DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

Ant writes "From Page 6 of FiringSquad's QuakeCon 2002 Postmortem article: John Carmack said something at the end of the Q&A about how the multiplayer will be only four players? Tim: After 2 hours of talking up at the podium, sometimes you leave a few details out. Doom 3 multiplayer will be fully scalable. It will be a peer to peer system. We haven't started working on it yet. Tell everyone not to panic - it will be fine. John just forgot to mention it'll be scalable past four players. It's hard to give a hard number because we haven't started working on it yet. Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game."

Comments

DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[bsDaemon]

This proves my suspicions that "gamers" are pirates and perverts. trolling is so much easier than being clever.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[krabbe]

This article is a misconception altogether. Virtually all multiplayer games (including ego-shooters) are peer-to-peer systems, meaning that the players connect to each other. There is no server that does all the maths, basically every system is a client.

This is true for all networked games (Doom,Quake,Starcraft,Diablo except MMORPGs like Everquest). There's nothing new about it either. Note that this has absolutely nothing to do with file sharing, warez and mp3s.
~ we hope the you choke

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[TheDick]

Shenanigans!!

Counter-Strike anyone?

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[KeyserDK]

No it's not true for all networked games.

The network part of the quake series is most certainly server/client.

Ie the game client doesnt talk to the other clients but only talks to _one_ server, which indeed can be a player (listen server) but more often the usual setup (dedicated server).

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arena style is significantly more fun than DM anyway, so long as they can keep reset times down.

There's nothing I hate worse than non-team non-goal based missions, and you don't improve your skills nearly as fast if the only cost of death is clicking your left mouse button.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[kryonD]

That's odd...I distinctly remember always being the SERVER for Q2 and Q3 at school since I had the highest end machine. Everyone else connected to my game via the seach if they were on my segment, or via an IP I provided if they weren't.

As long as there are configurable parameters in the game, I don't think they will ever seperate from a server based concept. One machine has got to be the athority on which map is being used and how much health the players have, etc... Now, perhaps all machines will advertize the games they are connected to so there doesn't have to be a need for GameSpy. It will be interresting to see how they implement this.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[James Foster]

Agreed that vanilla DM is pretty tedious, and arena style adds much more flavour. Conversely, though, have you played the Battlefield 1942 demo? It has what can be described as very long rounds... and I think it's really damn fun multiplayer.
It's also a pretty original style of gameplay -- fighting to gain territory. I think UT came with a similar game type... but Battlefield 1942 seems to be the best implementation of it so far.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[kjr_rocks]

hey! carmack just may be the first person to think of a use for quantum cryptography: encrypted doom3 pr0n sharing!

god bless you Mr. Carmack!

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[jhol]

Also, it is known for definate that once a game has started, additional players cannot join. This limitation is due mainly to DOOM 3's physics engine. Basically, there is so much physics data that would need to be synchronised, that if a player had to "catch up" with the physics data, it would probably be a lot of data to send, and since it's constantly changing data, it is likely that as the player recieves the data, it becomes invalid.

Oh come on, all the client needs to know is where the items are. What in the world would the DOOM3 engine have that the Q3A engine didnt have which allowed the client/server based games. All FPS related games today do client/server.

It is more likely that they do this because they want to get the game out as soon as possible; id software makes the real money on licensing their engine. Thus they don't have to spend precious time on creating a good multiplayer aspect, but can instead release an addon later (and maybe sell it for some extra $$$).

Going from client/server to Peer To Peer in online gaming is a serious setback, it's like going back to the old Doom days again. Not only is there the cheat aspect when everything is client based, but a player can't join a game that has already been started.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you've certainly proven that you're not clever.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Manes]

They have stated that there will be NO coop!

This p2p thing just doesn't make any sense to me, especially since it will be cheaters haven.

Descent anyone? (oh my did that show me the ugly sides of p2p fps games)

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Manes]

>> It's also a pretty original style of gameplay -- >>fighting to gain territory

It's called domination, and it's been in quite a few games already :)

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Anonymous Coward]

send encrypted proprietary checksum, change encryption everytime you update client.

Should eliminate casual cheating.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[elfkicker]

Every client has the ability to be a server, but most games are definately implemented as vanilla client/server. And for games which use a universal ladder/auth (ie Westwood games) the do communicate through a central server to maintain state, prevent cheats, keep ranks, etc.

The crossover to real P2P is when all connected clients are also acting as servers to eachother concurrently. Of course the problem with that it introduces massive opportunities for cheats and DoS exploits. It's also hard to maintain a reasonable amount of latency.

IMHO, games are best done through a state maintaining central server(s).

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[N1KO]

If its central as in battle.net then you are terribly wrong. Having experienced the inability to make or join a game in d2 thanks to the lame cheats lagging bnet i can say i never want to use that system again.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Kashif Shaikh]

So the question remains, why will id choose a "peer-to-peer" architecture over the more tried-and-tested client/server architecture? Everyone knows that client-to-client eats too much bandwidth, and more importantly that it's a lot easier for people to cheat when there is not a central server controlling the "law of the game".

Is it because they HAVE to limit the number of players on screen at once, lest have an angry group of consumers complaining about bad framerates? So is id planning to have 4-player peer-to-peer battles so that it will be easy to implement on the Xbox(i.e. 4 xboxes connected together)? Or is it because id doesn't give a flying fuck spending another 6 months developing the network-code and multiplayer maps? Or is it because id thinks that it is only important to have a good network architecture when it licenses out the Doom3 engine commercially(and therefore can delay it for now)? Or is it because I don't understand what id's peer-to-peer system might actually be(you never know what Carmack is doing...possibly making peer-to-peer better than client/server), which therefore nullifies this whole argument?!

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[gid]

Your xbox comment is definitely intersting. c2c architechture would mean it would be an easier port to xbox/ps2/gc/whatever new system is out by then. A lot of companies are moving away from the pc, I wouldn't doubt if Id is just positioning themselves to be on both sides of the fence, primarity because of the vast ammount of money companies see on console game sales. Plus support on console games is virtually nil, you put the game in and it works because of controlled hardware and OS.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[OblongPlatypus]

What's so hard to get about this? I haven't been following the coverage here, but if id has said the physics engine in Doom 3 makes it hard to support mid-game joining, then they mean just that. I'm assuming the client no longer needs to know just where the items are, but also which walls have been damaged by bullets and explosions, where people have died and in what situations they died (to calculate body positions and postures), how injured people (both living and dead) are and where they've been hit, and so on and so forth. If they're already saturating the bandwidth just updating this information continuously, you're obviously going to have a "catching up" problem when you join in mid-game.

Of course, if id hasn't said this and it's just a conjecture by the parent poster, then I'm a bit more dubious. But either way, his argument makes sense, while yours doesn't. Why would using a peer-to-peer network architecture help them release sooner?

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hardly make a judgement on a network scheme that's been used for virtually everything for as long as I can remember based on your problematic experiences with a blizzard game.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[famillionaire]

They have stated that there will be NO coop!

Then WHERE WILL I keep my CHICKENS!

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[mr3038]

The crossover to real P2P is when all connected clients are also acting as servers to eachother concurrently. Of course the problem with that it introduces massive opportunities for cheats and DoS exploits. It's also hard to maintain a reasonable amount of latency.

I'd guess that this would instead decrease the latency compared to anything seen in Quake and kind. In Quake every client has to send all the movement to the server which then calculates some stuff and sends the info to all the clients. With P2P system all the clients send that client's movements to all the other clients so there's one one-way-trip less to go for every packet and the latency should go down.

In addition because every client is acting as a server the calculations should match. If a single client has different results you can be pretty sure that it's cheating and the others could vote it out. Though, incorrect results could be due lag or something but I think it could be made automatic so that other client would give a mistrust point if it seems that the other client is getting incorrect results and if some threshold is exceeded that client would be considered as a cheater. Perhaps add an centralized server for blacklisting the cheaters and hopefully we could happily live without cheating.

The only question is if this is going to fly in the real world--you need more bandwidth to send all the stuff to all the clients and syncing the clients must be one hell of a job. If there's one game company that could successfully do this, it's id. Remains to be seen if that's enough.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[elfkicker]

No. Game latency would increase in P2P. While you might have a lower ping to your peers, the gamestate itself would be lagged. It's much faster to have 50 clients communicating with a single host than to have 50 peers computing and pssing on info in some twisted way. Especially since YOU CAN'T TRUST THE CLIENT. EVER.

Id had it right with Quake3 and the network code was solid. What they lacked was a central server with maintained game state for all games. It not theoretically hard to do, it's just very expensive and a bitch to maintain. Blizzard (haven't played but have heard the stories) and Westwood do this, but do it poorly because they haven't found a way to make money off the SERVICE of providing a centralized server. Sony understands that people are willing to pay a subscription to have it done right. I can't wait to see how Planetside works out for them.

I'd be surprised that you need to buy network based games in 5 years. It will all be subscription. There's no technical advantage to p2p games and there's no profit advantage to the company when they wise up and realize that network games are really a pay-to-play service and not a box you sell on a self.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[nnnneedles]

Yes but it is not a REAL server, it is just used for the basic stuff. Remember when the old games like doom used to freeze and say "synchronizing"?

That, my friend, means that someone playing had to catch up with the rest of ppl playing. In quake you would see a player "dancing" when he was severely lagged, in a p2p system the same lag completely halts the game, as there is no real server.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[Anonymous Coward]

What an idiot! P2P refers to the networking technology where clients share data without using a central server. That data doesn't have to be mp3, p0rn just because its the most prevalent form.

Re:DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[mr3038]

No. Game latency would increase in P2P. While you might have a lower ping to your peers, the gamestate itself would be lagged. It's much faster to have 50 clients communicating with a single host than to have 50 peers computing and pssing on info in some twisted way. Especially since YOU CAN'T TRUST THE CLIENT. EVER.

I really cannot defend myself about the latency issue as I haven't coded P2P network code for any game--I'm just guessing that in the near future the last mile does have pretty good bandwidth but not that good latency and in that case P2P could help with the latency. And in the long run you can have all the bandwidth you need but the latency isn't going down because the light is so damn slow. All clients need more computing power because they are doing the work for both server and client but that shouldn't be an issue as Doom3 already requires that much CPU power anyway.

About what comes to trusting the client I tried to explain the issue. It doesn't matter if the client isn't the official one as long as all the clients in the game are using the same version. Because all clients calculate the state then a single cheating one can be identified by comparing the results. That comparision doesn't need to be real time so it doesn't hurt the performance. If there're four players in a game and three of them are using cheater-version and you're using the original then you are the cheater in that game because you have different version from the rest.

There's no way you can ever get rid of aim bots and stuff that emulates the stuff the human player is trying to do, only better. Perhaps today you have to integrate the cheat in the client binary but soon you have the prosessing power required to identify those targets from the resulting frames and you can have an aim bot working without cracking the client binary.

Doom Monsters

[Daxbert]

Hey, as long as they keep the brown furry guys, I'll be happy.

Eye candy!

[ObviousGuy]

Not to bash eye candy, but doesn't anyone have a better idea for gaming than FP shooters?

