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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.
Would you really want Co-Op in an atmosphere based game?
It's not going to be as frentic with very few enemies on screen at one time so there really isn't any call for it.
It does seem kind of a shame though, co-op gives you somehting to do to teach people the game.
It's too bad Doom 3 won't have cooperative play when it ships. I had a very good time running around Doom's levels with friends, and I'd like to be able to do it again with the new game. 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. I bet they just wanted to focus on the single-player game first.
I hope that the Doom 3 coop mode is similar to Halo. It is nice that when you get 'stuck' in some area, you can have a friend help you to get you through it, then switch back to single player mode and keep on cruising.
If I had that mode for Medal of Honor: Spearhead, I might have finished the game.
It's also the only thing that got me through a few tough levels in Halo at higher difficulty levels.
Also- I'm thrilled at the way they are developing Doom 3 for two separate systems. One group working on the PC, and another working on the Xbox. Then we won't hear how it is 'watered down' from the PC people, or how the 'controls suck' from the Xbox people.
I'm not a huge Doom fan, but the fact that it is being developed this way, and the co-op mode, mean that I will be getting the Xbox version. The screenshot for the Xbox version looked pretty good. I've been putting off an HDTV for a while- but if Doom runs at 720p, I might get one sooner than planned.
Depending on what the release date is- I don't think they have one yet- this could be something for me to get excited about. Halo2 of course is at the top of my console FPS list, and Half-Life 2 is slipping fast, I lose a little more interest in that just about every day.
But then again- Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow comes out this month, so that should suck up a large part of April for me. And I have this 'Real Life' shit I am supposed to be working on. Gotta find a cheat for that one...maybe something like 'God Mode' or 'Invincible'. At least some 3d glasses..or sumpin'.
No reason to lie.
UT doesn't have anywhere near the smoothness and speed of Quake.
I hate the way UT feels. It feels jerky and icky.
This is not a hardware problem. It's more subtle than that. Most players probably can't tell a difference but when you've played as long as me and at the level I do then you realize that UT feels pretty bad compared to Quake3.
There's also the real performance issue. I mean, Quake3 runs damn fast. Faster than any game that uses the Unreal engine.
With that said, I like other aspects of UT2004. Especially the vehicles. They actually feel pretty good. It's the normal player mode that feels horrible.
Anyway, Doom3 will probably continue the smooth and high performance playability I've grown to expect from Carmack.
I find it hard to believe there won't be a co-op mode for PC's. Did iD sell-out?? Sucks. And sucks even more because Microsoft is involved.
Next we'll hear there will be no Linux version of Doom3.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
There was an article somewhere quite awhile back that had one of the devs, possibly Carmack saying he would leave it up to the "community" to get co-op going on the PC. I assume the Xbox devs put it in from the get-go because the Xbox is a relatively fixed platform.
Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D: they all had co-op out of the box. And that was in the days of modems and kermit for [omnipotent diety here]'s sakes!
If they can't take the time to include co-op, then I'm not going to waste my time and money to buy the frickin game.
Yes, like it was rumored that the Mac version would be first, or that Elvis was the lead programmer. I think we're looking at a simple matter of deadlines. The XBox version comes out later and they have more time to add goodies to the code.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
This is certainly the case in terms of technology. Many engines are implemented this way, most of them make all games network games even if only 1 person is playing (i.e. Quake 3).
If a game is made to be multiplayer from the start, then the extra programming work to add things like coop etc. is normally minimal. If there's a single player version of the game and you want to add coop, then you're normally looking at alot of work.
However, technology is only half the battle, there's also the issues of level design, game flow and balance.
Whichever way you look at it, co-op is a significant amount of work. Unless a development team think that putting co-op in is going to shift more units, then they generally won't bother.
Normally, co-op will be used by more people on consoles (esp. if there it's 2 players on 1 machine) than on PC's, so it does kind of make more sense. To put it in only on a console version of a game.
what's the point of buying it if 1/2 of the game is missing? fuck id. i thought it was great that they were bringing their games to linux, but they're just screwing us.
maybe i'll burn my registered copy of wolfenstein 3d along with my other id games and never buy anything by them again.
Many engines are implemented this way, most of them make all games network games even if only 1 person is playing (i.e. Quake 3).
I agree its more about design than tech, but I want to illustrate one point. Even Q3 engine games, with the possible exception of Quake3 itself, ship with seperate executables for single and multiplayer. But this is still about design. Even when the weapons, powers, etc. are all the same, what works for the single player portion doesn't translate directly to multi or co-op. Design a good single player game AND design a good multiplayer game, don't do one that goes both sorta well. This is just to point out that even when the tech is there, "slapping on" commercial quality co-op play is much more than trivial.
I remember the days I played addons and mods with my buddies in DOOM 1 and 2 over dial-up modems and SirDOOM (lets you do 4 players on BBS' with dialup modems). It was much more fun when playing maps that we haven't played before.
I was hoping DOOM 3 (PC port) would have co-operative play like System Shock 2. I guess not. Maybe someone can hack DOOM 3 to have co-op like Sven Co-op.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I wonder what makes it so hard to make co-op for the PC version too then? I'd imagine that co-op makes the leveldesign part a bit more challenging, as you need to take in consideration that the players could be in very different places in the map so you'd need to be careful about locking doors behind the player for example. But as the levels are the same in xbox and PC versions (I assume) then what could be the reason for this? If the company doing the xbox port has time to do this, then why not ID? Isn't it the ID guys saying that the game will be released "when its done", so lack of time is not a very good excuse. Its a shame that developers seem to keep co-op play in such low regard today. For me personally co-op has given the most memorable gaming moments ever, and lots of people seem to share my thoughs about it (For example in the Stalker forums theres a huge thread where people cry for co-op support, after the developer announced that it might not make it to the final game).
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.
I don't know about that... given what Carmack's attitude seems to be (support of OpenGL, linux, etc.), it seems unlikely that he'd be willing to sell out to Microsoft.
I think the explanation is more likely that id thinks that PC co-op play comes in a distant third to deathmatch and single player, and so has devoted their resources to improving those rather than implementing co-op. The console market seems to be different however, with co-op being a major mode of play, so the decision to implement co-op on the X-box makes sense.