No Doom 3 This Year?
Ant writes "According to an article at Blue's News: 'Though id Software basically invented the idea of using "when it's done" as a release date, and thus did not specify a release date when DOOM 3 was announced, many have been assuming that the game would be available for this year's holiday season. Now a report on HomeLAN Fed cites Activision's 2003 release calendar and quarterly financial conference call... [saying that] Activision admits that this matter is entirely in id's hands, but that they are not expecting the game this year, and have it "penciled" on their calendars for fiscal Q4 (Jan-March) 2004.' Additionally, Quake IV is now due in Fiscal 2005 (which begins April 2004)."
Or maybe Doom Whenever?
if(!cool) exit(-1);
As long as I don't have to buy a Pentium 6 with 2GB ram and a Geforce 10 running windows 2005 with Directx 15.
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
"DOOM!"
"DOOM2: Hell on Earth"
"No DOOM 3? What the Hell?"
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
...No wonder I couldn't find it on Kazaa!
Is nVidia and ATI. The new version of any game like this generates as much sales for them as it does for whoever put the game out I bet.
I'd also bet that AMD and Intel see a nice little spike when a new generation hallmark game comes out. Thats the kind of thing that everyone is waiting for to upgrade...
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
Consider that he's mostly "only" doing the 3D graphics engine, and that a couple mod groups have started to modify Quake into something quite different from a FPS (I remember a racing game). Once the engine is up and running, you can code the actual "game implementation" anyway you like, ie any game style. I'm pretty sure somebody could evolve Doom3 into a RTS, given enough time and incentive.
I'm thinking that after Valve's E3 techdemo and their subsequent best of show awards with little mention of ID/D3 that ID were taken off guard. I'm sure they thought they'd waltz in there and floor the place but Valve came out of no where and blew the socks off of everything hands down.
I think ID realized that they would have to revamp somewhat and code additional features into the engine itself as well as enhance gameplay so the worlds would at the very least be as interactive as the worlds in HL2.
I've never been a HL fanboy the movies I've seen of in game play not cinematics are amazing! They have revolutionized gaming and are taking it in a new direction in terms of a fully interactive world. Go dl a movie of HL 2 off Kazaa or BT and see what I mean.
I had no intentions of purchasing HL 2 but after the tech-demo/in game movies I will now buy it.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Maybe this is a sign that there are good things to come. I just hope that there is some true innovation involved.
yeah, but it's only coming out on the phantom
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
They have to predict a release date. This is a major product for a publicly traded company. The stockholders are entitled to know what to expect for the near future. It is responsible to give the quarter a product is expected to ship as well as when a product's shipping slips to another quarter. Predicting an exact date can make one look foolish, but that was never the case with this title.
C'mon dagarath, I know you could have thought of that if you tried.
Of course there's Doom this year. It's called the RIAA.
In the past week, this date has just come out of nowhere and is now generally accepted as the release date. Not that long ago, there was an interview with someone at id that suggested the engine was complete and it was just down to finalising level design.
It wouldn't surprise me if HL2 has been a factor here. Everyone was shocked at the E3 debut of Half Life 2, and full, full credit to Valve. Over the past 2 years especially, Valve have taken all the criticism of "you're just happy to sit on the laurels of Half Life you lazy b's", and sat back and blown everyone away when it mattered.
Certainly some aspects of the Doom 3 engine seem from reports awful in comparison to HL2's engine - poorer scaling in terms of system spec, Environment manipulation (which HL2 blew everyone away with at E3 but is apparently very poor in the current Doom 3 engine) and a plethora more effect/shader programs than Doom 3.
The competition is good, because its a chance to force id's hand to play catch up. For too long, id and Carmack have sat in almost demi-God mode over the PC games market with the Doom 3 hype and you have to wonder if maybe they have got a little complacent.
Oh, and a final issue, purely to play Devil's Advocate, I understand Half Life 2 uses DirectX and some might suggest that it is the reason why HL2 apparently is more scalable and achieves more effects more easily across many performance levels. Could HL2's apparent conquering of Doom 3 at the moment be the defining moment of DirectX's conquering of OpenGL?
Even if you assume that to really play the game you need twice the minimum specs which would be approximately:
2 Ghz CPU
512 MB RAM
GF2 or Radeon 8xxx series card
I would guess that's gonna be one outdated computer system by Jan-March 2004.
So much for Doom 3 forcing everyone to upgrade and sparking a business revivaling for PC parts manufacturers....
Where the Music Matters
This also hurts any bullied geeks planning a school shooting, now forced to keep using outdated Doom and Doom II mods to map out their attacks. When Kleinbold and Harris began their spree they were completely unprepared for jumping or for how prettily water reflects in real life.
Nobody thinks of them.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
DirectX 9 was the first to allow the use of all the latest fancy pants shader stuff of the bleeding edge graphics cards.
