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Doom 3's Release Date; Quake Turns 8
LehiNephi writes "Apparently, GameStop has an updated product page for long-awaited PC FPS Doom 3, along with the note: 'Official launch date of August 3rd, 2004 confirmed!', although the official Doom 3 site hasn't yet been updated, sporting just a 'coming soon' notice. [Blue's News also has further info, noting 'that the British Board of Film Classification has a DOOM III Listing with a rating for the game, a seeming indication that they've already been able to review all its content'.]" In related news, Ag3nt writes "One of the biggest leaps in PC gaming technology, Quake, celebrated its 8th birthday yesterday, according to an AmpedNews piece - there's also a birthday note on John Romero's homepage."
Seeing a confirmed date on a reporting site, heck even on ID's site, seems like reading portents in the tea leaves. Even when they announce ship dates, these companies are notorious for having last-minute changes. Thirty-six hours before you should be able to pick up your precious pre-order, it's announced that you'll have to wait another two weeks... maybe three... they're not sure.
I'll believe the release dates when I have a copy in my grubby little hands and not before.
Start a happiness pandemic
...my WAD file parser. Argh!
The Army reading list
If we were to take that poorly worded title literally, that would mean Doom 3 was released yesterday. W00t!
... but remember id still hasn't budged from it's "when it's done" release date.
"When it's done"
Part of me wishes this was the industry standard instead of forcing themselves to abide by release dates only to output a buggy product.
However the downside to "when its done" would be our favorite game Duke Nukem Forever.
WHEN WILL YOU BE DONE?!
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My pewter mancubus is sitting on top of my monitor, where it's been laughing at me ever since I paid $10 way ahead of time to own doom3. All I can say is, it's about time! (... to upgrade my video card, that is)
I can't wait to upgrage my box to run this and HL2, then have to throw it all in the trash next year so I can upgrade to a Longhorn spec machine. Wheeeee!
I'm always skeptical about release dates, but at least two stores are consistent this time. EB Games has the release date for Doom III listed as August 3 as well, but the strategy guide comes out on July 10. You can spend three weeks reading up on the game and then kick ass at it!
For more information, click here.
Warez group announces August 1, 2004 release date for cracked version of Doom III.
The shareholder is always right.
No doubt that this game's gonna have everyone flipping head-over-hoof. I just hope the game will actually deserve its reaction. Much like any good trilogy, the third release is often a dissapointment. (with the exception of the original star wars trilogy ;-)
Wow, I can't believe that it was only 8 years ago. When the original Quake was released, I honestly wasn't that impressed by it. Perhaps that's because I never had such hot hardware to run it on. But, mostly I remember thinking that the main way in which Quake, as a gaming engine, improved on Doom / Doom 2 (which I really loved) was by providing a true 3D environment, as opposed to Doom's psuedo-3D. Yet, to me, Doom was so well done in terms of level design, etc, that all Quake did was make me aware of things that Doom did not do, but that I had never missed in Doom as I never really realised that Doom wasn't doing them.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
When is the Linux release date? Does it say anywhere whether they are doing a concurrent Linux/Windows release? Will there be a nice free demo, as is ID's habit?
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Wouldnt it be cool if they modelled an Armadillo Aerospace rocket crashed somewhere on a Doom 3 map? ;)
I'll have to wait until August 2nd to get a video card that can handle doom 3. Oh wait, I use a laptop guess I can't play :(
Damn.
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Duke Nukem Forever will become bundled with Doom 3 as well.
8/3/04.
Obligatory Penny Arcade reference
id software's games are the only reason I buy new computers. Sure, I'll update my video card, or get a bigger hard drive, but as far a whole new system goes, it's just when id's new games come out.
Quake 3 - new machine
Wolfenstein - new machine
Doom 3 - ordered new machine yesterday. (from endpcnoise.com - wife is complaining the 3 computers in the office are too loud. We'll see if thay are as good as they claim.)
I wonder how much hardware worldwide id is responsible for selling?
After reading Masters of Doom, this smells a little like sour grapes to me ...
You could get healthpoints by taking a leak and drinking water.
You could pay the hookers to dance.
All the piggy cops had LAPD written on the uniform sleeve.
The list goes on...
But most of all I liked the way Duke lived up to his promise to rip off the Uberfiend's head and sh*t down his neck. When he sat down on the thing and unfolded the newspaper I fell of the chair laughing...
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
"Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride..."
I clearly remember when Quake came out like it was yesterday. I remember that at the office I was working at there was a big debate on what was the better game... Duke Nukem 3D or Quake. In the end Quake won, but not without some heated arguments in DN3D's favor.
And of course, before that I remember playing Deathmatch Doom on the office lan on a 386 with a b&w monitor (shivers).
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
And now this...Quake is 8, Doom is over 10. It couldn't have been that long ago, right? I got it when I got the first Snoop Doggy Dogg CD...oh, wait...
