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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."
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...... APRIL FOOLS!
What with the leaked Alpha, numerous screenshots on every gaming site, I never really thought of Doom3 as vaporware. DNF is another story
Wow, what a great engine!
I can't wait till someone makes a game with it.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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)
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
This is completely meaningless. Stores put release dates out that are wrong quite often. Move on, move on.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
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).
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.
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?
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.
I can see the hardcore gamer trying to figure out if fate is toying with their sanity.
Sanity is a majority vote.
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.
Hate me!
Duke nukem forever announced for late '04?
-- Jim.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
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.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Not only is there no word on a Linux version yet, the only other version I've even heard rumors of is the XBox !
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
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
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.
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.
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...)
A Linux version will be available as well.
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.
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.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
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.
5 440 0/9600/9700/9800
e 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.
.plan file saying Doom3 may support the OpenGL high level shading language which would mean there is a sixth path;
;) I bet bad drivers prevent it from running, and even if it did run it would actually walk, or crawl. :) */rumour*
. html?i=1821 &p=21
:)
"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=1
r1x0-Radeon, Radeon 7000/7200/7500
r2x0-8500/9000/9100/9200
r3x0-95
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-pr
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
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
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
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!