Tim Willits Interview: Lead Doom3 Designer

Joe writes: "PlanetQuake3.net has a interview with id Software's Tim Willits who is the lead designer and project manager of Doom 3. Tim talks about the new generation of level editing in Doom3, his favorite maps of all time, how designers and coders work together, and many other subjects. One of the most interesting parts of the interview was this question: 'PlanetQuake3: Will it be possible to adjust the speed of the game for between single player and multiplayer play?' 'Tim Willits: Yes, most of the game logic is outside the main executable, this gives us great flexibility in changing basic game parameters between single and multiplayer.'"

Comments

Breaking News

[cscx]

Pentium IV 2.8 GHz provides the best overall around performance in Doom 3! More information forthcoming on slashdot.org

Re:Breaking News

[mgeneral]

One wonders if Intel isn't subsidizing game developers to write code that requires the latest and greatest (that's subjective) processors.

The cost of a game is only one piece of the overall price I'll end up spending to play it.

Re:Breaking News

[Njoyda Sauce]

He must have read the earlier posts here about P2P support in D3, cause he was refusing to talk multiplayer at all this time around. Feeding the trolls is always a messy endeavor.

Re:Breaking News

[the way, what're you]

I don't know about you, but I look forward to the Pentium IV 2.85 GHz news story. "Just when you thought the internet couldn't get any faster..."

Someone has to do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are maps designed with hardware constraints in mind?

they're a bane to us all

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, most of the game logic is outside the main executable, this gives us great flexibility in changing basic game parameters between single and multiplayer.

The cheaters and lamers are going to love this.

Re:they're a bane to us all

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever. Say it with me, "Security through obscurity is no security." Especially when the kiddies are involved. Anyway, the multiplayer is P2P, not client-server, which means you have to already trust everyone more. And before you go off on that, say this other phrase with me, "Doom3 is about the single player experience, not multiplayer". AND, the real preventative measures against modern cheating are through external verification programs like PunkBuster, which will work just as well in P2P or client-server.

Re:they're a bane to us all

[esper_child]

This is an increadibly good thing. Think of all the great things that can be done with mods if the game is this way. You can virtually recreate anything in the game you want to be able to create a totally differant experiance. maybe iD will release a package with it that helps you create new variations of the game's mechanics.

.5 Life

[Anonymous Coward]

1/2 Life (Team Fortress Classic) is better than any Doom game ever made.

Re:.5 Life

[MaxVolume]

Better playability, yes.

Re:.5 Life

[aflat362]

So you've played Doom 3 then? How was it?

Multiplayer Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hope the multiplayer performance is decent, considering its only FOUR people. Those are gonna be some awesomely huge lan parties.

Re:Multiplayer Performance

[Spazholio]

They've already stated that the multi-player is going to be more than 4 player, and somehow based on P2P technology.

Hmmm

[friday2k]

I don't know what the others think but for me a game is not only about gfx. I still play Half-Life (OZ mod that is) and yes, the gfx and levels are not that great but the multiplayer experience is still the best (for me). Why do we have to go further and further with gfx, new levels, etc when the old games still have their challenge? So it will be more realistic to shoot up monsters, more realistic sound, creepier levels, etc., but does that really make for a better game? Just wondering ...

Re:Hmmm

[ApoxyButt]

I tend to agree with the guys at Penny Arcade that Doom3 is great for a proof-of-concept, so to speak, but it's still just Doom. You can put all the detailing in the world on a '90 Civic, but that doesn't mean that driving it is going to be any more fun.

If you believe Gabe and Tycho from PA, and I do, the exciting thing about Doom3 is the possibilities its engine opens up for games that really push the envelope.

Re:Hmmm

[lamp77]

Man, people are always going on about this.

it doesn't make a better game on its own, but it does allow the designers the freedom to make a better game.

blah blah, I'm still playin nightStalker on the Intellivision, like Doom3 could top that.

Re:Hmmm

[aronc]

You missed an important point in all that - they were talking about the E3 Demo. They weren't excited about the tech demo. They (and you) don't know jack squat about what the actually game is going to be/play like. Don't flap your gums about what the game is or isn't until there is at least an actual completed game available.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

DoomII was relatively unique as far as multi-player games are concerned. It gave you deathmatch, with the monsters, and the exact same levels as single player (with a difference in weapon layout). There may be more games out there that give you this (can't remember if Duke Nukem 3D did), but I haven't seen them. It's the one thing that keeps me playing DoomII, despite the horrid gfx, and buggy play... It's fun! And with certain mods, it was even creepy... I seriously hope this is going to be the same with DoomIII. And yes, the extra levels and better graphics makes for a vast improvement in enjoyability. Playing the same level, or set of levels, over and over is so boring. And bad gfx gives people headaches after playing for long.

Re:Hmmm

[PMadavi]

Good gfx always enhance a gaming experience. But the core, of course, is the gaming experience. I think people are excited about Doom 3 because they know ID is going to produce a good gaming experience, and this time it will have a lot of interesting visuals and sounds. It's like the sprinkles on the ice-cream.

Take Rayman 2, for the DC. The gameplay is sweet as hell, it's a fun game that's challenging but not frustrating. What makes it even better is just how mesmorizing, quirky, and beautiful the graphic for the game are.

I guess what I'm saying is, if the gameplay is good, go ahead, go nuts on the graphics. What could it hurt?

what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[garcia]

I *refuse* to play new online games like Q3. I hate the way lag "feels". No longer do I actually seem like I am moving slower. In fact you feel as if nothing has changed yet to other players you are in fact standing still.

It is VERY annoying to have sudden lag and see players hopping around on the screen. Explain to me how the hell you are supposed to compensate for that?

We need to go back to the way Q1 felt as far as lag was concerned. At least that way you could at least learn to adjust to the speed of your connection and change your aim accordingly.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Quasar1999]

Nah... Just get a broadband connection.. :P

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[McComas]

Little anecdote along these lines. I was all hot and bothered for the Mechwarrior series of games, so when Mechwarrior 3 came out I jump right in and played the single player campaign until my body screamed for its required raw materials....like 'water' and 'carbohydrates.'

It then dawned on me that I could derive a new plateau of enjoyment from this game by hitting up the multiplayer (we had recently got broadband). Straight away I had visions of joining a clan and rising to a level of prominence. My strategy would confound...my reflexes would dazzle...the sheer artistry and elegance of the custom configuration on my war machine would revolutionize design standards. These were my thoughts as I received the instructions for my first clan audition.

Them: "Get in this machine and configure it with nothing but energy weapons."
Me: "But my design philosophy is really built arou---"
Them: "You want in or not?"
Me: "Yes sir."

I promise this is getting to the point. I couldn't understand why they were having me configure the machine like this, until they explained that all the other weapons were basically useless because of lag: You need to shoot about 3-4 seconds ahead of your opponent and this can only really be done with the energy weapons, because they travel instantaneously. ...
Three to four seconds ahead? Forget that...so ended my multiplayer Mechwarrior outing. I've been away from it for a while, so maybe it has got better. But the lag situation really took the life out of that 'net play game.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[YaRness]

a broadband connection isn't any better when your neighboor's mp3/porn ftp site is in full swing, or you are in an environment like battle.net where you can run lag-free from 5-6am on every other sunday.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[garcia]

I have roadrunner. I have had DSL (two places), I have had ethernet at school, and I have had 56k.

I have found that even though I might have MONSTER bandwith (with RR mostly) I have SHIT pings. I don't even bother to play anymore.

At least when I was on 56k playing Q1 I had a STEADY 185 ping (crctf.quake.erols.com) and I could actually do rather well. Now, w/broadband I have ping spikes and I am normally 80ms behind everyone else.

