Only Xbox Port of Doom 3 Will Have Co-operative Play

Ant writes "According to this interview with the Xbox developers Vicarious Visions over at GamePro, only the Xbox port of id's Doom 3 will have co-operative play, and the PC version will not have co-op, unlike the original Doom games. There are also two recent interviews with id themselves on the GamePro site." Co-op was one of the parts of Doom (and Quake) that really got me into the genre, but after I got good enough fighting alongside my friends, I found it was more fun to fight against them, since they were more challenging than anything the computer could come up with then.

Comments

Short-sighted

[Synic]

Why they didn't bring the co-op portion of the Xbox code to the PC version I have no idea. Personally, after Quake III I gave up hope on id ever producing something good ever again. Quake IV is hopefully in good hands at Raven, but I heard that many left that company that were responsible for their earlier great games.

Re:Short-sighted

[bigman2003]

Well...first of all, maybe he DID mod you down, and that is why he had to post AC. (Not that I would ever do such a thing)

Secondly- yes, of course there is a double-standard. You are talking about a Microsoft product (Xbox) as opposed to something that comes from Japan (PS2).

But you do have a good point. For instance, Nintendo can make 'exclusive' games, and people point it out as a great reason to buy a Gamecube. And slap Nintendo on the back for the 99th version of a Mario game.

But, when Microsoft wants an exclusive game, it is obviously predatory, unfair, and probably illegal.

People complain about crappy ports of Xbox games on the PC. But when is the last time you played anything with Mario, Wario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, etc. on your PC?

And here is why....

[MBraynard]

Co-op makes more sense for consoles. Remember what P. Diddy says - 'It's good to play together.'

Technically, the co-op that will be in Xbox will not be the same as you'd want in PC - it will be Split Screen. It's not as though the Devs can as easily take this split screen co-op and turn it into single screen, multiple location co-op.

While co-op is important to consoles, it's not such a big deal for PC games. How do I know? I recall Serious Sam having co-op and nearly all the games on the servers were for pvp, not co-op.

Re:And here is why....

[gl4ss]

coop makes sense on any system.

you know why halo on pc sucks serious ass in many peoples opinions? because it lacks coop. you know why there's some people who despite hating the controller and xbox in general think that halo on xbox can be some serious fun? because it has coop.

coop IS fun on fuckin any device.

and yes they could do it pretty much 'easily', the part where coop story runs into problems is the world interaction/story unfolding.

Re:And here is why....

[Orien]

Yes, but every time I do a LAN party I do Serious Sam co-op. Co-op isn't for playing with random stranger on the internet that hogs all the good action and do things to make you mad, it's for chillin' with people you know. It goes right back to the old days for me. When I was a kid (think mid to late 80's when the Nintendo was big) I had a best friend who I would always play video games with. Almost every weekend we would beg our parents until they gave us money to rent a game, then we would run down to the rental place and look on the back of all the boxes until we found the ones marked "two player simaltenous action!" or whatever. One player games sucked because one of us would always be sitting there bored, and if the two player wasn't simeltenious it wasn't nearly as good.

I know everyone will have a different opinion about this issue, but for us the goal was to beat the game, and that was a lot more easy with co-op. Try beating Contra by yourself! If a game wasn't co-op then we ended up competing with each other and we would end up getting in a fight by the end of the night. With co-op we felt like a team and it left me with some of my favorite childhood memories.

Don't discount the value of co-op on PC. You should hear the people raving about UT 2004 demo and the onslaught game mode. That is a perfect set up for one of the best co-op games ever. They have set it up so that it's next to impossible to win without a good team effort, as opposed to traditional CTF where you commonly get 'that one player' who is 100 frags above the curve and scores all the points for the whole team.

And no, I didn't spell check this, so go ahead and flame me.

Re:And here is why....

[MojoMonkey]

Rainbow Six 3, co-op, live full screen.

Re:At least we know it can be done.

[Slashdot Insider]

The good thing is, id can always put co-op play in in a patch. They add features a lot with their patches, hopefully they'll add this once they get a little less busy getting the game shipped.

Ah but then you'll get gamers griping (justifiably) about publishers shipping half complete (full price) games. What ever happened to "It will be done when it is done"? (brace yourself for the thousand Duke Nukem Forever jokes)

idunno

[drjenk]

They didn't really make it clear if the it is split screen co-op or over xbox live...

Re:At least we know it can be done.

