Doom 3 Vaporware no More

gilxa1226 writes "The waiting will soon be over... I was browsing Best Buy's website, and saw a preorder for Doom 3. It looks as though the release date is 4/1/2004. Doom 3.com also has info on presales."

Comments

4/1, eh?

[i_am_syco]

...... APRIL FOOLS!

Re:4/1, eh?

[G3ckoG33k]

Or, as in Europe - January 4th (2005?)

Re:4/1, eh?

[gnu-generation-one]

4/1, eh? ... APRIL FOOLS!

WTF? 4/1/2004 has been and gone, 7 days ago, and I can't remember it being April yet.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Alan]

Erhmm... the ebgames page says it's ship date is 7/14/2004...

Re:4/1, eh?

[Poeir]

Anyone remember StarCraft, the game originally slated for release in 1996 (released in 1998) by Blizzard, on April Fool's? Is this some sort of tradition in the video game industry: Release on April Fool's Day, so if there's any further delay, they can just claim it was a joke?

Re:4/1, eh?

[miruku]

uh, americans use "month/day/year" syntax for dates.

Re:4/1, eh?

[rickst13]

Hmmm, 2004/01/04 seems to make the most sense to me. That way, all dates would be in a nice alphabetized format.

Re:4/1, eh?

[R0]

It makes more sense to use something that isn't ambiguous: CCYY-MM-DD
(International date format campaign)

Re:4/1, eh?

[budgenator]

SQL does it that way.

Re:4/1, eh?

[paule9984673]

You probably mean 2004/04/01. (1 April 2004)

This way (yyyymmdd) you can use regular number sorting to sort dates. 31 January 2004 (20040131) will be lower than 1 February 2004 (20040201)

Re:4/1, eh?

[SnowZero]

You want us to die because we use a different date format? Isn't that a bit absurd?

Seriously YYYY-MM-DD is the only really agreed on format, and MM/DD/YYYY only gets the year out of place (its usually left off because it is normally obvious). DD/MM/YYYY, is just backwards; Nothing wrong with using it but I don't see the point in advocating it.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Trejkaz]

YYYY-MM-DD rules.

It makes sense because we specify time as HH:mm:ss, the biggest first. Why should dates be backwards, or in the case of the US date format, scrambled?

YYYY-MM-DD kicks butt for text sorting too.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Metal_Demon]

Well in the military it's 1 Apr 04. --Vastly superior! LoL

Re:4/1, eh?

[rjamestaylor]

April Fools and "beginning of 2nd Qtr 2004" -- both are cruel jokes. When programmers give delivery dates beyond 6 weeks it means they don't really know when they'll be finished. And companies making promises with "Qtr of" references are hoping and/or stalling.

Re:4/1, eh?

[@madeus]

You want us to die because we use a different date format? Isn't that a bit absurd?

I expect it's not specifically related to the date format, but rather the quite astounding arrogance and destructive provincialism your demonstrating which is what's so objectionable.

But you'd have to clarify that with the poster.

Seriously YYYY-MM-DD is the only really agreed on format, and MM/DD/YYYY only gets the year out of place (its usually left off because it is normally obvious). DD/MM/YYYY, is just backwards; Nothing wrong with using it but I don't see the point in advocating it.

YYYY-MM-DD us not merely 'the only really agreed on format' it's the ISO 8601 International Standard format for date notation. It is the most useful format for direct digital manipulation and more than that, it's a practical and symbolic political compromise between the predominant format in North America, and the predominant format in the rest of the world.

DD/MM/YYYY is most useful for humans who use western left-to-right languages, this is why the western world (with the exception of North America) uses this format when writing dates.

MM/DD/YYYY is useless screwup of a system used by North Americans that is neither optimal for digital manipulation nor for parsing from left to right.

People who prefer MM/DD/YYYY are also the sort of people that prefer the Imperial System to the Metric System. IME, they also tend not to be programmers (for reasons that should be obvious). It's demonstrably inferior to both systems (both for digital manipulation and for manual parsing) and this is why it restricted to common use only in North America. Like the Imperial System, it's an anachronism best left in the past where it belongs (though, also like the Imperial System, it appears that people will continue to use it for quite some time, no matter how obviously inferior it is to avalible alternatives).

Re:4/1, eh?

[rickst13]

Eeek.. I screwed that up... Hehe, forgot what date we were talking about there for a while. Yeah, that I what I meant.

Re:4/1, eh?

[NanoGator]

"People who prefer MM/DD/YYYY are also the sort of people that prefer the Imperial System to the Metric System."

Actually, we're just people who say "May 4th" instead of "The 4th of May". That's why that 'system' is commonly used. It's confusing to hear "May 4th" and then see "04-05".

Not that it's that big of deal, people can get used to any format. Just saying that it's not some strange development that people spontaneously decided to choose. Go to other languages such as Spanish, and they actually do say "4th of May". So it's not so surprising that they would write 04-05. Now think about the various languages used in Europe and how it would have grown that way.

Lighten up, we're not all crazy. Just from different environments.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Kent Recal]

People who prefer MM/DD/YYYY are also the sort of people that prefer the Imperial System to the Metric System. IME, they also tend not to be programmers (for reasons that should be obvious). It's demonstrably inferior to both systems (both for digital manipulation and for manual parsing) and this is why it restricted to common use only in North America. Like the Imperial System, it's an anachronism best left in the past where it belongs (though, also like the Imperial System, it appears that people will continue to use it for quite some time, no matter how obviously inferior it is to avalible alternatives).

Umm..
Well, you are right and I agree with you on all points. But still I see MM/DD/YYYY every day.
Look, only a few posts down this guy used it.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Omerna]

How is DD/MM/YYYY more useful than MM/DD/YYYY? I just see two arbitrarily different systems with no difference in utility.

(Though if pressed, I'd rather have the MM/DD/YYYY because you know first what month-- the general-- and then what day-- the specific.

Re:4/1, eh?

[@madeus]

The idea is that it's more logical and more useful is based on:

(a) The units are in order of significance (Days in Months in Years). It is very definately not arbitrary.

MM/DD/YYYY is however entirely arbirtary and much harder to organise or sort because of that.

While the ISO date standard of YYYY-MM-DD is certainly ultimately superior to either of the other two methods, you can still much more easily create an effetive sorting system based on DD/MM/YYYY than MM/DD/YYYY because there is some order (implied by the relative significance of the units) to the notation of DD/MM/YYYY.

This is in the same way that HH:MM:SS is the most appropriate way for us to read time (it features most to least significant, like the ISO date standard), but if I had to choose I'd rather have SS:MM:HH (least to most significant) than MM:SS:HH (which is entirely arbirtary and mirrors the middle-to-least-to-most significant format of MM/DD/YYYY)., Of course it's also the hardest to index as well as to manually prase, though of course you could 'get used to it' if you had to, and if you'd grown up with that it I'm sure it would seem entirely normal, but it still wouldn't be very sensible to an external observer.

By way of another, but practical example:

If you can imagine 3 stacks of say 100 cards each with a different date in the top right corner, one stack with dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format, another in the DD/MM/YYYY format and another in the MM/DD/YYYY format. Try thinking about sorting these and then imaging retreving items from the stack quickly based on the date. Alternatively, try knocking up a Perl/Python/etc script to do the same and see which is the most alkward format to deal with.

And:

(b) when reading from left to write your likely to want to know the day first (on the basis that your looking at something recent, or even current and want to know what day it is, or alternatively, on what specific day in the last few days something was done).

I still always use YYYY-MM-DD myself as it's just so much better (even if it does mess with the bank tellers who all seem to get confused by it and ask me what it is).

Re:4/1, eh?

[AnotherFreakboy]

uh, non-americans use "sarcasm", saying things which are untrue or very obvious for humour.

Re:4/1, eh?

[phorm]

Agreed, and being that I'm Canadian, and I use metric... I'd say that the parent might want to back down off his pedestal a bit.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Directrix1]

I still prefer the CCYY-MM-DD format. It makes everything sort easier, and it is much nicer on the eyes.

Re:4/1, eh?

[SnowZero]

How is it "destructive provincialism" when a site hosted in North America with an article writen by a North American uses a date format common in North America? If this were a site in Europe I would expect it to be written in a European language, use a European date format, and use "," as the decimal separator, not "." like in the US. Are you going to attack Asia now for not using a Western alphabet? It has been shown that small alphabets are superior in terms of how long it takes to learn the written language, yet somehow I think its best to leave it up to them to decide rather than deriding them for it. Did you know that most Asian cultures break numbers into groups of 4, instead of groups of 3. 4 digits makes a hell of a lot more sense to me, not being a strange number occuring almost nowhere in nature. I think they can coexist, maybe the better one will win in the long run. But I don't see Japan demanding that Europe start grouping numbers in 4's. Why do you make similar demands?

There are a huge number of things across cultures that are just plain arbitrary, or nearly so. Measurement systems, formats, languages, customs, etc. Attacking and riddiculing someone for not being "like you" (using your favorite date format, running your favorite operating system) is really quite a bit more arrogant than someone using their own culture. Apparently the best way to get modded up around here however.

Thus I'll give it a try:
I use Kelvin for all temperatures, anyone who uses Celsius (or god forbit, Farenheit) is an idiot, because their temperature system is not based on a universal zero, but random chemical or human constants. All temperature systems besides Kelvin belong in the past as they are demonstably inferior.

Finally, don't forget that Windows is the world standard, and everything else is minority crap.

Re:4/1, eh?

[F34nor]

Ahhh but you've missed the profound beauty of the American way. You make your system the biggest pain in the ass possible. e.g. The English Language, the "Standard" system of measurement, the stupid MM/DD/YYYY system for dates. This way EVERYONE ELSE is made to work twice as hard to understand us; you have to spend a great deal of effort just trying to figure out WTF is going on. We generalize this system out to our treaties as well. Notice we haven't signed onto the international court, the land mine treaty, or the child labor treaty? Why? Because we are the last superpower and as such will not allow ourselves to come under any form of international jurisdiction. It's a little more high brow than the date and measures thing but its still the same philosophy.

You think that we'd use a better system just becasue its better? Look at Microsoft.

Re:4/1, eh?

[@madeus]

If this were a site in Europe I would expect it to be written in a European language, use a European date format, and use "," as the decimal separator, not "." like in the US.

I would expect a web page to display a date that conforms to the ISO standard, as do the W3C. It's not the format commonly used in my country either, but I realise I'm publishing on a global medium to a global audience and that's why I use it.

Are you going to attack Asia now for not using a Western alphabet?

Most of Asia (including China, Japan, Korea and others) already use YYYY-MM-DD as their date format, so no I won't be critisising them as they have prefectly sensible date formats and, along with much of Scandinavia, are ahead of most the rest of the world when it comes to using logical date notation formats.

Attacking and riddiculing someone for not being "like you" (using your favorite date format, running your favorite operating system) is really quite a bit more arrogant than someone using their own culture

I'm not attacking a group for not being 'like me' I'm attacking them for doing what is clearly (as far as the rest of the world thinks) the wrong thing, and pointing out that MM/DD/YYYY is the wrong thing is something I am quite comfortable with.

Your simply ignoring the arguments of logic and common sense and attempting to introduce political correctness into the argument. You don't have to be a maths wizard or software developer to see why it's a bad format, but I really hope your not a programmer if you can't see what makes it a bad format.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Anonvmous Coward]

>I'd say that the parent might want to back down off his pedestal a bit.

Canada is also very much influenced by French. I would say you pretty much backed up his point by mentioning Candada.

Re:4/1, eh?

[SnowZero]

Ok now we're getting somewhere. I agree its better, which is why I too use it on computers for things like directories. However I don't care at all if someone else uses a colloquial form. So we agree on the result, but disagree on whether its meaningful enough to warrant a campaign to change people. Have a nice day.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Baikala]

If by 'SQL' you mean any decent RDBMS like Oracle, Sybase, MySQL, MSSQL, etc they all use a binary format to store and sort dates/times, the display format is configurable and there is a default format (also configurable) so you don't have to specify the format in every single query.

Re:4/1, eh?

[BugZRevengE]

When talking about date formats... i always use something that cannot be confused eg:
21-01-2004
01-21-2004
20040121
That way no one gets confused which is the month, year, or day...

Re:4/1, eh?

[Omerna]

I see your point, but I'm still skeptical.

I think the time analogy is flawed as nobody uses seconds (in everyday "What time is it?" sorts of ways) so to compare them to something as necessary as the DAY seems odd. Also, would you really have to say: "It's 15 seconds, I mean 16 seconds, and uh, 5 minutes past 4"? No way, it's much easier to say "It's 4:05" and then add the seconds if you want.

The order of MM/DD/YYYY comes when one is speaking out loud. Let's take my birthday. I would rather say I was born on "April 15th" then "15th of April". In English, at least, it makes grammatical sense. (Spanish, the only other language I'm more than passingly familiar with would say "quince del (of) abril" so perhaps that's where the original change came from.

(b) makes much more sense, and I agree fully with that argument. The only problem in its use is that the rest of society wouldn't get it for the early days in early months (i.e. 1/4 or 4/1). I guess America and the rest of the world are going to have to disagree again.