I would have rather played 56k back in 1997 than 3mbs in 2002.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I've played Q1-3 extensively and have come to the same conclusion.

The problem with prediction is it makes the game feel very inconsistent. You can dodge a rocket on your screen...but your position wasn't updated to the server yet so you get hit directly...which is immensely frustrating.

Another example is a player can have a lot of packet loss. In Q2/Q3, the player can move on his side, and his position gets updated to the server, resulting in him warping around on other player's screens and being harder to hit. In Q1, the player cannot move until the server aknowledges it so other players see him standing still and then moving fluidly, then standing still...etc. Q1 provides more consistent gameplay for the majority.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[swoopx]

you will *really* feel the lag now that doom3 is P2P. id seems to have digressed in terms of netcode performance since q1 and they are continuing that grand tradition into doom3.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Anonymous Coward]

get dsl. you get better pings anyway.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude no shit. Quake 1 multiplayer was (and still is) the shit. Everything about it was perfect.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Zathrus]

That's because bandwidth has little to do with latency. And latency is what online gaming is all about.

If you have a steady 185 ms ping with a 56k modem you're better off than an erratic 20-80 ms ping with a broadband connection.

That was true in 1997, and it's true now. If you could adjust your aim for that 185 ms ping then, you can now too -- I get railed regularly by people pinging 3x me because they've adjusted for their ping. One of the best Q1/2 players I know was on a modem the entire time and regularly beat people on T1 lines.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the feeling. When I moved from 56k and 220-250ms ping times to DSL and 20-100 pings my game suddenly became really shitty, and I had to switch classes (TF) from sniper and occasional medic to soldier (less accuracy required). Then all of a sudden I couldn't find a server closer than 150 ping (with a machine 1 switch away from my ISP's router (I used to work there)), and gave up online gaming altogether. Bleh.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Quixadhal]

Add to this the fact that most FPS fans seem to be intent on moving as FASTASPOSSIBLEATALLTIMES, since very few games reward you for being careful (Thief was one).

Prediction only works well for things that are, well, predictable! Large vehicles are great for this, because their ability to turn and change speed quickly is usually limited, hence a missed packet or three will cause a seeminly more abrupt change. RPG's take advantage of this because people generally move in a line, and it's seldom nescessary to follow someone exactly (they NEVER do traps very well, although maybe NWN does).

The golden rule though is that the server is always right. If your move-forward command didn't get there, you didn't move yet. If your screen shows you moving, it is lying to you. I think the client side should only predict ahead about 1 or 2 packet-times, and it should always smoothly correct paths and speeds accordingly.

Otherwise, things work as they do now, and anyone who constantly dodges in semi-random ways will appear to blit to different parts of the screen under all but the best latency conditions.

HINT to ID (and friends): Not everyone can get 80ms, and 2 packets lost puts the predictive code a good 250ms into badness.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Jagasian]

Why not just play Quake1 then? Many opensource clients are available with various improvements. I suggest getting a Quakeworld client because it is simply Quake1 with an improved network protocol that allows for various levels of "prediction" in addition to simply being more efficient than the original Quake network protocol. In fact, in Quakeworld, you can set a prediction threshold known as pushlatency.

For example, "pushlatency 0" means that any lag above 0 miliseconds is lag you want to not have predicted. That is most likely what you are looking for. So you get an efficient network protocol, but the client doesn't try to hide the lag. "Pushlatency 0" is effectively "What You See Is What You Get". While "pushlantency -500" means that any lag above 500 miliseconds (half a second) is lag you want to not have predicted. Such a setting is useful for modem players that want a smooth feel, but still want to "feel" any extreme lag.

I still play Quakeworld regularly, and I usually have less than a 100ms ping, and I play with "pushlatency -2000". Such a setting basically says "give me full prediction and hide all my lag". If your lag goes above 2000ms, that means its been 2 minutes since your client has talked to the server. So with that lag, you most likely aren't connected to the server anymore ;-)

Seeing as Quake1 is still getting graphical improvements in addition to many other improvements, and add in the fact that it is opensource and inexpensive... why not just play quake 1? It has gameplay as good as or better than all of the other FPS games out there.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[CableModemSniper]

2000ms, that means its been 2 minutes

How does 2000 ms turn into 2 minutes????

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Nehemiah S.]

Absolutely. I play a lot of iCTF/iTDM/iFT and I'd rather rail against someone with a 20 ping than someone with 175 and high pl, because my reflexes are fast and when you shoot an lpb, he generally dies. HPB's sometimes aren't where their avatar is displayed, meaning you have to miss to hit them. Especially when they warp- then you have to guess.

The sad thing is, warping at least is 99% fixable. The big problems come when 1) players have their maxpackets+snaps+clpacketdup set too high, saturating their upload bandwidth, so the server doesn't receive the gameworld updates it expects, or 2) when players have very high packet loss and have a network card that implements packet caching, which confuses the Q3 engine by sending lost packets n+1 times when the server is expcting n=cl_packetdup. These are both problems which can be fixed with a little work or a $10 investment in hardware (or, sometimes, simply turning off packet caching in network card properties).

I have not yet found a n00b lagger whose lag was so bad that I couldn't make him stop warping with a little tweaking of network parameters, or in an extreme case, a new network card. Assuming his ping was under 400 or so, and he was willing to experiment (you would be surprised at how many laggers do it intentionally, esp at instagib servers). Not being hittable is a big advantage... especially when you play against good players, with >60% accuracy rates.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[DeathPenguin]

Agreed. Games like CStrike which try to compensate for lag make the game so unfair! You think you're getting out of the line of fire by walking behind a wall, but then you suddenly drop dead when you think you're safe (And I'm not talking about assault rifles in that game).

The best on-line multiplayer experiences I've had were with Threewave Q2 and Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. In both cases, your ping was directly responsible for how far you had to manually compensate. It was consistent and it was fair. If you were dead, you knew it right away. With newer games, it feels like someone else is aiming for you.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everything about it was perfect."

Including the aimbots.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why Q2 was good. A good player could get a rail accuracy of ~75% during a clan match. When playing normal DM you could easily have 90% accuracy, because people didn't know how to dodge...

The difference is that in a clan game you have lots of 1 on 1 combat and the other guy usually knows how to dodge (or try not to jump as the moment you jump, your trajectory is predictable and you become an easy target which means instant kill on a low latency connection...).

With Q3 the railgun sucks bigtime. The whole game is also a piece of crap... Q1 was about speed jumping, knowing how to dodge rockets while in air (by turning in air), being good at combos etc. Q2 was about being a railgun god and learning to hit nearly always with hyperblaster (yeah a few of the top players always shot the right amount in front of you...). I myself learned the railgun and I was one of the best railgunners in Finland... though I never became good with the HB.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[esper_child]

And this is exactly the reason that you don't play games on a satilite connection.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Vulture_]

I should point out that some Half-Life mods (such as Action Half-Life) have lag compensation. You're aiming at the target (not leading at all), and you are informed of whether you hit the target after the usual round-trip time. The server knows what the state of the game was when you pulled the trigger, and hence, you don't have to compensate for lag because it's doing the job for you, and in a much more reliable way (it's not affected by ping spikes, etc). The server's decision of whether or not you hit the target is based on where the target was when you pulled the trigger, not where it is now. Very sweet. Note that, in AHL, lag compensation only applies to hit-scan weapons (ie, guns), though I imagine this could be done for other kinds of weapons.

Re:what I want to see is OLD-SCHOOL lag.

