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there were some screenshots released last year, but I don't think there's been much since then - these are probably out of date.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

[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.

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.

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.

may 22nd

[Maskirovka]

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

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.

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 ;).

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

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 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: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.