Coward]

Carmacks's Gamespot interview at QuakeCon is here.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Bungie]

I agree. Many games have just become too complex as far as controls and gameplay go. I really hate to get into a game and find that there are around 50 keys that I am supposed to memorize, and failing to remember just one at a critical moment gets you rocked. I am really getting sick of that. Honestly, if I wanted the kind of reality that some of these games are trying to continually push, I would just go buy a gun and not the game.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[mallie_mcg]

Was that the one where there were no aliens whatsoever? You spent the entire level wandering around, jumping around corners expecting to be killed, only to find that you'd got to the end without a scratch.

One thing I found once in doom, was when i thought i had cleaned out a whole level, and having problems working out how to leave it, i was just running around trying to work out what to do next, i came to an area that i had already cleaned out and got the crap kicked out of me by a mob that i did not expect at all, not to mention the crap scared outta me too. A combo to your suggestion/reccolecction came to me..., sometimes nothing should appear on a certain (relatively small level), and other times (randomly), some (1 to whatever) should appear. Could be amusing.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[Scorchmon]

No, the Aliens TC was somewhat flaky. You had to have the right version of Doom to get it to work completely. There might have been some other factors too, but I remember trying it many times and ending up with no aliens until I think I loaded it on an older version.

Re:Doom Gameplay in a fully 3D engine

[SmittyTheBold]

Fully 3D? Uh...I remember the "blood" being basically sprites rendered on planes...

But yeah. lots o' crap on the screen. That's what I live for.

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

And I had just gotten used to having good framerates. I'm going to hate going back to skip skip dead. Is the GeForce7 Ultra Uber Pro DV out yet?

Why link to Yahoo!?

[cliveholloway]

...when the press release is also on the ID web site???

.02

cLive ;-)

Re:Why link to Yahoo!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Yahoo can withstand a slashdotting.

Re:Why link to Yahoo!?

[cliveholloway]

I know - just being a karma whore :)

(seams to be working :)

cLive ;-)

Re:Why link to Yahoo!?

[Servo5678]

Why link to Yahoo? Because we like ID and don't want to /. them ;-)

Re:Why link to Yahoo!?

[NachtVorst]

Funny, I can't watch that page in Opera nor Mozilla (windows)... It renders fine in IE. Anyone else have the same problem?

Re:Why link to Yahoo!?

[Jaysyn]

I'm having no problems on Mozilla.

Jaysyn

Re:DOOM 3 poised to ruin old games?-sound

[Anonymous Coward]

"What do you think?"

It was the *sound coupled with the dark graphics that makes the Doom atmosphere such a *killer*.

Try watching any horror movie with the sound off. Big difference huh?

may 22nd

[Maskirovka]

For the record, the electronic arts expo is may 22nd to 24th, which is when they'll show off Doom3.

Re:may 22nd

[Osty]

electronic arts expo

That would be Electronic Entertainment Expo (thus, E3). Electronic Arts (EA) is a game publishing house, most famous for their sports lines (Madden, NHL, FIFA, etc). While they're big, I don't think they're big enough to have such an important expo dedicated solely to their products.

Re:may 22nd

[Glytch]

Maybe it's the fact that I'm reading Illuminatus right now and my brain is scrambled, but doesn't that seem like a very curious date? The fifth month, with the 23rd in the middle of the conference. I think Eris is a Doom fan.

Re:may 22nd

[Loligo]

>>electronic arts expo
>That would be Electronic Entertainment Expo

Woah. Geek meme alert. I've seen that before.

EA's big, but they're not a xerox of band-aid or anything.

-l

Quake, still my fav.

[ekool]

Quake, to this day is still my favorite.

Sure, I loved Doom 1 -- I first started playing on my 386sx25, postage stamp sized screen in low detail... i could tell when someone was shooting at me because the screen turned red. I would swivel in a circle until i saw flashing :)

Then, my upgrade to an SLC2/66 -- Still couldnt run full screen full detail, but it was much better...

Lots of late nights playing co-op over my v.fc zoom modem (sysop special)

Playing 4 player doom2 over modem (APCi add on, lotsa money, lotsa hardware needed) was awesome..

But, I'll never forget my first night playing doom. Sitting in my bedroom, sound going through my stereo, fire up the game and the first thing you hear is an awesome NIN song.... the ambient sounds were just awesome. The music couldnt have matched the maps better....

Monsters jumping out, sounds perfect... scare the hell out of you. I have never felt so immersed in my life while playing a game.

Thats just single player... multiplayer I spent more hours in that game then any other game ever. Alot of the mods kept it alive, especially TF before cheats became rampant.. If there was a cheat free version, I'd still be playing it today. Even the non GL version, since the "feel" was there, and it wasnt in the GL version.

I dont think id has ever come close to Quake as far as "feel" has come.. the mouse always feels not quite up to par, and the movement has been slightly 'off' since that engine... Just, nothing has ever felt right since then.

Its the small things that make all the difference.

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[Anonymous Coward]

"when first playing doom" ....

I think Nine Inch Nails did the music for Quake not Doom

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[Anonymous Coward]

But, I'll never forget my first night playing doom. Sitting in my bedroom, sound going through my stereo, fire up the game and the first thing you hear is an awesome NIN song....

Hmm, looks like you forgot already, yeah your memory is real good. (Dumbass).

NIN did the soundtrack for Quake, not Doom. Geez

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[theCURE]

Exactly, and i think the problem is making things more realistic. people don't want real, they want fast and smooth. It's all about reflexes, and i think Quake 1 shows it. Take a look back at streetfighter II and those types of games...even ms. pacman was a really fast game. They try to make it too realistic. the theory of running around shooting dumb guns and doing rocket jumps is all a falsehood anyway.

The game should be quick and engaging. What makes the new engines suck is the level of detail that was implemented at the cost of making everyhing slower. i want speed, pretty always comes second.

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[slakdrgn]

Aside from pointing out the obvious (NiN music was in quake, not doom, and I could tell that u ment quake)..

I loved playing quake, when I got the demo of Quake, it was right when BBS' were starting to loose their userbase, but still had the many dedicated sysops and users.. I'd play the hell outta it with some fellow sysops via modem, kickin ass, finding mods via the internet (which was limited at the time, atleast compared to today) and kickin ass with the sticky bombs and all the goodies..

Even to this day, quake hasn't lost its feel, I even fire it up from time to time on an old laptop that I know will run it, (currently running my car mp3 player.. I know I know, I'm a theif or copyright violator.. blah blah..) and just blow a few monsters/dogs/enforcers away ;)

I still say it'll be interesting when DOOM III will come out, I remember reading in the beta groups in fidonet that Quake was actually suppose to be Doom III (look at the story line and some of the similiarties..) anyways, I'm outta here.. good to have a trip down memory lane ;)

peace,
~slakdrgn

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[ekool]

ya ya, everyone makes mistakes.

Hell, that was a long as time ago, if my memory is even that close, i'm happy :)

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[ComputarMastar]

the mouse always feels not quite up to par, and the movement has been slightly 'off' since that engine... Just, nothing has ever felt right since then.

Thats because everything up to glQuake was DOS and in that OS you can poll the mouse as often as you want and always get the real current value. You could even get down to mouse mickeys (the best way, IMO, to do mouse control in a FPS). I remember Carmack bitching about the mouse when he converted over to Win32-native. The complaint, as I remember it, was that no matter how many times per second you poll, the driver only polls the hardware X times per second and theres no way to change that. Thats where hacks like m_filter came from. Hopefully, some day MS will write an OS from the ground up with gaming in mind instead of hacking gaming features into an OS designed to run business apps. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that though :/

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[pnatural]

if you liked TF, you might be interested in Q3F. It's Q3 based, obviously, but they just released a new version that is really slick. It's the most fun I've had playing a varient of TF since the original.

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[algernon7]

I had only seen doom once, in passing. I wasn't much of a computer person (shock) other than a rudimentary knowldge of Mac's for high school/college journalism, but I had played some nintendo, and was familiar enough to appreciate the coolness of doom and multiplayer in general. A while later a friend of mine loaned a me a NIN cd he said he had found in the gaming section. He was aware there was a demo on it, but bought it for the music (he be big fan). I didn't have a computer either, but I was dating a girl who worked at a place that did... The three of us went there one night, she unlocked the door, and we loaded it onto her boss's computer (small office, hottest computer-I remember I loaded it in his quicken data). I hadn't checked in on the whole 'desktop pc' revolution in a while, and the first time I figured out mouse-look was pretty...other-worldly. Later I graduated to grabbing ip's from websites (it took me forever to learn how to cut-and-paste, I'm ashamed to say - hours of hunching over a daily planner and trying to read off a server so i can type in 'connect...'), and then quakespy. Actually, before that there was the little program that let you click on a link on a website and it would open quake to the server...what was that called? But the big moment in quake for me was when I downloaded that stupid dog. Talk about altering my reality. I tried quark and made a pyramid... not very playable but you could tell what shape I was going for...And then I got Team Fortress and lived in the basement with a chain gun, staring at the wall for what seemed like hours. Now we've got voice chat and gamespy arcade and aim-bots and clans. /insert crotchety old voice here -- kids these days

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom? NiN?

Doom had some awesome atmospheric music but it was midi based.

Re:Quake, still my fav.

[billcopc]

Oh lordy! Finally I learn I'm not alone.

I still to this day pull out my Quake1 disc and fire it up (in GL though). When Q2 came out, it 'felt' so drastically different I didn't really like it at first. Even to this day I lack better words to describe it, but the first Quake was 'juicier'.

Shoot a guy with a rocket launcher, he turns into a pound of ground beef on the floor. Do the same in Q1, you've got 40 pounds of chunked steak flying around and a gallon of blood dripping from the airborne viscera, all happening just a tad slower than you'd expect it to. The game had a slightly slow-motion thing to it, while Q2 was pure mouse-twitching turbo. The slowness (say, 75% of reality) is what gave the game attitude. Realism wasn't a factor, it was all about attitude. What's real about fighting zombies in hell anyway ? Screw reality, been there and done that. I want something different!

And then Quake 3 came out, and I bought a Geforce2 the week it came out just to get that little edge in the game. It had rediscovered some of the juicy bouncy feel of Quake 1, though I was disappointed at the lack of a single player mission. Shooting CPU opponents was fun but didn't come close to the enjoyment a well scripted monster-bash would have provided. I still play Q3 to this day, two years later. I still like it more than UT or HalfLife. I've been waiting for Doom 3 since the first time I heard about it. I hope it'll be faithful to the mood of its predecessors, because that's what Doom means to me : pure mood!

The question now...