[tyler_42]

"I bet they just wanted to focus on the single-player game first." yeah? Well I bet MS 'persuaded' them to make co-op available only on the xbox.

Co-op play makes a great game even better..

[Zawash]

Co-op play should almost be required in action games. Even ones as heavily scripted and story-based as Doom 3.

Neverwinter Nights and its expansions are very good examples. Granted, NwN is an RPG, not an FPS, but it is still has a very heavily scripted story-line. The single-player campaign is made to be played uhm - single player, but it is still _possible_ to play it in coop mode with your friends on a LAN or on the internet. This is a _very good thing_(tm).

HALO and a lot of other games have also implemented co-op modes. It's often MUCH more fun to play with your friends than playing alone. ..And please don't give us the "it's not implemented in the code" speech - if it's implemented for the XBox, then it's not hard to implement on the PC as well. Puhleez!

Cheers!

Re:Co-op play makes a great game even better..

[jtpalinmajere]

Ah... but it ISNT implemented in the code so to speak. You have to remember that the codebase is for the PC version alone. VV is responsible for porting it to the Xbox. iD is not designing the game with co-op in mind... VV is designing the PORT with co-op in mind. You can look a co-op as a pre-release mod hard coded into the Xbox release. Aside from that, co-op play can be a tricky thing to code up. Let me give you an example to illustrate this point. Assume you are playing a single player mission. You play on a map where the map designer had intentions of trapping you in a small room once stepping on a certain platform. In co-op if the code requires that only one player be on the platform to activate the scripts then it is entirely possible to catch your teammates outside of the situation with the possibility of getting them perpetually stuck (due to later puzzles that would require the entire party to be present). Likewise, if you code that all party members must be on the platform before the trap is activated you have to rely on the fact that all the players are going to know to do this. It is also entirely possible that even with co-op principles in mind the map designer fails to realize the potential number of players that might be playing at one time and designs certain triggers too small for the entire large party to fit in... thus impeding progress yet again. By no means does this mean that it is impossible to do co-op nicely. However it DOES mean that there are likely to be longer development cycles due to the large deal of complexity required to go into something like that. It would better be left up to an expansion pack or patch or left alone in favor of hoping some mod project picks up co-op. Touching back on the statement that "iD is not making the code with co-op in mind" I would remind you that if they HAD initially designed the game to be played co-op and "oh by the way" single player as well then there would be no reason not to include it in the PC version. It is much harder to do it the other way around. NWN and its expansions DID have co-op play in the design of the game and so making it singleplayer is a simple process. It just so happens that some of the earlier co-op able games were simple enough to make the transition from single player to co-op without too much hassle. Even then I have been stuck in Doom2 when odd bugs arose that are only possible in co-op mode and largely unforseeable until it accidentally happens. It is particularly easy to translate singleplayer to co-op when progression is limited to killing key entities and/or limited branch paths to goals. However once you start adding in puzzles and traps and scripted events the effort to orchestrate everything becomes noticeably difficult.

Re:Question for any programmer

[JMZero]

The single player missions in a game like Doom III will not be...

1. Start level
2. Wait until player arrives at end ...sort of affairs. I'm sure Doom III will be full of scripted events, and will rely on certain things happening at certain times in response to actions. Adding a co-op player means re-thinking all that stuff, and multiplies the possibilities to be considered.

As you say, co-op presents no special technical difficulties. It's just a matter of editing presentation and scripting - but that's a large affair in what, I'm sure, will be a large, complex game.

Yep, but those are the only good news.

[AzraelKans]

Well.. the co-op for xbox is ok, but basically is the best news Ive heard on the port, theres a lot of talk about the game being released at the same time than pc's but theres no store preordering, is not even listed yet. Considering Doom3 for pc is coming out in june thats not a good sign. And probably means the game will be delayed until halloween or xmas, months after "the release hype" reaches its critical point, chances are you will already played and maybe even finished doom by the time it hits the xbox (considering it can run in a geforce mx card which is pretty common these days)

Aditionally one of the greatest strengths in doom 3 will be the extremely easy to modify engine, doom 3 wont use bsps and just like in tribes it will feature an in game IDE script "compiler" so you will be able to create levels on the fly literally, not to mention there already tools out there to create models for it. Expect the first mods to hit almost as soon as the game is out. None of these features have been discussed for the xbox port, they havent even mentioned downloadable levels, much less mods. Think "half life" without any mods.