(Though maybe we'll change our date format when we get around to swtiching to the metric system... if we do.)

Re:4/1, eh?

[scabb]

I think this is kind of a stupid argument. You use whatever system is accepted amongst your culture. Sure, logically and from a purely mathematical standpoint your argument is watertight. I'm used to labelling everything DD/MM/YY. This is what everyone else does, and understands, and it's the date format that I am used to. I don't particulary care about making the system easier to program with.

Re:4/1, eh?

[scabb]

"The order of MM/DD/YYYY comes when one is speaking out loud. Let's take my birthday. I would rather say I was born on "April 15th" then "15th of April". In English, at least, it makes grammatical sense. (Spanish, the only other language I'm more than passingly familiar with would say "quince del (of) abril" so perhaps that's where the original change came from"

I disagree. In England, it wouldn't be considered gramatically correct to say "I was born April 15th". The correct phrase would be "I was born on April the 15th", or "I was born on the 15th of April". The latter is more commonly used.

But let's not get into an argument about which type of grammar is the best, or logical, or the most useful.

We still haven't implemented the metric system fully over here in the UK yet. I was brought up on centimetres, millometres and kilograms, but I still travel in miles and weigh myself in stones (We only use pounds (lb) for cooking. That way it's less confusing when we're talking about the currency, maybe?)

I think that we should leave this argument at "Everybody's Unique", and embrace each other in some kind of huge hug in celebration of cultural diversity.

Re:4/1, eh?

[scabb]

Grr.

Re:4/1, eh?

[scabb]

(Everyone else being the people I communicate and interact with on a day-to-day basis)

Re:4/1, eh?

[gnu-generation-one]

"Though if pressed, I'd rather have the MM/DD/YYYY because you know first what month-- the general-- and then what day-- the specific."

Except you don't... you only know what month is specified about ten seconds later, as you realise that it's written in the american date system...

Unless it's the 12th of the month or earlier, in which case you may never know...

If you want to be really confusing, you can use 2-digit years as well, so now that we're near the beginning of a century, 01-02-03 could mean near enough anything...

I did try using the 2004-01-03 date system for a while -- nobody I showed the text to realised what it was until it was pointed out to them. One person thought 2004-01-03 was a date in 2003, because it had the 03 at the end, where the year normally goes (this after a glancing at a letterhead), and I imagine that the people who clear checks at a bank have about as much time as she did to read dates.

Re:4/1, eh?

[Robmonster]

There are also a lot of people who say "It's 25 minutes past 10", but they dont write the time as 25:10

Re:4/1, eh?

[NanoGator]

Oh yeah, I'm totally defeated. :rolleyes:

Re:4/1, eh?

[miruku]

it comes from the syntax "july the 4th, 2004"

Re:4/1, eh?

[miruku]

i just didn't see any sarcastic tone in the comment

Doom3

[Anonymous Coward]

What with the leaked Alpha, numerous screenshots on every gaming site, I never really thought of Doom3 as vaporware. DNF is another story

Re:Doom3

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

DNF is another story

What do you mean DNF is vaporware? It's already for sale in Ukraine.

Re:Doom3

[bigbigbison]

That article says that Half-Life 2 is for sale, not DNF. Is there another article that talks about DNF?

Re:Doom3

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I, euh, kinda mixed up their names. It was actually HL2 instead of DNF. I got a math exam in 2 days, so I cannot be held responsible for such mistakes. If you want to blame some one, blame Rolle, Lagrange, Chauvy and L'Hopital


Half-Life 2 For Sale In Ukraine

Following the news yesterday, of several high profile games being leaked onto the Internet, it has transpired that copies of Half-Life 2 (and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero) are being sold on the black market in the Ukraine.

The boxed software is being sold as a full game, but contains only the leaked builds and source code that appeared on the Internet last autumn.

Re:Doom3

[_Sexy_Pants_]

Please, let's let the DNF jokes die (just as the game will)

Re:Doom3

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

This is /. the only place in the known galaxi where a sentient being can tell the same joke over and over again and life to tell the tale.

If there is one thing I've learned of /. , it's the fact that once a reasonable good joke is published, it will never ever die. In fact it's more likely that readers will die of old-joke-exposure-induced-violence-syndrome (symptoms are easily recognized: blood red eyes, white foam on lips, violently hitting head to a wall).

April fools day!

[shakey_deal]

Like im gonna fall for that one! EA GAMES says July 2004 though...

Re:April fools day!

[bigman2003]

That's because they want you to buy the next Medal of Honor update- not Doom III. EA Games would actually see Doom III as competition to some of their games.

Interestingly, another similarly named company, EB Games may want you to know a more accurate date- so they can sell more copies of Doom III, and share in the profits with the game designers, publishers, etc.

Early April Fool?

[SkArcher]

Listed for release on April Fools Day... anyone want to bet this is another false alarm?

I'll wait to HL2 anyway

Re:Early April Fool?

[zr-rifle]

on Gamestop the release date is listed as 5/3/2004 Is there an official release date anyway?

To quote penny arcade...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what a great engine!

I can't wait till someone makes a game with it.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[ziggles]

Ya know, maybe I'm weird, but I like to play games before deciding they suck and their only redeeming feature is their engine. It's not like id has a track record of making crappy games. They may not be great innovators, but every game they've made has been of high quality. You may be bored of FPS games, but that doesn't mean they all suck.

Personally, I could care less about whether a game is innovative. I just want a game that's well-made and fun. id has always delievered at least that much in the past.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[88NoSoup4U88]

Quake 3: Arena, compared to for instance, Unreal Tournament, at that time, was a more 'solid' engine, but it lacked ALOT in single player.
Whereas in UT you really had the feeling the bots we're trying to fight you in a fair matter, the different level settings in base Q3, made no real difference in 'playing experience'.
Ahwell, the people just deliver kick-ass engines, and , from the looks of it, they actually seem to have more of a set goal now for Doom III ('shit your pants' ;) ) and I think with the quality graphics one can get, it will be very, very good, and anoter step closer to future gaming.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[vigilology]

Totally agree, except I couldn't care less about whether it's innovative or not.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[obsid1an]

Q3 was never supposed to be anything resembling a single player game. They should have just called it "offline mode." Quake3 was MUCH more popular than UT for a good reason, it was better on so many levels. Engine, gameplay, and MUCH better modability (that a word?).

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[JFMulder]

I understand what the other poster meant. While the engine looks great and powerfull, the art direction is seriously uninspired. Demons with rocket-launchers? It was allright ten years ago, but people expect a little more these days. Demons with mechanical limbs? Bad bad bad...

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[fredrikj]

They may not be great innovators

Bullshit. They invented the entire FPS genre.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Personally, I could care less about whether a game is innovative. I just want a game that's well-made and fun. id has always delievered at least that much in the past.

Man, companies like EA Games must love you.

Sorry, but I tend to appreciate games that are, oh I don't know, DIFFERENT from the others on the shelf.

id's last few games have been Quake 2 and 3. How were those revolutionary in any way? Quake 3 did give us a neat little engine, but Quake 1 has always been everybody's favorite.

id is suffering from a bad case of sequel-itis. They should just ship engines. If they did, we'd already have the engine by now, and games that used it. Instead, now we have to wait for them to build more of their typically dark and brown enclosed rooms with some baddies hiding in the shadowy areas. Give me Half-Life's level design any day.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Guido von Guido]

Call me a philistine, but I liked Quake 2 better. It felt more visceral to me, and better balanced in multi-player. It also was a decent single player game. I never cared for Quake 3.

I agree with you about the level design. However, it ain't easy. Look at the last third or so of Half Life--it really tailed off after you leave Earth. Does anybody really like all that jumping?.

Although I should probably wait to play the game before I critique the level design...

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[ziggles]

I think it's great that they have such ridiculous designs. This is a Doom game, it should carry on in the tradition of Doom 1 & 2. If this was some other game about a mars base being overtaken by demons from hell then you may have a point.. but it's not. And actually, the game's plot (mars base overtaken by demons from hell? come on!) is so ridiculous, having "inspired" art direction would seem out of place regardless of the past Doom games.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[theefer]

Bullshit. They invented the entire FPS genre.
Right, but it does not mean they have to stay with that very same gameplay for the rest of the studio's life, does it ? Actually is does sound like it is their plan.

To me, Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog and Lionhead have been much more inventive than ID Software. This does not mean ID games suck, it just mean ID takes no risk and innovates only in technology, not game design.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[AKnightCowboy]

They may not be great innovators, but every game they've made has been of high quality. You may be bored of FPS games, but that doesn't mean they all suck.

I have problems with id software continually releasing the same kind of "evil" dark games. Why can't they make something a little lighter? All the Dooms and Quakes concentrated on evil satanic monsters and nothing but mindless killing. As a Christian I have to wonder what this is doing to the children who end up playing these games behind their parents' backs (for example at a friend's house who has liberal parents or a single mom who is working hard to support the family). id should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such garbage. Why can't they make a good quality game about American soldiers hunting down evil terrorists?

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[k98sven]

Right, but it does not mean they have to stay with that very same gameplay for the rest of the studio's life, does it ? Actually is does sound like it is their plan.

Welcome to the business world.
Small businesses have little to lose and are prepared to take risks.
Big businesses are far more conservative.

ID isn't a 5-developer company anymore, they've got a board of directors, investors and whatnot to take into consideration.

Look around.. It's the same everywhere: Small record labels vs. the Big Five. Movie studios, (Remember when Miramax produced innovative films?) TV-channels (FOX was still a new network when "The Simpsons" started, but more recently "South Park" was picked up only by the much smaller Comedy Central)

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[joeytsai]

Well, remember the plot is that a portal to hell is opened in a military installation in Mars. Thus the demons possess the station's personel, and maybe they glob together some of the weapons that were lying around? It's a story and a game, man. Take it easy!

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"How were those revolutionary in any way? "

Quake2 added multiplayer savegames for coop. Evolution, not revolution, but still a nice feature expanding on the fun that is coop.
Quake2 and 3 would both be more fun if they used q1's physics. I don't know about you all, but I find it fun to just run around in bunnyhop circles in q1, rocketjumping up to high places, etc. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it (in singleplayer, in multi just play on a server where its banned)
BH in q2 and 3 had ZERO air control. In q1, to change directions midair you look to the right/left. In q2/3, you launch a rocket to the left of you ( and kill your speed)

q3's menu system was somewhat revolutionary, I don't remember any game(sans quake1) having such a useful menu system while ingame(see halflife pre-steam, where accidently hitting esc meant about 8 seconds of resolution changes/waiting for menu to load/exiting back into game)

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[natd]

Actually, I quite liked it :)

It's a mis-saying that I pick up on every time I read it and while I always think "why on earth do people say that???" I've never though or read that much about it.

So...yes, while off topic, I thougth it was a good read and something I personally hadn't seen before.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Send me a demo and proove me otherwise. I'm pretty sure you've never actually played quakeworld, and have no idea what air control actually is. Think being able to rockjump off of a platform while holding backwards. and end up back on it by just turning your mouse at the right time.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[danila]

You can't easily invent another genre in a mature market. id created FPSes, now FPS is a genre inside which they have to work (because they are best at FPS games). They have a lot of creative ideas, but there are certain limitations (like the game is first-person, you run around and basically shoot stuff) they have to respect. Still, Doom3 promises a lot of innovation in the style. It won't be the first movie-like FPS experience, but enough not to be considered a clone.

Another thing is that id guys had a lot of ideas for their next game, including a very innovative Prey (IIRC). But ultimately they decided that they want to make Doom3, because they loved the original Doom and felt like the possibilities were simply to great to be ignored. This was neither milking the cash cow, nor investors' decision. The programmers (designers) made the decision.

Then you might also think about the reason FPS games are popular. It's because there is very specific behaviour that we humans enjoy very much - wreaking havoc. We have a very good picture of what we want to experience in such games and the FPS genre is doomed to assimptotically approach the image in our minds. That's why FPS game can't be too innovative, we are already close enough to the perfect experience and changing too much would be straying in the wrong direction.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[bugbread]

"All the Dooms and Quakes concentrated on evil satanic monsters and nothing but mindless killing. As a Christian I have to wonder what this is doing to the children who end up playing these games"

Maybe they'll grow and kill satanic monsters for a living.

As a Christian, it would seem that killing satanic monsters for fun would be a pretty positive playstyle.

Sorry, just being flippant.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[HohlerMann]

Why can't they make a good quality game about American soldiers hunting down evil terrorists?

Like America's Army developed by... America's Army?

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[brianosaurus]

So you're saying that killing people is of better Christian moral value than killing satanic monsters?

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Dr_Cornholio]

Well personally, i would find that killing a monster on a computer screen would be far less detrimental to a child's menatlity than killing a fellow human being. You say that you are a christian? Well, how can you say that killing your fellow man be better than destroying the legions of lucifer? I don't want to start bringing out quotes from the bible, as you probably already own a bible yourself, but grom your post, you have a rather warped sense of mroality and christian values.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[DWIM]

As a Christian I have to wonder what this is doing to the children who end up playing these games behind their parents' backs...

As a parent, my kids will never get a chance to play these games because I will be hogging the PC playing them myself!

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[ashkar]

Wow, you're right. I would much rather have my children killing people than evil monsters. That would make for a much happier game.