[leereyno]

..is just how long it will be before nitwits start trying to blame various acts of real-life violence or mayhem on the fact that some of the perpetrators might have played this game, especially if said perpetrators were younger than the magical mystical age of 18. This age is such a wonderous one. It is the point when everyone suddenly becomes a responsible adult accountable for their own actions, except of course when you spill your coffee in which case it is McDonald's fault. If you're under this age then things like Doom and Quake are bad for you because you're "impressionable." They are so bad for you in fact that if you play them you are (insert made up statistic here) times more likely to commit a violent act! They promote hate-thought, hate-speech, hate-crimes, racism, sexism, classism, dwarfism, and even autism! The whole world would be a better place if everyone turned in all their bad, bad guns, and just did what Big Brother^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H their benevolent government overseers told them to.

Mod me down, call me flame bait, I'm not here for asskissing anyway.

Lee

Re:The question now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, another "I'm sure they'll mod me down" comment, despite expressing viewpoints that are unanimously cheered every time this topic gets brought up. Instant karma. Way to go.

uh-oh

[r00tarded]

hope this isnt a press release about layoffs at Id.

Re:Carmack's Lack of Programming Skills

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing Doom 2 to UT? Hahahahaha.. pathetic.. Please, learn something about id and Epic before judging. I laughed out loud for quite a few minutes after reading your ignorant blather.

Re:Ho hum. Looks lame.

[Have Blue]

Those screenshots were taken off a Quicktime stream of last year's Macworld SF keynote. Anything would look like ass after that.

Nuh-uh!

[delta407]

First, id Software's site is updated for the first time since the Quake II times

You seem to have missed the news articles from March and April... unless, of course, we are still living in Quake II times.

Re:Nuh-uh!

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Well, in the land of GPL, we are still in Quake II times until Quake III's engine gets GPLed.

Re:Nuh-uh!

[spike hay]

What open-sourcers need to do is just build a top-of-the-line engine for ourselves, instead of relying in Id Software's outdated Q2 engine. It would be a project, yes, but it would kick the arse of the souped-up quake 2 that is under development right now..

Re:Nuh-uh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Crystal Space

Re:Nuh-uh!

[spike hay]

looks tight

It's been announced before

[OblongPlatypus]

Aside from the original .plan update from Carmack, there's been at least one official press release announcing Doom III before. This is just one of those "it's getting closer to release date so let's announce it again to make sure people haven't forgotten about us" press releases.

Re:It's been announced before

[Anonymous Coward]

This announced the official name (which was unknown until now) and the distributor. Everybody already knew the were working on the game, and that was not the point of the press release. One only had to actually READ the announcement before posting.

Re:Carmack's Lack of Programming Skills

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that is true that he uses 1960's style coding stuff like a "r_" prefix indicates this is a function in the rendering API (no objects, just a bunch of header files with global functions).

But, his shit runs faster than UT simply because of this very fact. C++ is 2-3x slower than C in most applications.

old news?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you take a look at the shareprices over the last few days, you wont even notice a ripple when the announcement took place.

Do the pencil pushers know this kind of information before the geeks?

What about the tomb levels?

[roystgnr]

Don't tell me you weren't at least a little creeped out by the zombie soldiers breaking through the walls or rising up from the fog. I admit, I did the "late night, lights off, volume up" thing myself to try and enhance the atmosphere, but for at least one level the RtCW guys did pretty good by themselves.

Re:What about the tomb levels?

[Jaeden]

I'll second that. I absolutely hated the catacombs, basically because they really creeped me out.

The only other FPS level that ever did that to me was the original DOOM, the level with the secret maze and the chainsaw. Running around in the dark like that got the pulse going.

Re:What about the tomb levels?

[Phexro]

Maybe I wasn't clear. I really liked RtCW a lot. The catacombs creeped me right out.

My point was that I don't enjoy the original Wolf3D games as much since I played RtCW. They just look too cheesy, and it just doesn't get my blood pumping the way that RtCW.

Re:What about the tomb levels?

[mobets]

The first time I played the second episode in Quake. I had gotten home pretty late from work (retail sucks) I was tired, and it was dark. I wanted to play it since I had bought it that night. I put my headphones on so I wouldn't wake any one. I could hear the dog around the coner. I knew it was there, but when it jumped out of the darkess at me, I went throught the roof. I think that creepy CD Audio added a lot to the atmosphere as well.

Re:What about the tomb levels?

[Ed Avis]

The only thing that I found creepy in a computer game was the sound of laser fire in Elite. Something about the blackness and emptiness of space, and then you hear this noise. As it says in the manual:

Laser fire striking the defensive shields makes a light screeching sound. Listen for laser fire striking the hull direct. Through damaged screens it makes a low, screeching sound. DANGER.

Of course it has to be the original BBC speaker sound: other versions of the game on machines with better sound hardware just don't sound as creepy.

It probably helps to have a slightly underheated room, too.

Re:What about the tomb levels?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the first Unreal, the spiral tower with spiders jumping out... I really hated that, but I had to go through to get to the next level. I really dreaded that level.

The key to restarting the tech economy

[Brian Stretch]

Yes, Doom 3 could do it. Betcha it comes out right about the time people are looking for a way to justify buying nVidia's latest & greatest and AMD's shiny new ClawHammer. Surely they'll do a x86-64 compile? Millions will buy new gear to play the game in all its glory. Hooray, we are saved!...

...but then tech worker productivity will plummet for the next month, the Internet will crash from millions playing Deathmatch, the federal deficit will skyrocket, and the whole economy goes into the crapper. Damn, I knew there had to be a catch.

Screw it. Pass the railgun, lock & load.

Re:The key to restarting the tech economy

[minusthink]

"...but then tech worker productivity will plummet for the next month, the Internet will crash from millions playing Deathmatch, the federal deficit will skyrocket, and the whole economy goes into the crapper. Damn, I knew there had to be a catch. "

right.. but there'll be a mainstream 64-bit processor? clearly, the good outweighs the bad.

Re:The key to restarting the tech economy

[JavaJones]

Try Longhorn, the next major iteration of MS's super-fabouloso OS line. When your OS starts requiring a 3D accelerator, you know there's gonna be some major upgrading afoot.

- JavaJones

C++ is supposed to be better??

[leereyno]

I don't even know where to begin. Only someone who didn't understand anything about compilers and the hinderance that unnecessary abstraction creates would make the statment that C++ is better for programming games. C++ is fine for applications that don't squeeze the last drop of performance out of a system because memory usage and overhead are considered acceptable trade-offs. But for real programming the only way to go is hand optimized C and assembly. C++ just makes programs EASIER to write, it doesn't generate superior code by any stretch of the imagination.

Lee

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[dakoda]

Way to go! it's nice to see someone who agrees with me when i say c++ is slower than c =) c++ is for lazy programmers (or coders with a deadline ;^)

i don't know, was q3 and friends written with assembly (i know q1 was, and im fairly sure q2 was as well)? i haven't really kept up.

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[aardvarkjoe]

Since when are "applications that don't squeeze the last drop of performance out of a system" not qualified as real programming? For the most part, remember, CPU speed isn't the big bottleneck that it used to be; the overhead involved in using C++, in most instances, isn't particularly important, even in gaming.

Now, the whole 'C++ is better than C' notion is rather silly (of course, since you were replying to a troll, it's not like anyone was claiming it anyway), but stop slinging the FUD about. It's not a matter of one is slow, and one is fast -- it's a matter of picking the right tool for the job.

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[MisterBlister]

You're living in the mid to late 90s, pal.

Quite a lot of games (including Doom III -- look I'm on topic!) use some amount of C++ these days. Even console games (discounting the GBA, of course).

The days of C++ being a performance killer on your average system, with your average compiler, are long since over. I won't make the silly claim that C++ is faster than hand-written assembly, but I will make the claim that well written C++ code can be just as fast as well written C code, as long as the programmer knows what he's doing and makes proper use of inline functions, watches out for over-expansion of templates, etc.

And lastly, C++'s job isn't to make things easier to write (ala Java with its GC or Visual Basic)...and C++ is actually much harder to use well than C is, since its a helluva lot more complex.

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[Vulture_]

Memory usage and overhead are not considered acceptable tradeoffs? Hand-optimized assembly?! Are you out of your fucking mind??? We are not running games on 386/16 machines anymore, 3D rendering is not done in software anymore, and MS-DOS is not the only operating system you'll ever run games on! Portability, extensibility, and maintainability are far more important than squeezing an extra 0.25 fps out of your machine, and thanks to hardware 3D acceleration (a concept that seems completely alien to you), 0.25 fps is about all you're going to get from hand-optimized assembly.

Oh yeah, and today's optimizing compilers are not the pieces of crap you had back in the early 90s. Today's optimizing compilers often produce code that's far more efficient than most hand-optimized assembly. I imagine even John Carmack would be hard-pressed to produce assembly that's more efficient than what today's compilers can produce.

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Take it to comp.arch. Smart compilers often beat "smart" programmers and that is a common discussion over there.

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[Anonymous Coward]

q1,q2,q3 were 99% pure C (why all are vey portable), 1% asm (mainly for q3 vm stuff).

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[mochan_s]

You must have been in a coma for the last 6-7 years. All the hardcore graphics stuff is now in OpenGL and on the silicon on the graphics board.

The main purpose of the game engine is now to use the graphics library properly and make the engine interactive and also, modular for people to add mods on it.

The C++ complier does make a few more tables and a few extra memory references in C++. But, look at modern day CPU architechure with large caches. The slowdown is very little. Also, engineers have been working hard on the C++ compiler optimizations that a lot of the critical stuff (tight loops where the program spends 90% of it's time) can be turned into C equivalent code.

Re:C++ is supposed to be better??

[Anonymous Coward]

If C++ makes programs easier to write it is better, even for games. The faster you can get a game out without bugs the better. If not you end up with development times like Max Payne..

GPU

[rodolfo.borges]

I've sold my geforce2 just 'cause I wanted NOT to waste much time in games. In fact I was waiting for Doom III to buy _the right_ 3D card for it.
Now the time has come.. wich one is it?

(PS: as for the rest of the system, I hope my Athlon 950/256Mb will do)

Re:GPU

[wackybrit]

In fact I was waiting for Doom III to buy _the right_ 3D card for it. Now the time has come.. wich one is it?

Don't get too excited, my friend. Don't expect to see Doom III for quite some time. No dates have been mentioned yet, and it might not even be out by Christmas.

That said, Carmack has said a good GeForce 3 will run the game at a 'playable' frame rate.. but that might only be at 800x600. A super top-of-the-range GeForce 4 should see you okay.

However, since you don't want to play games, and Doom III won't be out for ages anyway, why not just wait until a few weeks before its out and then buy whatever you can afford? You'll probably want to get up into Athlon 1400+ territory too, and some DDR memory wouldn't hurt either ;-).. it's gunna need some serious memory bandwidth.