[Vulture_]

You need to shoot about 3-4 seconds ahead of your opponent and this can only really be done with the energy weapons, because they travel instantaneously.

The usual strategy in Mech3 is to wave a pulse laser around like a wand, until you find the target's "lag spot". Then you have the information you need to compensate for lag, using energy weapons or otherwise. I agree that 3-4 seconds of leading is a bit ridiculous, though.

Just be glad you weren't playing Mech2, where none of the weapons hit instantly, and leading is almost as bad.

doom three

[Anonymous Coward]

will this game promote liberalism like the previous 2 doom games did. in those games there was lots of immorality and also redistribution of wealth, will doom three be better than this.

Re:doom three

[McComas]

Whoa. I would really like to hear how an inter-dimensional gate to hell on a Demios penal colony has anything to do with socialistic political agendas. :) Seriously. Enlighten me.

You sound like some Objectivists I know.

Re:doom three

[Noodles]

Guns and ammo laying around. People running around shooting each other. Doesn't seem politically "liberal" to me.

Re:doom three

[sketerpot]

If you want to do more than just make people laugh at your pathetic attempt at a troll, you ought to try linking things that are not completely different. You might try one of the "What will this game do to our children???" posts, rather than just acting like you have the IQ of a dimwitted beet.

"the most interesting part"

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most interesting parts of the interview was this question: 'PlanetQuake3: Will it be possible to adjust the speed of the game for between single player and multiplayer play?' 'Tim Willits: Yes, most of the game logic is outside the main executable, this gives us great flexibility in changing basic game parameters between single and multiplayer.'"

I guess that's interesting. It's also been true of id's games since at least Quake 1.

How do you think all those mods get made? By hacking the executable? :)

Hmm... Sounds a lot like Build.

[Bonker]

PlanetQuake3: How much does it help you to be able to edit the game in real time? Did you request that feature be added?

Tim Willits: It is great for aligning textures and working with the lighting. Yes, we requested that feature be added, it is an example of the designers working with the programmers to make the best possible editing environment for the game.

This sounds surprisingly like the Build engine, which was used to create levels for Duke Nukem 3D and a few other 3DRealms games. The editor had a complete instance of the engine so that a level designer could go in and build levels around himself, aligning textures and specifying shading levels all the while. It was surprisingly intuitive once you figured out which keyboard key was responsible for which editor action.

Re:Hmm... Sounds a lot like Build.

[Pyrosz]

Take a look at Tribes/2/Torque (engine) for how an in game editor can work. The Torque in game editing is really good right now and allows tons of control without wasting your time by starting and stopping the game for every little change.

Re:Hmm... Sounds a lot like Build.

[nemesisj]

You've got to love the old Build Engine. I remember spending tons of hours working on custom maps for Duke3D. One time we were playing on a map my friend built and I couldn't figure out why he was suddenly so much better than me. I decided to follow him around the map and caught him sneaking into a hidden control room, complete with video cameras showing all parts of the map, a weapons stockpile, and walls that you could see through and shoot through, but only in one direction. Lots of fun. Back on topic - the build engine's integration did make things easier, even though one might not think it would.

The sheer size is supposed to be staggering...

[Spazholio]

In a recent interview, they said that it would not be uncommon to see 80 MB textures in Doom 3. 80 MB for ONE texture! Now I think I finally have a need for that ATI 9700 I've been drooling over.

Re:The sheer size is supposed to be staggering...

[silicon_synapse]

You weren't quite subtle enough on that troll, but you were close. Keep working at it. You can do it!

Re:The sheer size is supposed to be staggering...

[Viking Coder]

"80 MB for ONE texture!"

In a word : no.

Re:The sheer size is supposed to be staggering...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that was a troll, but he DID get his facts jacked up. I've read that Doom 3 will use 80 MB of textures total, not 80 MB for ONE texture.

Re:The sheer size is supposed to be staggering...

[Spazholio]

Damn it all. This was NOT a troll, it was simply a mis-reading of an article. Ah well, down from Neutral to Bad for a bit...

Gamers unite

[The PCG]

A whole new frag fest is just what we need, something to finally stretch our P4/1.5GB RAM/ Ti4600 systems to the brink... Like playing Q3 for the first time on the blazing 600Mhz. LAN parties arent going to be boring for a while now...

Re:Gamers unite

[liquidsin]

Are you referring to the P4 2.8 GHz? I'd heard that it was out, but haven't seen anything about it on slashdot yet. These editors need to get with the times. Most other news sites would have posted a story like that *at least* once by now...

Re:Gamers unite

[aussiedood]

You mean this or this. I wish the readers of slashdot would get with the times. ;)

Re:Gamers unite

[The PCG]

Actually I gotta 2.4 But anything upwards of a Ghz really laughts @ Q3 with a Ti anymore...

Re:Gamers unite

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats. This was humor.

Re:Gamers unite

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no ... On slashdot its already been posted twice. Can you say that about those other quality new sites? I bet they only posted it ONCE. Losers...

Re:Gamers unite

[sketerpot]

According to most of the interviews, Doom 3 is going to be slower paced, not a real fragfest. It will focus fore on being scary, having a monster eating a corpse look at you, than the monster and the corpse both try to kill you, less guns and ammo, fewer monsters. This will push your hardware, though.

Re:Gamers unite

[The PCG]

Personally I think that will be a great cange of pace. Look at warcraft III. Much more detailed plot, and less about just killing eveything but you. I hope Doom3 takes this kind of approach. I always prefered that kind of "scary" feel in my one player games, I just hope the multiplayer mods still have that "feel" with the tuned up graphics everyone is waiting for.

Re:The most pressing question

[Anonymous Coward]

If you applied the general rules about school violence around here to a TYPICAL day in school back when I was in highschool, myself, and my classmates would have been suspended for 10 years.

As for various state laws regarding weapons on school property. Have you looked at the definitions they use?

Last year some girl was expelled because a kitchen knife was found in her car (what the hell were they searching it for in the first place?). The reason, she helped her brother move and it fell out of the box it was in. This was VERIFIED by the manager at the apartment he moved in to (that they used her car, etc. )

Yet, she was expelled. So, of course, she gets added to the list of people bringing weapons on school property and the list gets longer...

If thats the value of some of the data in the statistics it is USELESS. Of course there is an increase. 10-15 years ago it wouldn't have been considered an issue.

Re:The most pressing question

[Anonymous Coward]

What video game was Cain playing when he killed Abel?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I thought MP wasn't implemented yet

[FortKnox]

'PlanetQuake3: Will it be possible to adjust the speed of the game for between single player and multiplayer play?' 'Tim Willits: Yes, most of the game logic is outside the main executable, this gives us great flexibility in changing basic game parameters between single and multiplayer.

Is this the same multiplayer that you haven't started yet.

Re:I thought MP wasn't implemented yet

[aussiedood]

It does not mean they have started multiplay work it just means that they have planned ahead for multiplay features while working on the single player code. Is that so odd?

Re:I thought MP wasn't implemented yet

[silicon_synapse]

He never said it was started/complete in the text you quoted. "Will it be possible..." - Future tense. "this gives us great flexibility..." - The infrastructure can be present long before all the resources are in place. Where are you coming from?

Re:I thought MP wasn't implemented yet

[Garridan]

Holy shit! They're planning before implementing??? I thought that was impossible, or at the very least, illegal!

Re:I thought MP wasn't implemented yet

[Puk]

Well, gee. Second question in the interview:

PlanetQuake3: Is Doom3 at the stage where everyone at id plays a deathmatch game over the LAN or is that stage a ways off?
Tim Willits: We are all focusing on making a great single player game and haven't started on the multiplayer component of the game yet.