What could Wil Wright or Al Lowe or Sid Meier do with a badass graphics engine behind them?

We already know what Carmack can do.

Re:Eye candy!

[EvilAlien]

Sid Meier did yet another Civilization game, didn't he? With pretty graphics? I think its time he explored some more new ideas. An old idea with a new engine is a pretty weak excuse for charging anothing $50 for a "new" game.

Bioware has Neverwinter Nights, it as pretty graphics and revolutionary features and blah blah blah. Morrowind. Driving games... etc. The fact is, however, that the FPS develops tend to lead the industry in the development of new technology in terms of graphics engines and network code. Other than them, its the massively-multiplayer crowd.

Re:Eye candy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could say I was impressed. The last really interesting and taxed its developers' ingenuity was the Monkey Island series (though it too got played out towards the end).

Re:Eye candy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Although EvilAlien has a point about some of those author's games being a rehash, I am also not very impressed by the current crop of games.

Shoot em ups, multiuser wankfests, driving games (original idea??), all are tired genres.

The Sims was a cool new approach to gaming. Monkey Island and other LucasArts games used to set the standard for cool games.

Maybe it's because I'm not a game designer, but I just can't think of what could be a cool new game...

Re:Eye candy!

[Dillon2112]

What people fail to realize is that most of the genre's are tired. The important thing to note is FP shooters drive the industry. At no point in gaming did it become obvious that 3D was the way to go until FPS games were developed. Now, we have the pleasure of seeing things like Bioware's NeverWinter Nights in 3D, and we have other games we can develop with that technology in the first person (Morrowind, for one). Even Blizzard, a company I admire much for their games and not so much for their politics, has made the switch to 3D, saying they had done as much as they could with a 2D engine. And really, it doesn't occur to me to complain that id is putting out another FPS - they created that entire type of game, pushed the technology behind it, and changed the face of almost every game out there because of it. FPS is what I expect from them, just as I expect yet another turn-based strategy game from Sid Meier. And their new technology isn't always used the best in their own games. The real power of the Quake III engine was only seen in games like Alice, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Heavy Metal: FAKK II (all of which were fun to play, and took a new tack on the old FPS).
Monkey Island, innovative? I think not. Perhaps hilarious (they are!), but hardly a new concept. Th idea of adventure games has been around as long as gaming, as far as I know. As soon as the PC as we know it rolled out of factories, we had Roberta Williams there with the King's Quest series. I have to admit, besides the witty banter, Escape from Monkey Island was essentially very similar to that series (even in skurvy-inducing 3d). Solve the puzzle, move on to the next, face the boss, win.
Actually, I'd be hard pressed to really say any "crop" of games was particualrly innovative. Sure, theres King's Quest, Sim City, Doom, Quake (just because it introduced internet play of a game), and the Sims. Oh, and sports games. But really, what else hasn't been some form of rehash? I don't think creating games within an existing genre and doing good things with them is necessarily bad. Technique and implementation are often as valuable as innovation.

Re:Eye candy!

[grumpygrodyguy]

Bioware has Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com], it as pretty graphics and revolutionary features and blah blah blah

Yes NWN has some very original concepts...too bad Bioware doesn't know how to build a user interface.

Re:Eye candy!

[timeOday]

Not to bash eye candy, but doesn't anyone have a better idea for gaming than FP shooters?

I would say, "No."

I don't see people moving along from first person shooters any sooner than I see them getting sick of auto racing and throwing it out for something "new and innovative." Sure, there are technological advances, but novelty is only a rather small part of the fun.

Multiplayer computer games are just like multiplayer non-computer games (tennis, golf, what have you) in that it takes a while to get good enough to have fun. The interest comes from the other players.

Look at the level of Starcraft competition in the far east. It would surprise me if some of those folks weren't still playing real-time stragegy games 30 years from now.

Re:Eye candy!

[gl4ss]

anyone who's played vampire: the masquarade will feel an eerie deja vu feeling when playing NWN, the system is almost 100% identical and suffers from s**** singleplay.

morrowind on the other hand is just a KICK ASS ultima underworld clone.

Re:Eye candy!

[Anonymous Coward]

If Al Lowe came out with another Leisure Suit Larry based on the same 10 year old engine, I would still play it. The jokes and storyline are what made that series truly great.

Re:Eye candy!

[phorm]

there is a point to this. While FPS games do look a lot nicer, and perhaps a lot more realistic... the fact is still that 95% of players (number pulled from @ss) are still sitting in front of a screen, listening to music from headphones or perhaps (if lucky) surround speakers

What we need is a new level of immersiveness in the game, not just pretty graphics. This isn't to say that when one frags one's neighbour, the neighbour recieves a direct nerve shock and suddenly suffers a heart attack... but perhaps we need to move away from the old 2d screen, mouse click and shoot.

At one point they were trying to push the idea of VR headsets, but it sort've flopped. The best I've seen in this genre in arcades was a POS shooting game that was reminiscent of wolf3d mixed with deer hunter... and the screen bobbed so much that it made me ill. I have an extra room in my apartment which I would happily dedicate to some sort of VR console... if I were to believe that one was out there.

Another idea might just be a live HUD... you can still play on the screen but maybe an eye-sensor gives you a map or something like that... and maybe a realistic gun or something, instead of a mouse.

Awhile back there was an article on a gizmo that projected combined sound waves to a point where they would converge and be audible... wouldn't that be sweet.... arch-vile (PLEASE tell me d3 has some of those) suddenly purring right behind your back...

Re:Eye candy!

[EvilAlien]

Boringwind couldn't keep my attention for more than 10 minutes.

I've noticed a similarity between NWN and V:TM, however NWN is getting much more attention than either of the two mentioned games did.

People slag Bioware for NWN instability (don't know what you are talking about, mine is fine), UI (I don't have a problem with the user interface, and I've studied ergonomics, so there =P ), etc etc etc.

All games should have a Your Mileage May Vary disclaimer. To each their own.

w4r3z d00ds said...

[News for nerds]

"So we can distribute DOOM III ISO image in DOOM III P2P network!!!"

Re:w4r3z d00ds said...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh

Re:w4r3z d00ds said...

[tomstdenis]

Funny. Did you think of that yourself?

Re:w4r3z d00ds said...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I met you in real life I probably wouldn't like you much.

Re:w4r3z d00ds said...

[tomstdenis]

I'd probably agree with you.

Re:w4r3z d00ds said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this "News for nerds" fellow is a fountain of wit. I wonder if he conceived this brilliant piece of work all by himself.

New hidden rooms...

[SarkySod]

Imagine fragging, collecting weapons and mp3's throughout the game!

Re:New hidden rooms...

[Anonymous Coward]

...now imagine a beowulf cluster of that!

P2P multiplayer

[cdf12345]

"Taking a cue from the RIAA, the gaming industry will attempt to place fake opponents onto the networks. These oppenents (bots) will appear normal, but will repeat themselfs after about 30 seconds."

p2p gaming.....wow.

The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, are not all peer-to-peer networks for the explicit purpose of infringing upon the rights of the owners?

I expect an all-out war against this blatant attempt to further the cause of the criminal "filesharers", and I would expect nothing less than Congress to demand its ceasation.

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[xingix]

After all, are not all peer-to-peer networks for the explicit purpose of infringing upon the rights of the owners?

That has got to be the most ridiculous statement I've had the pleasure of reading today. Have you ever connected two computers together using a cross-over cable or a hub? That's called a peer-to-peer network--- like 90% of all home networks in existence.

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[damiam]

The majority of existing games are already mostly p2p. You usually have to connect to a server to find other players, but then the game itself is handled between the clients.

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called humor...

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[Golias]

Is this a new method of trolling? You pretend not to get an obvious joke, write a pedantic and angry response, and hope to get people to post replies explaining the joke that you "missed" to you?

Or are you actually that irony deficient?

(Oooo... check me out, I coined a new pun: irony deficient. I think I'll keep using that one.)

I'll feed the troll, just this once: The parent post was obviously joking.

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[xingix]

So that's what trolling is ;-) I'm new to this, but I reread that parent statement and it doesn't seem sarcastic at all. It was even written by an anonymous coward. Oh well, my bad!

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[Gooba42]

Shhhh...we don't want the *AAs to know there are other networks aside from the internet.

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[LordNightwalker]

I'll feed the troll, just this once: The parent post was obviously joking.

And not doing a very good job at it. The "p2p" <-> "p2p file share app" uhhm... "joke" was probably the first thing everybody thought of when reading the post. Nobody has anything inteligent to say, yet everybody wants to be heard. The end result is thread upon thread of utter bullshit and bad puns that this /. article has already become.

If you don't have anything useful to say, simply shut up. My grandfather understood this, my father after him understood this, I understand this, the slashdot crowd obviously doesn't.

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems most humour wouldn't happen then, would it?

Quit being an ass, the original poster put his/her tongue in cheek and made a post. Deal with it.

Re:The RIAA/MPAA Isn't Going to Like This!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have anything useful to say, simply shut up. My grandfather understood this, my father after him understood this, I understand this, the slashdot crowd obviously doesn't.

If you understood it, you wouldn't have posted that bullshit. Face it, the only difference between you and them is that they weren't arrogant dickbiters about the bullshit they posted..

Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[ptbrown]

P2P is a fad and I predict that sometime after the beta they'll have things set up in a more traditional client/server fashion... though they likely won't call it that.

But what I found much more interesting was this quote:

"Absolutely, but Linux version basically means an NVIDIA version - that's the only safe bet for working video under Linux in Doom 3."

Gah!!! I hope ATI and Matrox see that and consider it a challenge. It's really discouraging that the only quasi-respected video drivers for Linux are proprietary.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[Anonymous Coward]

If Matrox and ATI supported as much functionality as NVidia, they wouldn't have any problem.

Of course, it's difficult to tell some company to play catch up when they don't realize they are behind.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll point out that it was Carmack who originally stuck the client-server model, along with TCP/IP support, in games, with Quake.

If he's switching back to P2P, I'm sure there's a good reason.

He's been talking about it for years; about the compromises he had to make to use the client-server system, and how P2P had more potential. I forget the details, though.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[Anonymous Coward]

Get real, ATI and Matrox suck shit. I'll use a working card, thanks.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[SmallFurryCreature]

Well ati has got only itself to blaim, and matrox has let a few balls drop with its new card since it cannot keep up with the ati and nvidia (although its linux support is great!). So if you want a powerfull GPU on linux, nvidia is the only choice for the gamer market.

As to the two others considering it a challenge, well for desktop matrox is the king and ati probably got other things to worry about then a fraction of a niche market.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[mrpuffypants]

at quakecon this year the guy from ATI was asked about linux compatibility for the 9700, and his response was that they are "in the works"

so you might see it running on a radeon too :)

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[Winnipenguin]

Linux driver here:

http://mirror.ati.com/support/products/pc /radeon8500/linux/radeon8500linuxdrivers.html?cboO S=LinuxXFree86&cboProducts=RADEON+8500&cmdNext=GO% 21

And ATI and Massive render The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in real time in Linux
http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2002/4 520.html

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[0x0d0a]

Matrox supports *more* functionality than NVidia.