Re:GPU

[parkanoid]

The new 3Dlabs card might just do the trick

Re:GPU

[rodolfo.borges]

Don't get too excited, my friend. Don't expect to see Doom III for quite some time. No dates have been mentioned yet, and it might not even be out by Christmas.

• 
  But, but.. they said it's going to be released on this year's E3, or did I read it wrong?
  
  Cut'n'pasted from www.idsoftware.com:
  DOOM III is currently in development for the PC and will debut at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Activision's booth #1224 in the South Hall.
  

Re:GPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, that just means they'll have a playable demo available at the show. I don't expect to see it until around Christmas time.

Re:GPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Go with an NV30 based card. Theyll be out this fall. Its NVIDIAs next generation chip. It will make GF4s look slow.

Re:GPU

[TPOCdeucalion]

A super top-of-the-range GeForce 4 should see you okay.

as far as i know, John Carmack gave up developing stuff with/for geforce 4, because they (nvidia) changed something in the architecture of the gf4.
the geforce 3 will do just fine, but i'd rather recommend to wait for the geforce 5 with John Carmack garuanteeing doom III running on it.

greetz,
deucalion

PS: someone @ id-software (maybe its been J.C., dunno) wrote that about the geforce4 in his .plan-file...

Re:GPU

[Rothron the Wise]

You're getting things confused. Carmack bitched about the GF4 MX-series not having any pixel-shader and vertex-shader functionality, and recommended people not to buy those cards, at least not for playing doom III.

The GF4 Ti-series is a different matter. They are basically souped up GF3s and will be able to run Doom III just fine, at least faster than GF3s.

Still, I'd wait to see whatever card is best when Doom III is released.

Re:GPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Carmack bitched about the GF4 MX-series not having any pixel-shader and vertex-shader functionality, and recommended people not to buy those cards, at least not for playing doom III.

You're right. The GF4 MX is basically a souped up GeForce 2.. whereas the non-MX range are souped up GeForce 3's ;-)

Officially announced means

[Screaming Lunatic]

It means that they found a publisher, which is Activision. Having a publisher means they can put on a better show at E3. id definitely did not want to go to E3 without a publisher. Activision does what it is good at: marketing. id does what it is good at: making cool shit. The Activision deal should not be a surprise since they also published RtCW.

Re:Officially announced means

[OblongPlatypus]

The Activision deal should not be a surprise since they also published RtCW.

..and Doom II, and Quake, and Quake II, and Quake III, and..

Re:Officially announced means

[VoiceOfRaisin]

"The Activision deal should not be a surprise since they also published RtCW.

..and Doom II, and Quake, and Quake II, and Quake III, and"

wrong. Doom II and Quake were NOT published by Activision.

Re:Officially announced means

[OblongPlatypus]

You're probably right. I blame the mistake on gamers.com.

Re:Officially announced means

[Chris Pimlott]

wrong. Doom II and Quake were NOT published by Activision.

Doom II was distributed by GT Interactive. Quake was initially distributed entirely by id Software (remember those 'locked shareware' CDs?); I think GTI was involved with the later boxed versions.

Re:Officially announced means

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody ever read the DOOM series of sci-fi books? Excellent hard sci-fi.

Re:Officially announced means

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think Doom 3 really needs marketing?

Re:Officially announced means

[ThatComputerGuy]

They better not try to pull the gayness they did with Q3A (and maybe RTCW?) where you had to enter your credit card info to prove that you're over 18, just so you can download the goddamn demo from Activision, one of the few working sites.

Re:Officially announced means

[Anonymous Coward]

wasn't that the paul mod-dweeb guy, on the planet with lots of sand and that drug that made everyone look like they had freaky eyes?

Re:Officially announced means

[billcopc]

I fail to see why id would need a publisher at this point. Aren't they big enough to handle their own marketing and distribution ? That would leave them with more money in the bank to afford resources for their next project (and supporting their existing ones). How hard can it be to get those boxes out to the big warehouses when you're already a market leader ? Publishing houses are great for small-time developers like myself, but the revenue split it a serious thorn in the side.

Re:Officially announced means

[Screaming Lunatic]

"The Ferraris are only gravy, honest?" -- John Carmack"

I don't think they care too much about money. Management wise, id has a CEO by the name of Todd Hollenshead. Other than that everyone is pretty much either a programmer, or an artist. They don't have the manpower to publish or market. And I don'ty think they want to publish or market.

Hmm, if the web site is the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOVED Doom 1 & II, totally addicative. But I followed you link to the website.. What a load of (thing which comes in loads).

Try viewing it at 1600*1280 - tiny scrolling boxes, fonts too small to read - at least this time of night.

Have they lost the plot, or just outsourced to mindless idiots who can't afford a halfway decent system.

Ah well, perhaps it looks goof on 640*480. Call it a time warp.

Yo, you, ID! Not a good advert of skills, we know you know better.

Re:Hmm, if the web site is the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

True.

I have the same res (1600x1200) and Id's site is unreadable.

Re:Hmm, if the web site is the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

what kind of fucked up non-standard resolution is 1600x1280? maybe the fonts are too small because your resolution is too high for your monitor, dumbass.

Re:Hmm, if the web site is the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they lost the plot, or just outsourced to mindless idiots

Well, their website does run Microsoft-IIS, so what do you expect?

Quake 4

[Metrollica]

Quake 4 is also being developed. Here's an old press release

EGM has a story that Doom3 might be released for the XBox first and then later for the PC. MS is also trying to get exclusive Xbox rights for Quake 4.

And now some Q4 screenshots screenshots. Although they may not be the best of quality.

DOOM is what turned me into a geek...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't for DOOM 1 and 2, I probably wouldn't be the CS major and full-time geek I am now.

All those days of editing config files and especially creating my own levels that many of my friends have played -- that's what made me love the command-line, what later led me to love *nix, what made me realize the true power of computers.

John Carmack, thank you for paving the way to my future.

This has all been hashed out many times

[Chirs]

Go read some of the FAQs on the C++ newsgroups and sites.

C++, when programmed well, is about the same speed as C when programmed well. However, it offers various ways of improving programming when properly handled.

Look at the Boost++ library as an example of using C++ to get levels of numerical performance near to Fortran--which was almost impossible with plain C.

Re:This has all been hashed out many times

[rreyelts]

Look at the Boost++ library as an example of using C++ to get levels of numerical performance near to Fortran--which was almost impossible with plain C.

Either you're confused or had a temporary brain-fart. Boost is a library of classes, algorithms, and other features that, in a general consensus, developers feel should be added to the standard C++ library. Blitz++ is a numerical computing library based heavily on C++ template expressions and specialization.

Re:This has all been hashed out many times

[Chirs]

Oops. Brain fart. I meant Blitz++.

Finally a new version ...

[laxian]

... so that for future school shootings ... when the media mentions that the kids played "video games like Doom", they will be talking about something that modern kids *actually* do.

Re:Finally a new version ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, I doubt the media will update their video clips to Doom III. They don't mind showing a man killing himself on national tv for ratings, but a scary video game... Well that would just be too violent for the masses...

Should be called Doom IV

[Moderator]

Why aren't they calling this Doom IV? Wasn't Final Doom the third game in the Doom series?

Re:Should be called Doom IV

[slakdrgn]

Final Doom was more (if I understand correctly) a complation of levels and a mod of some of the mods out there.. also there was engine (minor, I know) changes between doom and doom2, final doom was basically doom2 with some new wads.. it was badly put toghter at that.. atleast in my opinion

Doom was alright...

[PepsiProgrammer]

I never really got into doom, sure the graphics were pretty good at the time, but I always thought wolfenstein was the better game, dont really know why though, just had an air about it

Re:Doom was alright...

[laserjet]

Doom had better graphics than wolfenstein, no question about it.

I liked wolfensten better because I thought killing nazis was better than killing monsters, thus I coulc play wolfenstein for hours.

Re:Doom was alright...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not trolling but I enjoy killing the allies equally much, the nazi soldier should not be held culpable to what occured unbeknownst to him. The nazis were cool, they had superior weapons, training, and tactics. They lost really in numbers only.

FreeBSD port

[Anonymous Coward]

All right! Doom is my favorite all time game.
I hope they will do a FreeBSD port this time.

Re:FreeBSD port

[puckhead]

bwahahahahahaa

Now with Borg Implants

[Alien54]

I can see this now, special inputs for those of you with Borgified implants

extra creepy crawly skin sensations, programmed just for you by those wonderful game programmers.

Especially good when you are hiding in a corner, trying to stay perfectly still in ambush.

Doom question

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell are you supposed go up that rising tower at the end with shit being blasted at you?

That's UNPOSSIBLE!

Can you finish DOOM without a rocket launcher?

Eh?

[MisterBlister]

Doom III? What is that?

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're dumb.

DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[squarooticus]

I know I speak for a lot of old-timers (yeah, I'm a geezer at 26) who agree with me that the new games just don't have the atmosphere the old games had.

Doom was and still is my favorite first-person shooter because it had great music and horrifying imagery in addition to great gameplay and the prototype deathmatch.

Remember the first time you saw one of the damned marines twitching, impaled on a pole? Remember the first time a Baron of Hell surprised you to death with some green spooge? Or the first time a Cyberdemon tore you a new bunghole in about 2 seconds with blast from his missile launcher? Or how incredible you felt rampaging your way through level 7 of Episode II with the tune to "Behind the Crooked Cross" by Slayer acting as a Wagner-like anthem to your greatness?

Doom rocked. The new games are all substance (great 3D graphics, immaculate sound) and no style.

Re:DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[King_TJ]

Hmm... I'm not even sure it's so much "atmosphere" as it is originality. When games like Doom (or even Duke Nukem 3D) came out, they were so much fun because you never knew what was going to happen next. The weapons were mostly "never seen/done before", and the enemies would truly scare you as you kept running into more and more powerful ones with new tricks up their sleeves.

This whole 3D shooter genre has been done and re-done so many times now, I think we've gotten to the point where we've seen everything. Tricks like grenades you could toss and detonate with a second click of the mouse aren't "awesome" anymore. It's not exciting anymore when you push on a secret wall or walk over a sequence of buttons on the floor that open up a new room. All that's left is to keep incrementally improving the graphics resolution, and make good use of surround sound.

When they attempt to improve things by adding more storyline (movie sequences/intermissions), that's not even so great anymore. It is, after all, still supposed to be an action game. Those cut scenes just make for more B.S. to click past and slow down the loading of the next level. There was a time when people watched those in awe, just to see the "real-life" graphics quality of them. Nowdays, everyone's seen full-screen multimedia - and we just don't care anymore.

Re:DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[mojo-raisin]

hmmm... well I'm also 26, and I've gone back and tried to play Marathon, that was so amazing in late '94/early '95, and I couldn't even play it for very long. Games are *much* better now.