Just because they haven't started the multiplayer component yet doesn't mean their engine design isn't complete enough that they know it will allow the features in your quote.

-Puk

Game logic

[Plutor]

"[M]ost of the game logic is outside the main executable, this gives us great flexibility in changing basic game parameters between single and multiplayer."

Yeah this is so cutting-edge. Never before has a game put its game logic outside the main executable. I foresee this design paradigm spawning multiple "modifications" using the Doom 3 game engine. Many of them will be free and I imagine some may even use OSS licenses. This is truly a revolution for PC gaming!

Re:Game logic

[Anonymous Coward]

This is truly a revolution for PC gaming!

I looked on your resume, but couldn't find any links to the research you've been doing on real-time lighting and shadowing in games. Oh, wait... you haven't done that!

Bitch.

Re:Game logic

[Plutor]

Your post is either 1) a troll, or 2) misdirected anger. I have the utmost respect for the real-time lighting and shadowing that Id is working on for Doom3. That, in fact, is why I was so surprised that Joe thought the (decade-old) idea of separating game logic and engine was the most interesting part of the interview.

I actually thought that the interview was pretty lax on details, and I think Tim probably typed up those responses in five minutes in response to a single email.

Re:Game logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is either 1) a troll, or 2) misdirected anger.

Misdirected anger. Sorry about that. Mondays and all.

Re:Game logic

[MamasGun]

Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays!

Not at all true

[lhbtubajon]

That is a cop-out. Violence in the U.S. has actually decreased over the last ten years. If video game violence were to blame, that trend should be the opposite.

Our times are actually among the least violent in the history of the world. If you consider the incredible violence that has occurred over time, and that violent video games have existed for approximately for 0.001% of human history, it becomes obvious that your argument is full of shit.

Great!We've done it again!We should start a lobby!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Unable to select database

Hopefully...

[Steveftoth]

Intel will make sure that they realease a binary that is optimized for the P4 with one of their compilers. The 'real' intel C/C++ compilers are always faster then the MS or GCC compilers when optimizing for their chips. AMD AFAIK doesn't have a compiler suite that optimizes for their chips.

Re:Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, intel optimized code is supposed to be faster on amd as well, because icc can try to generate mmx and sse code by vectorizing simple loops.

I don't get it

[dh003i]

I really don't get what's so great about these Wolfenstein/Doom/Unreal/Quake games. I mean, its all so repetitive. Same kill the baddies, destroy everything scenario every time. And it, of course, feels completely unrealistic because a computer is trying to emulate the motions/actions of a real person in first perspective, which is next to impossible to do.

I really don't see why more people don't try out vehicular shooter games like Descent and Freespace, which feel realistic because your flying a ship, not moving a person, which means that collisions feel much more real (a real bump or knock). Also, they're alot more challenging and you're given a lot more freedom, as you can move in all different directions.

How many times do we have to get the same old shoot-em-dead, destroy everything that moves, kill everything, watch stuff bleed and blow up guts all over the place type games like Doom? These are really the same games, but just with face-lifts.

Do yourself a favor, try a game that doesn't involve mindlessly killing everything in sight. Try out Descent (1-3) or Tomb Raider (1-6), or Resident Evil, or (if you can emulate the GameCube using gCubix) Eternal Darkness. Might also be interested in games like "Of Light and Darkness".

I'm not saying that the latest releases of Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein are bad games. They're great games. Only problem is they are unoriginal -- they were preceeded by many very similar games before them. And they don't really evolve from the previous versions, except in terms of graphics/sound/physics. The game-play is pretty much the same, with few wrinkles added.

Re:I don't get it

[balbord]

And now, for something completely different... Remember?

Re:I don't get it

[Junks Jerzey]

Also, they're alot more challenging and you're given a lot more freedom, as you can move in all different directions.

I agree that the core gameplay of Quake-like games has gotten stale. But then you take a wild leap of fanboy logic with the above statement. Moving "in all different directions" is equated with "a lot more freedom"? That's crazy. It sounds like something from a circa 1997 debate over some comments in a .plan file, back when hardcore gamers thought that More Polygons meand More Gameplay.

Re:I don't get it

[BlackMesaResearchFac]

I really don't see why more people don't try out vehicular shooter games like Descent and Freespace, which feel realistic because your flying a ship, not moving a person, which means that collisions feel much more real (a real bump or knock). Also, they're alot more challenging and you're given a lot more freedom, as you can move in all different directions.

I can agree with your general sentiment. A lot of the FPS aren't very original at all.

Yet the above quote doesn't make much sense to me. The most recent FPS I've played (SoFII & Medal of Honor) have the screen jerk when you're hit thereby messing up your aim, etc. Some of them also give you the ability to lean around corners, crawl, and when you walk your cross hair goes up and down (i.e. more accurately simulating what it would do if you were actually walking).

I also don't quite understand the comment about freedom and moving in all directions. I don't see any difference between FPS and vehicle games/shooters in that regard besides the limitation of a characters horizontal jump in a FPS. Yet I can't say that's a very useful comparison.

Try out Descent (1-3) or Tomb Raider (1-6), or Resident Evil

Tomb Raider? Resident Evil? Isn't there a lot of shoot'em up characteristics in those games too?

Re:I don't get it

[DG]

Thanks to Loki (RIP) I've had a chance to do both on my Linux box:

Quake
Quake2
Soldier of Fortune
Quake 3
Descent 3

And to be honest, I found the "Quake-alikes" to be a lot more fun; a lot more immersive, than Descent.

I've run for my life from a Shambler, gotten totally creeped out when I found a lab full of my fellow space marines begging for death, and laid patiently behind cover while scouting an area with the scope on my sniper rifle - great fun, all. I could suspend disbelief enough to make me care about what was going on in the game.

Descent... left me cold. Robots drifting around endless corridors? Why? Where's the motivation?

Story can really change a FPS into something much more than "run amok shooting baddies" - Bungie's Marathon is a prime example. Done well, it can really hold your imagination. And isn't that what fun is all about? Not every game needs an original play mechanism, if the story is gripping enough.

That's why Q3 didn't do much for me either - pretty engine, awesome control, gameplay that left me flat after a little while (no story) But hey, lots of other people love the game, so I don't have any problem with it. To each his own.

DG

Re:I don't get it

[_Swank]

And they don't really evolve from the previous versions, except in terms of graphics/sound/physics.

and yet you've advocated tomb raider 1-6? that tomb raider 1-6 were just nominated as an original game (maybe 1 could be counted)? or is this as games that aren't of the destroy everything that moves? huh? all ditto for descent 1-3 (again, maybe 1)? and resident evil? well, i didn't play the game, but i saw the movie -- it was along the lines of "kill everything that moves and looks mean." close enough.

Re:I don't get it

[NeMon'ess]

You probably don't understand what makes pong or even computer tennis great, either. Or tetris, bust a move, sonic the hedgehog...Simple can still be fun. Sure simple games could get boring as the repetition grows, but for some people they don't get bored easily.

Re:I don't get it

[Knightmare]

I got bored with Quake 3 as a single player game after I beat it the first day. It's the multiplayer that keeps me coming back night after night... Some of the things you can do in the quake engine are insane and a wonderful escape from the world of physics we live in :)

Re:I don't get it

[TonyZahn]

For Quake 3, the trick is not to think of it as an adventure (as us Old-school gamers tend to do), but as a sport (I know, a foreign concept to geeks). In fact, Epic is promoting this view with UT 2003 and I wouldn't be suprised to see more games going this way.