La, la, la...skipping through the desert...yay, a raghead. Kill Him!!! BANG! BANG! ...Die you coon dune scum.

This is a great argument for religion and all the good it has done for mankind.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[fondue]

OK genius, what would be acceptable monster designs for a game about a space marine getting sucked through a portal to hell?

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Dr_Cornholio]

Yes, I know I wrote 'grom' instead of 'from'. I don't know if it was a typo of my subconscious being hooked on orcs in wc3

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[stor]

As a Christian I have to wonder what this is doing to the children who end up playing these games behind their parents' backs...

As a parent, my kids will never get a chance to play these games because I will be hogging the PC playing them myself!

You, sir, deserve a medal. You have found the solution to the US's "War Against Violent Video Games(tm)". We just need to get the parents addicted to violent video games, then they'll be much less likely to want them banned.

Woot.

Cheers
Stor

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[JFMulder]

I'm no artist, but one can still have an opinion about the art direction someone is taking. If you think demons with mechanical limbs is fine, good for you, but this is pretty laughable. When I looked at the screen shots, I wasn't scared, I laughed. For a game that wants to make you crap your pants, this isn't really the best way.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Rayonic]

Another thing is that id guys had a lot of ideas for their next game, including a very innovative Prey (IIRC).

Prey was an old 3DRealms project, actually. Dropped, at least for now, in favor of Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[NanoGator]

"having "inspired" art direction would seem out of place regardless of the past Doom games."

You don't like the art in Doom 3?!

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[NanoGator]

Dammit! I'm sorry, meant to reply to the post above yours.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[_Sexy_Pants_]

Yeah they aren't the innovators they once were. Yeah Q2 and 3 were disappointments too. What about Return to Castle Wolfenstein though? THERE was a fun game. So ID can still make a good game. I don't know if we can count on it, but it's still there. That said, let's not analyze Doom 3 from their track record, but from what we've seen. I mean, have you watched a movie from this? Have you checked out these screen shots? This is a CREEPY and very atmospheric game. And those that have played it seem to love it. Sequel-itis? Take a look around, the entire industry is choking on it. At least this is one I welcome

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[gabe]

Killing thousands of evil cybernetic zombies from hell is known to cause gamers to give thousands of dollars and tons of presents to sick children.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[WormholeFiend]

i want monsters with slimy tentacles, lots of em. and if possible, that are inspired by the Overfiend.

i want monsters so big, they swallow your character, who has to blast his way out of the monster's gut, but not before having to fight with some tapeworms from hell.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Dr. GeneMachine]

i want monsters so big, they swallow your character, who has to blast his way out of the monster's gut, but not before having to fight with some tapeworms from hell.

You, Sir, have a seriously twisted mind. I fear for you.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[TempeTerra]

" Why can't they make a good quality game about American soldiers hunting down evil terrorists? "

What? You mean that's not what it's about? I thought it was the America's Army mod for "The War Against Horror".

Why am I going to join the army if I don't get to hunt down Weapons of Mass Fraggage?

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[danila]

Thanks for correcting me, the id's project was called Trinity. It was postponed in favour of Quake III (this one was a cash cow) and then apparently abandoned in favour of Doom 3.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Firehawke]

"Much more popular"? Hardly. They were pretty much neck and neck. Q3 was faster, but UT's weapons and gameplay modes didn't suck half as much. You could find a good server easily for either at their heyday.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Rayonic]

Actually, I think Carmack was asked about Trinity, and he said it was less of a game than an engine. (He is the lead programmer, after all.)

Furthermore, I recall him saying that it was more of a playground for his programming ideas than anything else, some of which were incorporated into his main commercial engine. (Curved surfaces in Quake 3 were, I think, a result of his fooling around with Trinity.)

On a similar note, I wouldn't be surprised if some old Prey code got into Duke Nukem Forever, despite it being based on the Unreal engine. Much like how the Valve team heavily modified the old Quake engine to suit their needs.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[CyberdogOSX]

yes, because American Soldiers are righteous and good. doing the lords work killing the godless terrorists.

got news for you. those terrorists have a stronger faith in god than you(their version of it anyway), and look what happened to their society.

if you want to know what America would be like with a theocracy, just look at any muslim governed nation.

i am so sick of you self-righteous bastards moralizing about how if the rest of the world thought like you, we'd have no more problems. well, look at what happens in a world where everyone IS forced to follow the same moral code.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[danila]

I might be wrong again, but I think Trinity was still the codename for the project Carmack wanted to do after Q3. The squabble they had in id is described in Masters of Doom book and in Carmack's .plan (albeit briefly). It was supposed to be something more innovative than just another FPS, but the rest of the team wanted to redo Doom.

I don't have the book with me now, so I can't check if it really was the name.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[Cynical Troll]

You realise this is a remake of the original Doom, right? And that when you make a remake, it has to actually resemble the original? And that the original had all these cyborgian demons? And that that's what people want? And that you're a troll?

Okay.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[JFMulder]

The backgrounds are gorgeous, but some of the demons are just horribly bad. (I'm talking about the mechanical ones)

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[scabb]

The future of gaming never gets closer, no matter how many steps you take ;D

old news

[Lumpy]

the prorder shelf boxes have been in best buy for over 2 weeks now here in the midwest.

but there is no promises as to when you are able to get your copy, so dont get your hopes up too much about it coming out very soon.

Re:old news

[nekura]

In the Best Buy I work at, we've had the pre-order boxes out since around the time I started working (mid-November). For some reason, a $10 price tag and the words "Preorder Only" add up to equal "OMFG DOOM 3'S OUT" in a lot of people's minds. God it's a bitch working software sometimes. =D

Re:old news

[Deosyne]

When I saw those boxes last month, it took me a while to figure out what the $10 price tag was for, since I'm not quite so stupid as to believe that id is going to sell Doom 3 for ten bucks although I am apparently stupid enough not to have derived the whole idea of what the box was about without any explanation other than a $10 price tag with no other mention of paying more at some point. To this point, I'm still assuming that the $10 is a deposit on the total order, whatever insane amount that might be since that was conveniently left off of the boxes. Never having bothered with preordering anything before though, I wouldn't swear on it. Once again, marketing trumps clarity. To be completely honest, I did harbor a little tiny hope that it might have been a fuckup on Best Buy's part of the actual preorder price that might go in my favor. ;) Whatever the case, I think I'll just stick to buying products that exist for now.

Re:old news

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

The preorder boxes I saw only cost $10. I definitely took a second look, actually thinking for a moment that I could get Doom 3 for $10. My hopes were quickly dashed though... all the pre-order gives you is some kind of trinket and the right to $10 off the final version when it is available. I doubt if they even hold one for you...

First week of april, NOOOOO!

[kryptkpr]

I see what's going on here.. 4/1/03.. they're trying to make college/university students fail their 2nd term final exams! (usually the first through third week of April)

Re:First week of april, NOOOOO!

[jdmuir]

they're trying to make college/university students fail their 2nd term final exams! It's part of the curriculum. If you can ignore the new games and study, you pass.

So what?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Big deal - there's been a Doom 3 box at EB for awhile now. Just because a retail outlet says a product is going to be out on a date, doesn't mean much of anything - especially when it comes to a video game.

This is completely meaningless. Stores put release dates out that are wrong quite often. Move on, move on.

Re:So what?

[Zardoz44]

Not only that. Didn't DNF have pre-orders at one point?

It can be vapor until it's shipped.

Re:So what?

[mnemonic_]

Indeed, the editor who approved this story and decided to keep the title is really fucking stuipd.

Re:So what?

[Seth Finklestein]

For you Americans out there in cyberland, Duke Nukem Forever will ship on 1 December 2005. Oh wait, maybe it's 14 November 2004.

Just be glad you don't live in New Zealand, where it won't ship until 31 December 2006 .

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Humourous Game Release Date Expert

Re:So what?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Didn't DNF have pre-orders at one point?

Yup, and by the looks of it, it's due out the end of this year too!

:-)

(hey, I didn't write it, I'm only reporting it...)

Re:So what?

[EpsCylonB]

Yeah the Doom 3 release date has been said to be 4/1/04 for a while now by most online websites. Considering ID software usually releases games "when they are done" and not to specific dates it is unlikely to be accurate.

I'm hoping that this date is actually a hedged bet and that the game should be done before then (Half Life 2 now has the same release date which makes me think it is more general than specific). It should be pretty close to completetion now, afterall activision did briefly plan on a christmas release last year and they must have some idea of far along the game is. It may come out next month it also may come out in 6 months time, I guess the only person who really has any idea is Carmack (Hello ?).

In other news...

[Daath]

The check is in the mail!

Never was vaporware

[klueless]

What about the E3 Demo? This thing was playable a LONG time ago.

I'm pretty sure our doom "vaporware" existed only at games.slashdot.org.

Regardless, a date is always nice, although it doesn't guarentee anything (even with pre-orders).

Re:Never was vaporware

[l810c]

While i do think the term 'vaporware' is being tossed about a bit too freely in this case, this has definatally been id's longest development cycle. The game was announced June 1, 2000 and the famed E3 demo was over 1 1/2 years ago. If they make Fool's day release they will come in just under 4 years.

There will probably be many derivitives and mission packs to follow over the next couple of years. At this pace, however, we can expect to see Carmack's next graphics engine in 2010.

Re:Never was vaporware

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

prey was also a playable alpha too.

Re:Never was vaporware

[tbradshaw]

That is exactly right. DOOM3 was never vaporware. Not only should one consider the E3 demo, what about at QuakeCon 2003 just this last summer, where all comers were allowed to play DOOM3 in four player deathmatch mode?

Seriously, I know that DOOM3 isn't vaporware because I've played it alone with like a thousand other people last summer.

Re:Never was vaporware

[SnowZero]

Why do we even need the next one? By 2010 shouldn't we already have a base on Mars and be working on cybernetic warriors and opening actual portals to hell? (Or at the very least we should be witnessing a supernova on Jupiter caused by aliens that look like magnets)

Re:Never was vaporware

[TempeTerra]

"Regardless, a date is always nice, although it doesn't guarentee anything (even with pre-orders)."

Pre-orders eh? Could you tell us here at slashdot how to get one of those? Anything that remotely increases our chances of getting something on a date (or even getting a date in the first place) would be much appreciated .

*grin*

It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[goljerp]

Sorry, it's still vaporware until I can run it...

on my Linux box!

Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[irokitt]

Not only is there no word on a Linux version yet, the only other version I've even heard rumors of is the XBox !

Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[Sp4c3 C4d3t]

It's been said that it will run with Linux, but only with NVIDIA cards from John Carmack himself.

Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[Gabriele Capone]

They are simultaneously working on versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. I think most of their development is even done on Linux and I read somewhere that the demo at E3 last year may have also been running on Linux.

Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[Cornelius the Great]

Considering the fact that every ID game since Doom (original) has had a Linux port, it would be fair to state that you shouldn't expect anything different from this release. ;)

Cheers!

Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[arendjr]

A Linux version will be available as well.

Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[mrpuffypants]

From what I heard the demo that I played at Quakecon this last year was running on some version of Linux.

Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[dzym]

Nah, it was running on XP SP1, but it was on AMD Opteron/Nvidia hardware.

Great!

[teamhasnoi]

When will the Pentium Pentiums be out?

When it's finished...

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

<insert obligatory Duke Nukem Forever joke here>

Re:When it's finished...

[len_harms]

Im thinking it will be released in 2 weeks!

Re:When it's finished...

[fredrikj]

<insert <insert joke>>

I'd insert a witty remark here, but there's an overhanging risk of infinite recursion.

Happy Birthday to me...

[aznxk3vi17]

Wow... this will make the perfect birthday present for me! Now I just have to make some "hints." "Hey... you know I've REALLY ALWAYS WANTED DOOM III" *wink wink* *nudge nudge*

Re:Happy Birthday to me...

[fafaforza]

What, you can't afford $50?

It would be a better financial decision to hint at the top of the line NVidia or ATI grahics card.

No dates yet.

[juhaz]

Both stores linked from doom3.com state that:

Please note: id Software has NOT supplied a release date for this title. We will provide a date as soon as one is announced. Pricing listed is an estimate and is subject to change.

So anyone who has some specific date marked is just guessing.

What's the big deal anyway? It's just a game.

Re:No dates yet.

[ToolFiend]

What's the big deal anyway? It's just a game.

But it's just the kind of game that makes everyone upgrade their PC :)

Re:No dates yet.

[juhaz]

We don't know that yet.

ID Software has made plenty of technically advanced first person shooters, but after the original Doom, not one of them has been a good game.

Maybe there's something wrong with me but lousy plots, "shoot everything that moves, and shoot anyway if it doesn't" -gameplay and bad, repetitive map design just doesn't make me feel urge to upgrade my PC. I'd rather play something with a compelling storyline and gameplay than "ooh! pretty" that lacks everything else.

Now, they have been great technology demo, and base for other people to build the really good games and mods, and I guess they're at least somewhat playable in multiplayer mode.

Re:No dates yet.

[override11]

I can feel the bitterness in your words... yes, I can see in your past, the lonely nights staring at your monitor after you had been fragged over... and over... and over again. It was just too much for you, the moving, the jumping, the shooting, and all at the same time!