Oh, you mean in hardware, not in their Linux drivers? Well...yes, there is that...

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[byran lei]

>Get real, ATI and Matrox suck shit. I'll use a working card, thanks.
>
>
And bitch once again about how *cheap* they are when very few Linux users buy this game because most of them own ATI and Matrox graphics cards.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[grumpygrodyguy]

P2P is a fad and I predict that sometime after the beta they'll have things set up in a more traditional client/server fashion

P2P is a "fad" because the content industry and the media industry have merged, and are protecting thier monopoly.

AOL/Time Warner isn't doing anything to foster broadband because P2P threatens the TW side of thier business(content), while the AOL side is making money on thier 56k service. The cable companies are of course doing the same thing. DirectTV recenty aquired Telocity DSL. The list goes on.

As long as monopolies and private interest are prioritized over public citizens, there is no reason to believe that broadband will ever become a reality in the US.

So, you're right, P2P is just a fad...because broadband has been bought, sold, and shelved.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[HimalayanRoadblock]

Just wanted to say I like your Sig. And I agree and hope ATI does some linux drivers. There was that storya while back about the weather channel funding radeon linux drivers. I wonder what happend to that.

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[the way, what're you]

...and matrox has let a few balls drop...

Does that mean they're growing up?

Re:Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox

[Anonymous Coward]

"P2P is a fad and I predict that sometime after the beta they'll have things set up in a more traditional client/server fashion... though they likely won't call it that."

Except that Doom 1 + 2 had a peer to peer system, not a client server system. Hint: get a clue, _then_ post.

files

[wretchedmage]

so he's saying now that people can give each other files in a 3D world!? COOL!

Re:files

[Anonymous Coward]

no hes not. dick. read what he said again

you fucking DICK!!!!

why?

[asv108]

Two questions:

Why P2P for multiplay?

Why Focus on single player?

I can see using p2p for making servers scaleable across a network, but i hope they are abandoning client/server.

Who gives a shit about single player? Really, they had it right with quake 3, nobody plays single player anymore, at least not repeatedly.

Re:why?

[tomstdenis]

Why P2P for multiplay?

Ditribute the load. Of course with each level of the P2P system [e.g. say its a N-way tree] you add delay so obviously you want a short tree.

Consider a system with say four servers that host say 20 people each. As long as the ping between the four is low enough you can now host 80 people and distribute the load/cost over four different servers.

Why Focus on single player?

Because 9 out of 10 times I [personally] go on a DM net game the ping is ridiculously high with some people [stupid dialup shitheads] hitting over 900ms ping.

I'd rather blast some inteligent bots than play online.

Also games like RtCW and Elite are done with the Q3A engine and are decent single play games.

Tom

Re:why?

[sane?]

Why focus on single player?

Because you can't really do a good storyline if all people are doing is shooting their mates.

Because only a subset of the gamer community is interested in multiplayer. Many more don't want to have to go online to play.

Because, in the end, multiplayer limits what you can do, even in a FPS.

Re:why?

[Reziac]

Probably hard marketing facts:

At the height of the Quake-online frenzy, Doomworld ran a poll asking how many people played in each mode: single, deathmatch, coop. Turns out solo players outnumbered DMers by 4 to 1, and coop players by 20 to 1. (Sample size was several thousand, so statistically significant.)

DOOM (primarily a solo game) outsold all versions of Quake (primarily a multiplayer game) *combined* by at least 3 to 1. And that's even tho DOOM came out when home computers were still a relative novelty, and priced out of many people's reach. By the time Quake came along, most households already had a computer (and PCs cost a lot less too). So -- Quake didn't sell as well even tho more people had PCs by then. Obviously, something went wrong with the spectrum of Quake's market appeal, and consensus is the lack of really good solo play.

I'd hazard a guess that DOOM3 won't really be playable over the net unless you have broadband. Which would artificially limit its market to the small subset of net users who actually have broadband (the last figure I saw was under 20%). Which would be stupid, from a sales standpoint.

In short, the single player market is a helluva lot larger than the multiplayer market. And idSoftware is really in the game *engine* business, which multiplies that market by a factor of however many companies they license their code to.

Re:why?

[Tom Dunne]

If it bothers you that much, skip Doom III and hold out for Quake4.

Re:why?

[exoduz]

Also, Halflife... another great single player game topped the charts for how many years?

I like multiplayer but sometimes the competition and stress is too much for me :P

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Who gives a shit about single player?

Hey, what about those of us who have no friends, and are far too shit at it to play against other people on the net?

Re:why?

[swoopx]

Multiplayer in quake1 was just an after thought, it too like doom was geared towards single player.

Re:why?

[KalvinB]

"I'd hazard a guess that DOOM3 won't really be playable over the net unless you have broadband."

Actually it should have no problem playing over the same connections as previous versions. The significant improvement in graphics doesn't change the amount of data that needs to be sent.

If I shoot a rocket all I need to send everyone else is the velocity, angle and starting position of the rocket which can be done in less than 20 bytes. If it hits a wall, all the clients will know about it and destroy the wall (or anything else that's destructable) without any further information being sent.

The only data being sent on a regular basis is still position, velocity and angle like every other FPS multiplayer game.

If you can play Quake III on-line you'll be able to play Doom3 on-line.

Ben

Re:why?

[JofCoRe]

Who gives a shit about single player? Really, they had it right with quake 3, nobody plays single player anymore, at least not repeatedly

I'm quite excited about the focus on single player, for one. I found myself playing a lot more half-life than I ever did quake 3, despite quake 3 being the technologically superior game. Why? Because running around killing bots is boring, and you can only play online if you have a fast connection (I live in the boonies...), and have hours to waste. I mean, I consider myself fairly good at these type of game, but I can in no way compete with a teenager that has all the time on his hands to play constantly. And running around killing over and over can get boring too... there needs to be some point, or some goal, IMO. If you're working towards something, and moving forward in the game, it gives me more reason to go back and play again... to see "what happens next".

When Doom came out, I remember it was the shit. I used to play all three ways... single player, deathmatch, coop. And it was enjoyable each way. Since it was pretty much the first of its type that had that sort of "deathmatch" available, I think deathmatch caught on really quick, and so they started focussing on that more in the later games. But it seems like the other parts of the game weren't stresed. I'm glad to see that iD is going back to the development model they used on Doom, because Doom proved that a game could be good at many different types of play, and do it all well.

I really hope they bring back cooperative mode too, that's one thing I've sorely missed since the doom series. The problem with deathmatch is that if you've only got 2 or 3 friends handy, there usually ends up being one person that gets better than the other(s). So after a while, it gets predictable.

So anyway....

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Because 9 out of 10 times I [personally] go on a DM
> net game the ping is ridiculously high with some
> people [stupid dialup shitheads] hitting over 900ms
> ping.

Where do you live, Zimbabwe? Why do you care what some modem user is pinging? The warping will never be enough if they're really pinging >800 for them to have an aggregate advantage. You might miss one shot. Oh woe is you! Maybe they'll spend two minutes in the connection interrupted state! Oh how they'll rack up the frags!

Their lag doesn't amount to anything but an aggregate advantage for you.

Now if their real ping is much lower and they're changing cvars to induce warping (and appearance of lag as a side-effect) then they're cheating. Play a mod where they actually locked the relevant cvars.

> I'd rather blast some inteligent bots than play online.

Bots are boring. They're never clever, and their only challenging aspect is that their aim is good. Playing against real people is far more stimulating (providing you ignore everything they say, as it's usually less intelligent than the commentary provided by the SP Q3A bots).

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

On what basis do you consider yourself good at these games, if you "can't compete with a teenager...?"

Your contention is that you're good, but when you add your "but not against the people that actually play multiplayer," and "I don't play multiplayer because compensating for a 300 ping will crush my frail ego."

I like SP modes, and I like co-op. The latter is good if you have friends, such as yourself, that aren't actually very good at the games, but like to play them. Can't have you getting mad and leaving!

Re:why?

[Reziac]

But even so, Quake proved more of a multiplayer type game. It just wasn't suited for sustained interest as a solo jaunt.

Re:why?

[Iscariot_]

I think one thing you're forgetting is that Doom came out at a time when there wasn't as much competition in the PC Gaming market. Good games (especially like Doom) were hard to come by. Less competition naturally led to more sales in this case.

If you were to take that into consideration, I'm sure that the Quake trilogy has proportionally outsold Doom 3 to 1.

Re:why?

[Reziac]

Actually, DOOM had at least as much competition *relative to the number of PCs available to play it on*. Plus DOOM was probably warez'd a lot more than Quake, simply because DOOM would still fit on a handful of floppies. (Quake having predated ubiquitous CDRWs and being of the 28.8 modem era, was too inconvenient to avoid actually buying.)

One of the independent marketing groups (Gartner or the like, I forget) put forth these numbers: copies of DOOM sold: 6 million; copies warez'd: estimated 18 million. Copies of Quake sold: 800,000; no estimate on warez'd copies.

At a wild-assed guess, the percentage of homes with a PC capable of playing DOOM in its day was probably around 1 in 10. By Quake's day, probably around 1 in 4. When you take that into consideration, it probably swings the balance even further toward DOOM.

Re:why?

[cobar]

First off, Doom ][ outsold the original Doom by a fair amount. And the actual numbers for Doom ][ are something in the neighborhood of 1.8 million copies (Myst has sold more than 5 million copies and the Sims more than 6). As the first link states, lots of people got the Doom demo, but since you had to mail order Doom when it first came out sales were not that high.

Secondly, at the time Doom came out (1993) there were quite a few machines that could run it. Even measly 386 DX's could and it ran quite well on my 486 DX 33. By the time Doom ][ came out a year later with the same engine and only slightly more cpu intensive maps, virtually everyone could play it.

Quake on the other hand had mediocre single player compared to Doom, graphics that were technically superior and cool but looked like crap till people had 3d cards with 16 bit color and high res, and required a Pentium 100 or better to run well at a time when Pentium systems were significantly more expensive than 486's.

Also, much like how the first Doom episode was easily distributed via BBS's and floppy disks, the first episode of Quake was sold on CD for $5 and was also downloadable off the Internet, so some people may never have bought anything more.

The last thing is that Doom had numerous 3rd party addons, map packs, editors, Final Doom and everything else that further drove the Doom craze. Everybody and their brother was playing Doom, getting extra Doom levels, etc. Quake sold less copies, mapping was more difficult, etc. so there were fewer people creating maps and there was only the one official addon pack. Frankly, Quake single player wasn't that fun compared to Doom. Quake 2's single player focus still didn't help, it's got a horrible single player aspect.

Re:why?

[spullum69]

because single player is way more mentally challenging and fun than multiplayer. multiplayer gets boring to someone like me real quick. i love half life like realism, and i cant wait for dm3. what i love about doom is that you always feel like ur there, and if they can do this for modern hw, ill be in heaven.

Re:why?