There will always be a place for the story-oriented adventure games (every play System Shock 2 in the dark? shudder), but the multiplayer-only sport-style game is a great way to show off a new engine while you work on your story-based epic.

Re:I don't get it

[eviltypeguy]

I would call that a matter of personal opinion more than anything.

In my opinion, Quake 2 or 3 never really scared the crap out of me. Descent 3 did, *OFTEN*. I can't tell you how many times I was zooming down a corridor and all of the sudden I hear missle lock kick in and the first thing out of my mouth is Oh $hit.

I admit Quake I was almost as scary to me. And I liked Quake I's single player MUCH more than I liked Quake 2's. But, nonetheless, the Descent series (especially D3) remains the scariest to me personally.

Descent 3 was a game made mostly for Descent fans anway. It "tied up" the loose ends of the Descent series.

Descent when it was introduced was beyond any engine's capability really at the time in a lot of ways. The first AFAIK to actually do a true 6 degrees of freedom. Most 3D engines still don't have this today. They all rely on the player being unable to do more than jump and move.

I'm not sure if the original Doom engine required convex polygons or not, that's the only "large" limitation that I remember the original Descent engine having.

Just my 2 cents...

Re:I don't get it

[oGMo]

Funny, I've always been the exact opposite. Although Quake (particularly 1) had potential, it was always "gee, another level, it's kinda weird, but what's the point? Why am I playing this?" Although Q1 felt something like Doom, which was nice to start out with, it wasn't carried through.

Quake 2 was infinitely worse in my book. "Another factory on another alien planet with... aliens to kill. *yawn*" It was all the same, all the way.

We won't discuss the lacking of Quake 3.

Oddly enough, I've been playing Doom 1 again lately, and it's been great. I really, really miss Doom's automap in new games (like everything after Doom), and even the quick story they have, coupled with the wonderful level design, makes it a much more interesting game in my book.

(I picked up Doom 2 recently too, and unfortunately it seems to suffer from some of the same problems as Quake did; nicer technology, less reason for me to play the game. And no, just shooting demons/aliens/whatever is not enough motivation for me to play something, particularly in things like Halflife where even if you turn things up to the hardest mode there are very few things to shoot. Red Faction was kinda fun though, decent if slightly bland story, but good level variety and lots to shoot at.)

Descent 3 also had a story coupled with gameplay that let you actually feel like you were part of the mission, at least for me. (Plus, it had lots to shoot at, and even an automap, woo hoo. Although I liked Descent 1's map better.)

Anyway, hopefully Doom 3 will bring back the old days of Doom 1, and it sounds like they're trying to flesh out the story, which will be cool. "Ultimate single-player FPS experience" someone said, and that'll be a nice break in a long line of bland deathmatch clones.

Re:I don't get it

[Zapman]

I've got to argue with you on the descent bit. I played through every version (not the freespace ones though), and loved every minute. Is it as immersive as doom and counterstrike? No. However, the game play is amazing. Having full 3d, 3 axial rotation rocked.

Ultimatly, it depends on what you want. I value gameplay very highly. While your gravity bound FPS are cool, I find myself coming back to descent a lot. Not for the story, but for the running around backwards from those clawbots shooting at them.

Of course this probably explains why I have a GameCube.

Re:I don't get it

[psycht]

We won't discuss the lacking of Quake 3.

Discuss what? The fact that Q3 has no story line? No Objectives than to go to the next map? Dude, its a multiplayer game. Q3 lacks nothing except for the latest PR from iD to combat the OGC. Q3 may lack what you want in a game.

My servers stay full. I lack more servers. ;)

Re:I don't get it

[fgb]

You can turn the gravity down (or off altogether) in Q3. It's a totally different game when you can move in all directions and your inertia carries you a lot further.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

"...try a game that doesn't involve mindlessly killing everything in sight. Try out Descent (1-3) or Tomb Raider (1-6), or Resident Evil..."

You think those games don't involve "mindlessly killing everything in sight"? You must have played different versions than I did. Other than finding a key, button or statuete here or there, they were all just shooters.

"I'm not saying that the latest releases of Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein are bad games. They're great games. Only problem is they are unoriginal -- they were preceeded by many very similar games before them."

Dude, read your own posts, "Tomb Raider (1-6)", one through six! Come on! Resident Evil 1 was good but the follow-ups were basically more of the same, same goes for Descent. Eternal Darkness is the only one that you can't say that about, which is due in large part to the fact that its new, and they haven't had time to make a follow-up yet.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the best FPG I've played in recent time is American McGee's Alice... Well it's based on the Q3 engine. The levels are fresh and very interesting you might want to check it out, also Heavy Metal FAKK might not be a bad idea if you want single player stuff..

Also these games are all based on the Q3 engine. Friend of mine showed me how to play Alice on Linux, it's pretty fast and slick btw.

Re:I don't get it

[mandolin]

1) You're confusing immersion with story. Quake1's single-player story, aka "plot", was utter, utter bunk.

2) I agree that immersion is very important. I would posit that it is very subjective. Shareware (original) descent did it for me.. learning how to yaw roll, the first time I got buzzed by a vulcan mech or ate a homing missle, etc. Q1 let me down simply because (and I know this is unfair) it wasn't as creepy as Doom, and I'd already seen 3D done "better" with Descent. (I used a slow computer at the time and Q1 was just too pixelated and vomit-colored.)

Re:I don't get it

[Vulture_]

If you liked Descent, you are going to love FreeSpace. The Shivans are scarier than shit when you have your first run-in with them, and the story is definitely on par with Marathon and its ilk.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The most pressing question

[nerdynerd]

That's right because it's damn near impossible to discern the difference between fact and fiction these days. Especially with these new fangled computers and what not. Has it ever occured to you that violence and entertainment have forever been hand in hand? Take a look at fiction centuries old and older, look in old religious texts. Violence has been in the human concious for all time. Stop trying to blame games and movies when a kids parents can't teach him the difference between reality and fantasy. If people took a vested interest in raising their children in this country, children would probably not be the subjects and perpetrators of violent crime nearly as often.

Re:The most pressing question

[Anonymous Coward]

idiotic.. As if solving the human prediliction towards violence was as easy as censorship.

I dont have the figures on hand, I'll leave it as an excercise to you to find them and prove me wrong.. But,

Market research these days shows about 90% of all video games are purchased by those 18 and over. Of those, 75% are purchased for the purchaser.

This myth that 'kids need to be protected' is crap. Kids are the tiniest fraction of the video game market, and are not the target audience of game publishers.

Adults are responsible for themselves.

As an adult I have the right to any entertainment I deem appropriate, from watching Barney and Friends to the most hardcore of hardcore porn.

You and your ilk have no right to force my hand through taxation, legislation, boycotts, or any other means.

When I was a tot, it was Dungeons and Dragons (non video-game) that was the root of all evil. Imagine encouraging people to pretend they're warriors fighting each other with swords. Gasp.

BTW, since when was Pac Man the first video game? You never heard of Pong? Pac Man was the first marketable video game 'character' to appear on lunchboxes, etc.

Re:Doom3 ?

[Spazholio]

Well, as soon as you manage to get Duke Nukem: Forever finished, then you'll be able to! =)

dm1-6

[Dark Nexus]

My favorite group of maps were the 6 extra deathmatch maps in Quake 1. When I came up with the idea to include extra maps into Quake 1, only for deathmatch, the guys here at first thought it would be a waste of time. I really pushed for getting them in and I'm glad I did. Those 6 maps were played more by our fans than the entire rest of the game.

