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Doom 3 Gets Info On Demo, Linux, DVD, Xbox
Eeknay writes "Following up yesterday's announcement about Doom 3 going Gold, id software today went into specifics on a Doom 3 demo and a Linux version of the full game, saying: 'We will release the demo as soon as it's done, but this
probably won't happen until after the game has arrived on U.S. store shelves', and adding: 'Linux binaries will be
available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games.'." Eurogamer also has a handy round-up of other Doom 3 news, noting, via CNN Money, that "Doom will apparently ship exclusively on CD", quoting Todd Hollenshead as saying of the Xbox version: "We can't say, at this point, that it's going to come out this year", and relaying on game length: "the [PC Gamer paper-mag] reviewer claims it took 23 hours to complete."
I still don't understand why more and more game companies push back demos to after the retail release; I want a demo to decide whether or not I want to buy your game. The sooner you give that to me, the sooner I buy your game. Simple.
Why should they delay the windows version just so that people that run OS's that are such a small percentage of the population should be able to play at the same time?
It would be more convenient for linux and OSX users but not for Id or anyone else.
STFU Troll, you as a linux user (or osx) are getting a good deal hear and you know it. Anyone that buys the boxed game, which is required to play the game on ANY platform, gives you access to play it on ANY platform they release binaries for in the future. This would include linux and OSX binaries apparantly in the VERY near future.
Do NOT turn this into yet another "poor us linux users abused again" argument, especially whey you're targeting it at one of the very few game companies that even give a flying fuck about linux.
You should be happy for chrissakes that you a) will even be able to play it on linux and b) that should you for some reason want to install it on both linux and windows (to prove how much better it is on linux of course, or whatever floats your boat) WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY FOR IT TWICE!
I know, I'm feeding the troll but I couldn't let that crap go without saying _something_.
No Comment.
Maybe cause it was released late, when all Linux quakers already bought the Windows box and downloaded the Linux executable.
No, but Ebert doesn't write magazine based reviews. He writes newspaper reviews and does television shows.
Magazines typically have a 75-90 day lead time. No game magazine in their right mind is going to review a finished game knowing that it won't be out on the stands for a full 3 months. They'd constantly be scooped by the game oriented internet sites and TV shows.
You are making a ton of assumptions about the setup of their development. I would think that doom 3 would be a lot more complex then an office application.
Only Carmack would be able to answer for sure, but I bet each new engine has brand new code that needs to be written for each OS. It is never just a simple matter of copying the code to the new OS and compiling it there and fixing a few specific problems.
Truly spoken like someone who has never written a commercial game.
People often seem to assume that if you write an OpenGl game, there'll be very little work in making a port for another OS. That may be the case if you're writing some free thing that you can download from Sourceforge but when people are actually paying for a product, there's this little thing called 'Quality Assurance' that gets in the way.
Basically, as well as porting your program over, you'd have to test it on a wide variety of machines for all the distributions you support. This takes a long time whatever OS you're running. You've also then got to fix all those niggly little isses while at the same time ensuring you don't break the setup for any of the other machine/graphics card/driver/distribution combinations you've got.
It's easy to say it's easy - it's not easy to do it.