We celebrate id Software's ability to create more shades of brown than ever imaginable... and love every minute of it!
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From 0 to drunk in $20
It was because of Quake that 3d accelleration made it to the big time. When I was 21 I plunked down 200 of my hard earned dollars to buy a Diamond Monster 3d card JUST TO PLAY GL-Quake!
Lots of my buddies did the same. Before Quake 3d accelleration was just a novelty.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I won't believe any dates untill i see a 'we gone gold' message from the id-dudes themselves.
Setting the date at the start of August, would still be very convenient for the die-hards at Quakecon (12 -15 August) to have a LAN-go at it.
Anyhow, I'm very curious , and patiently await the 'we gone gold' message.
On a last note : Seeing that Splashdamage took the multiplayer portion as their part (at least leveldesign) i -know- the MP part is gonna rock my socks off, since they (co-) created the very cool (free) game Enemy Territory. For more info on this upcoming studio, check out their site, and give Enemy Territory a try, if you haven't allready. www.splashdamage.com
Oddly enough, they also have Half Life 2 available as preorder as well listing September 1, 2004 ...
They will even give you a deal if you pre-order both at the same time ... I'm not holding my breath.
It's ironic (this story comes up) in that a friend of mine recently duped me into installing and running quakeforge. I went along with it because my gf keeps telling me that i need to play more video games.
It's hilarious. I have a fairly up-to-date athlonxp system w/ 512mb of ram, huge fast drives, a decent surround sound system and such, but since i'm not a huge FPS player, my video card is still the old STB Velocity 4400 (i.e. a RIVA TNT) from the k6-II that now serves files from my closet.
I get about 17 FPS in fugly-graphics mode, but it cracks me up. I fire up the game and all of a sudden it is 1997 again. All i need now is Duke Nukem, Doom, Sim City Classic and HotelChat, and i get all those warm fuzzies i haven't felt since the days on the roommate's 486.
w00t!
Disclaimer: i love both debian and freebsd
do() || do_not();
Refer to this article for more information about the engine.
I went along with it because my gf keeps telling me that i need to play more video games.
...
my video card is still the old STB Velocity 4400
The geek with the gamer GirlFriend has a video card that's more than six years old !! What. The. Fuck. Any gamer knows that those things are meant to be upgraded every six months.
This is why it's so hard for a gamer to find a decent girlfriend. They've all been stolen by people with 30 times as much system RAM as VRAM. I guess the size of your Video Card really doesn't matter !
--LordPixie
</joking>
I think a "measly Radeon 9600" will be able to run D3 as well as HL2 just fine. The recent Doom 3 leaked Alpha runs on my Athlon 2600 / Radeon 9600 XT with perfectly acceptable rates. I can't actually see or adjust the detail level, but the default is still nice looking. I imagine that the retail version will have some tweaks and optimizations that will improve performance.
"TCP/IP" refers to a family of networking protocols including IP, TCP, UDP, ARP, and less strictly, DNS and the routing protocols. So it's perfectly valid for a game to use UDP and say that it's using TCP/IP.
Some people still play old games. Chess for example has been played for hundreds of years. Quake... well it is only 8 years old, but it still has an active community of players, developers, competitions, etc.
One reason that Quake is still going strong is because it is that Carmack open-sourced the game engine a few years ago. This has made it possible to update the game's technology. Sure it isn't as graphically intensive as modern games, but it isn't bad looking either. The most important thing in Quake is a high frame rate, which is quite easy considering the game's system requirements.
So what are you waiting for?
Download Quake! Note that you will need the two retail content ".pak" files to play on most servers. Carmack opened the game engine, not the game content (skins, sounds, levels, textures). However, the eQuake package comes with tons of free content, so you can still play, somewhat, without buying Quake.
Join the community!
Finally, you might ask, "Why play Quake"? Well, why play Chess? Some games are classics, and they are classics because they are fun. Quake is the best game for fast, furious gameplay. Unlike tactical shooters such as Counter-Strike, Quake is more concerned with fun fast paced action than realism. So if you want slow realistic, but sometimes boring gameplay - stay away from Quake.
If you want fast, furious, chaotic and violent gameplay... Quake is your ticket to fun.
The first time around, it felt like they cut out the use command - didn't affect me to a degree, but I had a feeling that certain situations could arise where you accidently touch a button of certain death.
After beating it on Hard, I tried nightmare mode - that difficulty option was hidden from view mainly because it is considered too hard for most players. However, there was really not much difference from Hard - the only changes would be the monsters firing or re-firing more frequenrly and the Shambler inflicting 10 more points of damage per shock. This is not much of a difference, since you can still dodge most attacks (they either don't have lead-ahead, or have predictable lead-ahead.)
Mutliplayer was acceptable, provided that you knew that you should switch to W-A-S-D and to type "+mlook" in the console. Otherwise, you'll encounter situations where you will get creamed by other players even before you should even know that mouse looking is even possible.