I expect a cool but not very replayable game not even in multiplayer mode (which is doom's weakest points) considering that, the xbox co-op addition is a must.

nonsense...

[bergeron76]

We're the consumers. NEVER FORGET, that WE dictate what platforms will offer what functionality - not vice-versa.

Never underestimate the power of the dollars in your wallet. Contact the vendor and tell them what games you've bought in the past, and how if they don't offer the functionality you want you won't buy any future games; and furthermore, you'll tell all of your friends (and blog-mates, and website visitors, etc) NOT to purchase the game.

They're going to "try" to limit the functionality, but I'm sure that if enough people bitch they'll see the err of their ways.

I'll give you a hint: $$$$

[nobodyman]

Why are so many people mystified as to the reasoning behind this decision. People arguing that there is no technical reason why you can't have co-op on the PC are missing the point.

I'm almost positive that this has *nothing* to do with technical/time constraints and almost everything to do with a big fat check from Microsoft. In Id's Wired interview, they claimed that they were getting a lot of pressure to do an XBox exclusivity deal a la Halo or possibly a 6 month delay. I'm sure that this is a compromise.

Not surprising

[slycer9]

Carmack's no saint. I'm sure with the amount of money Gates threw at him he agreed quickly enough.

I mean really. For Christ's sake.

Sellout anyone?

Go ahead & mod me flamebait, I'm in a FOUL fucking mood today, and this just pushed me over the edge.

Conspiracy theorist? Look at the track record.
Each and every godamned Id release has also had a Mac version with FULL godamned functionality.

They've even released Mac demos!

Now, once the mighty X-Box enters the fray, suddenly only 'It' (I'm using the Stephen Kingative version of 'It' here) will have co-op?

Wonder what fucktard thought THAT would go over well.

I'm NOT buying an X-Box, and I'm NOT buying Doom3 it seems. Co-op was one of the things I was REALLY looking forward to.

Fuck this Virginia. Santa Claus isn't only dead, his body's been donated to science.

How I feel about consoles; am I alone?

[Mitleid]

I have to say that my love for videogames was spawned by a PC. I had NES and SNES back when they were initially released, but when I saw Wing Commander 2 on a 486 with all that speech (hehehe) back in '92, I was hooked. Since then, a PC has been my primary source of video game entertainment. Until recently, though, I've found myself to be a bit more satisfied with a console experience. Maybe it's because I got an HDTV for XMAS and I'm just still stuck on the novelty of high resolution console gaming, but for the most part I'm finding the console experience more "solid". There seems to be too much politics in modern game development, and it seems to be having the worst effects on PC game developers; Deus Ex 2, anyone? I played that demo for an all of 5 minutes before un-installing that nonsense, and the "dumbing" down of cross-port video games couldn't be more obvious. But then, on the flip side, look at what effect it seems to be having on rather PC-loyal companies like id... Granted, I understand that as far as development goes it could make sense to only support cooperative on a console and leave it up to loyal fans to devise a system for PC, but I've always trusted companies like id to release things how THEY want, and then watch the magic of mods and what not take over after the games release. A move like this shows how much of an influence the video game market as a whole has become...

...which leads me to the point of this rant. With consoles seeming to blend so much closer to PCs as far as multiplayer and even hardware architecture, it seems like it is only going to get worse. So, my concern is this: why bother spending so much money on computer hardware ($400 for a video card? Give me a break...) when you can just wait for QUALITY games to be released for your respective console? Granted, many of the cross-port games are just terrible and not worth the media they are pressed on, but it seems that the general consensus is that you'll be able to get all the "better" games released on your console. Especially if you own all three, like me. I mean, spending around $600 to get all three systems is probably what it could cost me right now to upgrade my machine to something that could play DOOM 3 at a framerate comparable to how smoothly it may run on my XBOX...

Please don't get me wrong; I do think the PC is a much better format for gaming. If you want to talk graphics, they are completely unmatched to anything on a PC, and PCs have the ability to configure game interfaces so that ANYONE can get a comfortable system set up (not to mention that the control schemes in FPS on a PC is the most precise setup you can get anywhere). It's just that as far as money and affordability goes, it seems like the best bet for gamers is to just invest in whatever consoles are dominating the market. Now, if you have the cash flow to AFFORD a new machine every six months, that is an entirely different story...

Just my 2 cents... I'm interested to hear anyone else's feelings on this matter.