Seriously tho, Quake3 was definitly badass and a ton of fun, and with all the maps available, as well as mods and add-ons, it was an amazing game! :)

Re:No dates yet.

[rabidcow]

I was wondering about that... I remember a few years ago there were a few places preselling Duke Nukem Forever, release date and all. (even unofficial box art...)

I think we all know how far that got.

Re:No dates yet.

[benja]

I'd rather play something with a compelling storyline and gameplay than "ooh! pretty" that lacks everything else.

As for the first request, the lore goes that story is refered to as "the S-word"[*] inside ID...

[*] (Search for it on the page linked.)

Re:No dates yet.

[swdunlop]

It was okay, but I think I'm not the only one here who can honestly say it got dull after a while.. I think my friends and I spent more time playing Kohan than Quake 3, despite my fetish for Threewave CTF. Guess we're getting old..

Re:No dates yet.

[Sevn]

Maybe there's something wrong with me

Yup.

Re:No dates yet.

[drinkypoo]

There is something wrong with you. Quake was both a groundbreaking title (being the first truly three dimensional textured FPS) and fun to play. Quake held my attention longer than any other game, before or since. In fact, I still play Quake even now. Its modular, extensible architecture and scripting language enabled it to be reborn countless times in countless forms. I remember how excited I was when the transparent water patch came out for gldoom. Likewise, I remember how excited I was that the game was playable on my 486DX33. Quake is one of the greatest games of all time, and will be remembered as such.

Re:No dates yet.

[freeweed]

I remember how excited I was that the game was playable on my 486DX33

Quake was playable on a 33? Huh? My 486 at the time was a 100mhz monster with 16mb of RAM, and it could hardly load the game. It then stuttered along at 5 or 10 fps. It sure looked pretty, but it was hardly playable.

However, you've made me realize just how much my PC gaming life revolves around id, and how little I care about other games (seemingly, anyway). I got my first PC (the above 486) to be able to play Doom(2) at a nice screen size and speed - before that I was quite happy on various Commodore/Apple machines. My next PC (a screaming 200mhz MMX Pentium) I got because the 486 could play Duke Nukem 3D just fine, but couldn't handle Quake or Quake 2.

id hasn't released diddly in the way of new games lately (sorry, but Quake 3 seems more like a demo to me), so I've had another new cpu or 2 since the 200, but lately I've been putting off getting a new system (especially the video card) because I'm waiting to see just what Doom3 will want to run decently.

Sick. :)

Re:No dates yet.

[ssstraub]

id hasn't released diddly in the way of new games lately (sorry, but Quake 3 seems more like a demo to me), so I've had another new cpu or 2 since the 200, but lately I've been putting off getting a new system (especially the video card) because I'm waiting to see just what Doom3 will want to run decently.

A "demo" that many many people are still playing right now. I recommend Ultra Freeze Tag. A great team-based mod.

Re:No dates yet.

[Glonoinha]

Try Star Wars Galaxies.

Re:No dates yet.

[juhaz]

BatMUD fills my mmorpg needs quite nicely.

Single player game suggestions are welcome, though.

Re:No dates yet.

[damiam]

Doom3 will run fine on any Athlon XP, Athlon64, or Pentium 4, with any video card as good as a GeForce4 Ti4200 (i.e. any Radeon >= 8500, and any GeForce 4 or FX except the GF4MX and the FX5200). Basically, any system you buy now would have no problem with it (although you'll probably want a high-end box for 1600x1200 with full AA and AF).

Re:No dates yet.

[lc_overlord]

I tend to agree with you, but any FX card will do, even the FX5200(Allthough you might have to restrain yourself from even thinking about using AA, AF and such thing's).

--Me wait's for the FX6K series cards--

Re:No dates yet.

[TwistedGreen]

Yeah, but it's the game. Subtle difference.

Re:No dates yet.

[damiam]

The FX5200 is marginal. I've seen it benchmark worse than the GF4MX in some cases, which is truly sad (although it does support all of Doom 3's features, which the GF4MX does not). Really, though, no one except a masochist should buy a made-for-Doom 3 box with a 5200 in it :-).

Re:No dates yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quake was both a groundbreaking title (being the first truly three dimensional textured FPS)

Descent.

Yep, all the ones I know of are:

* Descent (1994), Parallax. I still remember the TV commercials with the tagline saying "360 degrees is greater than Doom".
* System Shock (1994), Looking Glass.
* The Terminator: Future Shock (1995), Bethesda. (This one even had drivable vehicles in multiplayer).

FYI, Quake came out in 1996.

Re:No dates yet.

[SnowZero]

Ok, Quake was the first full 3D FPS that had lighting and physics that didn't suck. (Quake used lightmaps, Descent used Gouraud shading; Quake did contact physics, Descent didn't really handle that well).

Re:No dates yet.

[bugbread]

Why the hell is this moderated as "troll"? Just because the mod didn't agree with the author??

Re:No dates yet.

[NanoGator]

"What's the big deal anyway? It's just a game."

We want to see the bar for graphic excellence raised.

Re:No dates yet.

[Black Hitler]

System Shock (1994), Looking Glass.

System Shock wasn't true 3D. Check this out.

Re:No dates yet.

[sYn pHrEAk]

Descent had 2D sprites for pickup items. Sorry, please play again. Wait. Don't. Just accept the facts. Quake = first FULL 3D FPS.

Re:No dates yet.

[sYn pHrEAk]

damn... I am pwnt... But not ALL the torches.... heh... all the explosions though... and the HUD.... LOL but it was a LITTLE closer than descent... i guess looking at it that way there probably hasn't been anything TRULY 100% 3D... but Quake was like 99.3 or something

Re:No dates yet.

[lc_overlord]

shure, but then again the 5200 is pretty respectable to those people that insist on running CS just because they don't have a graphic's card with enough power to run pacman.

But you really need a FX5900 and later(5950,5700) to play doom3 the way it should be played.

personaly i use a FX5600 and it runs just great(now i only wish that my new P4 would arrive).

Re:No dates yet.

[Telastyn]

No, quake was not the first 'real' 3d FPS.

What quake *was* the first to do was allow "drop in" network play. If you've ever actually played doom or other games of the era, you'll know what a godsend being able to just drop in a game and start playing instead of trying to track down your buddies to startup the game... restarting when someone gets dropped...

Pain in the ass. Duke Nukem was a much more entertaining game, but you'd have to get everyone together beforehand to play it!

With Quake you could just start up a game, and people on the network would spontaneously join in. Then there was Quakeworld, and then everyone could join in...

GameStop and EB have varied Ship dates

[suedehed]

EB says 7/14/2004, Gamestop says 5/3/2004 and BestBuy says 4/1/2004. Any bets on which date will realistically be the ship date?

Re:GameStop and EB have varied Ship dates

[fafaforza]

My guess is when / it's / 200-done

Re:GameStop and EB have varied Ship dates

[spare.dave]

I'll start believing EB dates once my pre-ordered copy of TeamFortress 2 ships.

Re:GameStop and EB have varied Ship dates

[SuperDry]

I've had my copy pre-ordered at Amazon since Jan 31, 2003. Amazingly, almost a year later, my order is still sitting out there in my account and will presumably ship when it gets released. I get an email every few months when the ship date in Amazon's system officially slips, telling me to expect a delay.

I wonder what the longest pending order at Amazon currently is, and what the longest one was before a product actually shipped as opposed to having the order cancelled?

Re:hmmmm

[Lazyhound]

You expect to be able to just the final product by the alpha? Do you understand the software development process at all?

Large format trailer

[embobo]

I haven't slept for more then 24 hours but I didn't see a link to the large format trailer on the site so here it is:

Slashdot Me

Of course, I already grabbed it myself.

Re:Large format trailer

[jdkane]

Gone are the days when I get that excited (to lose sleep) over the news of an upcoming game release. I envy you.

Re:Large format trailer

[lhaeh]

At this download rate it seems I'll be able to buy the game before seeing the trailer.....

w00t! 1% complete :)

Re:Large format trailer

[danila]

Of course, I already grabbed it myself.
Impressive. I only grabbed it 8 months ago myself...

Completely Meaningless

[Pave Low]

Taking pre-orders for upcoming games is nothing new or interesting. That doesn't mean the release date still can't move back. It's still vaporware until it hits the shelves.

Amazon's has been taking pre-orders too, but the release date listed is 3/01/2004.

Re:Completely Meaningless

[FrostedWheat]

That's nothing. Amazon UK has been taking pre-orders for Duke Nukem Forever!

Re:Completely Meaningless

[LearnToSpell]

This item will be released on 31 December, 2004.

Sweet!

Please note that release dates are subject to change.

Aww...

Re:Completely Meaningless

[the quick brown fox]

Yeah... I seem to remember Amazon.com started taking preorders for Ginger/IT long before they even knew what IT was going to be!

bad site

[wren337]

The site does not play well with your favorite browser

try ie to get correctly-sized popup windows for the screenshots, there is a hidden "next" button

Re:bad site

[=weezer=]

Works great for me with Mozilla Firebird, 1st January trunk build . .

Re:bad site

[irokitt]

Are you using 0.7? Is it a recent build? Becaus mine is, and it shows the site just fine, thank you very much.

Re:bad site

[yope]

Oh, btw, works great with Konqueror (KDE 3.2-beta) ;-)

Re:bad site

[wren337]

The popup window is too small and not resizable for me, I updated recently to moz 1.5

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

not trolling, just having a problem.

Re:bad site

[wren337]

The popup window is too small and not resizable for me, I updated recently to moz 1.5.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

not trolling, just having a problem.

Re:bad site

[cicho]

Parent post is not a troll. The doom3 site just crashed my Mozilla 1.4. It's the first time I've had this build crash by just navigating to a website. (In fact, I don't think I've ever seen it crash.)

Re:bad site

[PIBM]

Well, this one works great : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031208

odd that

[freidog]

EB Games just recently changed the 'ships on date' to 7/14....

01 April 2004 ....

[bain]

I can see the hardcore gamer trying to figure out if fate is toying with their sanity.

Did you hear that wailing sound?

[Dark Lord Seth]

That was the sound of utter terror from ten-thousand Nvidia, Ati, AMD and Intel engineers who can now look forward to putting out a bleeding-edge new graphics card / CPU in less then four months. Expect casualties.

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[Telex4]

That was the sound of utter terror from ten-thousand Nvidia, Ati, AMD and Intel engineers who can now look forward to putting out a bleeding-edge new graphics card / CPU in less then four months.

And the spontaneous orgasms of thousands of Nvidia, Ati, AMD and Intel sales persons awaiting the gullible geeks desperate for a video card upgrade to enjoy the full splendour of a video game for > 300

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[irokitt]

The demos run on a 9700. And Carmack says the game will run well on considerably less than that. It's OpenGL, so you don't even need the latest version of DirectX (9.0b) to run it. A ti-4600 or an overclocked ti-4200 will serve, if that's what you already have. A Radeon 9600 Pro/XT will give you the best bang for buck. And a 9800 will put a large dent in your wallet. But avoid the new Nvidia cards unless you're not interested in being able to play Half-Life 2 when that comes out.

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[TigerNut]

Nah... you just need that new Pentagram 6.66 GHz CPU that's in beta testing...

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[aardwolf204]

That was the sound of utter terror from ten-thousand Nvidia, Ati, AMD and Intel engineers who can now look forward to putting out a bleeding-edge new graphics card / CPU in less then four months. Expect casualties.

Dont worry, They'll just take the latest chips/cards, slap "ultra extreme edition XT second edition" on them and resell them at $500.

PS: On a weird note, a friend just got a GeForce FX 5600 Ultra XT. I thought the XT thing was ATI's? Oh wait, I mean IBM's ;').

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[DJCouchyCouch]

And if you hear nothing, that's Matrox.

DJCC

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[isorox]

And the spontaneous orgasms of thousands of Nvidia, Ati, AMD and Intel sales persons awaiting the gullible geeks desperate for a video card upgrade to enjoy the full splendour of a video game for > 300

And the simple acknowlegement of people like me that can buy the new knocked down Geforce9's to replace my voodoo 3 and play some modern games

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[LookSharp]

The nVidia render bug for HL2 was overblown, and fixed pretty much before it even went public.

The only real FUD going on is that ATI and Valve are cross-promoting eachother's products, and to that end, Valve is coming out saying "the way we wrote the game, it's going to perform better on ATI's current cards."

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[Deternal]

Or they found that it was considerably easier to optimize for ATI cards, that it ran better on those and therefore decided to cross-promote with them instead of nV who was very willing to do so?

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[freeweed]

Just to add another data point, the alpha ran just fine on my 9000. Maybe not at the highest quality, etc, but hey, it's an alpha. I'd expect the final product to run a bit better anyway.

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[Pyromage]

The game will run on anything down to a GeForce 1. It won't look as good, but that'll do. Basically, any card on the market with some basic T&L capabilities will do *fine*. This has been stated by id and id has a very good history of making games with low requirements. Consider Quake 3, which ran on essentially any computer with any hardware accel at all (i.e. ATI Rage Pro). I'm not upgrading for Doom3, and it'll look great on my system.