Re:DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[jcsehak]

I dunno, i think there's plenty of original stuff they could do--they just aren't doing it. I heard from friends how Tribes and Tribes 2 are all team-based, but it never came out for the Mac (or Linux AFAIK), so I was SOL. I'd love to see:

1. More team-based games. How cool would it be to be in a humvee, one guy driving, another at the machine gun, perhaps trying to destroy a tank with 6 guys in it, each doing the job of whatever those 6 guys do in a real tank. Or, *drool*, how about one guy flying the millenium falcon, and two others at each gun, like in the movie? Or any other jet or spaceship, for that matter.

2. Why not add the quake engine to everquest? Right now, EQ is boring, because you just click "attack" over and over again to kill something. But what if you had to be good at mouse-and-keyboard coordination in addition to just having a sword +82? This could partially eliminate newbies buying high-level characters on ebay, because they'd find they're no match for a player 5 levels lower with great m&k skills. Maybe when you get 1000 frags then your strength goes up 1, or something. This actually might be what these guys are up to; I haven't explored the site enough to find out exactly what the game will be like.

3. How about some scheduled large campaigns that emulate great battles of history? You could pick, say, a decisive civil war battle, find out how many people were involved, and once you had enough people signed up, schedule it for a week later. It might be tricky to get it to be fun, but it could be a great way to learn first-hand (well, 1.5st hand) about history. Hell, why not have history classes of rival high schools or universities fight it out?

4. I want to see a EQ-Quake game involving pirates. You'd get a crew (like a clan) together, get a ship, and look for merchant ships that you could attack and plunder. Or you could attack other pirates and steal their loot. Of course, you'd have to constantly keep on the lookout for the British navy. OR (ooo, this could be really cool), you get a bunch of friends together and buy a ship for like $50-100 real money. Your skill at capturing merchant ships would determine if you were able to plunder enough booty to pay for your initial investment. Alternatively, it could be just a pirate vs. pirate thing, and the publisher could simply take a small % of everyone's loot to pay for hosting fees, servers, etc. That way, it could be worked so that people didn't have to pay those annoying monthly membership fees. It would almost be like gambling! Would the feds step in if it was? What great press that might be!

These games could all look like ass, I wouldn't care. It's all about gameplay. How refreshing would it be to have a new game come out that you didn't need to buy a new computer to play?

Oh well, it was nice ranting, but I guess I'll go back to looking at screenshots, saying "ooh, that looks pretty," and playing tetris, infocom games, and pong.

Re:DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, yeah, the old games were fresher. Honestly, there is still life in the first person shooter--we just need somebody to do something creative with something besides the graphics and/or engine.

Re:DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[Phexro]

"..Tribes and Tribes 2 are all team-based, but it never came out for the Mac (or Linux AFAIK)..."

Loki ported Tribes 2 to Linux. You can probably find it pretty cheap now. here's a petition to port it to Mac OS X.

Re:DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[platypus]

You really should take a look at
Operation Flashpoint

I haven't played the multiplayer yet, but it should be exactly what you mention in your point 1 and someway covers 3 too.
Extremely realistic damages (1 hit can kill you, 2 will), enourmous areas - each level is on one of three islands, which have several towns and can be travelled freely.
Yes, you can cross the whole island by feed, but it will take half an hour or so.
You will have to drive cars, planes, tanks etc, and can do that in the game at your will. Just enter a parking car (if you have the keys) and drive away.
Tanks need three people for using them optimally (commander, driver, cannon).
Mix in the multiplayer mode, and you are there.

Re:DOOM and DOOM II were all about atmosphere

[sniggly]

How cool would it be to be in a humvee, one guy driving, another at the machine gun, perhaps trying to destroy a tank with 6 guys in it, each doing the job of whatever those 6 guys do in a real tank.

You need operation flashpoint if you want to sit with three people in a tank, driver, gunner & commander. Or a jeep with a machine gun mount. Or a helicopter with pilot & gunner. It's great fun!

Play jDoom just for kicks...

[antdude]

If you can't stand the original DOOM graphics, then try JDoom with pretty graphics and effects. I had a blast replaying episode 1, 2, and DOOM II. It uses the original WAD files so you still need the original DOOM games!

Sorry, no Linux port (only Windows) :(. Bug the author for one though ;).

Re:Play jDoom just for kicks...

[Soul-Burn666]

Tell you the truth? I'm a gamer, and i've played tons of the new games, but when I got JDoom, I didn't stop playing it till I finished it. It's great! If you don't care for graphics / unrealistic maps, but for PURE atmosphere and gameplay, JDoom pays off.

Re:Play jDoom just for kicks...

[antdude]

DOOM rocks :).

Re:Play jDoom just for kicks...

[Junta]

http://legacy.newdoom.com/ is more interesting to me, it runs under linux.

Re:Play jDoom just for kicks...

[antdude]

Junta: I tried that one before. I just didn't like staring at the sprite images :). The polygon models in jDoom rock.

When?

[Anonymous Coward]

When is it coming out?

When can we expect a demo?

Re:When?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as you might already have expected - when it is done.

Doomiii

[Anonymous Coward]

The genre requires some real groundbreaking elements, the great Doom achieved this with pre-existing technology(more or less) no state-of -the -art sound card and/or graphic card required or multiscan monitor with xxxx-xxxx resolution it was groundbreaking because of it's straight out the box approach, no extras required. It's hard to judge and debate a new game without comparing them to others, it's hard to judge a game that has become so configuable it's differences can become easily recognized on those high end machines and those difference aren't just graphical, the essence and "shock value" were quite high for a game of it's time. Image playing that game again for the first time. though It still crashed on the pentium 75 of mine and got no better than 1 fps, I liked it.

Re:Doomiii

[thomas.galvin]

Hardware was not being pushed to it's limit when Doom was released; esentially, Caramack said "let's see what these things can do." He was catching up to the capabilities of the machine.

That is no longer the case; we've seen pretty much everything that is possible without some sort of hardware acceleration. The machine is now catching up to the abilities of the prorammers.

Just about time

[borgesian]

holy, it was about time they came back to amuse us....i was about to point the BFG at my head...... Long live ID.

What makes Doom

[steveha]

The big question on my mind is whether this will really be a Doom game with modern technology, or whether it will really be another Quake with some scary trappings.

To me, the defining features that make Doom are:

Dozens of monsters swarming you all at once

Monsters that can be tricked into killing each other

Light and music providing atmosphere

All this talk of how pretty Doom III will be, and how you will need a GeForce 4 or Radeon 8500 to play it, are making me worry that maybe you will only see a small handful of monsters at a time (like Quake). I'm not too worried about the other points.

By the way, the screenshots reminded me a lot of the movie Aliens (the James Cameron sequel to Alien). I hope someone does a total conversion, or maybe they use the Doom III engine for an Aliens Vs. Predator game.

steveha

Re:What makes Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Monsters that can be tricked into killing each other

Oh, yes! I loved that, and miss it like crazy. I would restart over and over, until I could get the one big lug to smack the other bigger lug, then sit back and watch.

What other games ever had that? I guess HalfLife, sort of, with grunts vs aliens.

Re:What makes Doom

[Kwil]

The original Quake had that as well. Nothing better than to get a fiend fighting a zombie.

Keeps them both amused for hours.

Re:What makes Doom

[ilumits]

And don't forget the *speed*. Developers are so concerned with having players move at a realistic speed, that they forget that it's fun to whiz around a level at a pace faster than your mind can think.
Dozens of monsters swarming you all at once
Aye! The one current game I can think of that offers this is Serious Sam 2 (I'm sure the original does, as well, but I've yet to play it). An arcade-style romp that you don't need 53 fingers to play.

Re:What makes Doom

[ziggles]

i doubt we will see the dozens of monsters. if you want gameplay like that, Serious Sam 1 and 2 can satisfy your needs. from what i've heard doom iii looks to be a "make you crap your pants" kind of game. which is fine by me!

Re:What makes Doom

[Vireo]

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I read somewhere (I think it was an interview with Carmack) that Doom 3 will be so polygon-heavy that even the basic gamespeed will be slower (and more realistic, no more running at 30 mph) -- not to mention that there will be few monsters at once. Last year they mentionned a GeForce 3 as a minimum for the game.

However, you'll probably be delighted by the lighting and overall atmosphere, judging by last year's screenshots. Also, if I remember, dynamic lighting computations will allow tricks like a character half hidden in the shadows, slowly revealing himself as he moves; or incredible lights-behind-fans effects including shadows.

I think Carmack and the rest of id Software know very well that yet another no-plot, dumb-action Wolf/Doom/Quake-like game will be badly perceived by the public; for my part, I wouldn't be surprised if Doom 3 is a story-driven game much closer to an interactive movie.

Re:What makes Doom

[Soul-Burn666]

"By the way, the screenshots reminded me a lot of the movie Aliens (the James Cameron sequel to Alien). I hope someone does a total conversion, or maybe they use the Doom III engine for an Aliens Vs. Predator game."

Man, don't wait, get Aliens VS Predator 2. It looks great and if you play as Human, in night, with headphones, you'll probably get a heart attack. It's really nice.

Re:What makes Doom

[Broccolist]

Although they're claiming it will have a story, I have serious doubts that the ID software team is capable of writing a decent storyline. Consider all their previous games, and Carmack's admission that (IIRC) he enjoys watching action movies and not much else. Not that I really care, since I rarely play games for the story, but if that's what you're expecting you probably shouldn't get your hopes up.

Re:What makes Doom

[yason]

To me, the defining features that make Doom are:
Dozens of monsters swarming you all at once

True.

Monsters that can be tricked into killing each other

True.

Light and music providing atmosphere

Well, kind of. I'd like to change this point to "Level Design". Having created dozens of Doom levels myself, having seen too many levels by authors who want them just look cool, I can say that the three episodes of the original Doom I were really well-thought and _playable_ and still superior, even to any iD levels seen in games using a variant of the original Doom engine. Level design is damn difficult. Designing a good, playable level is near impossible if you're in a rush. I'd say that creating the levels may take more time and is definitely more important than the 3D-engine, when it comes to the game as a whole. Level design is also one of the things that are easy to suck at. :P

(Quake's (1) levels weren't exactly bad either, but the gameplay was boring especially because of the first point you made.)

looking forward to technology

[mrm677]

I'm really looking forward to any product ID Software puts out. Why? Because they always raise the bar as far as 3D game engines go. However, I really don't enjoy ID games. Their forte is in graphics engines and not putting it all together. For example, I personally believe that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is superior to RTCW in every way (graphics, sound, multiplayer). And yes, I own both games.

Put this engine into the hands of a development house such as Raven Software, and you will see works of art!!

Re:looking forward to technology

[linzeal]

There is no blood in mohaa, that for me is still the reason I play rtcw 2-3x more.

Re:looking forward to technology

[mrm677]

There are several blood patches available.