[Reziac]

Exactly -- multiplayer, especially DM, soon becomes much the same old thing -- the appeal seems to be the sustained adrenaline high. Solo has far more variation. As to realism, that's mostly in the player's head, not in the game itself. A super-realistic environment with boring gameplay will not cut it. For my rant on the topic, see http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/asylum/zdoomr.ht m (beware of /.-added spaces in URL).

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiplayer in quake1 was just an after thought, it too like doom was geared towards single player

If multiplayer was just an afterthought, then why was it so tightly designed into the code? The code comtains a very clear separation into client and server even when playing on a single machine, single-player all communication bewteen the two is doen through the networking model.

P2P?

[SEWilco]

So what does P2P mean in this situation....Can we keep running in one direction, passing through an endless series of different servers handling their own collection of rooms?

"If this looks like Cairo, my lag must be awful."

Server monitor: a map showing the people running around in your server.

Or does P2P mean that everyone sends their status to all 30,000 other people in the game?

Re:P2P?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the latter, but if they've got any clue, they will set up a token ring network to minimize the bandwidth consumption.

Well, and you will probably have local networks with your friends, not some huge Gnutella monstrosity.

ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

So this means the RIAA can hack into Doom servers when players exchange maps? I hope they enjoy Martian moons...

P2P in gaming.

[Karhgath]

P2P architecture has existed way before any P2P file exchange system.

Previous iD's games used a client-server architecture. Now, they changed it to use a Peer to Peer 'protocol' and architecture.

What does it mean? Since it won't use a client-server protocol, you won't be able to join a game that has already started(that was stated at QuakeCon). The game is 'hosted' on each player's computer that exchange data about the current state of the game. There is no central server that handles all the load. Each player communicate in peer to exchange the information, hence the name.

Peer to peer architecture is what is used in most Real-Time Strategy(RTS) games like Starcraft, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, Age of Empire, etc.

So, there's absolutely no relation to P2P file exchange like kazaa and such, just he architecture that has been used extensively before.

Now... the question is: why? Also, won't that allow hackers to create better hacks? Usually, games go from P2P to Client-Server because of security concerns, even if Client-Server is usually 'slower'. They rarely go the other way around. But that's another completely different topic.

Scalable ?

[Krapangor]

John just forgot to mention it'll be scalable past four players

Why should this be better than servers ?
P2P will least introduce a scale of lag, and it will probably even cause bandwidth issues (remember that the peers might be connected with lines It seems that they are in fact fucking up a good game just to be on the P2P bandwagon.
I'm rather surprised that Carmack didn't notice that a system like Quake is not an easily distributable computing problem.
Some people say that with money and fame the brain melts.

Re:Scalable ?

[James Foster]

By peer-to-peer they meant clients only. No servers. It's not the same breed of peer-to-peer as you see in file sharing applications.

Think of a "peer" as a "client". Client-to-client. It just means that there are no dedicated servers, one player connects to another player when they want to play a game. Just like in Quake 3 when you are not all joining a dedicated server.

Re:Scalable ?

[KeyserDK]

It's still client-server in quake3... both with listen & dedicated modes.

The listen "server" just runs a renderer/client on top of the "dedicated".

Every client still talks to the same server - the listen guy just talks to himself(the server) and get ping 0.

Re:Scalable ?

[sfraggle]

This isnt better, its just easier to write.

The original doom used a peer to peer networking system too. In a peer to peer game, every player has their own copy of the game running on their machine. The multiple games are kept "in sync" by exchanging data about inputs (which keys are pressed, mouse movements etc). As long as the games all have the same exact inputs they should stay in sync.

Most modern games (Quake and above) have adopted a client-server system. In client-server systems, there is only one copy of the game running, on the server. The clients send their inputs to this server, and the server sends information about the changing state of the game world to the clients. This has the advantage of being more flexible: you can do things like in-game joining (join a game while it is running) and it is not possible for the game to go out of sync (in peer to peer if things differ slightly they go out of sync).

id have obviously decided to do this because it is the easiest solution. They want there to be some kind of Multiplayer available but they dont want to spend too much time on it. P2P multiplayer systems in general are easier to write. They have already stated they will be concentrating on Single Player for Doom 3.

Re:Scalable ?

[Dillon2112]

I have to disagree. Carmack has always done things because they are The Right Thing. And while I'll concede that he is a man that will draw the line on feature bloat, I don't see how writing a Client/Server multiplay would be even remotely more difficult for him. He has Quake/2/3's netcode and C/S code to base it off of. In fact, P2P would probably be far harder to construct, considering *no one* has ever written a P2P online gaming architecture designed for TCP/IP.
And to the original poster: you think that Carmack hasn't figured out that P2P system is difficult to implement in gaming? He's the guy that designed the original C/S architecture after writing the first P2P architecture. I think he knows the pros and cons.
All that remains to be seen is: how does it play?

Re:Scalable ?

[sfraggle]

P2P multiplayer is much easier to write than Client Server: you simply exchange the status of the input devices. A Client Server system by contrast is a much bigger task - one that would probably take several months to complete. He cant neccesarily use the Quake netcode as from what I have seen of it, it is very integrated into the game itself.

In this situation, The Right Thing would probably be to use a simpler, albeit less powerful and flexible system rather than hacking something together from old code, which would likely lead to an awful mess.

Re:Scalable ?

[bmorton]

I'm guessing he's decided peer-to-peer to eliminate the strange glitches that happen when a client goes out of sync for one reason.

This game seems to be intended to be more cinematic and what not, so it might be a better solution to keep the "world" more consistent.

Maybe I'm wrong. *shrug* :)

Really? What about security?

[Maggot75]

I'm very interested to see how they will tackle the security part. In general, you cannot trust the client. Ever. Introducing a P2P network will enable one hacked client to wreak havoc on other clients. Some redundancy might be introduced to prevent cheating, but that would increase bandwidth, neh?
Are FPS's perhaps already trusting the client anyway? Is a cheat-proof multiplayer FPS a myth?

Not article material

[cybermace5]

OK.

Someone asks about the multiplayer Doom 3. They haven't worked on it yet. In the middle of a live Q&A session, Tim is assuring everyone the game will be multiplayer. He starts throwing out words even though he doesn't know the exact way it will work, because, hey, they haven't done multiplayer yet.

Tim blurts "It will be a peer to peer system." That's the entire discussion of that in the whole article. There is nothing else.

By "peer to peer" system he simply meant "yes, you will be able to hook up your computers and play together" and nothing else. Why does this deserve a front page article? It doesn't. It was obviously something he said while in a live situation and he wasn't sure of the details.

The poster of this article looks sillier than the stock market and Alan Greenspan. What's even more disturbing is that Taco fell for it too. Someone needs to send over good strong pot of coffee.

It's days like these when the trolls start to make sense.

Re:Not article material

[Gaccm]

actually, before this article Carmack said that there will be a p2p system but it will be capped at 4 players. This article is refuting the 4 player limit that caused many people to gag.

Also don't you think an enginner working at ID is a little more careful with his words than saying p2p when meaning playable online?

Re:Not article material

[SoLoatWork]

Someone asks about the multiplayer Doom 3. They haven't worked on it yet. In the middle of a live Q&A session, Tim is assuring everyone the game will be multiplayer. He starts throwing out words even though he doesn't know the exact way it will work, because, hey, they haven't done multiplayer yet.
Wrong.
This was revealed during John Carmack's Q&A session, a man who doesn't usually "throw out words" when he doesn't know "the exact way it will work".

Tim blurts "It will be a peer to peer system." That's the entire discussion of that in the whole article. There is nothing else.
Wrong.
The talk with Tim was after Carmack's speech, and it was a 1-on-1 with a reporter, Tim wasn't talking to a crowd.

By "peer to peer" system he simply meant "yes, you will be able to hook up your computers and play together" and nothing else. Why does this deserve a front page article? It doesn't. It was obviously something he said while in a live situation and he wasn't sure of the details.
Wrong, again.
By "peer to peer" he meant, *gasp*, peer to peer. He is not stupid and realizes what peer to peer means. To answer your question: it deserves a front page article because the new Doom is using a different type of networking code than the Quakes. We're all big fans of the id games and this is "New for nerds, stuff that matters"

The poster of this article looks sillier than the stock market and Alan Greenspan. What's even more disturbing is that Taco fell for it too. Someone needs to send over good strong pot of coffee. It's days like these when the trolls start to make sense.
Cultural reference drivel. Next.

DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

[James Foster]

Why is there a question mark after the title of this? It's been stated by id, that DOOM 3 will use a peer-to-peer network architecture. There's nothing uncertain about that.
This has been known for around about an entire week now... it's been stated multiple times.

Also, to clarify, when they say "peer-to-peer", they don't mean a network of users like Kazaa or file sharing applications, they mean that it is client-to-client as opposed to client-to-server.
The best way of thinking about DOOM 3's multiplayer is as being the same as the original DOOM's multiplayer. 4 players, and no such thing as a "server".
The only actual uncertainty is the 4 player limit. It was initially mentioned, but now Willits has said that it is scalable beyond that... This is unclear as we don't know if he means that the game can go beyond that, but the network code is ideal for 4 players, or means that the game will have a hard limit of 4 players, but mods and games based on the engine will be able to scale beyond 4 players.

Also, it is known for definate that once a game has started, additional players cannot join. This limitation is due mainly to DOOM 3's physics engine. Basically, there is so much physics data that would need to be synchronised, that if a player had to "catch up" with the physics data, it would probably be a lot of data to send, and since it's constantly changing data, it is likely that as the player recieves the data, it becomes invalid.

It will be interesting to see how other games deal with the problem of physics data. As physics engines in games become increasingly complex, it will become harder for programmers to cope with players joining a game that has already started. Perhaps if all games employed "rounds" (like Counter-Strike), then player's wouldn't have to wait long until the game restarts and they can start playing. This already has to happen when a player joins a Counter-Strike game that's already in play.

Wha?

[decipher_saint]

"Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game."

What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only? Probably the original Doom. I don't know about you lot, but I like playing FPS because they let me pit my wits against other people.

Re:Wha?

[OblvnDrgn]

What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only?

Max Payne. It was a decent sized hit.

Half-life was before that. That's bigger.

I suppose it wasn't ONLY single player, but neither is this. However if a single player FPS is good enough to get everyone interested in the genre to have a play-through, and then those clever mod-makers realize how many people are playing Doom 3 and begin work on the next counterstrike, well, it's a path to success.

I'll agree, multi-player is the key to longevity, but there's nothing wrong with a good ol' solo romp through Hell before you get around to Deathmatch.

Re:Wha?

[martyn s]

Ever hear of Half Life? Deus Ex? No One Lives Forever? Medal Of Honor? Dude, get with it. It's so obvious that most people on slashdot, despite being geeks, aren't really gamers. You don't know anything about games.

Re:Wha?

[Spokehedz]

Umm... Hello? How about Unreal, Quake, Quake2, Half-Life, No One Lives Forever, Soldier of Fortune 1&2, Aliens Vs Predator 1&2, Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt?

I know I've seen on this thread the hatred for modem users and their effect on the multiplayer games... they make them so PAINFULLY slow, that its unbearable to even try and play. I've got DSL, and unless I'm the server, I HATE playing online because of the LAG.