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[randyest]

Er, assuming you mean "Hardware Texture & Lighting Transform Engine" and I believe you do, then a GeForce1 will not run it, nor will some of the earlier ATI cards (not sure where the HT&L line is drawn in the ATI series, but it's there).

BF1942 requires hardware T&L, and it will not even try to run on a GeForce1.

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[Pyromage]

I am referring to transform and lighting. And yes, a GeForce 1 will run it. If BF1942 won't run on a GeForce, it's because of other reasons.

The GeForce 1 *does* have hardware T&L, and your link doesn't even say that it doesn't. Stating that the successor has it doesn't mean the original doesn't ;)

Check out this article for Doom3's requirements.

As for BF1942, you'll note that it uses DirectX. I'm not saying that DirectX needs more horsepower, only that the BF1942 renderer is massively different from the D3 renderer.

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[Skuld-Chan]

But avoid the new Nvidia cards unless you're not interested in being able to play Half-Life 2 when that comes out.

I get so sick of this. The benchmarks that they released were a) with old drivers and b) a beta video game - and you know what? The 5900 still kept a decent frame-rate. By the time half-life 2 comes out (if it comes out) the 5900 will be more than capable of playing it.

After replacing 3 broken 9500's (you can read about the 9500/9700 shim problem almost anywhere) - I'll never buy another ATI video card again... I rather have reliability over speed any day.

Re:Did you hear that wailing sound?

[Zog The Undeniable]

I'll run it in software mode at 320 x 240. If I can't see the monsters properly, they probably can't see me either ;-)

Yeah !

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it will be released earlier, thanks to ATi.

Trailer on doom3.com

[wfberg]

The trailer seems to have an awful lot of CG in it that appears to NOT be in-game. The screenshots and in-game CG look very nice, although they're at tiny resolutions..

Why does that soldier's helmet say "ARSE"? Did any one else notice that?

Re:Trailer on doom3.com

[oneiron]

Actually, it has been said by id that ALL of that trailer is in-game footage. NONE of it is CG. That's just the doom engine... Marvel in it's glory.

Re:Trailer on doom3.com

[r0j]

Just in case you were serious, the helmet says MARSEC.

Re:Trailer on doom3.com

[zephc]

yes, the poly count is a lot lower than it looks, its just the heavy use of bump mapping that gives the more realistic lighting effects there.

Re:Trailer on doom3.com

[Neuroelectronic]

if you have the right kind of eyes you can see that the models have a relativly low polycount (as compaired to the Half-Life 2 demos for example) But what makes it look so nice is the magic Bump maps and lighting arithmatic weaved by John Carmack

And the release date is ...

[dkleinsc]

April Fools! Nice joke, Id.

Re:hmmmm

[graveyardduckx]

*sigh* People on slashdot take everything too seriously. I code.

The sensible way to buy it...

[ksheka]

(Not that anyone here's sensible...)

1. Wait three to six months.
2. Then buy a near-high-end computer.
3. Marvel as you get 30 fps.

Re:The sensible way to buy it...

[nuggetman]

3. Marvel as you get 30 fps.

anything that isn't 90 to 120fps just isn't worth playing IMHO

Re:The sensible way to buy it...

[Neuroelectronic]

oh god, I hope your not right. My dual Opteron system should chew up the math of any engine. 45 fps at 512x384 would make me happy

Re:The sensible way to buy it...

[damiam]

Well, Doom3 is capped at 60fps, so have fun.

Re:The sensible way to buy it...

[Glonoinha]

-3. anything that isn't 90 to 120fps just isn't worth playing IMHO

You are kidding, right?

Re:The sensible way to buy it...

[SnowZero]

It doesn't matter much, but it does matter. If you have a monitor w/ a higher than 60fps refresh, having a higner framerate decreases latency and creates better looking motion because our eyes can create the motion blur so animation looks smoother. If games calculated motion blur (they don't) then it would be moot.

The latency still makes a small difference in multiplayer however. Average human response time is 100ms, and if we change the video delay of 16ms (60FPS) down to 8ms (120FPS), that's like having a 7% better reaction time. Of course D3 is mostly aiming to be a single player game, so that won't matter too much.

4/1/03...where was I???

[ErnstKompressor]

How could I have missed that release??? My copy must *really* be back-ordered

The Date

[Timmmm]

4/1/2004 .... That was about a week ago...

Re:The Date

[Timmmm]

You must be from France.

You mean "You must be from the rest of the world." :-)

Ok.. Whats next?

[jamesjw]

Duke nukem forever announced for late '04? :)

-- Jim.

Re:Ok.. Whats next?

[elFarto the 2nd]

...3004?, that soon?!

Regards
elFarto

*sigh* a programmer explains:

[irokitt]

The alpha was only optimized for certain hardware configurations - namely a Radeon 9700 pro. And it is an Alpha, which serves as a preview of the story but doesn't reflect the final product at all. They have at least 4 months to work on the game, during which time things could improve considerably. Finally, realize that with Doom, Id is not only writing the game nut also writing the engine that the game uses, unlike about 90% of the games out there. So some of the "poop" comes from the engine itself.

Re:*sigh* a programmer explains:

[TeachingMachines]

I'm unfamiliar with the video cards out today. Is this OpenGL? If it is, it's fantastic. For a while I was concerned about OpenGL falling so far behind DrirectX, but I have to admit that those images look quite nice.

Re:*sigh* a programmer explains:

[dzym]

Actually, since the alpha leaked in November of 2002 and was a build for E3 of 2002, they've had over A YEAR AND A HALF more time to work on the game so far.

Re:*sigh* a programmer explains:

[irokitt]

It is an OpenGL game. While this is largely a good thing, it's probably made Carmack tear his hair out on one point: the shading languages in OpenGL are not standardized per se, and he might even have to write hardware-specific assembly code to get the lighting effects he wants on certain hardware. Remember, the entire selling point of this engine is supposed to be the fact that all of the lighting is dynamic. Even Half-Life 2 is only partially dynamic.

Re:*sigh* a programmer explains:

[irokitt]

A good point. In fact, Carmack and Co. aren't going to do the work on Quake IV; they're farming it out to Raven Games. The engine will be Doom3 though, and that is Carmack's baby (I heard a rumor that he's been working on the engine since Quake III came out, although they didn't have a game concept for Doom until ~2 years ago. 2 years is not a bad time period for a complex game with a new engine. Other companies have done worse even without an untried engine *cough* Duke Nukem *cough*

Re:*sigh* a programmer explains:

[Naysayer]

Mod parent down.

Not only was the game leaked a hell of a long time ago, the leaked copy was A DEBUG BUILD.

Either the poster is confused about the difference between Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, or this is a troll.

Re:*sigh* a programmer explains:

[dzym]

Almost 4 years, now, actually. They announced that work has begun on it in June of 2000, and had a batch of artwork and an engine demonstration at the Apple G3 announcement.

Re:April Fool's Day Release?

[maddogjt]

Not necessarily April Fools Release, first day of Q2 2004, maybe they're trying to toy with their financials

Re:Hey guys!!!

[cangeceiro]

All i gotta say is this game is gonna freakin rule, i have been waiting for years for this

duke nukem anyone?

[abrotman]

Why settle for doom3 when you can continue to wait for the next duke nukem ... that should be out by the time my AARP kicks in

Just a game??

[xao gypsie]

What's the big deal anyway? It's just a game.
jsut a game? why havent you heard? this is the next big thing in scare-the-shit-out-of-you-ware.....seriously. the alpha leak was scary as hell even at about 3fps....not that i played it...

wow

[abhisarda]

I opened the doom3 mainpage and that mechanical robot page. Jesus, what a coincidence.
It's almost as if that the doom3 monster *is* the mechanical robot covered in flesh.
Doom
Robot

Re:wow

[orthogonal]

I opened the doom3 mainpage and that mechanical robot page. Jesus, what a coincidence.

Excuse me, I browsed at -1, and saw no previous comment noting this similtude. So who gave the parent post a redundant, and why?

Seriously, log in AC and tell me what I missed that you saw.

Notice!

[cthellis]

The one retailer actually listed on their site for pre-orders (EB Games) that actually lists a release date puts it at 7/14/2004. o_O It's been all over the map for a while. Nothing to see here...

Cool!

[zr-rifle]

I think I'll pre-order it straight away, so they'll send me the game together with SNES CD-ROm Device I preordered from them way back in ... uhm?

Am I the only one

[tomstdenis]

Who isn't terribly excited about Quake4, a/k/a Doom3 ???

Their games, while aesthetically pleasing are far from original anymore. Doom3 is just going to be another run-and-jump-shoot-that-rocket game.

At least with UT2k4 they're adding new game modes and vehicles and such.

Also from all the stuff I've read it won't play decently on anything short of a 500$ graphics card and a 3Ghz processor.... Which leaves my main windows box [laptop] in the dust...

Tom

Re:Am I the only one

[Neuroelectronic]

actually the polycount on these critters is comparitivly low (to Half-Life 2 for example) the reason it looks so nice is great math applied to Texture maps via John Carmack.

Re:Am I the only one

[tomstdenis]

My point is moreso that the Doom3 game will be a demo of the Doom3 engine [e.g. game with zero plot].

Look at wolfenstein? Decent game based on the craptastic Quake3 game in the same way the next interesting game will probably be based off the Doom3 engine.

So I'm not terribly excited to see Doom3, I'd rather see the real games that come after it.

Re:Am I the only one

[damiam]

Doom3 will play just fine with a 1.5Ghz Athlon and a Geforce Ti4200. A box with those specs will set you back all of $300-$400.

Re:Am I the only one

[Froug]

Indeed.

ummm...

[Transcendent]

the ebgames preorder says it will ship on 7/14/2004

That's a little late for that 4/1 prediction, doncha think?

Re:ummm...

[forkazoo]

"the ebgames preorder says it will ship on 7/14/2004"

Sweet! The Seventh of Twelvember is my birthday!

Warning! DNF also available for 'pre-order'

[meador]

Just because you can pre-order it, doesn't mean it's not vaporware. Gamestop thoughtfully provides a link to their Duke Nukem Forever preorder page on their Doom3 preorder page. Note that Duke has a ship date in December 2005! Doom3 http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?cookie%5Ftest= 1&product%5Fid=644930 Duke Nukem Forever http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=6 40700

pre-order info from id site?

[n0mad6]

If you go to th EB Store from the id site , the pre-order date is 7/14/2004.

Seems like just as much vaporware as it was early last year.

Old News. EB says Doom3/HL2 4/1/04

[aardwolf204]

Big news, yeah right. I found a boxed copy for pre-pay at EB or Game World durring xmas, asked the sales guy, was told 4/1/04. that was over a month ago. Same thing for HL2.

Codename Ginger

[RenHoek]

Am I the only one thinking about the whole Segway pre-ordering stunt, and the ages it took before it was actually out?

Whimsical Release Dates

[Keiran Halcyon]

I work at my local Best Buy very near the display which holds the Pre-Order for Doom 3. I looked in our system, and the date listed for Customer Fufillment (ordering out of stock or not released productsS) doesn't even match the 4/1/04 date. Everyone knows they just make up a date and use it for awhile, but 4/1/04 isn't even the first date set for Doom 3. It's changed at least twice since it sat on that shelf.

Funny enough, sitting right next to it is Counter Strike: Condition Zero. It's release date has changed twice as well. I see people go by all the time and go "It's OUT! YES!" and then bitch and swear when they see pre-order.

Pre-Order date differs

[dalleboy]

EB Games say "07/14/2004"
Gamestop say "05/03/2004"

didn't they already do that?

[CausticPuppy]

Didn't the hardware vendors already make Doom3-ready hardware?
You see, the funny thing is, I upgraded my computer in November of 2002 specifically to play Doom3.

P4 2.4GHz, Radeon 9700 Pro, 512MB memory. I was ready!!

time passes....

No my computer is getting old. It never even got to run Doom3 (except for the leaked alpha). And guess what? I'll be upgrading again this spring, specifically to play Doom3.

Curse you id software. Curse you.

Re:didn't they already do that?

[damiam]

Your current system will still play Doom 3 fine (as well as HL2 and just about anything else). No need to upgrade.

Re:Warning! DNF also available for 'pre-order'

[Gabriele Capone]

Who came up with the idea that Doom3 was vaporware in the first place?

Re:SO DOOM3 IS ALLREADY OUT?

[TeknoHog]

AFAIK, the ISO recommendation is YYYY-MM-DD. It has the same logic as decimal numbers and times, where bigger units always come before smaller units.

More like Doom Episode 1?

[tommertron]

The hype around this game in the gaming community is seeming to rival that of the new Star Wars prequels before they came out. We all remember what happened there, right? I'm not saying that hype=bad, necessarily, but looking at the screenshots, it looks nice graphically and all, but seriously, where are the imps? The floating eyeballs?

What I'm looking for in a new Doom game is a great graphical rendering of most of the original characters (and weapons) I came to love in the first game. And for god sake's, let me be able to unlock the maps for the first two games, newly rendered and with the new engine.

Fiscal 05

[syberanarchy]

Why then has Activision pushed back D3 until fiscal 05? Link.