Panic button.

[jarodss]

"Not sure whether to have it pop up a screenshot on screen, or pause and minimize"

Since you're going to put it in, why not do both?
Have it set in the prefrences that alow the user to load a gif/jpg/bmp/whatever into the game/memory or to select the minimize option.

Not much more coding involved right?

Re:Panic button.

[laserjet]

Yes, I agree with you. Like Linux, more choices is always more better.

Re:Panic button.

[smaug195]

Yeah, the problem is pause and minimize might take a while on slower PC's, so we will probably go with a jpeg or gif. Should not take more then 3 hours to code and I am sure many will appreciate it :).

Re:Panic button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why dont you have it put up a screenshot and minimize in hte background, then refresh the screen a few seconds later. With the right screenshot nobody will be able to tell the difference.

Re:Panic button.

[mentin]

What about the third option: grab content of the screen before the game run, and display it on boss key?

After your game suspends/minimizes, close this bitmap, so that the real desktop is displayed (which should be pretty close to your image).

Re:Panic button.

[Anonymous Coward]

you == sneeky. remind me not to hire you!

Soundtrack Announcement

[napa1m]

I really hope they make some sort of soundtrack announcement. As several of you have mentioned that NIN soundtrack really nailed the feeling of Quake and added tremendously to the game. I'd gladly welcome another NIN effort for Doom III... or how about Ministry this time?

Doom3 spurs on the next Tech economy!

[Apoptosis66]

I know this is going to sound rediculas but it is true, I have been planning my next computer purchase around the release of Doom3 for almost two years now. Hopefully that new Nvidia GPU is out before the game, I would also like a Hammer (or whatever they are calling it today) to go with it. I think Doom3 will be a big boost to computer sales. I remember going out and buying the first pentium computer just to play Doom 2 with my friends. Is Doom 3 going to increase anyone elses computer spending?

Re:Doom3 spurs on the next Tech economy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that has been my argument for the last years too!

Fully agreed.

Matrox G1000 (or nVidia NV30?)
AMD ClawHammer
Linux (or Win64?)

Re:Carmack's Lack of Programming Skills

[MisterBlister]

Actually, while Quake1/2 were written in C, the code was fairly object oriented, just using logical objects based on structs and segmented file-based modules as opposed to C++ interface/classes.

In any case, I've seen it mentioned in quite a few places the Doom III is using C++. Not all of the language, I'm sure, but at the very least its using C++ classes.

Re:Doom III - quarterlife

[flemflam]

So if what I think is funny is not funny someone with mod points, no one else ever gets to see it?

Hack time

[Anonymous Coward]

That's where the soldering iron comes in.

x86-64 and OpenGL 2 versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

John Carmack is realistically the only reason we have any OpenGL support from companies like ATI.

Will he release an OpenGL 2.0 targetted version of the game with more features for next generation cards like the one announced by 3DLabs or just release one version with half a dozen different rendering paths for all the different chips that can run the game to avoid favouring any company? Probably not because Windows will only be at version 1.1 of OpenGL, but maybe if he wants to see OpenGL 2.0 be viable instead of just DX9...

Is there a company more likely than id to release a downloadable x86-64 version of their game? I'll be interesting to see if x86-64 with all those other SSE registers can offer extra performance in a game... We've heard 5% more performance on average, will FPU intensive games be at the 0% range or really high?

You're not the only one in the minority

[Infonaut]

It seems to me that game series are in many ways akin to movie sequels. "If it worked the first time, it'll work again!"

Of course, with games, the technology gets that much better between sequels, so there is more to get excited about. But there are just so many first-person shooters, and essentially they are all the same. You go through levels, shooting people and things, picking up more powerful weapons, and shooting some more people and things.

Raw computing power has been driving the computer games industry for some time now, but I'm still waiting for the day when someone can come up with a truly engaging VR game that isn't based on the same, tired formula.

Flame away ;-)

What do you mean 1992 Wolfenstien?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, its all bunk. The REAL Wolfenstien is played on APPLE ]['s.

Re:What do you mean 1992 Wolfenstien?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the REAL diablo is played on *BSD

/usr/games/hack

;)

The C++ code isn't the bottleneck.

[Christopher Thomas]

I don't even know where to begin. Only someone who didn't understand anything about compilers and the hinderance that unnecessary abstraction creates would make the statment that C++ is better for programming games. C++ is fine for applications that don't squeeze the last drop of performance out of a system because memory usage and overhead are considered acceptable trade-offs. But for real programming the only way to go is hand optimized C and assembly.

The bottleneck for all games for the past 5 years or so has been the graphics card, for the machines most gamers play new releases on.

The graphics libraries are already written in hand-tuned assembly where needed. This is the domain of the graphics card manufacturers (or the driver companies they contract to do it, but I digress).

I would be surprised if the CPU breaks a sweat when running game engine code, so writing it in C++ makes a _lot_ of sense, as *well-written* C++ is more modular (and thus more maintainable and extensible) than C.

Triangle transformation libraries and so forth in the engine could easily be written in inline assembly if they're under enough load to justify the obfuscation. C++ supports this too, you know.

In summary, I think your complaints about using C++ in game engine code are unfounded.

Re:The C++ code isn't the bottleneck.

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, the Doom/Quake mainly used C with some 30% assembly code.

C++ handles assembly just as well as vanilla C.

But...

[Nickovsky]

What if your boss wants to see what you are working on!?

Re:But...

[algernon7]

/resume be sure to point out your health, and what level you are on

Re:But...

[Squareball]

Do what I do.. move the mouse and say "oh this damn thing locked up again!" and then hit reset! ;) Works every time. AND it got me a new work computer because they were convinced mine was too "old" and locked up too much because of it.

System Req's...

[Wheaty18]

All your resources are belong to us.

Yeah I know, but it's late, give me a break ;)

I missed counter strike

[CrazyJim0]

I'm poised to jump on the next FPS.

I designed a few revolutionary FPS.(not developed)
1 is based on a huge world with random terrain and major bases that give resources and points... So you're scouring a devastated world in search of power...

The other is an RTS crossed with a FPS where you build an army from your bunker, and their AI (which u develop or download) fights along side you... While you try and nix your opponent's bunker.

That's nice, but i'd rather like to know

[zurmikopa]

Will idkfa still work?

I may no longer use cheat codes, but nostalgia will force me to try this one.

Re:That's nice, but i'd rather like to know

[mobets]

There was at least one game, maybe Heretic, where idkfa would kill you. So, be carful... :)

You have absolutely no clue...

[Anonymous Coward]

... where the performance tradeoffs actually are in game coding, do you?

I didn't think so.

The only people here less wit-ful than you are the mods who ranked this a 4.

Great

[trollbot]

So, how long until we start seeing Doom III inspired school shootings?

Render Process

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard they were waiting on announcing until Carmack figured out how to set up a Beowulf cluster for the render farm. That guy should let Romero take care of the technical aspects and just managed the business side like in the old days. Daikatana will go down as the best game of the decade once people get done bad mouthing Romero for having the drive to tell ID what they are doing wrong and head off on his own!

iD is Flash

[mojo-raisin]

Because reading the idsoftware site requires flash, and some of us dont' have flash installed.

Re:iD is Flash

[Saib0t]

wrong: http://www.idsoftware.com/index.php?flash=false try for yourself...

Although I have to admit I'm pretty disapointed it doesn't render correctly with Mozilla :(

Re:iD is Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

mozilla rc1, renders fine here.

ok... but

[Ender Ryan]

Yeah, people always say that, however practice often proves different than theory. For their entire existence, the Quake engines have been far superior to any other engine no matter what language they are written in.

Interestingly, the Quake engines have also proven to be far, far more stable and portable.

Given that Carmack has consistently developed the best gaming engines, I'd say he probably knows what he's doing.

Re:ok... but

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that Carmack has consistently developed the best gaming engines, I'd say he probably knows what he's doing.

Yes, and that is using the best tool available for the job at the present time. In 1996, it was C and i386 ASM. In 2002, C++ has progressed to the point where it is viable not only for its flexibility, but the performance issues have long been hashed out. C++ is the next logical step from the C and hand-optimized engines of old.

Not to call people who love C luddites (I hack in C too and avoid C++ when possible), but sometimes a newer tool really _can_ be superior.

Re:ok... but

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a flame in any way, please keep that in mind.

Yes, the Quake engines have been the fastest. You know why? Because they are "hacks". There are hardly any comp-sci style solutions in there (read: not more complicated than they need to be just to be more flexible). Most pure computer science people would cringe when looking at the Quake source. The solution is not always elegant, usually not flexible, but it's always damn fast.

Holy shit...

[AnimeFreak]

If a single movie can cost an economy $300,000,000 in a single day, just imagine what Doom III will cost when it is released.

The economy will lose that amount every day for the next four months after the release. :D

doom3 Is already out !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, its called Serious Sam !!! Its better and much more mindless then the first 2 dooms. Really though, I had a peek at those screenshots for doom 3... what shit. Can't ID ever learn, I'd didn't soup op my computer to play a corridor game thats too dark to ever see the detail.

HL and SS, nice bright colors, daylight, big fights. No more dungons...

Just waiting for some good Serious Sam mods, ya know, plot and story.... I know it's possible...its a beautiful engine....just check out those wide open spaces never seen anything like it before

Re:doom3 Is already out !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, hl and ss have no environment. doom1/2 were utterly scary when I played em. Have yet to experience that in many other games (cept maybe some quake2, q3 mods, and moh mb).

Carmack is writing C++ now

[Anonymous Coward]

'Nuff said.

ditto

[mojo-raisin]

n/t

FPS Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the guys at ID completely out of idea's for their latest and greatest rendering engine.

Why rehash an old idea like DOOM with new graphics. The latest Castle Wolfenstien was nice, but I think they could be a little imaginitive than this.

I outgrew FPS'ers a long time ago, surely they can come up with new and exciting idea's than this...

3D will trickle down to Pocket PC to make XBoy

[yerricde]

When your OS starts requiring a 3D accelerator, you know there's gonna be some major upgrading afoot.

Why would .NET Server require a 3D accelerator? Datacenter hardware is almost always headless.

If Longhorn requires a 3D accelerator, it will raise the price of systems using Longhorn Embedded (the successor to Windows XP Embedded), making Linux or *BSD (which is not dying) seem more attractive. Is Microsoft going to push CE for such devices? Or is Microsoft going to require simple 3D hardware in a coming generation of Pocket PC devices, in effect creating the XBoy?

Re:3D will trickle down to Pocket PC to make XBoy

[TotallyUseless]

"Why would .NET Server require a 3D accelerator? Datacenter hardware is almost always headless."

you're going to play Doom3 on a .Net server located at a datacenter??