I'll say they were played more... I'm pretty sure they were all remade for Quake 2 (if not all then most were - I can't quite remember, it's been awhile) and subsequently got played more than the maps that came with Q2, and several of them have shown up in Deathmatch Classic for Half-Life...

Notice: ..php on line _42_

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing more to say ;)

Re:Great!We've done it again!We should start a lob

[moz25]

Now it says:

Warning: Access denied for user: 'planetquake3@localhost' (Using password: YES) in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/mainfile.php on line 42

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Access denied for user: 'planetquake3@localhost' (Using password: YES) in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/mainfile.php on line 42 Unable to select database

Looks like someone was displeased with the traffic...

Re:Great!We've done it again!We should start a lob

[forged]

Better yet:

Warning: Access denied for user: 'planetquake3@localhost' (Using password: YES) in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/mainfile.php on line 42

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Access denied for user: 'planetquake3@localhost' (Using password: YES) in /home/virtual/site2/fst/var/www/html/mainfile.php on line 42
Unable to select database

Seems they have some serious resources problems with the infamous Slashdot effect :)

Any Hope for the Following?

[ackthpt]

These would be very near and dear to my heart, I hope they're in development path:

Super Mario Doom: No more carts of jumping from platform to platform over mushrooms and barrels, its Mario goes a'Fragging.

M.U.L.E.'s revenge: The proletariate goes Marxist on Mechtrons, Gollumers, Packers, Bonzoids, Spheroids, Flappers, Leggites and Humans. No more colony tap-dancing contests, ever!

Bear Day Afternoon: Bentley rules these Cyrstal Castles with enough firepower to cut down even the surliest centipede, tree spirit or skeleton.

Cooking with the Iron-fisted Chef: Eventually everything looks like spaghetti and lots of it, marinara everywhere! Woo!

Star Wars: Attack of the Anaklones: If they could clone Jango Fett, imagine a clone army of twisted, anguished Anakin Skywalkers. May the force be with you, cause everyone else is on the last train out of town!

Living and Dying with Martha Stewart: Shrapnel and gore, but extra bonuses for tastefully arranging the recently departed. Watch for subpoena servers, though, they can bring down even the mightiest empire.

CowboyNeal's Duck Hunt: Point gun, hold down trigger, hours of entertainment or you could just tape down the button and leave for a while.

Re:Any Hope for the Following?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are a retard. Thank you.

Enough with the trolling!!! ARGH!

[Rahga]

We get it. Doom 3 is same old same old, a lot of you are bored with the FPS genre, blah blah blah.

Doom 3 is a single player (our 4 player co-op) FPS game that is doing something most of you dorks haven't figured out yet. It's time for PC games to move beyond the Charlie Chaplin -> Talkies phase and into the Studio Picture phase. Doom 3 doesn't seem to aim for the blockbuster game of the year. Essentially, it's time for games to seperate the technology from the story and art. Every once and a while, a new game will be the first to showcase new technology, in the same way Star Wars recently started hitting up digital theaters. But, by and large, this is just a project to showcase some new technology which will not only try to tell a good story and make a nice profit off of it, but also to pimp the technology that powers it.

What makes this different from the projects like it in the past is that they are making no bones about what Doom 3 is... Doom 3 is to the game industry what "Harvey" was to the film industry. I guess. :)

Anyway.

Re:Enough with the trolling!!! ARGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else out there think this post is completely incoherent?

Re:Enough with the trolling!!! ARGH!

[Azghoul]

Well said, man. Sorry to see that no one else noticed, but i'd toss a point to you if i had one...

Re:Enough with the trolling!!! ARGH!

[Dolly_Llama]

It's time for PC games to move beyond the Charlie Chaplin -> Talkies phase and into the Studio Picture phase.

Woe unto he who would compare PC games to movies, lest I should incant the unholy name "Wing Commander 3"

Yes, Doom 3 is awfully pretty, but it is not a shift in paradigm. It is an iteration going back to Wolf3d (or even further back to that wireframe star wars arcade game of the early 80s whose name escapes me).

Re:Enough with the trolling!!! ARGH!

[G-funk]

...or even further back to that wireframe star wars arcade game of the early 80s whose name escapes me...

Hmmm..... Perhaps it was called Star Wars...

Re:Doom3 ?

[forged]

Too elaborate an answer ! Remember, anyone hiding as AC has just as much credibility as me claiming I'm the pope.

I bet they're just jealous :>

huh?

[maddogsparky]

I wouldn't consider Doom 3 as part of that set since they haven't finished making it yet.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point. It is on top of your head. Very much in the same way I'm on top of your momma...

It would also make an excellent in-game feature

[lingqi]

you can carry weapons to modify the environment in real-time as you multi-player.

imagine a "wall gun". somebody is running, running, you shoot, and a wall (of spikes) appear in front of him. he can't stop in time and loses 30% health. you laugh your ass off until another team-member hits the ground you are standing on with an "infinite abyss canon".

you can also do texture guns / mirror guns etc. imagine painting all the walls into (100%) reflective surfaces in real time, when you run into an enemy. (like in bruce-lee movies). or even spray the texture of yourself all over the place.

it would make an interesting game, for sure.

it would also make excellent "god" games. where you raise the lava or cause huge chasms in the ground, etc.

Re:It would also make an excellent in-game feature

[esper_child]

would you be able to cause a medusa or hall of mirrors effect (2 different effects here, not one like someone would interpret if i don't specify). Imagine acidently spraying a bad tecture on and your computer locking up or accidently making a mirror face a mirror. And before someone makes a comment about it yes, I know hall of mirrors is a problem in the build engine and not doom (no mirrored surfaces in doom). Prohaps you could make a paralax floor in real time (or a paralax wall, which is EVIL.) I made a multiplayer level once with normal floors and paralax sky and walls, was really amusing to try to play.

magic

[maddogsparky]

Sounds like a good mod for a game with a Heretic theme.

Game Speed

[http101]

Why not create a slider bar like the guys did for Unreal Tournament? I always play at 150% game speed. Things really start to hit the fan at 200%! I just hope they don't try to skimp on the pretty graphics and the special effects. I was completely won over by the 7 minute long demo at QuakeCon 2002. I hate it when I see a product, pour $60 into it (or more) and find out the company cut corners to push the release date up sooner to boost revenue. That pisses me off when that happens and I'm sure it does to the rest of you folks too.

Any chance

[Rogerborg]

That we could have a Doom3 section? It seems that we're getting an article every couple of days, and I'm getting pretty tired of seeing previews plastered over the front page. I mean, I want to play Doom3, but I'm prepared to actually, you know, wait for it.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

who ever asked these questions are pretty retarded, cant he have got an interview off of slashdot?

Changing the speed is a great idea

[wackybrit]

Quake never had it, but UT allowed you to adjust the game speed between 50% and 200%. It seems as if Doom 3 might give you some control over this, even if it's just a variable in the game you have to adjust.

Why is adjusting the game speed a good idea? Well.. I used to play UT all the time, and then moved to Quake 3. Quake 3 was a far faster game (in gameplay terms) and I got to love it, and my 'skills' improved. When I went back to UT, the levels felt too big, the moving about felt slow and nasty, and I yearned for more speed.. so I just put it to 110% gamespeed, and it was more like playing Q3!

Adjusting game speed is quite important and I wish more games would allow you to do it. One of the first was Maxis's 'way ahead of its time' 1993 sim A-Train.

Re:Changing the speed is a great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

.. as I recall A-Train was a SimCity like strategy game of running a transportation business. Any game such as this should have a time option.