"Fiscal 05" means April 04...at the earliest.

same with Half-Life 2

[fireduck]

you can pre-order it from any number of sites. EBgames has it coming out the end of March. However, anyone that pays any attention to these things, knows all the release dates are absolutely meaningless. Most high quality games (i.e., from high quality developers) have the "it's done when it's done" release date. When iD / Valve announces it's gone gold, then you can get it in 2 weeks. That's really the bottom line. This is a non-story.

But if you must pre-order, EBgames does have a cute figurine for Doom 3. (I preordered the harvest moon game for the gba, just to get a stuffed cow that's sitting on top of my computer, along with diablo and arthas...)

Re:same with Half-Life 2

[JFMulder]

Funny thing about HL2 : the strategy guide is already out and is selling RIGHT NOW on Amazon.com. See it here.

Re:SO DOOM3 IS ALLREADY OUT?

[Majin Viper]

yeh that would make sence, but u dont put time as MM:HH either

Where are you Carmack?

[Neuroelectronic]

please eleaveate us from are suffering!

ID Software's greatest hits

[Mr2cents]

Quake I: played it for years. At that time, I was at the university, so having a great network connection, my friends and I regulary played until everybody else left the server out of frustration. I still consider it the best multiplayer game (FPS, anyway) ever written.
Return To Castle Wolfenstein: The teamplay is is a great addi(c)tion, IMHO. Unless the team you're in has never heard of teamplay. It then becomes very depressing.

Or did you just mean they didn't make any great Doom-successor?

Re:ID Software's greatest hits

[Comen]

QuakeI was definitly a great game, people that say id cant make a good game should be whipped repeatidly.
QuakeI and the release of Quakeworld I belive it was, when we finally started hearing more from Carmak and less from Romero since Carmack was working on client side prediction and working out the server client model was great.
The game is still a great MP game.
And at the time I had allot of fun playing the single player game just to see what was the first true 3D polygon based model engine. It was a awsome game, I still love it.

Re:ID Software's greatest hits

[antime]

RTCW was actually made by Gray Matter Studios, though.

Re:ID Software's greatest hits

[nomadic]

It was the same damn game as Doom. As Penny Arcade so aptly pointed out, the people at Id aren't really that creative. They spend all their time on the engine, but they're not really head and shoulders over the competition, like they should be considering how much more time it takes them to code things than everyone else.

Time to upgrade

[Brad1138]

That gives me about 4 months to upgrade my computer. And it will still probably be to slow to run D3 at a decent fram rate.

Re:Time to upgrade

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

It's so slow it's dropping letters off your words!

preorders mean nothing

[asv108]

Although I don't think Doom3 will be vaporware, its important to remember that preorders don't have much value. Back in 1998, I preordered Valve's TeamFortress 2, which looked like a killer game at E3 and was scheduled for release in late November, 1998. Its now January, 2004 and I have yet to receive my copy of TF2. At least EB did give me a refund :)

OMG OMG OMG

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Best Buy has given up a release date!! woopeedoo... Seriously, what's the big deal? Places like that make up release dates all the time. And I'll be damned if Best Buy actually got this from id/Activision. And why is this front page news?! A games-section-only article I could understand, but what the hell?

But even stupider is the title "DOOM 3 Vaporware no more". Wow. id has released lots of info about DOOM 3, but until Best fucking Buy tells us, it's vaporware?! Ugh.

Placeholder for "2nd Quarter"

[Heutchy]

4/1 tends to be a placeholder for the 2nd quarter.

Also, 4/1 is a Thursday, not a Tuesday (games tend to be released on Tuesdays).

And after editing, the real article:

[Phekko]

Doom 3: still vaporware

Re:And after editing, the real article:

[damiam]

"Vaporware" is a term for a product that doesn't seem to actually exist. Doom 3 rather obviously exists.

Suspicious plot...

[myc_lykaon]

I've seen the trailer and I seem to have heard it somewhere before...

Organisation conducting experiments into reaching other worlds; experiment goes wrong; creatures and entities from other world start appearing.

I'm sure I saw a ginger haired guy with glasses near that reactor... hmmm

Re:Suspicious plot...

[Coryoth]

Organisation conducting experiments into reaching other worlds; experiment goes wrong; creatures and entities from other world start appearing.

I'm sure I saw a ginger haired guy with glasses near that reactor... hmmm

Well, that was the exact plot for Doom 1, so, um really...Jedidiah

Re:SO DOOM3 IS ALLREADY OUT?

[jimwatters]

I can't agree more. The date should always be written as YYYY MM DD when every I see a date not writen this way, and there are day is not above 12 I have no idea what order it is in.

<Rant>
One of the first things I do when getting a new machine is fix the way computer dispays the date.

Everyone do it now. Go to the contol pannel, or wherever you need to, and fix it.
</Rant>

Thank you.

Old News

[llzackll]

Best Buy has been offering pre-orders in-store since before christmas.. I'm also pretty sure this has been covered on slashdot before.

DooM for Columbine

[Limburgher]

This is exiting. A release for DooM3 will bring DooM for Columbine that much closer.

(Shameless plug)

Check my .sig for details.

I can't help but be reminded

[EvilStickMan]

of nthe three years that I spent waiting for Master of Orion 3. They almost released that game like 7 or 8 times before they finally gave up and spent 6 months in regression testing...

/. ? Run by Nerds?

[captainstupid]

This site claims to be run by nerds, right?

Retailers have been listing release dates that are no where near anything official for years now. If retailers were right, I would have had HL2 on 11/15 like they promised. It's been shown OVER AND OVER AGAIN that retailers don't know ANY more about game release dates than average joe game buyer.

I honestly can't believe that slashdot even accepted this story let alone posted it on the main page.

If you want REAL game news, go to shacknews.com. People who actually play games and talk to game publishers and developers hang out on / run that site.

(no I'm not a shack troll, this is honestly my experience)

All release dates for Doom 3 are false

[Temporal]

Amazon.com has had Doom 3 for pre-order for quite some time. They list the release date as March 1, 2004. Where did they get that date, you ask? They made it up!

id has a very specific policy regarding release dates: There are none. They will release the game when it is done, but until that point, any date you see is pure speculation.

At one point, Amazon was actually offering a discount if you bought Doom 3 together with Half-Life 2, which I thought was pretty amusing.

Re:All release dates for Doom 3 are false

[roskakori]

At one point, Amazon was actually offering a discount if you bought Doom 3 together with Half-Life 2, which I thought was pretty amusing.

even better, amazon already has almost 50 customer reviews of doom 3. (4.5 stars out of 5.)

But...

[88NoSoup4U88]

When was Doom III ever being assumptioned as being 'vaporware' : Come on, they worked their asses off to deliver the next generation engine : Got leaked in between, but noway , this was EVER considered of not let it get released anymore.

id's Policy when it comes to ship dates

[Anonymous Coward]

... is it'll be released "When It's Done."

Team Fortress 2

[nukem1999]

I believe was available for preorder at Amazon sometime in 99 or 2000. Preorder means nothing.

Offical

[rudy_wayne]

The official release date is April 23, 2004. I know this is true because I just made it up.

I had pre-ordered it at Software Etc

[vor]

LOL, I had put a 10$ deposit down and pre-ordered it at a local Software Etc in 1997 or 1998. Last year I got into an arguement with them for my deposit back.

Good horror game!

[DroopyStonx]

I've been reading reviews and previews since the day this thing was announced, and they claim that this game will seriously scare the piss outta you mainly due to the graphics and lighting, but also due to the enemy AI. They'll actually HIDE from you only to jump your ass when you run by. Or you'll be walking down a faintly lit corridor only to see a vague silhouette of something moving, but by the time you think "..what was tha-," something's swiping and screeching at you.

Amen to this... these are the best types of games to play. Nothing is better than playing these in the pitch black at 2 AM when no one else is up.

Not that it's truly terrifying, but the fact that a game can remotely trigger the emotions to creep you the f'k out.. that's some quality stuff.

I can't wait to see what comes out in the future.

Re:Good horror game!

[LarsWestergren]

Or you'll be walking down a faintly lit corridor only to see a vague silhouette of something moving, but by the time you think "..what was tha-," something's swiping and screeching at you.

Um. I risk coming off as a superior asshole, but these kinds of scares are beginning to bore me. Its like in a slasher flick when the camera moves so that someone has their back/side to the "edge" of the screen, you know a hand is going to come in suddenly and grab them. Oh, and the first time its just the cat, or a friend who for some reason moves around without making any sound at all. Then when the characters, and presumably the audience, goes whew, false alarm, the real terror strikes.

A lot of the inspiration for the atmosphere of Doom 3 seems to have come from System Shock 2. Now that was a scary story, and not just because things went "boo". Hearing the audio logs of crew members as the infection spread through the ship... darn.

I preordered it a few weeks ago!

[miscellaneous_havoc]

About 3 weeks ago I preordered Doom 3 at Best Buy. It came with a nice Pewter Figurine of one of the monsters and a nice-sized poster of the Doom3 logo and monster... Where have you been?

sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[Selecter]

I'm not gonna buy it. BF 1942 / Desert Combat proved to me that a good multiplayer will stomp the best single player game around. No matter how good Carmack's programming is, it's still you against the machine.

Back in the Quake I days poeple were content with that but you cant replace the individual skillz match between 10,000 different human players and you with coding. BF1942 has got it all over Doom 3.It's not about how scary the monsters look anymore. Thats 1990's game thought.

Only when you make the monsters human by making them human controlled from all over the planet will Doom 3 be in the same league as BF1942.

Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[Aeolusz]

I disagree. Call of Duty had an awesome single-player game which is actually better than the multi-player (hundreds of losers hopping around, camping in underbrush, and playing stupidly). The excellent sound, the story, and the frantic pace makes it an excellent single-player game. It immerses you in the war much more than bf1942 ever did. Doom3 could be really awesome and I do not think the fact that it is single-player will be a detriment to it if they can pull off the story.

Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[simetra]

Uh, yeah.

I would be willing to bet $12 that there are more geeks out there WITHOUT a LAN and dedicated game server than there are WITH. Not to mention the hassle of getting other people to participate. Plus there's the convenience factor of popping in a cd and playing a while whenever you want. I was personally disappointed with Quake 3, as it's not great as a 1st person. In fact, I'd rather replay Quake 2 over and over. Multiplayer games are fine in geekland where you do have a LAN set up and a bunch of buddies sitting there waiting to do something, but in the real world, single player games do still make more sense for most casual game users.

Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[Graymalkin]

I would wager that by the time Doom 3 has been out a month there will be several MP mods readily available for it. Existing mods as well as brand new ones that use the unique features of the D3 engine will be all over the place. The D3 SP game is just one example of what the engine can do, just like Quake I and II were. Quake 2 as a single player game was decent but not great. Quake 2 as a base for mods was much better. Action Quake and Weapons Factory were awesome Quake 2 mods.

Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[ticklemeozmo]

I was personally disappointed with Quake 3, as it's not great as a 1st person... Multiplayer games are fine in geekland where you do have a LAN set up and a bunch of buddies sitting there waiting to do something, but in the real world, single player games do still make more sense for most casual game users.

...However, the developer has stated previously that it has focused most of its efforts on Doom 3's single-player game...

Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[LordJezo]

In response to the line: "It's not about how scary the monsters look anymore." I would just like to point out the Silent Hill and Resident Evil games. Both are single player and both are about how scary the monsters look.. and both are very very popular. Many people don't want to bother with multiplayer all the time. We don't have the time to put into a game to get our "skillz" on par with the people who dedicate their lives to playing a game. For many of us a single player game provides just as much excitement as a multiplayer one and a much better story to boot. How about Prince of Persia? That game is single player and it getting a ton of awards for being the best game of the year. Mulitplayer games have their place but I doubt they will ever replace single player games.

how was the vaprware?

[UID500]

it's been in development . they have even shown it. an alpha leaked. this is not "vaporware". it's called development .... people have to make something out of nothing.

I'll believe it when I see...

[eyeota]

RTM ISOs floating around on the net... Then I'll know it's not vaporware.

Original Maps

[LPetrazickis]

If you want to use the original maps, why not just download jDoom, 3d Models, and Textures?

No, it won't be exactly cutting edge, but it will look pretty sweet compared to staticly lit 320x240.;)

Re:Original Maps

[tommertron]

Had a look - neat stuff, I might try it out, but still. Don't you want to see the original characters and themes with a truly modern engine and professionally done rendering/texturing? My point was that the new Doom, from the screenshots, doesn't really look like a Doom game at all.

Honestly...

[DaveCBio]

If you take retail release dates as gospel I have some land to sell you. It's only a bit swampy.

Good, longer it takes the longer I put off

[Zed2K]

Buying a new machine. New intel chipsets come out in the march/april time frame with PCI Express. If HL2 and Doom 3 don't come out till summer I'll be happy.

1024x768

[Kynde]

For a game that will need a $1000 graphics card to run over 20fps is strikes me odd that the biggest screenshot they provide is 1024x768 and they dare call that a "large wallpaper".

Moreover, a site cluttered with popups and showing in game puny 474x314 sized screenshots. Or is that just a sneaky way of telling me that instead of being vaporware it's foremost crapware and my 2.6GHz computer will only be able to exceed 10 frames per second with 474x314 resolution...