Re:3D will trickle down to Pocket PC to make XBoy

[JavaJones]

Who said anything about .NET server or Longhorn Embedded? Those product families have always had key differences from their mainstream counterparts (that's the entire point of their existence), and there's no reason to expect that practice to cease. If the Longhorn GUI doesn't work for those platforms/markets, it won't be used there. Period. That doesn't invalidate the coming demands of the Longhorn GUI in the consumer desktop space though.

See this thread for further discussion 3DLabs Launching New GPU and these articles linked from it Tom's Hardware on 3D Labs Announcement and Anandtech on 3D Labs Announcement

Ph34r the coming of Longhorn, for it shall make you obsolete beyond your wildest nightmares! :-P

As for 3D acceleration in your Palm, I do believe PowerVR's MBX just might be your solution, or at least the beginning of the market. So it appears MS is not creating the "Xboy", PowerVR and ARM are. I mean really, who'd want increased power in a mobile computer anyways? Go figure.

- JavaJones

Re:YOU PC USERS ARE STUPID!

[Anonymous Coward]

repost for this latest iteration of the village idiot

This announced the -official- name (which was unknown until now) and the distributor. Everybody already knew the were working on the game, and that was not the point of the press release. One only had to actually READ the announcement before posting.

At least post anonymously next time so only you know you've made an ass of yourself, instead of everyone else.

and fyi...it was announced before mac world expo, that was just the first public showing of the technology.

GCC's code gen on some platforms is poop

[yerricde]

Smart compilers often beat "smart" programmers and that is a common discussion [in news:comp.arch].

Often, but not always. If you start from the output of gcc -O3 and then carefully tweak each line of generated code, you can often double the speed, especially on platforms such as ARM and Alpha where GCC's code generator isn't yet up to snuff. Some architectures (such as ARM7TDMI) have auto-promoting 32x32=64 bit multiply instructions, useful for fixed-point signal processing, that GCC can't figure out how to use. Bit-twiddling (compression, encryption, etc.) is faster in assembly than in C because in assembly, you can get at least an extra 20% by leveraging the carry and overflow bits. Then you can prove in a profiler that your hand-optimized assembly version is faster. Of course, you'll want to keep your old C version around so that ./configure can fall back on it when confronted with an unknown architecture.

Re:GCC's code gen on some platforms is poop

[Anonymous Coward]

that might be true, but you're forgetting one very important fact.
when it comes to optimization , the gnu compilers are total pieces of shit..
they do *NOTHING* ..
or rather they do very very very very little
i saw a presentation by bjarne a little while back, and he showed graphs of execution speed of code written for 1/2 dozen compilers, and gcc was the *WORST* of the bunch..
and frankly, everyone knows (or should know) this..
in fact the gcc admits it, cause they know
1) optimization ain't easy
2) their primary goals are being available on as many plats as possible
3) being as standards compliant (in all languages) as possible

in fact, this chart that bjarne showed was code that showed that given a good api and a reasonably optimizing compiler (in some cases msvc came out pretty good, and in general it blew gcc away) you *CAN* beat fortran for large scale scientific and mathematical processing
2 of the libs on his chart were blitz++ (www.oonumerics.org/blitz)
and MTL (matrix template library)

so frankly using gcc as a metric against which you can write faster code is a no-op..
it's pointless because there are dozens, if not hundreds of optimizations that could be done that gcc doesn't ..
and probably never will
if you want a *REAL* competitor to you l33t asm skills try a decent compiler (like msvc)
or a kick-ass one like Kai

Only on PCs

[yerricde]

For the most part, remember, CPU speed isn't the big bottleneck that it used to be

That's true on a big fat GameCube, PortBox, or Athlon PC with 1000 Mflops, but on a 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI processor, you really need to make every cycle count if you want to keep up with the 59.7 Hz retrace. Most of the tricks that applied on the 486 still apply on the Game Boy Advance.

Perspective

[A_Non_Moose]

Wolf was great because it brought FPS's on to the scene...but IMO it was not very immersive.

DooM I and II were visually impressive for their day, but the Immersion Factor is what made the games kick ass. Fun with chainsaws too.

Ultimate Doom. Summation: AAAAaaahhhrrruuughhh!
Get the most sadistic SOB's to make levels that challenge you to no end. Even if you tired of DooM...those levels just plain ROCKED!

Heretic (doom engine)..I can look up! and down! and I can FLY, I can FLY!! yeeehaaa.
Not terribly immersive, just fun to play.

Quake. Hummm... just WOW ain't quite good enuf.
Fun, Fast paced, decent AI, Swim, dammit, swim!
And a rocking soundtrack to boot.

Quake II. Good deathmatching, so so Single Play.

Kingpin. Solid game play and death match. Fast, furious, neat weapons (HMG's rule..they RULE!)
(loved getting quake players in game and using the grenade launcher...doesn't explode on contact..hehe...freak out time)

Quake III. Awesome Grfx, well done AI, and Single Player Deathmatch...interesting and fun in an eveloutionary way.

(I leave out Descent 1,2 and 3. One came out after doom2 and had a section called "Doom recovery 101. True 3d environment and wicked AI.
Bots would *HUNT* you, tag team you, rush you or lure you while others smacked you around... just brilliant...and kept getting better).

DooM3...We'll see. The only saving grace for Q3 was: I could play it on my Mac, and now on my dual box with SMP enabled and a TNT2 (was a gimme, and PCI only system..meh).
I hope id makes some concessions for "us" of the not-quite-state-of-the-art-fronkenstheen-boxen-own ers.

.

Re:Perspective

[distributed.karma]

> Wolf was great because it brought FPS's on to the scene...but IMO it was not very immersive.

It played well on my 10MHz 286. It was the most immersive thing back then. Probably a lot of this is due to the music which kept up the gloomy atmosphere. Of course the graphics were crap by today's standards, but you didn't have them to compare to. You just accepted seeing blocky scenes on computers in general.

Portability == Will it fit in my pocketses?

[yerricde]

We are not running games on 386/16 machines anymore, 3D rendering is not done in software anymore

Maybe not, but we are still running games on ARM/16 machines. Palm, Pocket PC, and Game Boy Advance will be around for a while. There's Doom 1 for GBA, and yes, it renders in software to a 120x120 pixel frame buffer.

Portability

Those not in the software biz define portability as "can I put it in my pocket?"

thanks to hardware 3D acceleration (a concept that seems completely alien to you)

And battery-powered devices (a concept that seems alien to 3D apologists)

Today's optimizing compilers often produce code that's far more efficient than most hand-optimized assembly.

Unless GCC doesn't have a good backend for the arch <cough>ARM</cough> <cough>Alpha</cough> or its runtime library isn't completely optimized <cough>newlib software divide on ARM</cough>.

Re:Portability == Will it fit in my pocketses?

[Vulture_]

You're not going to be running Doom III on those things anytime soon, hand-optimized assembly or no.

Re:YOU PC USERS ARE STUPID!

[thomas.galvin]

If only Windows had GCC, then I'd switch.

Go here, and click "Download Now" on the top right.

This won't be real Doom

[Jacek Poplawski]

Have you ever played Wolfenstein 3D? What do you think about RTCW? I am still playing Linux demo online, I like it. But it's not game like Wolf3D, it's not next Wolf, it just modified Quake3. This game has nothing in common with Wolf3D.

Doom was special. It wasn't game you play and forget 3 months ago. You can say Quake or Half Life was special too, but it wasn't, not that way.

Can you imagine Doom with full 3D-characters? I can't. Most important thing in Doom/Doom2 was dark athmosphere, no other game ever was so brutal, so dark, so heavy. Show me the game when you can shot somebody with shotgun and it looks like in Doom, show me the game when you can shot barrel and person standing next to it blow up like in Doom. Even Duke Nukem 3D was not so perfect.

Or maybe it is possible to create 3D characters which looks better than Doom's imps or Duke Nukem ? Maybe one day, on 10GHz CPU...

Re:This won't be real Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is...
have you ever played Castle Wolfenstein (the real thing, on the Apple II)???

Well said

[Nickovsky]

Number 2.
I would kill to have a MMORPG like that, if it were done right of course. I thought Rune sucked, but maybe you are on to something there.

Re:Doom III - quarterlife

[qubit64]

nah. i saw it.

Aliens total conversion nice but unlikely

[galaga79]

By the way, the screenshots reminded me a lot of the movie Aliens (the James Cameron sequel to Alien). I hope someone does a total conversion, or maybe they use the Doom III engine for an Aliens Vs. Predator game.

As great as an Aliens total conversion could be for the Doom III engine it's unlikey to happen because Fox would threaten to take legal action. It's happened before as both the Aliens total conversions for Quake and Half-Life were cancelled for that very reason.

Re:Aliens total conversion nice but unlikely

[ziggles]

Well it doesn't have to be an Aliens© TC. Like Gloom for Quake II, it was sort of the same idea as an Alien tc, but they didn't use any official alien things, so they didn't have legal problems, but still had the cool creepy gameplay.

Forget about the dumb shit...

[DrunkenTerror]

...I'm waiting for SPISPOPD 2.

I mean, games are really all about the characters... In SPISPOPD2, maybe we can finally learn what became of the King's vine mate, Orann-geos!
eND of sTORY, chump.

Matrox 61000

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it will be presented on the new Matrox G1000 (aka Parhelia)

http://www.imlande.de/mirror/g1000productinfo.jp g

trent reznor?

[geektweaked.com]

rumor around the rumor mill has it that john carmack had showed interest in having trent reznor (of nine inch nails fame, who previously did the music/sound to quake) do the soundtrack to doom 3. any word on that? i haven't heard much about it recently, but as i remember, both parties were interested in working together again.

-c

Re:trent reznor?

[James Foster]

Last thing I heard was that they had an "unwritten agreement" about it. So I think it's very likely that you'll see Reznor's music in DOOM III.

Even if it doesn't live up to the originals, id are pouring everything they've got into this game unlike any other game they've ever done. It is going to be an amazing game, even if it's not quite as good as the original was at the time. Id even hired a tonne of new people to work on DOOM, because it was DOOM and they need to make it as good as they can.

It could be out by now and it would have sold millions regardless of whether or not it was good, but id are very passionate about this one.

3DR should take a hint..

[Chicane-UK]

..from the id/Activision guys who have got the RIGHT idea.. release piccies now and then, movie clips, and make a good presence at E3 to get your fans really into it. That way they will be busting the doors down at the local geek shop on the day of release.

3D Realms have decided to be a no show at this years E3.. I really can't understand why. I personally feel somewhat cheated as a fan waiting to see the game - you would *expect* to get some more juicy nuggets of game information, yet the 3D Realms media blackout continues - I'm sorry, but I can't just keep getting 'promised' that Duke Nukem Forever will be the BEST game ever when it is released.

And why do you get the feeling people will be complaining about the same thing again in the run up to next years E3?