And to everyone who says "Well, its not _that_ bad." is just fooling themselves.

I never bought Quake3. why? because I hate lan games. and besides ID never wanted that one to fly that well anyway--they were making that game purely for the licensing of the engine. Which is making lots of cash I hear...

The rule of the world is that for every one person who likes something, there is another person who dislikes it with just as much. I personally don't give a hoot about online play. I've got a super-fast computer, that can do billions of operations a second. I want my games to look, feel, react, move, and think as realistically as absolutely possible.

I wanted to know exactly how far could we get with realism, and I came upon some algorithm that can accurately simulate the flow of water, mud, syrup, etc. etc...

the game I want is the game that is simply so real, and so detailed, that it would be up to the MOD community to make games for it.

Can you imagine a engine that was just SO good, that anything was possible? How about realistic flight, that uses the density of air and the physics of it over the wings to truly give a unique and different feel to each plane in the game? Same thing goes for cars, bikes, carts, 4-wheelers, ect. ect. If you coded in the BASIC rules of our world, then the game world would simply fall into place.

But, I'm just a lowly coder who knows noting more than a few shell scripts and a teensy amount of C. so I don't get to voice my opinion... oh wait. ^_-

Re:Wha?

[DjMd]

What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only? Probably the original Doom

Ah I believe that would be Quake, NIN did the soundtrack? Its engine and its progeny power almost every FPS. Perhapse you have heard of it? I believe the focus of that game was making a "kickass, over the top single player game"...

He didn't say exclusively single player, just a single player game first... after that...

Re:Wha?

[KeyserDK]

Lagging players doesnt affect you in any way - other than the guy may be warping around if it's bad, ofcourse there are more issues with listen servers servers.

It's not fun to play on listen servers - but there are thousands of servers at ISP's and the like which are dedicated. Find the servers with either Gamespy or the more powerfull All Seeing Eye

Unless you're a part of a gaming community/clan on irc these tools are must have.

On a sidenote i get ping 20-40 on the servers i play on - with dsl. Not that different from LAN really.

Re:Wha?

[xingix]

If you coded in the BASIC rules of our world, then the game world would simply fall into place.

I'm sure a real programmer like John Carmack would agree that nothing in game programming is simple. Actually that's not true--- initializing DirectX and/or OpenGL is simple ;-)

You are getting the wrong idea here.

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that multiplayer is crippled because the focus of the game is singleplayer, so they are throwing in basic peer to peer multiplayer system, similar to what was found in the original Doom games, and which is still in use today by MANY MANY GAMES, you all play warcraft don't you? yes that's what they are talking about. It also means you can't just join a game in mid play, you all need to join at the same time, this will be a requirment of the netcode. If firingsquad had any clue they would also have realised that 5 minutes later in the speech Carmack mentioned that proper multiplayer (eg. client server) would probably be added with an add-on which would ship after the game is released.

arg!

[Anonymous Coward]

But I DONT WANT a 'kickass single player blah blah' experience! I feel ID are making a BIG mistake on skimping out on multiplayer. I mean, he even said himself that most people will complete it in a weekend. What?! One weekend that'll cost about 40 quid. What a waste of time and money. Guess I'll just have to wait for Quake 4.

Small Black Dog

Re:arg!

[RabidOverYou]

"most likely someone could buy it, take it home, obsessively play it for a weekend and beat it"

If an Obsessive beats it in a weekend, then it'll take a normal human - going to work, reading the newspaper, eating food not straight out of the box - two months. I'm okay with that.

Re:Really? What about security?

[damiam]

Starcraft uses p2p, and it's almost completely unhacked after four years (yeah, I know about maphack, but that's not much compared to the hacking in a lot of other games).

DOOM III

[thefogger]

I remember the other DOOM games - I think they didn't use a real client/server setup either. If memory doesn't fail me here, you just said "4 player multiplayer game" to the setup program, and the different machines found themselves through broadcasting. The protocol was also just pure broadcasting of packets that brought many a network to its knees :-)

Also, wouldn't true p2p be a cheaters heaven? I mean there are a lot of cheaters now in current games that have a "central authority" kind of server. What would happen if every client is itself responsible for calculating the player's actions? I imagine it would be trivial for cheaters to crack such a system.

This is great!

[JediTrainer]

This is what I've always loved about Descent! For those of you who're not familiar with it, Descent was P2P, not requiring any one machine to be a server. Somehow the load was shared amongst all the clients. It was never a problem if one machine in particular crashed or disconnected - the game continued between the rest.

Granted, I think it was made to work on a LAN only, but if ID could pull this sort of feat off with Doom 3, I'd be all for it!

I'm guessing that this would eliminate the need for one person to have tons of bandwidth and a good machine dedicated to be a server. This should allow virtually *anybody* to start a game (even those on dialup, maybe?)

As someone who's cable is limited to 128k up, I'm very excited about this development!

Re:This is great!

[Manes]

> This is what I've always loved about Descent!

You know what i really hated about Descent?

That due to the system you praise above, anyone with a trainer could give themself unlimited health and weapons and whatnot, and since there was no authorative server, they could get away with it!

Cheats totally ruined Descent 1 and 2, anyone could just be an asshole and cheat if he felt like it.

Client/Server is the only way to go to have decent cheat-protection!

Re:This is great!

[blackula]

"Themself."

Jesus FUCKING CHRIST, would you please take three seconds to learn our language? "Them" is plural and only plural. The word you were looking for is "himself."

Re:This is great!

[sc00ch]

no, he actually meant 'themselves'. As long as you understand what he was trying to say. Whats the problem?

Re:This is great!

[Enonu]

Jesus FUCKING CHRIST, would you please take three seconds to be more P.C., and use a gender neutral term? Get with the program moron! Go open up a modern English book, and learn not to be such a sexist asshole.

Re:This is great!

[blackula]

Any respectable English manual will tell you to use "he" as the genderless pronoun or to recast the sentence. "Themself" is not a word, and using "them" as singular causes confusion and is just plain wrong.

It's also funny how you seem to contend that our language, when spoken and written properly, is sexist. I guess I should expect such moronic ideas from a woman.

Re:This is great!

[Freddy_K]

"I'm sure I will catch some flack about increased cheating after the source
release, but there are plenty of Q2 cheats already out there, so you are
already in the position of having to trust the other players to a degree. The
problem is really only solvable by relying on the community to police itself,
because it is a fundamentally unwinnable technical battle to make a completely
cheat proof game of this type. Play with your friends."

http://gamefinger.com/plan.asp?userid=johnc&id=1 57 53

Read this, and wonder why this story got posted

[veddermatic]

An article all about this that makes one wonder why this story was posted at all.

They are making it like Warcraft / most RTS games where you all "gather" in a waiting room, then start the server. Big deal....

DOOM3 is a SINGLE PLAYER game... anything they say about MP is probably invalid as it's leaving thier mouths... id knows damn well that there will be MP gaming in DOOM 3, but they aren't thinking about it now.

Besides, if you want multiplayer gaming with the DOOM 3 engine, one could always play Quake 4, which is in the works as well.

Re:Read this, and wonder why this story got posted

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone wants quake 4...After all, recall that Carmack and his crew are not developing it. It is going to be done by Ravensoft, which I'm not looking much forward to. If it was to be done by ID, I would have a complete change of opinion.

Re:Read this, and wonder why this story got posted

[DiscoOnTheSide]

Eh, after seeing how good they did with Heretic 2, SoF 1 and 2, and the Star Trek Voyager game (wassit.....Elite Force if memory serves) I say let em try at making Quake 4. They're obviously competent people, so I dont think they can bugger it up THAT much. And if they go back to the Quake 2 style of scenery and story. I'd love it. The futuristic cold steel feel Quake 2 had was great. The medieval castle feel in Quake 1 and the "organic" feel of Quake 3 just DIDNT sit well with me. Eh, you may disagree with me, but thats the beauty of opinions, right?

single player claim to fame.

[kaisyain]

What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only? Probably the original Doom.

You're joking, right? Goldeneye 007, Half-Life, Deux Ex, Thief, System Shock, Rainbow 6, Jedi Knight, Medal of Honor: Frontline, No One Lives Forever, MDK, Outlaws, Hitman, Shogo.

I like playing FPS because they let me pit my wits against other people.

You can play most games online, from Backgammon to Chess to every RTS made nowadays.

Re:single player claim to fame.

[UnknownSoldier]

> You're joking, right? Goldeneye 007, Half-Life, Deux Ex, Thief, System Shock, Rainbow 6, Jedi Knight, Medal of Honor: Frontline, No One Lives Forever, MDK, Outlaws, Hitman, Shogo.

You missed Max Payne ;-)

Re:single player claim to fame.

[xingix]

Duke3d and it's cousin Blood can't be left out either 8-D

Re:single player claim to fame.

[damien_kane]

You forgot Metal Gear Solid (Pick one...)

Re:single player claim to fame.

[Anonymous Coward]

MDK was a 3rd person shooter.
And a very impressive one.
I still play it from time to time; it's good for stress relief. :]

Re:single player claim to fame.

[tempfile]

Definitely. I think Max Payne is highly underrated, and less known than it deserves to be. It has a great, compelling story told in a unique way (through COMIC STRIPS!) and interesting gameplay ideas like bullet time and eating painkillers. The MaxFX engine is stunning as well.

Re:single player claim to fame.

[xmnemonic]

Yes, he missed Max Payne because its single player sucks. Totally repetitive gameplay with its one redeeming feature stolen from a movie.

Ever heard of Half-Life?

[solios]

HL was the last game I remember being an FPS with a decent storyline. Sure, nobody really went into great detail about the plot when they were discussing it on the smoke deck- they always talked about the weapons, character interaction, facial movements, enemy and ally AI... Halflife had a LOT of really nifty things that kicked ass for single player- things that just didn't apply to the multiplayer aspect.

I fiddled with UT and Q3 when they came available, but HalfLife spanked the pants off of them both- if anything of that caliber single-player ever comes around, I'll probably check it out. Until then, I'm sticking with RPGs. I like FPS, but I fucking HATE multiplayer.... it's great to see iD focusing on the one thing that makes a game great- the single-player experience.

Re:Ever heard of Half-Life?

[Manes]

> HL was the last game I remember being an FPS with > a decent storyline

I also enjoyed the story in MOH:AA and Jedi Knight 2, great games that can be recommended :)

Re:Ever heard of Half-Life?

[Gooba42]

It pisses me off to go online and be immediately nuked by some 12 year old who thinks that railgun sniping from a half mile off is the ultimate gaming experience. I never got a chance to be any good at Q3A because as soon as you join, somebody who is already much better than you just nails you.
They almost need a "beginners" server designated for those of us who could use some practice without the frustration of a 1000:1 deaths to kills ratio.
As good as you might be at single player, as soon as you step into the multiplayer game, you're meat. It's just not fun.

Re:Ever heard of Half-Life?

[Namarrgon]

I really liked Half-Life. I played a few other things, but the only game I've enjoyed as much since was Halo.