(for the record, I am huge fan of ID's games and I've played their games online in various leagues ever since q1 game out, but this doom3.com site is just pathetic)

Re:1024x768

[damiam]

For a game that will need a $1000 graphics card to run over 20fps

Doom 3 will run fine on a $150 gfx card.

Order it From Amazon...

[thirty2bit]

They're still claiming a March 1st ship date. And it's $5 cheaper than EB and Gamestop.

I'll get mine before any of you...(rolls eyes)

Re:SO DOOM3 IS ALLREADY OUT?

[unborn]

I am a European in the US. It took me some time to get accustomed to the MM/DD/YY format and to actually realize its benefits.

Think about folders and sorting: You first search for the month, and if it matches, the day flows logically next. You avoid going through either the day or the year first. Now, if there is any chance that you hadn't filed away the previous year, it is readily available at the other end of the date, also easy to see.

Now, I wish the imperial units gone though.

"I would like a Newton of apples, please!"

Bizarre article headline

[Overly Critical Guy]

Who thought Doom 3 was "vaporware?" There was no reason to. I don't think anybody did. Wtf?

My favorite part of the trailer...

[HorrorIsland]

My favorite part of the trailer is at the end, when a narrator comes on and says "This game has no yet been rated".

Whew! So at least there is still some mystery left! I wonder what rating it'll get?

Re:My favorite part of the trailer...

[freakmn]

It says it has not been rated, yet it also shows a picture of the box at the same time, that clearly has an M in the rating spot... Mystery solved!

P.S.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Personally, I could care less about whether a game is innovative.

Why do people still say that? It's "couldn't" care less. If you "could" care less, that means you do care, and there's no point to the statement.

Saw the trailer

[haggar]

To tell you the truth, if the game is going to reflect the trailer, then I don't see what's the big deal. You see monsters coming at you and a shotgun firing from your right hand side. Same thing as in the original Doom. And the lights are still intermittent in those hallways and corridors!? Fix those damn lights already!

Minimum requirements?

[MImeKillEr]

Anyone have what iD is claiming are the minimums to run this?

The gameplay of Doom 3

[Overly Critical Guy]

Doom3 is just going to be another run-and-jump-shoot-that-rocket game.

Clearly, you haven't even read anything about Doom 3 or followed what it's about. They're focusing completely on the single-player experience. There won't be any "run-and-jump-shoot-that-rocket" because the engine won't even allow for it. Next time, instead of jumping to conclusions that make you look ignorant of what you're talking about, try actually learning about it first.

You must be a young gamer

[Overly Critical Guy]

Organisation conducting experiments into reaching other worlds; experiment goes wrong; creatures and entities from other world start appearing.

Yeah, it's called the plot for Doom 1 way back in 1994.

Doom 3 is supposed to be a "re-imagining" of Doom 1. Haven't you been following?

Re:You must be a young gamer

[myc_lykaon]

I'm an old enough gamer - started with a ZX 81 and my first FPS on the PC was Catacomb Abyss. Don't blame me that someone rated my first post as interesting - I was hoping for it to be viewed as a funny comment, mostly tongue in cheek. I'll add smilies next time to cater for the hard of thinking.

Re:Forget both the engine and the game

[1019]

I'm sad to inform you that Trent has since stated that he will -not- be doing the music/ambience for DOOM 3.

This saddens me very much, too, but it's a fact. His work on Quake was absolutely fantastic, and I was looking forward to another excellent effort.

Ah well.

The original GeForce 256 HAS a hardware T&L en

[UpnAtom]

I remember buying one and having no T&L games to play on it.

pushing back release dates...

[windex82]

looks as though the release date is 4/1/2004

And no company has /ever/ set a release date only to push it back several times...

Want to see a bigger Doom3 trailer?

[Arkahn]

A short look at the html of the site along with a small guess yields: http://www.doom3.com/play_large.html The default trailer is entirely to small to make out details.

Re:Want to see a bigger Doom3 trailer?

[Arkahn]

And, actually, you can abuse my bandwidth if you'd like until Monday 8:00am ( 14:00 GMT Jan. 12)

http://66.231.10.5/doom3/trailer_large.mov

DOOM3 for Linux???

[maizena]

Does anyone know if there will be a Linux version available at the same release date?

Will there ever be a Linux Version???

Re:DOOM3 for Linux???

[ChopsMIDI]

Carmack is a strong advocate of OSS and Linux and as such, Doom 3 will also be shipping with a linux binary. You can preorder the Linux the linux Binary Here

Re:SO DOOM3 IS ALLREADY OUT?

[Grave]

Who's stupid, the guy who "can't write the date", or the guy who can't realize there are so many different ways to write it?

europe: dd/mm/yyyy (eg. 4th of january 2004)
us: mm/dd/yyyy (eg. january 4th 2004)
iso: yyyy/mm/dd (doesn't read so nicely)
us military: yyyymmdd (just to look confusing for civies i think)

There are many ways to write out the date, and if you're going to gripe about something, I believe there are many other issues that are far more worthy of getting a hernia over.

Offtopic sig nitpick

[damiam]

No Slashdotter has yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. But they sure hate the RIAA!

If "no slashdotter has yet" to justify it, then all slashdotters must have already justified it.

Re:Offtopic sig nitpick

[damiam]

Take a 3rd grade English class. If it says that "Every slashdotter has yet to justify piracy", that means that piracy has not been justified by anyone. If you negate the sentence by slapping a "No" in front of it, it means that piracy has been justified by everyone. It's called a double negative.

Slashdot

[Overly Critical Guy]

Slashdot hasn't been taken seriously as a geek news site for several years now. If it's not dupe postings, it's misleading and outright false postings that aren't updated to reflect the fact.

Everyone and their mothers knows about release dates and how retailers list random dates. Yet leave it to Slashdot to embarrass itself yet again by posting a headline called "Doom 3 Vaporware no More" (it never was "vaporware") and listing a release date that everybody knows is just another retailer's estimated release date for the pre-orderers. I can't believe some people pay for this site.

Re:Forget both the engine and the game

[Overly Critical Guy]

He's not working on Doom 3 so that he can work on the next NIN album. I'd rather he do that. The Fragile has to be the most underrated double-album I own.

This article is crap

[Overly Critical Guy]

Wow, Slashdot is posting retailer release dates now? After all these years, this supposed "geek site" doesn't know that every retailer has different dates that are never true? This is ridiculous. Why would Taco post this? According to EBGames last year, I should have gotten Half-Life 2 in November...since we're believing random retailers now. Right, I'm sure Best Buy is really in the know about id's release schedule.

Not only that, but we get a bizarre headline calling Doom 3 "vaporware" for no apparent reason. Nobody thought it was vaporware. It has had a steady stream of screenshots, an alpha leak, and a multiplayer demo, as well as no release date to delay in the first place.

Get with it, Slashdot.

Re:This article is crap

[t0qer]

Wow, Slashdot is posting retailer release dates now?

This is a story about Doom. It's important to us geeks because we will all be trading in our mothers to get the hardware needed to play this game. It will drive the PC gaming market and force everyone to upgrade meaning.

1. I will be playing it.
2. I will be getting a lot of calls from people wanting me to "fix" their machines (for $$$) so they can play it.

Dec 10 1993 was when it all started. (Hard to believe its been over 10 years. From that day forward a group of gamers were turned truly geek. They sat up long hours tweaking their machines to get that extra 1-2 fps. They learned the basics of networking for multiplayer.(Funny, same day my mother and stepfather got married? Coincidence? I think not)

Doom got me and a lot of my friends interested in networking to the point where we all became sysadmins. We started on tweaking ipxodi.com to run high for doom and it led to working with novell servers. From there Windows servers, and in the end Linux.

I'm glad Slashdot reported it. Even if it is an early Aprils Fools joke, it's related very much to my lifestyle, my friends, nerds.

BTW i'm going to tangent this thread here, who's not buying new hardware till they can have Doom3, PCI express video and a 64bit CPU?

Re:This article is crap

[Hermione Kestrel]

According to EBGames last year, I should have gotten Half-Life 2 in November...

I got HL2 in november... didnt you? Don't tell me you missed the whole leaked playable demo fiasco =p

Re:This article is crap

[Justus]

You don't understand.

The grandparent of this post isn't complaining about the fact that the story is about Doom and that games aren't 'news,' blah blah blah, as your reply seems to indicate. The grandparent was complaining that this is a release date that comes from Best Buy, a retailer, and not id, who are of course the people actually developing the product.

In other words, we have no idea whether or not this is the correct date; it's just when Best Buy has it listed on their page. I wouldn't be planning any hardware upgrade schedules just yet if I were you.

Damn Skippy!

[ChopsMIDI]

Duke Nukem Forever was originally slated to use the Quake 2 Engine.

Well it's now like 7 years later.

DNF better be phenominal

No longer vaporware?

[Upaut]

Look, I do not mean to break the mood here, but please take in to concederation that Amazon.com has had preorders for eq2 for months, and the shipping dates keep changing as Sony pushes back development. Just because it has preorders avalible does not mean that it will be released on time.

Re:April Fool's Day Release?

[Overly Critical Guy]

They're not trying to toy with anything, because this isn't an official release date. Slashdot got it wrong. This is just Best Buy's estimated release date for pre-orderers. This happens all the time, and I can't believe Slashdot posted it.

You've got to be kidding!

[jtpalinmajere]

You think that just because stores are accepting pre-orders that the game is going to come out? Don't get me wrong... I admit it's possible, but unlikely.

We all remember what happened with Half-Life 2 right? There were plenty of places touting pre-orders for it three months of its initial proposed release. How long has it been since then? And to top that, we STILL don't have an official release date on the thing (though we do have confirmation that the SDK will be coming out soon... however long that is).

No, it IS still vaporware...

[praedor]

Until there is actual software available to install on system. idSoftware could have started making "preorders" available a year ago for all that means. It would be no less vaporware.

When the game actually exists for purchase. When it is available to reviewers for, well, actually reviewing (instead of simply looking at nifty video clips from in-house), THEN it wont be vaporware.

The fact of the matter is, it is STILL vaporware, just as much as it was last year or the year before. Preorder or not.

Should be interesting

[WhitehatSystems.com]

Should be interesting to see how the Game most noted for the 1st person shooter can compete with the current market http://www.whitehatsystems.com/

EBGames!

[jaffef]

EBGames though says some time in July! So the release date is definetly not definate!

7/14/04 according to EB games

[jkc120]

According to this link, it ships on 7/14/2004. Could be a stale date, I guess?

In related news...

[inkless1]

Slashdot hit a new low for journalism, reporting pre-order release dates as absolute facts.

Damn

[wildchild07770]

If this sort of thing qualifies as a news story on slashdot I should've sent it in. The preorders have been up on Best Buy's site for almost a month now, I thought it was common knowledge Doom 3 was coming out soon, guess it just got overshadowed by Half-Life 2 and all of it's mishaps. Personally, I'm much more excited to see and play Doom 3 than HL2 the only reason HL1 was any good was the mods so I'll just have to wait a year till HL2 is any good to me.

April Fools

[Kris_J]

You can now apparantly pre-order an April Fools gag.

Why PreOrder?

[superpulpsicle]

I used to preorder games all the time depositing $10 and such. Seriously in my entire life time, I have never heard of any one person (including myself) NOT being able to buy a game. Really... this isn't Japan. We have 8 million copies of everything.

Preordering and early depositing locks you into a store. You never know when there'll be a massive discount on the date of release.

Re:Why PreOrder?

[jgoemat]

I agree... The dumbest thing to do is pre-order from an online retailer. Sure they'll ship your game on the day it's released, but you won't get it for days later. Best Buy and CompUSA usually have decent deals on newer games either when they come out of a couple of weeks later. Most brick and mortar stores give you something extra when you pre-order though, such as the DVD that came with "Enter: The Matrix" or a poster.

Give me a break

[EtherBoo]

I smell a troll coming for this one, but I really hope you're joking considering you got a "Score 3, Funny"

As a Christian I have to wonder what this is doing to the children who end up playing these games behind their parents' backs (for example at a friend's house who has liberal parents...
As a parent, its your job to monitor what your kids do and see. If they go to a friends house and play Doom 3, or watch Dead Alive then you need to have a talk with the parents about what you feel is appropriate for your childeren. The computer or TV is not a babysitter.

Why can't they make a good quality game about American soldiers hunting down evil terrorists?
I think you mean,

Why can't they make a good quality game about American soldiers invading a country and killing innocent people to find weapons of mass destruction that aren't there?

Non-sarcastically, they did make Return to Castle Wolfenstein where you play as an American soldier in WW2 trying to hunt down Nazi's performing satanic experiments. That should be Christian enough for you.

ATI and DX2

[EtherBoo]

When a developer says that a game will be optimized for a specific card, they're usually serious. I purchased Deus Ex 2 when i got my nifty Radeon 9800 XT (upgrade from a GeForce 3 Ti 200) and every game that I had before runs amazingly well, but Deus Ex 2 runs horrible. No Anti Aliasing (or Multisampling as they call it), no bloom effect, and at best 1024x768 res. I'm attributing the slowdown to my computer (Athalon XP 1800+, 512 MB PC2100 RAM), but my friend who has a system close to mine and a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 overclocked, runs it much better then me. That was a major kick in the ass from Edios and Ion Storm.

