QuakeCon 2003 Coverage - More On Doom III

Thanks to GameSpy for their series of reports from this year's QuakeCon, currently being held in Dallas, Texas. As well as a general preview article and a set of pictorials on the massive LAN party, the first-day reports focus on in-depth multi-player impressions of Doom III. The preview talks of "'per-pixel hit accuracy' - it's now possible to watch a rocket pass under a player's arm" and singles out "the ragdoll effects produced when hitting players with the rocket launcher, sending them flying in every direction" for the up to four-player deathmatch modes set in a Martian industrial facility.

Comments

Re:Sounds like

[Anonymous Coward]

there's something to be said for playing larger objective oriented shooters.

Yes, and that "something" is "go play one, 'cause this ain't it".

Id's obviously going in a completely different direction here- they're making a first person horror game, something that (to my knowledge) nobody's done. Semi-massively multiplayer deathmatch just doesn't fit. What's scarier, really? A hoard of teleporting space-jumping yahoos bouncing around an egyptian temple... or one guy feverishly hunting you down in dark hallways?

Not to mention that, from the sound of it, their engine couldn't handle many more than 3 players on screen at once (and then, with the co-op...) I guess that's what you get for uber-detailed characters.

What would be truly badass....

[Sevn]

Is if you could play one of the monsters as a character in multiplayer. :)

Re:Sounds like

[NanoGator]

"We're taking a step backwrds, with limiting the multiplayer games to 4 players."

Does it? The big difference is that it becomes more about tactics than about firing rockets all over the place.

I remember playing Q2 with only 4 people on the lan at work. Those games were often more interesting than playing with 16 players on the net. More time was afforded in finding good places to hide.

I remember being the first to find a 'shadow' (well back then it was just a dark spot) that I couldn't be seen in. That was a cool day.

Re:Only Four Players

[ComputerSlicer23]

Read up on what Carmack has said in the past. The Doom III game is oriented around being a single player game. The game engine is built assuming that there is not latency. He's been pretty clear, he wanted to make a game that was a great Single Player game. He wants it to be scary. He wants you to be on the edge of your seat.

He's talked about various design decisions he made to make the visuals impressive, and stunning that he knows directly contradict the goals of good game multi-player game play. He learned a lot about internet play, and dealing with latency, and multiple players resolving a situation in the same way when they have different information and different times. About dealing with somebody fragging you while never rendered while in that position, while making Quake. I get the impression he's tired of solving those problems, and would like to attack the problems of visually impressive. He wanted to make a visual stunning game. If you don't like it, send him the message by not buying it.

It's the game he wants to make. It's my understanding that the basics of the game engine will be tweaked for multi-player and used in Quake 4.

Kirby

Re:What about co-op?

[miruku]

when the plans for doom 3 were announced (or was it when quake 4 was announced?), there was mention of a specifically co-op game to be developed using the d3 engine. its in an old press release from a year or so ago iirc.