I've played Halo through a number of times, at different difficulty levels - Legendary has a slightly different ending, and Easy gives more opportunities for driving tanks & flying Banshees - both as a single player and cooperative with a friend. Multiplayer kicks ass too. Played it quite a bit more than Half-Life, in fact.

If you have access to an Xbox I can definitely recommend checking it out - or wait till the PC version finally arrives.

Re:Ever heard of Half-Life?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Jedi Knight II would be the 'last' FPS game with a decent storyline that I played.

Cool!

[trauma]

A game that can warez itself!

(Yes, I know what peer networking really means in the context of the article, but it wasn't funny that way.)

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't funny this way either.

Re:Cool!

[zapfie]

Yeah it was, you just got picked on too much, so you have low self esteem, and need to make it up this way.

P2P rules but...

[Assimil8or]

..I can already see the next generation of multiplayer-cheating...

QUAKE?

[veddermatic]

Last time I checked, that was a singleplayer game that they threw a few LAN maps into at the last minute.... the rest is history.

Re:QUAKE?

[VoiceOfRaisin]

"Last time I checked, that was a singleplayer game that they threw a few LAN maps into at the last minute.... the rest is history"

you dont know your history very well do you. qtest, which came out before the full game or a demo, was a multiplayer only game. it was VERY multiplayer oriented from the get-go.

Doom 3 on XBox Only?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard rumors from both friends that work for the Evil Empire, and from the XBox marketdriods that work downstairs in my building, that Doom 3 will initially be launched ONLY on the XBox, and will come to the PC/Mac platform approximately 6 months later.

Carmacks vision of Massively Multiplayer

[aragod]

A few years ago, prior to Quake 3 I recall Carmack speaking around this issue. The buzzword at the time was "portal" technology but the concept was the same. Distribute the clockcycles and network load around.

My memory (link tba) recalls that the context was along the lines of contesting the MMORPG's vision of enormous proprietary systems with something a bit more... flexible.

Aragorn!

p2p network? For gaming??

[__aawavt7683]

Either this seems like a really bad idea or I'm guessing the details wrong... Say you connect to someone who's connected to 3 others. Your ping to the 3 others is then compounded with the guy in between you. If you have 2 people in between, that's your ping plus the ping of both of them.

As one could imagine, this wouldn't work too far out. There'd have to mostly be a central hub for it all.

Also, lack of server = greater ability to cheat. If each client is responsible for its own .. life or death, just modify the exe to not die. Say you get shot, and it's up to the user's client to recognize that. It could just ignore it. Or, if other clients are responsible for it, they could lie and kill someone across the map.

Now, say multiple clients must be in on it.. bad spot there too. Multiple cheaters being one. Another.. the ping issue. Where someone is on one client's screen could be slightly different than on another client's, due to that whole compounded ping thing I mentioned above. So, one client would say "Yeah, he got me," another could say "nah, he missed that guy by a few feet," another could say either way. Far too much chance in such a thing, imo.

I think I had one other thought, but I can't remember it, so 'th th th that's all for now, folks!"

-DrkShadow

Sorry, but you can't use P2P

[Henry V .009]

The slashdot crowd has already come out in support of cable-broadband companies banning P2P on their networks because the only use of P2P is for piracy. Sorry that you didn't think of possible future uses when you had the chance.

nice...

[wzoo1]

nice :) this is just excellent for p2p technologies... So gaming would go faster and everything...

Thanks for pointing this out.

[Sunnan]

Sure, slashdot is a heterogenous collection of people with different views, and that's good.

However:

When I started reading slashdot a couple of years ago, there were always many post promoting free software or open source and justifying copyright infringement. And this was good. I agree with those views.

These days when I read the highest moderated posts they're often promoting propretary software, they're speaking out against "piracy", they're almost MPAA-loving microsoftians.

Has the slashdot readership changed that much? Hmm, maybe time to do a statistical study...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Fucking bad Idea

[frost22]

Gosh! Peer to peer. Truly distributed. No central server. Bingo ! Bingo ! Bingo !

Aside from that fact that I just won Bulshit Bingo, this means cheating hell.

Hello, Mr Carmack, been busy coding for the last few years, have you ? never noticed those problems game communities have with people hacking their software to gain unfair advantages ? never heard of the likes of punkbuster and co ? never wondered why Blizzard went away from a real P2P-Game system in Diablo 1 to a strict client-server system in Diablo 2, to even have a chance to control cheating ?

Bah!

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[dollargonzo]

diablo2 was also the most patched game in history, so i wouldn't exactly hail blizzard

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[frost22]

diablo2 was also the most patched game in history, so i wouldn't exactly hail blizzard

Huh ? Diablo2 is now at 1.09. That means 9 patches alltogether, some of which never reached the public (like 1.07). All this includes the expansion, which added a substantial number of features.

In all there were 5 or 6 patches to Diablo2.

Doom had _way_ more patches. Don't know about quake.

And, patches or not, Blizzard's client-server architecture is the right way to go.

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[sfraggle]

Actually, if they do it right it should be possible for there to be little to no cheating at all. The only possible cheats would probably be client side things like seeing through walls, aimbots etc. which still affect client server architecture anyway. Any attempt to modify the game (if it is designed right) would throw the whole game out of sync.

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[Mikelikus]

oh no no... johnc never heard of punkbuster... considering that id was THE software company that gave permission to punkbuster to improve their own code!

Next point release you'll have an almost cheat-free Q3 - until someone comes up with something.

Bah! back to you! I will only criticize when I look at the final product. Never before!

Carmack is god :D

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[0x0d0a]

Fortunately, id has network software engineers like you to explain to them how to design game engines.

You think they're stupid? There are plenty of ways to deal with this...do things like have several computers maintain duplicate state (though no computer stores all state), then compute hashes based on known game state and exchange them periodically (and that's off the top of my head).

Now, with that system you may be able to cheat if there are multiple players in collusion and have complete control over the binaries (sounds good in theory...may not be that nasty in practice) -- if half the people are working together, you may just be screwed.

I rather suspect that id is going to do something new and interesting with distributed program design, and that Carmack really doesn't need lots of video gamers telling him what to do.

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if they do it right it should be possible for there to be little to no cheating at all. The only possible cheats would probably be client side things like seeing through walls, aimbots etc.

Let me guess, you've never played Counterstrike, right? Things like seeing through walls and aimbots are a HUGE problem. Maphacking in Starcraft isn't quite as bad as wallhacking and aimbots in CS.

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[sfraggle]

I am not disputing that they are a huge problem. The point of the original post was that using a P2P system would make the game more open to cheating. I am just showing that this is incorrect. Client side are a problem regardless of if you are using a Client Server or P2P architecture.

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[Vulture_]

if half the people are working together, you may just be screwed.

Cheaters are antisocial by definition. Hence, they are unlikely to work together like this.

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[frost22]

Fortunately, id has network software engineers like you to explain to them how to design game engines.

Unfortunately id apparently doesn't have scurity specialists that tell them how to design secure systems.

You cannot trust code running in an untrustworthy environment. Period.

Re:Fucking bad Idea

[0x0d0a]

You don't *need* to do so. The system I just gave as an example does not trust unknown code on any one computer -- faulty information *cannot* be propogated throughout the system.

If you have ten people, any six of whom can trust each other, this system would reduce the maximum load on any system from calculating the full world to calculating half as many things going on -- each piece of information is calculated by five different people, and hashes exchanged. You *cannot* slip something by in an environment like that. Any conspiracy would involve at most four people, and the system checks against five different values.

Take SETI@Home. Their solution to the problem -- they want to build a trustworthy system as a whole, but cannot trust individual nodes -- is to have nodes compute blocks, and then have randomly chosen other nodes recompute those blocks.

Actually, to some degree a well-made distributed id gaming system would be more secure -- you can't have someone set up a bogus server (or just break into the server) and immediately have godlike ability to cheat.

It's all about the 3D Engine

[Matthew E. Kieren]

What is so incredibly amazing about DOOM 3 is the 3D engine , not so much the game itself. Even if the gameplay sucks, it doesn't matter. It's all about the 3D engine that John Carmack is creating. It's like no other before it. Not only does it raise the bar for other game engine developers, it will also be licensed out just as the Quake engine has been. John knows what he's doing -- if he thinks P2P is best for DOOM 3, then he's obviously the most qualified person to make that decision right now. I think they decided to make a single player game for a number of reasons; the original DOOM was single player oriented, and they've also been focusing on multiplayer for so many years that it must be refreshing to take a break and work on a single player game for a change.

Personally I can't wait to play it because I'm also a Resident Evil fan. I remember playing the very first publicly released version of DOOM when it came out.. I had nightmares from playing it so much. :) This "scary" type of gameplay isn't for everyone, but a lot of people do enjoy it and I'm one of them. Oh, you want something else? A multiplayer game? A roleplaying game? A strategy game? Wait for other game developers to catch up or license the DOOM 3 engine. It's just a matter of time. The important thing is that there is now a new level for the other guys to catch up to, and that fact alone will benefit everyone. I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of the same old recycled 3D engines, it's great to see something new! :)

I think they are limiting it to 4 players because the game is so resource intensive. Anything above 4 players would be a strain on the system. This is also probably one of the reasons they don't have a lot of monsters on the screen at the same time. In my opinion for this particular type of gameplay, dozens of "A.I. dumb" monsters on the screen isn't very exciting. I personally prefer sacrificing quantity over quality. But what is so incredible about DOOM 3 is the wonderful 3D engine John has created! Shadows and lighting are the most important things to me in a game, and from what I've seen of the screenshots and videos, DOOM 3 does it beautifully. :)

Re:It's all about the 3D Engine

[Anonymous Coward]

Shadows and lighting are the most important things to you in a game?

You're an idiot.

Re:It's all about the 3D Engine

[xingix]

the original DOOM was single player oriented

The world was a lot different back when Doom was released. People didn't expect a multi-player experience because they barely had any idea what that was (besides the console users with the split screens and the guys who played two-player games using a single keyboard ;-))

Re:It's all about the 3D Engine

[Matthew E. Kieren]

Shadows and lighting are one of the most important things to me. Happy now?

Re:It's all about the 3D Engine

[Matthew E. Kieren]

There are a lot of people that love to play single player games. Besides, it doesn't matter whether it's single player or multiplayer, what matters is the 3D engine and the games that will come out because of it. Everything else is easy for a game developer to change, but the 3D engine is at the core of it all. What's a fancy car without an engine? Look at Half-Life for example. When it came out everyone loved it, but guess what 3D engine they used? Quake 2. Now don't get me wrong, from what I've seen DOOM 3 is going to kick some major booty in all areas! They have an extremely talented team working on this one, and I think that it will be unlike any of the previous id Software games. It's going to carry games over into the next dimension. :)

Re:It's all about the 3D Engine

[nnnneedles]

I doubt the licensees will write a completely new physics and/or multiplayer component.

What this means is that multiplayer shooters will basically suck in a lots of AAA games for 5-6 years after DOOM is released.

Unless of course you want to play solely on Epic engines and the like. And I, for one, don't.