Re:3DR should take a hint..

[billcopc]

I fully agree. 3DR fucked up bigtime on Max Payne because of their silence. A rather cool game that had been hyped for years without really showing anything to 'tease' us. It took a few months before people really noticed it, by which time there were newer hits on the market, leaving Payne in the shadows.

Doom3 will be pre-ordered like mad because it is a highly anticipated title. We don't quite know what's in store for us, but we have this impression it's going to rock hard. 3D Realms' hype feels like wet noodles.

I forgot to mention the polygon models!

[antdude]

It no longers uses the boring 2D sprites for enemies. It is all polygons like Quake games. The author basically replaced them with 3D models. They are VERY nice. :)

What I would do.

[autopr0n]

two things, 1, record the image of the screen before the game starts. When the user hits the panic button, the image would be displayed in the game. Then minimize the game, that way the boss won't see a flash of the game, and the computer would still be useable if the boss does more then just walk by.

Right today atmosphere means nothing, its MP

[Iberian]

Multiplayer is where all the fun is in todays games. Here shiny graphics mean nothing. It is a contest between humans to see who is the best. Basketball has been around since 1890's and hasn't changed much. People play it because nothing is more fun then hitting the three pointer to win the game, or rockect jumping off the wall backwards switching to a rail gun and nailing your opponent to win.

ps2

[autopr0n]

There's a program called 'ps2rate' that will change the actual hardware speed of the mouse sampling, up to 80. It feels really werid at first, but once you get used to it it's just soo smooth (this is in windows).

I'm to lazy to give up my USB optical mouse, though :P.

Re:ps2

[ComputarMastar]

Its still only polling X number of times per second. Ideally, you want the driver to poll the hardware when you request the data. No more, no less. I guess it could be argued that something like that could mess up multitasking, but it would be a non-issue if the OS had been designed with native support for games and was aware that some apps want immediate access to current hardware data or that they might want to change certain hardware parameters (like screen resolution) for themselves and not for the entire system.

Re:ps2

[billcopc]

Yes, and then you'd watch your CPU usage go through the roof every time you move the mouse. Having Windows poll the mouse 200 times per second sure makes the pointer run smooth, but those serial port accesses tend to lock the bus while waiting for the results for the few milliseconds they need, which totally kills multitasking. USB mice cause the same problem but the bus contention is much alleviated by the increased speed of the USB itself, which is why USB mice have a greater default refresh rate (in the drivers of course). They can afford it without killing the host's performance.

Really

[inerte]

I've had too many Dooms already, and I hope Nxt-Life III wil seal them ;-)

No more DOOM

[CanadaDave]

I think the whole running around killing monsters thing is getting old. That's why Quake III is such a hit for multiplayer gaming but isn't all that exciting when played level-by-level. I think Return to Castle Wolfenstein is one of the best 3D action shoot-'em-up games to come out in a long time. Parts of the plot are far-fetched, but a lot of it is at least somewhat believeable, and at least to soem extent based on real things, like the Nazis, and spies in WWII times. It rules, that's all I'm saying, and think they put effort into making more series like this (with new plot lines) instead of making a 3rd sequel to DOOM.

"forward looking statements"?

[mark-t]

Okay, the guy that wrote this couldn't possibly have anything more than a grade 8 writing level. I think the term he was actually looking for was "projections".

"forward looking statements"... sheesh... I almost physically cringed when I read that.

Re:"forward looking statements"?

[inerte]

forward looking statements are like when you don't expect people to say bs, capisce?

Re:"forward looking statements"?

[freeweed]

Okay, the guy that wrote this couldn't possibly have anything more than a grade 8 writing level.

Nah, just needs an MBA for that. :)

Re:"forward looking statements"?

[pgpckt]

If you ever read a 10-K filing on the SEC website, you will find the phrase "forward looking statement" is standard. It is a standard accounting term. Try not to critique something you know nothing about.

That's why I don't like Quake *.

[r6144]

During the last six months Doom II (mostly add-ons like Eternal or Hell Revealed) has almost been my sole game which I play for two hours a week in average. It is just COOL to shoot at 30~50 enemies, and to avoid twenty fireballs of various kinds, all at once. Of course, I play in Ultra Violence god mode, just with my damage counted. My computer is a PII with a Riva128 video card, so it can even run GLQuake2 like a dream, but I just don't like it (or Quake1, etc.) because (1) not enough enemies, (2) having to aim vertically is really not cool.

Ahh the good old days...

[j_kenpo]

Thats great, I get to spend even more nights forgetting my biological duties to find a partner of the opposite sex and fornicate to instead DM to endless hours of the night and stunt my social development even further!! I remember the screen shots, the corridors look great, but the monsters look like Muppets...

idtla

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Open letter to John Carmack:

The masses demand their 'iddqd' and 'idkfa'. We wimps wanna Doom too. And three even.

ZDooM has a linux port

[axolotl_farmer]

The GPL:ed DooM port ZDooM has a linux port.

There aren't any pretty flare effect like in JDooM, but you can play at high res and use mouselook etc.

Get it at http://zdoom.notgod.com

Re:ZDooM has a linux port

[antdude]

Yeah, but it is not fun as jDoom with the nice graphics :).

Re:ZDooM has a linux port

[The Raven]

I prefer ZDoom for Windows as well. I never liked JDoom. Dunno why, just never blew my whistle.

Don't read many press releases, do you?

[Joe Rumsey]

The whole paragraph that contains the phrase "Forward-looking statements" is a boilerplate disclaimer. It is there to warn idiots that not everything in the release is a verified fact, so that if said idiots invest their money in the company by purchasing shares, they can't then sue when they lose their money because they thought something in the press release was a guarantee of future profits. You will find the phrase "Forward-looking statements" and a very similar paragrah at the bottom of practically any press release from a publically traded company such as Activision. Do a google search and you'll see what I mean:

"Results 1 - 10 of about 756,000"

See what I mean?

If they wrote "projections" instead of "Forward-looking statements", some sleazy lawyer would presumably be able to twist around to his advantage when the price of the stock dropped later.

Then try AvP!

[iamplasma]

You guys clearly haven't played Aliens vs Predator. Holy Cr@p is that game scary! Play the marine, and the first alien you meet will scare the hell out of you. You suddenly see a blip getting closer and closer on your motion detector, then suddenly this thing is running at you! I backpedalled like crazy and jumped right off a building. Then I washed my undies and went back for more. It is so incredibly scary, no game I have every played at all has come even close.

Re:Then try AvP!

[nmarshall]

yea, AvP was somewhat like being inside the movie. and everybody knows that you just do not what to be a space marine when there are Aliens about. Aliens kick marine's ass every time in a standup fight, them marine always have to call in backup or use some super weapon....

Bring back SPISPOPD!!!

[tangent3]

Remember the good old days when SPISPOPD was used to dampen the hype around Doom?

Karma Whoring: Better than Solitaire and Doom

[DarkHelmet]

There's a much more popular game than Doom, solitaire, or anything else for that matter out on the market.

It's called Karma Whoring.

The goal of the game is to come up with the most inventive, interesting, and funniest comments you can think of just in order to eventually make it to 50 karma points. When you do, this Magical Taco comes out of the sky and gives you the Sword of Moderation.

With this sword, you can strike down and flame other would-be people who are trying to attain karma. Your high karma score is devalued if lots of other people have Karma as high as you.

The goal is total domination and popularity among your peers. Imagine the results:

Friend: Thresh is such a great quake player.
Me: So what!?! I have 45 karma on Slashdot!
Friend: Really?!?!
Girls: Oooh, can I have your autograph?

Technologically the engine behind Karma Whoring is pretty weak. Whilst Doom 3 amazes people with its pretty OpenGL graphics and Violence, Karma Whoring is only built using PERL of all things. It's text based, much like some of the older games of the 80's. But didn't we all like Zork anyway? :)

Where Karma Whoring is better with is multiplayer. Whereas Doom will only have one character class, Karma Whoring has many. And you can choose your role. Karma Whore, Spammer, Nerd, Geek, Troll, Flamer, or even Anonymous Coward.

Karma Whoring is more addictive than Doom. In fact, many of the people who score high Karma also experiment with other addictions. Especially with the line, "Those moderators are all on crack". This is a literal expression.

The best thing is that Karma Whoring doesn't just have a boss key, it IS the boss key! You can always tell your boss that you're "researching important information on how to configure and optimize your apache server for optimal traffic", even when what you're really doing is browsing at -1 and blackholing the WIPO Troll.

Best of all, it's free! The only thing you have to pay with is reading a Katz article and an anime story now and then. Compare that to $49.95 and tell me which one you prefer :)

Re:Karma Whoring: Better than Solitaire and Doom

[SgtXaos]

Damn funny. Pity my Sword of Moderation is at the smithy for sharpening right now...

Intel must be pissed

[haggar]

Well, this will increase future sales of Clawhammer, but it leaves IA64 (Intel's take on 64 bit x86 successors) in the lurch.

Oh well. At least HPaq is going to ditch PA-RISC for IA64, making up for the blow.

The Big Black Blobby thing...

[FyRE666]

I must admit that I freaked when I first saw "Boss 1" in the churchyard. The way it lumbers about with the screaching ghost faces swarming out of its body was pretty un-nerving.

I was kind of dreading the second set of catacombs too, it really did get my heart racing (lights off, sound on headphones).

I pissed off my neightours with it one night. I was happily blasting away with my headphones on, but I'd forgotten to switch the main speakers off (I have a really big amp+speaker setup on the PC), and I only realised when I decided to take a break after like 2 hours, and after taking the headphones off I could still hear the music. This was at 2AM :-)

You are mistaken on Doom's & Doom2's in-game s

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom1's in-game story and game manual never said you were a "space marine." The game goes on and on basically on fighting and "pushing" all hell back through the "portal". Doom1's players and later unofficial strategy manual authors filled in the loose gaps in Doom1's story. ID Software later appended some retro ideas to bring in those players' and authors' "opinions" into a story with more background. Wolf3D was the same. At first playing Wolfenstein 3D, I thought I was in my bedroom, in my pajamas, armed with pointy magic marker, and I drew ketchup all over my grandpa and ran outside the doorway. To my right side, I saw "spot", my dog, in his dog pen and to the left and righ I saw my mom and dad armed with ketchup-water guns. I magic-markered on both of their shirts and they died on the ground. My dad was dressed up in brown pajamas and used a single-handed pistol, my mom in a blue gown with a double-handed super-soaker.