But what is the usefulness of a time option in other games, such as FPS and Flight Sims? I suppose it is a simple mod in an FPS to make things slower/faster as a challenge/handicap, but I don't consider it to be "quite important" in most games.

Re:Changing the speed is a great idea

[psycht]

Q3 gamespeed is actually an option in server-side configs. you have you have the admin change it along with other aspetcs, but it is there.

Re:Changing the speed is a great idea

[Schroedinger]

Even Quake1 had it: sv_maxspeed
It also had to be set on the server side unless you were running a mod that allowed the change from the client side.

Re:Changing the speed is a great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, try playing UT at 200%, get used to it, and return to a deathmatch at 100%, and win

I agree with you

[fluor2]

I've been playing CS (counter-strike) for some time now, and I must say that every new high-tech game I've tried I've ended up deleting. They are all too complex, and they was no fun playing in multiplayer-mode. There was so many things that players could hide behind. Also, they seem to lack realistic movement, even if they have good graphics.

It seems like every game tries to look good on pictures, and developers put zero time in building a good gameplay.

I remember the game Stunt Car Racer on Amiga 500. The models sucked and the environment looked like h*ll. But still it was one of the best racing physics I've ever played in a game.

I suggest game programmers look into some older games and learn from then, instead of looking at fancy rendered 3d graphics and say "hey, let us program that realtime!"

Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[wackybrit]

it is a great time to be in games!!

I'm not so sure that I agree with this.

Is it really a great time to be 'in games'?

As a lone programmer, I say not. How many even slightly successful games these days are produced by single programmers or even small teams? Sure, there are a few very successful examples but they're all lo-fi or Shockwave games.. and not the typical 'computer games' we're used to.

It might be a great time to be in games for the coders like John Carmack who have about 20 art guys behind them, or for individual members of their teams who get control over a tiny aspect of the game (like Tim Willits), but on a personal level, it kinda sucks right now.

Games have taken the same track as movies. In the early days of movies, a small team would make a simple enjoyable film of 10 minutes or so.. but then as time went by, the land of Hollywood came in and hundreds of people were required to make a single movie. In the 90s, we had indie efforts like the Blair Witch Project that took movies back to small teams again.. could we experience the same with computer games one day?

I know I just sound cynical, and I am ready for the 'Troll' and 'Flamebait' moderation points, but I just don't feel it's such a great time to be in the gaming industry right now.

Even as a -consumer- many of the games now are unoriginal and not as good (relatively) as they were in the 80s. Why is now such a good time?

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[Anonymous Coward]

carmack doesn't have 20 art guys. he has three.

Seneca Menard [3d artist]
Fred Nilsson [artist/animator]
Kenneth Scott [artist]

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[ziggles]

I think most games suck all around these days. Everything has to be "realistic" or it won't sell. I miss the days when everyone could enjoy mario(or whatever game) because it was fun, it didn't matter that it didn't have blood splurting out of the goombas when you jumped on them, it was just fun. I feel sorry for Nintendo now.. still producing the games that are really fun and completely unrealistic looking, and they're thought of as "kiddy." Bleh.

*end rant*

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[Viewsonic]

Very true, however, those games still sell boatloads because there ARE enough of us out there who simply could care less about blood and guts and realistic crash modelling, etc .. We just want to play FUN games, and Nintendo will always provide that to us. If I wanted brainless and boring games, I would have bought an XBox.

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[tswinzig]

I know I just sound cynical, and I am ready for the 'Troll' and 'Flamebait' moderation points, but I just don't feel it's such a great time to be in the gaming industry right now.

Allow me to explain.

Tim Willits was exclaiming his happiness about the state of technology. He gave his opinion, it's a great time to be in games.

He didn't say "it's a great time for wackybrit to be in games," now did he?

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[aantix]

Maybe the PC market is a bit out of reach, but with the advent of PDA's, cellphones, and handheld gaming devices, you still have a chance.

The technology is so much more primitive that any Joe Blow on the weekend could create something that is competitive.

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[Tom Dunne]

Well, maybe you should consider the mod communities. Counter-Strike was essentially made by one guy, albeit with contributions from many others. I for one don't lament the days of the solitary game designer hacking away in his basement - I *like* working within a team, I find it much more gratifying than having no one to work with...

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont know about you but i cant wait to get mario sunshine. that game is gona be awesom becasue of its gameplay not its graphics. from everythign ive heard its gona be an awesom game

Re:Tim Willits says: "a great time to be in games"

[AlexxKay]

As a lone programmer, I say not. How many even slightly successful games these days are produced by single programmers or even small teams? Sure, there are a few very successful examples but they're all lo-fi or Shockwave games.. and not the typical 'computer games' we're used to.

What about RollerCoaster Tycoon? Largely the work of a single programmer (Chris Sawyer). Hasn't dropped off the Top Ten Bestseller lists since its release, in 1999. That's rather more than "slightly" successful.

Doom 3 is going to disappoint many

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's not Doom 3's fault. Doom 3 is not done yet. Nobody has played it, nobody knows exactly what it'll have in it. Consequently there are all these stories (such as that stupid "Doom3 P2P" one yesterday) where people wildly speculate on what it will be. These people cannot help but be disappointed when the real Doom3 comes out and it can't live up to their dream expectations.

This exact thing happenned with Bungie's HALO and ONI before they came out. There were ambitious plans, some people speculated pure crap (HALO would be a MMORPG with persistent universe, ONI would have multiplayer), and so when the games came out and were respectable in their own right everyone was "disappointed" that they didn't live up to the hype. I hope ID doesn't let things spin too far out of control before the real product comes out.

Slashdot effect tally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tucked onto the side of this article, we see the slashdot effect in action.. :)

Download Stats
1052 files downloaded
2074624 times.
107087.42 GB served.

Damn,people.. ;)

Re:The most pressing question

[ryanvm]

[...] from watching Barney and Friends to the most hardcore of hardcore porn.

Whew. For a minute there I though that said: do

Tomb Raider SUCKED

[qurob]

Hey, if you jump up there you can see her (insert female body part)

Horrible 3rd person camera....

And Descent just made people DIZZY!

It was a fun game though.

Reality Check

[quakeroatz]

How many times do we have to get the same old shoot-em-dead, destroy everything that moves, kill everything, watch stuff bleed and blow up guts all over the place type games like Doom? These are really the same games, but just with face-lifts.

Obviously you've been playing all the new FPS in DM only mode.
Questions:
1) When was the last time you revived a fallen comerade with a needle so he could shoot flames down a hallway, clearing your way to cap zee documents? (RTCW)
2) When was the last time you sat tailgunner in a fighter/bomber while your pilot dropped bombs on unsuspecting American tanks, then downing the American fighters that come to shoot you down?
(BF 1942)

It's called teamplay. Thats what you're mising.

Very true.

[RatBastard]

Very true. We've seen this happen many times.

While many people were disappointed with HALO (and some for the mere fact that it came out only on XBox), I enjoyed the hell out of it. But I wasn't paying any attention to the game at all and only noticed it in the game press about a week before i bought my XBox.

I don't think that I will be disappointed with DOOM 3. Mostly because I am primarily a single-player game player, and I am jazzed that DOOM 3 will be focussing on the SP aspect.

speed setting / IN-no!-vation ?

[Anonymous Coward]

'PlanetQuake3: Will it be possible to adjust the speed of the game for between single player and multiplayer play?'

sorry to demystify but unreal tournament has such a setting, as well as on the fly changing of gravity.
which is most cool since its first version? whats the deal?

Re:what I want is Counter-Strike lag.