Not being able to join a game in progress totally sucks on the internet, at least for shooters. A Listen/p2p server setup also sucks on the internet.

Bottomline: This makes baby jesus cry.

Our only hope is that Carmack fires the guy making the physics engine, and writes one himself, one that allows real multiplayer (like sof2 had).

Sounds familiar

[Mulletproof]

"Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game."

I think that's what they said about Quake 3 until UT mangled, stomped and otherwise owned it's ass. And I do have issues with any p2p model despite being told not to worry. Because p2p sucks. We use it for music because it's the only thing that the RIAA can't really kill outright, not because it's good. It's slow, it's spotty. It's also a bandwidth hog. You're never guaranteed in getting consistent results. I don't like p2p. maybe since it's only used for finding games it'll be different, but I'm looking at the current p2p models and they are all substandard for what they do.

Re:Sounds familiar

[0x0d0a]

I'd like to see a good cooperative mode, a la Bungie's Marathon and Halo.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, more like "Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top multiplayer game"

The exact opposite of what you said.

Idiot.

Who plays multiplayer?

[Viewsonic]

Quake sales have been slumped simply because the single player was so suck. Multiplayer was great, but since Half-Life/CounterStrike and Unreal Tournament, multiplayer id games are just plain bleagh. They're going back to their roots with Doom and focusing on what sold, good solid and freaky FPS.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Peer to Peer Gaming Is Hardly New

[Robotech_Master]

Look at Battlenet. It has a lot of the characterics of a peer to peer system. If you host a Starcraft game where only one person has the map, first it downloads from that one person to one more person, then from those two people to two more people, then from those four people to the other four people (if it's an 8-player game)--in other words, from peer to peer. And there is no one specific set host--Battlenet itself assigns the host based on who has the best bandwidth and processor power...and if that person gets dropped, someone else's machine takes over.

Peer to peer doesn't automatically equate to Napster. It just means people send stuff to each other instead of to and from one master server. Geez, Slashdot stories are like playing buzzword bingo these days.

Screw single player....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't they know that multiplayer is what most people do?

Good to see

[Winterblink]

Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game.

You know, it's good to see that there are still game developers out there that make FPS style games for single players in mind. It seems nowadays the single player components for such games are poorly designed, since the developer knows the primary use for most people is multiplayer online gaming. Not to knock multiplayer gaming or anything, I love that, but sometimes it's fun to not play online, and enjoy a good single player match. Just my 2c.

Re:Really? What about security?

[exoduz]

I don't know how'll they'll secure this baby. Maybe they've just given.

RTSs have been using p2p like systems for awhile.

In Total Annihilation each client transmits its own game data to other clients, other clients trusts its correct. That means one client can suddenly pull 100 units out of its ass and the others will be none the wiser. The advantages of this method is less data is transmitted and less system resources are used auditing the other clients.

In Starcraft you can't just pull 100 carriers out of your ass but since everything has to be synced there's more overhead and things like maphack are possible.

Security wise, starcraft has the better model but that would mean, instead of just a central server keeping track of game sync (like it does now), every client has to assume the role of server and do the auditing. In other words, why bother?

Anyone know some other way this could be done?

SP RULES

[Anonymous Coward]

Single Player is so much better than MP and will always be. One of the reasons why Deus EX and Half Life are still being played today.

stfu you troll

Re:Really? What about security?

[AvitarX]

There could be a cheat guard slider bar. Those playing from slow connections or with people they know could throttle it down and reap the rewards of trust. Those that want to play on public servers and have the bandwidth could throttle it up and reap the rewards of knowing a stranger isn't cheating (as much).

Jesus H. Christ you are dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

P2P isn't a protocol and it doesn't depend on a certain port... it's a design philosophy. ISPs block certain ports because it's what the P2P file sharing clients use. Blocking those does not block P2P-based architecture, otherwise no one would be able to play Starcraft.

You fucking idiot, think before you type. And stop spreading your bullshit.

Re:Jesus H. Christ you are dumb

[Henry V .009]

My God, you are a dumbass.

Cable companies use two policies to block P2P use. The first is closing ports (which doesn't work very well). The second is by charging outrageous prices for high-bandwidth users (remember that once the infrastructure is in place, the biggest costs are tech support and not bandwidth.) Business Week outlines the practice.

P2P sucks up more bandwidth than simple client server interaction. It has to. It needs a more complicated control architecture. If you go back and check previous slashdot articles on the subject, you will find hundreds of posts saying that anyone who needs that much bandwidth "must be a pirate."

And use your account next time you want to attack someone. A lot of karma won't get your cock sucked any more than usual.

Re:Really? What about security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spamming already happen to gnutella and napster network, now you get pop-up ads on a doom console...nonstop =)

Re:Really? What about security?

[Anonymous Coward]

There won't BE public servers
There ARE no servers
It IS like StarCraft. You join a chatroom, start a game, get people to join, then you begin the game and start playing.

Giant levels with 100's of players??

[Cyclone66]

I remember when quakeworld came out the guys at Id were fantasizing about huge levels with portals to other servers that you could just jump through and continue playing on another server. The worlds would have hundreds of people and the game would run fine. Well as we've seen the # of players will go down because there's too much detail in each player model. So will we ever see huge FPS games with tons of players? Quake 3 came the closest with 32-64 players... with a P2P system this is all but impossible. Not many people will have the bandiwth to support that many players. A client-server connection made the only issue you had to worry about to be that of your ping time between you and the server. With a P2P style game, you'll have to worry about the ping between you and each player as well as your total upstream and downstream bandwith.
Doesn't this seem like a step back for internet gaming??

OT - ATI Linux drivers (was Slap-in-the-face...)

[handsomepete]

When did that happen? Are those ATI official drivers? I noticed that when you check for most other cards you get this message:

ATI does not currently develop or distribute LINUX or XFree86 drivers.

However, our Developer Relations team actively supports 3rd party LINUX/XFree86 developers by supplying technical information and software development kits.

Which is how I thought it was. I hadn't heard of them ever having drivers on their site (but I admit I haven't paid that much attention). I don't have an 8500 so I haven't bothered to download these (I have a lowly Radeon VE). Any more information?

Re:OT - ATI Linux drivers (was Slap-in-the-face...

[Winnipenguin]

According to this news release they started in 1999 with their Rage product;
http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/199 9/4241.htm l

Here is the driver for the Fire GL2/3/4 line:
http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/firegl/l inux/ce rt/linuxfiregl4certx403197.html

More info via Google:
http://www.google.ca/search?as_q=linux&nu m=10&hl=e n&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_ oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_ occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=ati.com&safe=of f

I have a bagged 8500 lying around the lab somewhere. When I find it (don't hold your breath kidlet#2 was born this week) I'll try it out and let you know how it goes.

if they don't...

[Twillerror]

put co-op in doom3, I'm going to be very dissapointed.

I thought this was much more fun in the original doom then deathmatch.

doom was all about killing tons of guys, so co-op was easy. If they want to put it in doom3 they would probably have to position enemies different, or put more of them to make it interesting.

Of course warping your friend as soon as you finish the level isn't very realistic, but I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to make the exit trigger require the both players to be less then a certain distnace from the exit. It would also be fun to have "you go I go" style. Where if you buddy died you had to restart the level, or from the most recent co-op save. It might get tough with a team of 4 players.

Hopefully one of these days someone will put out a true co-op game. Maybe the single player of Counterstrike will turn out to be a good one. Although it won't be quite the traditional single player storyline type.

Re:if they don't...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully one of these days someone will put out a true co-op game

Try Serious Sam, its made for co-op

I think every game was peer to peer before Quake

[piku]

Honestly, before Quake ushered in the whole client-server setup, how exactly do you think you played games online? That's right, client to client - essentially the same setup as p2p. So really, it's not that big of a deal; if anything it's almost like a step back really, since I'm sure they moved over to the client-server setup for a good reason.

Now I'm sure another game or two before Quake used a client-server setup, but it was the first major title to do so (at least I hope so, or I am going to feel like an asshat :) ).

Re:OT - ATI Linux drivers (was Slap-in-the-face...

[Fnord]

It's actually the FireGL driver. Some people discovered it works (though slowly) with the 8500 so ATI has decided they're going to call it an official 8500 driver.

Re:OT - ATI Linux drivers (was Slap-in-the-face...

[handsomepete]

Isn't that a bit misleading? I thought the FireGL drivers were developed by someone else and, as far as I can tell, they don't seem to mention that. It just makes them look like they're developing the drivers. Do the original FireGL drivers have the same license attached to them?

XBox?

[XMunkki]

It *could* be possible, now that the xbox version is official, that the 4 player multiplayer game comes from 4 player splitscreen on the XBox (now idea if it has the balls to run it, though). Just an idea (although a vague one).

Carmack's being lazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Carmack said a few years ago:

"I am still holding to my stronger networking belief, though -- centralized,
authoritative servers, as opposed to peer to peer interaction. I REALLY
think distributed simulation among clients is a VERY BAD idea for networked
games..."

But now he's gone P2P. That's a shame, because client-server is the only robust solution really, Carmack said it himself!

I'm assuming he hasn't gone back on these beliefs, but he's just basically being lazy, because another one of his beliefs is limit the focus of the game as much as possible so they can get it done.

You can build a single-player game without sacrificing any of the interactive elements or increasing workload if you build a strong client/server system where the clients are basically as dumb as the network conditions can allow. This is what I thought he was doing when he said it would need broadband.

Oh well, it'll work, but it's unfortunate, particularly for their licensees, who now have the job of rewriting the network code if they aren't going single-player only.

Re:Carmack's being lazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me (age 5): I don't like girls. Girls are dumb. Girls have kooties.
Me now: WHOA! There's like a ton of chicks in the classroom next door! Jackpot!

Real life isn't the static BSP-tree world you might be living in too much. Things *change*.

IMHO Client/Server is getting old. The server can go down. It can get hacked. People can still cheat. The technique is just different. Carmack could just be looking around for something new and different, and P2P just might be something to work with - maybe not completely, but it could be a start.

And, oh yeah, Nicole Kidman is sucking my dick right now. No, not really. But if I hadn't said "no, not really" and my name was John Carmack, would you have believed it?

In fact this is a big deal

[YourGarbageMan]

"By "peer to peer" system he simply meant "yes, you will be able to hook up your computers and play together" and nothing else."

No that's not what it means at all. What it means is a fundamental change from a client server relationship to a peer to peer relationship. This is a major change. Although the original Doom used peer to peer networking, it wasn't scalable to the limits multi-player FPS gamers expect today, which would be an 8 to 16 player game at a minimum. If anyone can pull this off J.C. can, but I am still a little concerned that they are not making any hard claims beyond a 4 player game.

Neverwinter nights P2P?

[Stalcair]

I haven't done the homework on the game since its release, but just remember that early on Bioware said it would most likely be using a P2P based system for its multiplayer. This was asked because of the horrible performance many experienced (pulled from forums and word of mouth) due to the client-server method they used, as well as the poor player who was actually playing on the machine acting as a server.