...anyway, I loved Wolfenstein 3D. It doesn't require anything beyond a 256 KiloByte RAM Videocard, as opposed to doom1 requirng 512 KiloByte RAM Videocard and Doom3 requires a 128 MegaByte RAM Videocard. I think John Carmack should rot in hell and when I crack his Doom2 sampler that has Doom2 on it and needs a password to unlock and play it, I will shoot a missile through the Big Goatse man's exposed brain and hurt his eyeballs all over. I think John Carmack likes me, but I told him i'm not gay and I don' like Texas trash. The only thing that isn't Texas trash is the thing that's made in China and you find it on the ground 'cause Texans litter alot. That means all of Texas is made in china and the only trash is the people walking around on two legs.

haha. OH and shout outs to my scientology friends, h3x0r-elmo, and my churchofsatan.org friends.

Question

[afree87]

What's so bad about reading an anime story?

Re:Question

[zurmikopa]

Funny. Soon after he posted this and sent me a link to it I mentioned to him that I, along with many other geeks enjoy anime. Thus, anime news should be deemed appropriate in a news production that has the tagline: "News for nerds."
In fact, with the prevalence of nerds in this vicinity, I'm amazed that he didn't get modded down for a disparaging remark about anime.

Am I the only one...

[Rhinobird]

Am I the only one that hopes that after they get Doom III out of the way they'll bring back Commander Keen?

Productivity hit

[Tomster]

Okay, we've heard that AotC will supposedly cost the U.S. economy $300 million. That's for a 2 hour movie.

How much is Doom III gonna cost the economy, is what I wanna know. :)

Wife's reaction to DOOM

[blankmange]

Interestingly enough, my wife was caught up in FPS's for a while: CW, ROTT, and DOOM especially. I knew we were meant for each other when I hear behind me,

"Die, motherfucker, die!!"

Oh yes, she is the one for me... now it's hockey & football, no chick flicks, etc... and she heckles me when I die in Arena.. go figure

C64 had something like this...

[DJK]

1. More team-based games. How cool would it be to be in a humvee, one guy driving, another at the machine gun, perhaps trying to destroy a tank with 6 guys in it, each doing the job of whatever those 6 guys do in a real tank. Or, *drool*, how about one guy flying the millenium falcon, and two others at each gun, like in the movie? Or any other jet or spaceship, for that matter.

I had a C64 fighter jet game (called Ace, I believe) that would let one person fly and another gun. Great fun.

Good game with Ministry as Soundtrack:

[DJK]

Good game with Ministry as Soundtrack: Abuse

It just seemed to fit the atmosphere...

Too bad crack.com went under.

Yes, I know they released the source and there are ports out there. No, I haven't tried them.

Will multiplayer require broadband?

[Roland Walter Dutton]

A good while ago ID said that that Doom III multiplayer would require more than 56kbits of bandwidth. Does anyone know if this is still their intention? If D3 multiplayer does require broadband, the consequences could be interesting. ID games broke OpenGL and hardware 3D acceleration into the mass market, after all.

Kevin Cloud interview

[Anonymous Coward]

Kevin Cloud interview is HERE.

Re:Kevin Cloud interview

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and Doom III is discussed!

Those damn baby Skaarg

[roystgnr]

The first time I went through it, I definitely took a few wrong directions; there were at least two times I found myself going up an elevator only to have a reptile-spider-thing clawing my face off right at the top.

Unreal takes the cake for atmosphere in my opinion: running through most of the first level with no weapons at all, then catching that first glimpse of an adult Skaarg disembowling one of the ship's crew? Finding yourself locked into a narrow corridor, then watching the lights go dead, one by one? Excellent game.

Re:You are mistaken on Doom's & Doom2's in-gam

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. DOOM requires a 256k video card.

Carmack isn't a real Texan, he just moved there. Duh, he lives in Dallas, for Pete's sake.

Yep, same here.

[nr]

I was planing to buy a brand new machine with state-of-the-art 3D card this spring coz my 3 years old PII-505 is pretty dog slow with the current games , but I suspended that until the release of Doom III. Hope fully, there will be a AMD 2700+ and nVidia GeForce 5 or what else they will call it, out by then. Then you are planing to shell out $1500 on a new system you can afford to wait some months for Doom III. :-)

Unreal II gonna kick some ass too.

What's in a name...

[Tha_Zanthrax]

a 3d shooter is a 3d shooter, right?
quakeIIIarena is nothing like Quake or Quake2

They are just using the name DooM cuz it sells.
Duke Nukem 3D was a hit for the same reason. Quake was so much better.

I don't really mind the name, I know ID makes great software and looking forward to the release.

Rememberings of the Dark Wheel

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on, commander.

I remember that the lasers made a sort of forlorn echoey sound, which was also a strangely suitable noise for the infinite void - if not particular realistic. But them the physics in the game weren't exactly Newtonian (or Einsteinian) but that didn't matter. In fact it was a positive advantage (have played Frontier?)

The inevitable question

[TheLastUser]

Will there be a LINUX version?

Id has always been a supporter of lunix but my impression is that they were not impressed by Q3 sales.

I have heard of a return to wolenstein Linux version, but what about Doom 3?

That fact that their new site doesn't seem to work with Mozilla makes me worry.

Total conversion

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at those screenshots, making a total conversion will not be the easy task it once was. These models have thousands of polygons. High quality models at this level require a talented artist lots and lots of time. A halfway decent artist could make a new doom character in a half hour. A character for the new doom would take a talented artist/animator days at the least, more likely weeks. The levels have to be modeled to a fine level of detail. Textures have to be highres and quality. Lighting has to be good, which is tough, because most games today have horrible lighting (see Grand Theft Auto 3). A total conversion at this level is beyond the scope of most hobbiests.

Re: also about controls

[maunleon]

Legacy doom also had simplified controls. You could pick it up in a few minutes. You could do just as well with the keyboard as you could do with the mouse. Starting with Quake, things got progressively more complicated. Playing with just the keyboard gives you a disadvantage.

This is what I miss most about Doom -- ease of play. Back, forward, left, right, run, strafe key, jump, shoot, change weapon. You could concentrate on mayhem and have fun. Heretic later managed to add the z-axis and inventory without too much trouble.. but after that, it went downhill.

I really do believe that the technology has advanced past the controllers.

No, Excellent Beginning...

[The Raven]

Too bad Unreal started great, and ended lame. They put a lot of attention into the first few levels, polishing them to a shiny finish... and leaving many of the later levels to rust, flaking large patches of orange-brown sameness.

For a game that was more consistently good from beginning to end, I'd have to point to Half Life. Other games have equaled it in part, but I have yet to see another game that was as CONSISTENT as Half Life in delivering new, exciting, and interesting levels and challenges from beginning to end instead of petering out and becoming repetetive halfway through.

Re:No, Excellent Beginning...

[Quinn]

I'll have to disagree wrt Half-Life. Though it had one of the best overall FPS storylines ever, the end-game was pretty disappointing. Once I was tossed into that gooey giant microbe dimension, I pretty much lost interest, pulled out the cheat codes, and rushed to finish up the game.

please no more graphics mania...

[Fuzuli]

as always, the discussion is going to be about which card is better for this game, and how we poor users can hack the settings for a few extra fps when it hits the shelves.
forget it, graphics mean nothing !! the most entertaining games i've played ever were another world in amiga, and half life in pc. There are a zillion games on the market with very good graphics, but when you begin to play, it's the same shit all the time. Run, get a new gun, find a door, find a key...
For me, games have mostly become a tech hobie. I just take a look at the graphs, and try to see a new trick in graphics or AI, but there is nothing new in these games. Only medal of honor had the excitement that made me play the game, instead of examining it for the past year. Maybe i'm just getting old, and it's harder and harder for these guys to find something to surprise me. For example , the AI of my avatar in Black & White was something that made me play the game, we just need better ideas, we have much more better graphics than we need.

What really freaked me out

[|_uke]

There was one part in RtCW that really freaked me out...

And the funny thing is, I expected something to happen to...

Its in the nazi labs area (forget name hehe)... where you are walking by a window and all of a sunden I think part of a person gets tossed at the glass (and it breaks? ohh geez I really do not remember)..

I literally jumped out of my seat and made girly screaming noises :P

Re: also about controls

[nzhavok]

You could do just as well with the keyboard as you could do with the mouse

I have to disagree, I played a lot of multiplayer doom in my time and when I switched to mouse control it did make a big difference. Actually now that I think about it it's the first game that I started using a mouse with. Also it's the first game that I built my own contoller for, well actually it was just a bent paperclip to hold down the shift key to keep running :)

I can't believe...

[lew3004]

...that no none has given mention to the Aliens vs Predator series. Now that was a game that basically utilized a new engine and was truly terrorizing to play (at least the first time). The gameplay was simple but effective and multi-player was always exciting (when Mplayer was around).

RE: Anyone younger care to say what they feel

[nomadianomad]

I remember when DoomII came out, I was ~10 and it scared the .... out of me. Esp. on levels where there were CyberDaemon's running about. I go back now and it's still a little tense, but nothing truely immersive (to me.) .It's still fun to run around and send Hell, well, back to Hell....

I, too, think that it'll be less, and less scary/immersive/impressive with the next->next generations of "the same" games.

Though, I really hope they do a good job on this game. (I've been thinking the should build a newone using the Quake [or sime other =ally cool] engine for a ong time now.)

Why Quake 4?

[ninkendo84]

Hmm... Doesn't it seem odd that id software is making a new game (quake 4) based on the engine on an even newer game (doom 3) that will come out later than the first game (quake 4)??? It almost seems like quake 4 is just being used to test the still semi-completed technology of doom 3. Unless i'm wrong, maybe quake 4 isn't coming out until after doom 3, but I doubt it.

Nah....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably "Frank".

WRONG - I have Doom Shareware 1.2....

[Size_Mick]

The first shareware release of the game, and it specifically reads "You're a space marine, one of Earth's toughest...". Not that anyone will ever actually read this now.

id's first story = Doom III, justified

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking more forward to this than any game id has ever put out. Why, you ask? The story.
No single player game id has ever developed has had anyone on a job that had anything remotely like "story" or "writing". (RtCW was developed by Gray Matter and Raven, not id. id was the producer)
Quake 2 was their last in-house single player game, and it had programmers, level designers, art, etc. But no writing. Half Life was released the year after, and since then every (non-tactical) action game is expected to have a good story.
Since this is only their second game without Romero doing the gameplay (i think he worked on Quake 1, but correct me if i'm wrong), and certainly they've had a brand new crop of developers sign on since Q2, I definitely see this game not only reaching the bar, but surpassing it by miles, just ask Doom 1 did.

We've not yet seen an example of an epic in-game story from id, as there was not really such a concept until after their last released single player game. Carmack definitely has the style of dark, moody atmosphere that pioneered the horror-action genre, and with the lighting technology we have sampled so far, coupled with the first real story, I think they will succeed in pushing past the limits once again.

Re:YOU PC USERS ARE STUPID!

[Krach42]

Cygwin isn't windows, it's a unix compatibility layer on top of windows.