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there were some screenshots released last year, but I don't think there's been much since then - these are probably out of date.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

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.

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.

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 ;).

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?

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.