So, did they end up using such a system? I know that they included actual servers to help alleviate the problem of playing on the server machine and causing lag to all, but what is the method for multiple clients connecting without the server explicitly setup? Did they stick with the old method and just make it so that the 'master' game machine is the server?

I am curious about both a postmortem analysis of implementing this and an early performance/approval rating of this method.
Somebody please set me straight (I can't seem to connect to their site right now or I would gladly look for technical details)

On a side but related note... outside of P2P for the use of filesharing only, what is a good library and/or toolset for creating P2P apps, as well as a good modularly designed and well documented system that can be scaled for P2P uses?

WOD!

[DrInequality]

WOD!

null

[shplorb]

Reading the posts above, it's pretty clear to me that 90% of posters don't have a clue what they're talking about.

Now, I've been a fan of Id since Commander Keen, I've bought *all* their games (Dangerous Dave - yay! =]) and liked/loved them. One thing I do remember though, is that they used to say they just made games they thought were cool and they liked to play, if other people liked them then even better. I also seem to remember hearing somewhere that multiplayer in Doom was a quick hack that they did because they thought it would be fun, and didn't expect other people to use it.

I noticed that with Quake 2 and 3 they seemed to listen to what gamers wanted, which is why I'd say that I don't like those games that much.

I'm glad to hear that with Doom 3 they're back to doing what they think is cool and great. It's looking great and I reckon it's going to be a great game to play - I know that I'm holding out on upgrading my computer until it comes out =]

Re:Really? What about security?

[z01d]

client-server is insecure too.

if a guy decide to break the EULA of the game, i mean, he just reverse-engineering the executable, nothing (technical speaking) can stop him to cheat online. "it is a fundamentally unwinnable technical battle to make a completely cheat proof game of this type." - JC

so, i think p2p is not that a big deal to introduce insecure risk, we just do what we was doing: "play with our friend"

Re:OT - ATI Linux drivers (was Slap-in-the-face...

[tyrr]

You are looking at the driver ATI released for Radeon 8500 and it does work, 15% slower then GeForce3 with NVidia drivers however.

Check this out:

GL_VENDOR: ATI Technologies Inc.

GL_RENDERER: Radeon 8500 DDR Athlon (3DNow!)

GL_VERSION: 1.3.3037 (1.4.3)

GL_EXTENSIONS: GL_ARB_multitexture GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_ARB_vertex_blend GL_ARB_window_pos GL_ATI_element_array GL_ATI_envmap_bumpmap GL_ATI_fragment_shader GL_ATI_pn_triangles GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once GL_ATI_vertex_array_object GL_ATI_vertex_streams GL_ATIX_texture_env_combine3 GL_ATIX_texture_env_route GL_ATIX_vertex_shader_output_point_size GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_func_separate GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_point_parameters GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_polygon_offset GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_EXT_texgen_reflection GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_texture3D GL_EXT_texture_cube_map GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_EXT_vertex_shader GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_NV_blend_square GL_SGI_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_multitexture GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays

GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE: 2048

DRI project has a wroking Radeon 8500 driver too in bleeding edge section.

Using an unapproved client is cheating

[r6144]

If you modify your client (quite possibly the source code of the game, except the rendering engine, will be released), and use it in a game without the approval of your partners, it is cheating.

I don't know much about newer games. However, for Doom, you may modify the client to prevent the screen from reddening when getting hurt, or do some automatic actions that is hardly possible manually. This is definitely cheating.

In fact, multiplayer games are often played in one large room, so someone will make sure everyone has the same client and that they are not modified by you. In other cases, you play with your friend, so you trust each other anyway.

Re:Using an unapproved client is cheating

[drsoran]

In fact, multiplayer games are often played in one large room, so someone will make sure everyone has the same client and that they are not modified by you. In other cases, you play with your friend, so you trust each other anyway.


Maybe in your case, but most people play online and have never met any of the people they play against, much less play against them in the same room. Getting a pickup game of Quake going is impossible unless you go online or if your friends are complete losers and do nothing but sit around waiting for you to call up a LAN party.

So what if it's P2P and single player specific?

[AbRASiON]

Despite the fact that both Doom 1 and Doom 2 were excellent multiplayer games, many gamers loved these games for the single player aspect more so than the multi player. Some may argue that there was no story, or the story was lacking and to an extent this is true, but back then based on readme's released with the game, our imagination and the general feel of the game I pretty much think I got quite a story from the games and I believe many others did too. Far too many "hardcore fps gamers" now worship quake one and c/s based online gaming and think that's what iD's all about and where it began and where it should be no matter what. I've long critisised iD for even making Doom 3 (on other forums) as I feel it's a bit like Episode 1 - Doomed to fail and not live up to the hype, but none the less I can't help but commend iD's attitude of sticking to their guns and focusing on single player for Doom 3 - if they can continue the "Doom universe" and make the story believable I'll be quite impressed. Either way - P2P or C/S who cares? - some of you whiners can go play your SOF2 or other C/S based online games (UT2K3) etc but some of us,.. maybe only a few can will and do appreciate single player games. Nothing annoys me more than online fanboys whining about multiplayer in every damn title which is released - example Deus Ex simply did not need multiplayer but the whiners got it added, it never gets played mind you and wasted the developers time, but the whiners got what they wanted (Deus Ex for christs sakes? multiplayer??! what were they thinking) Bravo iD for doing the best they can for the single player gamers (for a change)

Re:So what if it's P2P and single player specific?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, whether the single player worked or failed, the multiplayer aspect of ids games has always given thousands of more hours of play than the singleplayer. Quake 2 was a single player game if anybody still remembers. That's definitely not what it will be remembered for though.

However good the single player is, if it doesn't have good multiplayer, it will be a game confined to the history books within a year.

Thank god it's an 'Insightful'

[apankrat]

:I think they are limiting it to 4 players because the game is so resource intensive. Anything above 4 players would be a strain on the system.

Bah! That reminds me an explanation I got from the auto technician on why my alarm remote did not work farther than from 30 feet. "Because it implements security sooooo complicated, that CPU drains the battery power in a wink". Get real.

Listen, having masters in computer graphics, I respect Mr. Carmack no less than you do. But that's not the reason to trust him on networking issues.

Problem w/ scalability and security put existing P2P developments into the class of experimental endeveours. And applying P2P to more-or-less scalable gaming environment is waaay far from the reality. It's no doubt is cool, but it's in its childhood. If to guess, that would be the primary reason Carmack limits multiplayer to 4 nodes, not because of the 'strain on the system'.

Re:Thank god it's an 'Insightful'

[Matthew E. Kieren]

Each player or monster in the game has to process all of those shadows (casted on it, and casting itself), the physics, the per polygon collison detection, and I'm sure there are many other things to consider. I think it's safe to assume each player or monster visible on the screen puts a strain on the system. There's a lot more going on than the other 3D engines out there today. I don't think it's due to P2P alone, otherwise there would be more monsters appear at the same time in single player mode.

John Carmack's specialty is in 3D engines, not networking, so I agree with you as far as that goes. However, he has quite a bit of experience from past games. We don't know the whole story, for all we know he could be creating a P2P-client/server hybrid of some sort. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Although even if the networking and multiplayer isn't what we hoped it would be, it's all about the 3D engine.. Better games in the future -- even from other game developers -- will be the result.

P2P in gaming - totally impractical

[apankrat]

What strikes me with p2p being applied to the multiplayer, it's its impracticality. Say you have N nodes. With client-server model, you'd need N connections with more-or-less acceptable data replication ratio. Now imagine p2p approach, two options here:

- fully-meshed network. Totally useless. It's not only N*(N-1)/2 connections, but also a need to replicate state of the game for each peer ... this is very lame. Let's leave this option out of the picture.

- partially-meshed network, including hierarchical topologies. This is less wastful in terms of data flow and connection count, but this would mean that some nodes will be serving as proxies (or routers if you will). Such proxying node goes down - bam - all its dependent nodes are out of the game. That's not to mention that traffic_relaying=LAG. The only pro I can think of is to lessen the load on the central servers (in this case - top-level nodes that are connected directly to each other). Still I dont clearly see how this out-weights benefits of canonical client-server.

Now, having said that, I see only two interpretations to "P2P" term in the context of the multiplayer gaming:

- it implies some sort of multicast/broadcast based architecture and based on existing Ethernet/IP support. This will obviously be limited to the LAN parties. Interesting - sure, innovative - no, practical - not really.

- it's a distributed architectre that is somewhat self-organizing and provides optimal data traversal time for any two given nodes in the game. It's still not redundant (ie no loops in graf terms), but relies heavily on relaying and hierarchies. Interesting - oh, yeah, innovative - you freaking bet, practical - uhm .. perhaps, if they will be able to figure it out :)

Hense the conclusion - p2p in gaming is either not what it seems or it's a marketing hype. Sorry :)

Re:Really? What about security?

[Vulture_]

In Starcraft you...

I don't think Starcraft is a very good example. Blizzard is essentially the Microsoft of multiplayer games; their usual strategy for dealing with cheating is by using lawyers, not engineers.

P2P gaming is coming. Face the truth.

[wuHoncho]

Client/server is good. Client/server is great. For some things. Like games with thousands of players at a time who absolutely *require* a thin client doing all the up-front display. The truth is, the major thing holding P2P back from the gates of the internet is the gates of the internet themselves. Back when we all dialed into each other's computers manually, most of the time we were using some form of P2P.

And don't think for a second that Carmack doesn't have something up his sleeve to make P2P a reality on the internet. I've actually had quite a few decent ideas on P2P network optimization and I'm sure he's probably at least as far as I am.

Re:Really? What about security?

[Maggot75]

Well, client-server is not insecure normally, assuming that the server isn't hacked - the server can simply validate all client input. However, there is probably no feasible way for FPS servers to validate client input, unless you are ready to accept some latency, which usually makes the game look bad. Oh, well.

Re:Really? What about security?

[asteinberg]

There's a much more important difference than this. With client-server, the server can control how much knowledge and control the client has. For example, the server can keep track of how much ammo you have picked up, and no matter how modified your client is, you cannot add ammo to that count, because the server knows that there's now way you could have gotten more. Same goes for health. Another example would be that the server only has to tell you information about what you can see - so a server couldn't tell you exactly what the other player has done in another room or how much health that player has left - you just trust the server to keep track of it.

Now take peer-to-peer. There is no trust-worthy server to keep track of all the information, so now either each client keeps track of himself (which would allow you to just change the amount of health/ammo you have, for example), or, more likely, each client would share all the information with the other clients, so that now you can't change your own values (other clients are checking you), but your client would have knowledge about everything that all the other clients know (find out stuff that is going on that you shouldn't be able to see). It seems that it would be pretty trivial to add a little display in your HUD which monitors all the other player's remaining health and ammo, so that you would know when is a smart time to attack them and when you should run away and restock.

In either case, of course, aim-hacks are possible. These are a lot harder to prevent, just because they don't really need to do anything special behind-the-scenes; they merely simulate user input with inhuman precision.

heh..

[di0s]

I can see it now: Look out Gamers, here comes Valenti!