[planckscale]

I disagree. Counter-Strike is by far and away the best online multi-player game. The whole structure of the netcode gives players with 56k modems a chance to play against the people with T3's. Yes, lag spikes are there, and occasionally you'll see unfair deaths but it's a minor annoyance. If you are open minded, you'll realize that Counter-Strike/Half-Life has more man-hours put into it's netcode than any other game. There are a minimal amount of packages sent over the wire, and the downloading of maps, sounds and other customizations is painless. I'm sure you didn't know that "sv_unlag 0 automatically turns off client side shot prediciton and lag compensation (cl_lc and cl_lw respectively) so that you can lead your targets and shoot AHEAD of them, like the quake rocket." Of course, Counter-Strike is a team-based game with actual strategy so I don't expect you death-matchers to understand anything except how many frags you get.

Look around....

[sprayNwipe]

How many even slightly successful games these days are produced by single programmers or even small teams?

Are you blind?!? Some of the one-person-developed games have gathered cult-followings!

Soldat
Porra Sturvat
Crimsonland

Not to mention mods like Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, also...

Map-Editor

[squisher]

I just hope that they will get to produce better level this time. One of the reasons I did not like Quake3Arena so much, was that most levels were not well playable at all with a low number of players (2-4). Maybe with the better level editors they will have better multiplayer maps this time :-)

Bye,
Squisher

FPS and why they continue to exist

[FuzzzyLogik]

I see people complaining about the reasoning behind having so many games that are all the same. Doom, Quake, Unreal, Tribes, etc. Well, id will stop making games like Doom and Quake when either a) they want to try something new or b) when they stop making money. Obviously they're still making money as they're probably some of the best paid programmers out there right now. And if they're still making money, obviously then people are buying these games, even outnumbering those that pirate the games. which along should keep you amazed.

Stunt car racer :)

[Snookmz]

There was so many things that players could hide behind.

That has more to do with the level designer than the game though.. I really do like CS, but here in Australia CS servers are populated by 14 year olds who keep calling me "ghey" everytime i frag them.. Aparently ghey men are better at the game..

As for Stunt Car Racor, R0XZOR!
I spent hours playing that game, i'll have to hunt around for an emulated version of that.. If only there was a remake of it.. That was honestly the most original car racing game of the time, and sadly never got ported to any other systems (that i know of)..

Re:Stunt car racer :)

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a PC port as well as a C64 version (both wireframe). Look around, you might be able to find the former in some abandoned games section.

About the P2P thing again...

[McQuaid]

I know it was discussed the other day but things are bugging me about this.

Why the switch from a client/server setup?

Client/server has every advantage over for p2p except the obvious burden of the steep requirements to run a server. This doesn't seem to be a problem though as there are literally thousands of quake servers (never mind all the other fps).

When I am playing on a quake server my only concern connection wise is 'Can I send/receive packets fast enough to/from the server?' With P2P, I now have to have a good connection with each player, which obviously doesn't scale well. P2P is also only as strong as the weakest link. One player with a bad ping can hurt the experience for everyone. Nevermind the overhead of having to tell say 6 other computers where I am/what I'm doing in the gameworld versus telling one computer.

Id brought us the first popular online game experience with client/server and all the nice things like player prediction that made it possible to enjoy a fast paced game over a modem.
So what is Carmack thinkin?!

Is there some other advantage besides no need of a server that P2P has?

question

[applejacks]

Doom and Quake were really popular. But can we expect to see more depth? I heard you'd actually be trying to evade monsters. Maybe something simular to Metal Gear Solid? Generally ID has showcased engines and left the depth to be worked in by 3rd party developers like Valve. Other features that would be nice to see:
* Characters actually picking up weapons.
* Taking weapons off enemies, disarming them.
* Stealing clothes and other items.
* Non-static levels: explosions knock out walls.
* Non-linear story lines.

I think graphics cards are capable of these feats . Yet, programmers rush to get the product into production. No offense but Electronic Arts has an assembly line for Sports games and etc. 6-months they got a new title. What happend to taking 3 years and making it good. ID at least takes around two years.

Other examples

[Kragg]

from Chronic Logic, you have the superb 1 man (i think) effort, Pontifex. (Sounds like crap but play it... it's so much more fun than it sounds!)
And another one that made ./ a while back (which probably whacked their sales up 400%) - Introversion's Uplink... Not so good, but minimal dev team and zero marketing (except for the viral kind...).
It can still be done. It just takes a bit of luck, some real dedication and a decent game before you actually get noticed.

Shutup about Multiplayer!

[spoco2]

For god's sake, how many times do reviewers, fans etc. need to be told that the game is SINGLE PLAYER focused?

For god sake just leave the multiplayer questions alone. I for one am very much looking forward to another engrossing SINGLE player game.

My favourite games of relatively recent time have all been SINGLE player games like Half Life, Medal of Honour etc. I really do prefer the scripted, well thought out drama, scares, fun etc. I vastly prefer this to the mindless blastfest that most multiplayer games seem to end up being.

So, please, just leave the questions about multiplayer alone. It'll be there, it just won't be the damn focus. I applaud them for trying to make a scary, moody game, and look forward to playing it.

Shinanigans!

[Inoshiro]

Doom2 and Doom1 used the same engine. It was still the same 2.5D, and the doom.exe 1.9 worked on both the doom1 and doom2 IWAD files.

So I call shinanigans on your "nicer technology, ..." stuff. Yeah, Doom2's story-line isn't segmented like the Doom1 one is (in that you have 2 complete episodes), but it still is the same technology, and it does have separate parts of the story.

is this a must?

[z01d]

PlanetQuake3: Does the fact that the editor is integrated into the engine mean that there won't be an open source version that is continuously updated like GTKRadiant?

Tim Willits: Too early to say.

correct me if i'm wrong, but i think "build-in editor" doesn't mean there's only ONE executable. the rendering engine and the editor (create and manipulate brushes and objects) are different thing, even if they are integrated so tightly, there must be a interface, i don't think it's a must to be in one executable, and i do think Id won't do so.

Story...

[Mulletproof]

Marathon and it's younger cousin Halo. Story literally transformed that game from being a Tribes-like FPS into an epic saga. But it nessisarily take a story when the game is done right. Tribes? Laughable plot, but loads of fun (T2 might have been fun except for a certain "Fatal Exception" error popping up every 5-15 minutes of play) as was Tourny Unreal. These games got it right. Q3 just didn't have soul. Spark. Whatever, it just didn't have it.

No re-making ANY Doom 1 / 2 levels

[AbRASiON]

Makes baby jesus cry! :( What are they doing to this game? :( Doom is going to be ruined :(

Re:The most pressing question

[tps12]

The plans of the Columbine killers weren't "real" either. Until, of course, they actually walked into their school and started killing people.

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power, would you do it?

Would you have stopped the Columbine massacre from happening, if you could have?

I don't think we have a choice in this case. We are morally required to act against violence by eliminating the root cause, in this case violent video games.

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Re:The most pressing question

[tps12]

So why not just go back in time and try to give Hitler a loving home, so he wouldn't kill all those people? Are some people just pure evil, deserving of death even before they do wrong? And don't video games make them that way? I think you see my point.

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Re:The most pressing question

[tps12]

video games were not around then...Hitler was a grown man. He knew right from wrong, but he did wrong...I don't feel the kids were pure evil

Well, there you have it. Hitler knew right from wrong, and chose wrong due to his evil. The kids did not, however...they were misguided. So what went wrong? Are all kids at that age incapable of distinguishing right from wrong? I think not. But those who get involved in seeing fictional violence as entertainment are only one small step away from trying the real thing. I'm sorry, the price is just too high, as we have seen demonstrated beyond doubt.

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