Re:ATI and DX2

[EtherBoo]

I'm not the one posting as an anonymous coward.

Right now, the XT is the ultimate card, while the performacne difference is minimal to the 9800 256 MB, the reason I purchased it was for longevity. Games will at some point use 256 MB of VRAM, and I wont need to worry.

Maybe you missed the point I was trying to make. A friend of mine with an nVidia can run the card much better then I can, because the game is optimized for nVidia cards. If the logo at the beginning of the game didn't give it away, maybe you should try reading the ReadMe, which talks about problems with ATI cards. I really didn't need to tell you that, since you think you seem to think you know everything...

Re:ATI and DX2

[EtherBoo]

Calling us idiots for not using nVidia is pretty lame. The game was made for nVidia as I stated, unless you didn't read that. It says it in the readme, and there is a nVidia plug in the beginning of the game. Also, when the original came out, the ATI's were garbage, so of course it would run better on the currect nVidia's, but now the ATIs are better, but this game was completely optimized for the GeForce. Thats why the GeForce's run it so much better.

GeForce 3

[EtherBoo]

Remember when it wa said that Doom 3 would be optimized for the GeForce 3? If I stuck my old GeForce 3 in my computer when Doom 3 comes out, I think my computer would laugh at me, then my video card would jump out, go to the bathroom, and take a shit. There is no way a GeForce 3 will be able to run that with all the pretties.

Re:GeForce 3

[irokitt]

No, a GeForce 3 isn't capable of running the shaders that Doom 3 needs. You would need to have a GeForce 4 at the very least.

Re:GeForce 3

[EtherBoo]

Exactly, I just find it amusing when Doom 3 was announced to be optimized on the GeForce 3, and how there is no way it would be able to be done on that hardware...

I saw these about 2 months ago.

[EMR]

I saw these boxes about 2 months ago a gamestop.. This is nothing new at all.. Actually it's more annoying than anything.. As you see the boxes on the shelves, and it's not just one box of doom 3.. it's a whole shelf full.. and you think "Dude it's out".. But no it's not.. It's very deceiving..

geez this is old

[SquierStrat]

They were selling the pre-order WELL before Christmas.

Best Buy says so...

[blankmange]

This is only a pre-order date set by a retailer. It means nothing, especially if id says it means nothing.

Nothing to see here folks, keep moving along...

Fronzen Bubble

[stor]

Sorry ID, you've lost me.

I downloaded Frozen Bubble the other day and haven't looked back.

=)

Cheers
Stor
p.s. OK so I'm kidding about never looking back but I gotta say: it's a fun little game!

Re:Fronzen Bubble

[stor]

Not a problem. I posted that just for you. Enjoy.

Cheers
Stor

Base 10, feh

[cryptochrome]

Nice interconvertability in the metric system, but the wrong radix. You and your totally illogical base 10 system. A radix of 16 (or rather, 0x10) makes worlds more sense in the modern world. Incidentally, the imperial system measurements for weight, volume, and fractions of an inch are all based on powers of 2. Hell, even base 12 would be better - I have to divide by three, four, and six far more often than 5. I bet the British would have done it right, but apparently they left Le Systeme International d'Unites up to the French.

Re:Base 10, feh

[be-fan]

Dude. 10 fingers. I've been programming since I was in middle school, and I still don't consider base-2 to be more natural than base-10. And if you've ever done any engineering drafting (dealing with scaling factors) you'd realize just how much of a pain in the ass our base-12 system is.

Re:Base 10, feh

[Short Circuit]

If I remember my history class right, the French came out with a killer system, but since England was at war with them, their pride forced them to stay away from it. Later, of course, they adopted it, but not before the American colonies had their allotment of pride versus England.

No No...

[narzy]

It's still vaporware, its just vaporware with a price tag now...

My Doom tattoo

[the_tallman]

looks like this

Don't hold your breath.

[Moofie]

Uh, yeah, because games always ship right on the date some reseller's web site says they will. Wanna buy a monkey?

I remember Marathon being "scheduled" to ship for like a year by the catalog geeks. I'll believe it when I see a box on a shelf.

I'll assume you don't know better...

[silicon1]

...but a game that is ABLE to be pre-ordered != it isn't vaporware. Case in point http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/216810.asp
(du ke nukem for(n)ever) has been on pre-order FOREVER, it has been vaporware FOREVER.

It was a revolutionary idea

[dbIII]

It's a good old American standard, like the British Thermal Unit and the ounce. But for a storm at sea in the early years of the USA and you would all be using metres and grams as well, just like the rest of the world.

Doom3 hardware information

[Saville]

I saw some mis-information in a couple places. Rather than responding to all of them I'm just going to start a new thread.

"GeForce 3 isn't capable of running the shaders that Doom 3 needs. You would need to have a GeForce 4 at the very least"

nVidia has five generations of cards worth talking about;
nv0x-TNT series
nv1x-GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce4MX, nForce, nForce2, etc
nv2x-GeForce3, GeForce4Ti, Xbox
nv3x-GeForceFX series
nv4x-next generation unannounced cards

A GeForce3 is tweaked GeForce4 and will run Doom3 well. For ATI's cards we have this chart:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=15 44
r1x0-Radeon, Radeon 7000/7200/7500
r2x0-8500/9000/9100/9200
r3x0-950 0/9600/9700/9800

Doom3 is going to have at least five methods of rendering according to a year old post by John Carmack:
http://www.webdog.org/plans/1/
ARB1-pre tty much standard OpenGL to be compatible with everything. Most DX7 level cards will use this. No specular highlights, no vertex programs so this'll put more work on the CPU.
NV1x-five passes, renders all features
NV2x-two or three rendering passes, renders all features
R200-usually single pass, renders all features
NV3x-single pass, renders all features
ARB2-advanced standard OpenGL, single pass, renders all features. This will be used by all DX9 and better cards other than the GeForceFX which has a special optimized rendering path.

The ATI Radeon and Intel Extreme Integrated Graphics will use the ARB1 path. The Matrox Parhelia will probably fall back to the standard DX7 path and not use its ability to do things like vertex programs. I'm not sure where the WildcatVP falls in, it supports nvidia's register combiner extensions so it could pretend to be a GeForce1/4MX, but I seem to remember a .plan file saying Doom3 may support the OpenGL high level shading language which would mean there is a sixth path;
ARB3-basically be the exact same as ARB2, but using vertex/fragment shaders instead of vertex/fragment programs (high level language instead of low level asm shading language). Currently only supported by WildcatVP, but presumably ATI and nvidia would support this soon too. And any other DX9 level cards.

The XGI Volari and S3 DeltaChrome would use the ARB2 path as would ATI's next generation card. Not sure about the NV4x... Users would probably have the option to choose any rendering path their hardware can do if they want.

*rumour*
The PowerVR Kyro is possibly not going to be able to run Doom3 because it can't do Cube Maps. If they allow Doom3 to run without CubeMaps then I guess the nvidia TNT, ATI Rage, Matrox G400, S3 Savage 2000, 3dfx cards, and Intel 815G integrated graphics, will be able to run it too. In theory ;) I bet bad drivers prevent it from running, and even if it did run it would actually walk, or crawl. :) */rumour*

If Doom3 supports fragment/vertex shader it'll be the first on the market to do so. The only other advanced OpenGL game on the market for windows I know of is Homeworld2 which uses new extensions like fragment programs and vertex buffer objects.

Finally there have been Doom3 benchmarks released:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc. html?i=1821 &p=21
Medium Quality: 1024x768:
104fps - GeForceFX 5900 Ultra
95fps - GeForceFX 5800 Ultra
77fps - Radeon 9800 Pro
55fps - GeForceFX 5600 Ultra
40fps - Radeon 9600 Pro
47fps - GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
19fps - Radeon 9200

Those are from May 12th, 2003. Probably a full year before the game ships. But it gives you an idea of how well the GeForceFX can do when partial precision floating point is used via the NV3x fragment program extension (there standard OpenGL fragment program extension only allows you to hint fastest, don't care, or nicest for the entire program while AFAIK the nvidia extension allows you to specify per instruction if you want 16bit or 32bit precission) and how well the GeForceFX "ultra shadow" technology works. :)

I'm really looking forward to this game!

Missing the point

[Overly Critical Guy]

This is a story about Doom. It's important to us geeks because we will all be trading in our mothers to get the hardware needed to play this game. It will drive the PC gaming market and force everyone to upgrade meaning.

You're missing the point. There is no story here. Retailers constantly post estimated release dates. They are not officially and are merely guesses. Check any other store besides Best Buy and you'll find a different date from each.

In other words, not only is Doom 3 inexplicably being labelled as "vaporware" by this article, but a release date is given that is completely made-up by a retailer in order to give pre-order people something to look at in the catalogues. The release date is pulled completely from thin air.

I'm glad Slashdot reported it. Even if it is an early Aprils Fools joke, it's related very much to my lifestyle, my friends, nerds.

The impact of Doom was never in dispute. But it's not related to anything if it's not actually reporting anything.

Australia's equivalent :)

[thedji]

terrorists you say...

Someone thought of that in Australia (sort of), and developed a game where the user is an illegal immigrant and must escape from a refugee camp. Funded by our Government too, funnily enough.

Escape From Woomera

Good horror game with friends

[phorm]

Nothing is better than playing these in the pitch black at 2 AM when no one else is up.

Playing a deathmatch of the game at 2AM with a bunch of friends? Seriously, AVP was slightly creepy at first, deathmatch was seriously creepier when running through dark tunnels with an alien hiding ready to pounce on your ass. Doom3 will probably give a similar experience... but I'm worried because mention has been made that while single player is being buffed, multiplayer was said to be perhaps less of a focus (sadly, as it was part of what made Doom1/Doom2 extremely popular over say, Wolfenstein or others).

Anyone got an idea how this will be in multiplayer? Nothing like scaring the $#$%*(! out of a friend when jumping out from behind a darkened corner while using a freaky skin model

Re:4th of January?

[EnglishTim]

I'm English, Fool!

Great call!

[eforhan]

ROFLMAO!

Excellent point, considering the other flamewar, above.

Linux and ATI

[phorm]

Yes, but Linux and ATI don't have a very good working relationship. Thereforce, it would suggest that NVidia cards should be able to run Doom3 decently... at least in linux.

We know what kind of vid cards are be needed but..

[LordJezo]

..what kind of CPU will be needed to run these next generation high end video cards?

Sure, I can go out and get me a new fancy schmancy $500 geforce 5900 XP+ with with 5 GHZ ddr7 ram and a 10,000,000 RPM fan hooked up to it, but, will my athlon 2100+ xp be able to push that card any further then it can push my Geforce4 4400?

Christian FPS

[sharkey]

Perhaps you might be interested in Billy Graham's Bible Blaster. It seems to be pretty rare, but I did see it featured on the Simpsons one night.

Here's a thought

[Rogerborg]

Stop jizzing in your pants, and wait for the release. We've seen, what, a 3fps demo of the engine? Big whoop. What about content, what about quality?

Please don't send the message that we'll buy whatever crap is shovelled in our faces. Every pre-order is a sign to the marketdroids that quality doesn't matter.

Wait for the game. Wait for the (independent, player) reviews. Wait until your jizz-pants friend buys it and see if you like it. Wait until it hits budget. It will still be there. There's no rush.

All You Need is A Release Date?

[superultra]

Internal Memo found in 3drealms, Infinium Labs, Valve, Ogo, and Vaporware Companies across the nation:

TO: PR DPT.
FROM: CEO

I just read slashdot, and all we ever needed to stop being vaporware was a release date! And get this: we can slate for April 1st! Sweet Deal eh! Get to work on this "release date" stat!

-------------------

FROM: PR DPT
TO: CEO

Work on release date already started. We'll get the release date to you "when it's ready."

I'm ready!!!

[ShortedOut]

IDDQD
IDKFA

Ooh yeah, bring on the cacodemons!

You forgot to mention the Military Way.

[orichter]

I've always found the Military way the most obvious form for human consumption. They use DD/Three or Four Letters/YYYY (i.e. 24 May 2003, or 13 Sept 2004) It may be more difficult to parse for computers, but for humans, it is obvious to both Americans, and Europeans (and probably most of the rest of the world.)

Also, remember, there are three ways to do everything:
1) The right way.
2) The wrong way.
3) The Military way.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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You people are such tools

[cryptochrome]

I wouldn't have considered my (rather facetious) post flamebait, until you suckers came along. I was only half serious. Obviously if you spend 99% of your time working with base 10 the rest are going to cause difficulties, even if you're intimately familiar with them. It certainly doesn't help that hex uses the same numerals decimal plus a few letters. I wouldn't know anything about base-12 scaling factors either, but I reckon if you were using base-12 number system it would be easier.

There's more than one way to count on your fingers than unary base-10 you know. I find that letting your fingers count as one and your thumbs count as four lets you count in hex without too much trouble and no alkward finger positions (It's possible to count in binary with your fingers up to 2^10, but it's pretty uncomfortable.)

Of course the offensive response was from an AC.

Oblig

[bobbozzo]

May the fourth be with you!