I believe OpenGL can do those things to an extent but at least until OpenGL 2.0 comes out, DirectX will be the top graphics API.
What really blew me away though about HL2 was the physics and wickedly creative game play like shoot the rope and the huge thingie swings down and kills everything in it's path. And those rediculously tall creatures. Things which really have nothing to do with the graphics themselves. It's phsyics and creative character design.
DooM3 relied on more corridors and darkness. HL2 brought the monsters out into the light which is so much less cliche it's actually "scarier." Plus you actually get to see the full magnitude of what it is you're shooting at.
Walking down a brightly lit street and a huge monster jumping out at you will make me jump higher than one jumping out of the shadows where they have been hiding for years.
HL2 is definitly getting my money as will ATI or nVIDIA. DooM3 I'm skeptical about.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Given enough time and incentive, I can turn Doom 3 into a Microsoft Windows compatible
operating system. The question is how much incentive and how much time it will require.
Well, for starters...
I'm sure Clippy will be a helluva lot more polite, when you're pointing a Rail gun at his paperclip arse.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
It seems that everything imitates one of a few different styles. I'm saddened to see that an intelligent and creative man like John Carmack is just repeating himself.
Carmack is mostly a 3D guy...Kindof like the kernel hacker in the back. He has say and cares in what type of games get put out, but in general he is focusing on the engine... id releases their engines every once in a while, with new upgrades of features taking advantage of the latest video cards, 3D innovations, and performance upgrades. The game they are working on just happens to be the label for that new engine.
So far, Carmack's only 3D sons are Quake, Quake2, and Quake3 engines. Technology from Quake1 and 2 spawned halflife, and thus the HL MOD Counterstrike. It became a huge success, with id's engine doing the grunt work underneath.
Then Quake2 begot Soldier of Fortune, another huge single player and multiplayer success. So successfull that SOF eventually begot SOF2 (based off an independant engine I believe)...
After a while, id decided to release their Quake3 engine. It came with a multiplayer DM and CTF style game only, with no single player except playing the MP game with bots inserted. This quake3 engine gave a whole new meaning to 3D graphics engines, with curved surfaces, fully 32 bit color rendering, huge advancements in lighting, and large terrain support, stable and known consol/script interface for the "pro" gamers, amongst numerous features. (note: there were other competing engines that had similar functions, UT for example)
Quake3 was an instant hit. It carried on the hardcore gamers tradition from the land of Quake2 deathmatch and CTF to a newer generation of Quake gamers. With the release of OSP competition mod, quake3 was the first game to introduce serious gamers to serioius tournaments. People started Modding the Quake3 engine and created navy seals games, and others. Companies started putting out their own mods and releasing them as standalone games. Namely, Quake3 begot Jedi Knight II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and the new FREE multiplayer online game: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The latter 3 saving private ryan like semi massive multiplayer FPS and James bond like single player games were huge successess both in sales, but also in online gaming. Semi massive multiplayer reality online FPS games are one of the new big things, and id's Quake3 engine is behind it. (note: Battlefield 1942, using a competing engine, is of the same type, but with vehicles and larger terrains)
Quake3 will likely spawn more games, and improve its children into perfection. Quake3 is showing its age though. No vehicle support, and very large terrains are hard to build without killing framerate (wolfenstein has shown this). And new technology has built up since Quake3 has been released way back in 2000(?).
DOOM III will be id's next generation engine. With a new name, and an all new rendering paths for various card manufacturers. The latest technology in 3D rendering will be included, and you can bet it will be stable and fast and beautiful as ever. From the looks of it, DOOM III is scheduled to beget Quake IV as its online counterpart (developed by a seperate company, but using the DOOMIII engine). DOOM III should support vehicles in all shapes (aircfaft, cars, bikes) and will have unbelieveably large terrain support. Improved lighting engines and geometry and physics engines. All new sound engine. One thing I MUST mention is the all new network code. It will be improved to allow better scalability for massive multiplayer online gaming and with better prediction technology and lag fixes.
Virtually everything will be all new and improved. You can bet that the DOOMIII engine will live long and prosper.
thank you.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Looking at the HL2 and D3 trailers, it is pretty clear that the lighting effects in Doom are far superior. Watch the HL2 guys pass through a shadow and their entire body changes shade all at once (kinda like in the original Doom :P). In D3 the shadows pass over the creatures in a far more realistic fasion, including shadows cast by dynamic lights (remember the bathroom scene?).
The HL2 physics appear to be a lot better though. Not a big suprise there, Id has never really shown much interest in good physics (strafejumping anyone?). I'd also bet HL2 will have the better AI. And the HL2 engine will probably be more versatile: larger areas, more enemies on the screen, stuff like that.
I expect HL2 will be the choice for "kill your friends online", and D3 for "at home with the lights off getting the shit scared out of you". Personally I'm getting kinda tired of the former, so I'm really looking forward to D3.