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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.
Having read PC Gamer, I believe it.
Seriously, though, it's widely assumed that PC Gamer reviewed a non-shipping preview version of the game, which seems pretty shady to me. Though similar to the final version, the games are likely to have SOME differences. After all, Ebert doesn't review rough cuts of films, does he?
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
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.
Most gamers are asking themselves:
"How will I schedule my job around my Doom 3 time?"
Personally, I'm anticipating this release, but I'm not gung-ho about it. To me, it will just be another FPS. At most, it will remind me of the fun and fear I felt when playing the original version at night on my 486 DX 33.
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.
"Bah", I say to the alleged 23 hour completion time. Speed Demo people, I expect to see a 1 hr 37 min demo (maximum, of course) one week after Doom 3 hits the shelves.
The XBox version is being done at Vicarious Visions in Albany, NY.
I don't understand you people. Do you play for fifteen hours at a time? Maybe before a wife and a baby I could have done that, but not now. Many RPG claim "forty hours gameplay," but I've played for that duration spread over a single week and haven't passed more than their midpoints.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
>Most Linux gamers bought the Windows boxes and downloaded the binaries. They were counted as Windows gamers and the sales figures point towards there being no Linux market.
Lets not assume that they are idiots.
They can track how many downloads of the Linux binaries there are. They can match CD keys with with the bianary version when you authenticate against their master servers.
Most telling is the fact that even with the seemingly low numbers of Q3 Linux users they are spending the resources again with Doom. This is miles ahead of what many companies are doing. Complain about them but not ID.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Epic Games, creator of Unreal Tournament 2004, shipped a Linux version of UT2003 and UT2004 on the same CDs (or DVDs) as the Windows version.
A mac port and XBox port (Unreal Championship) are also available for UT2003.
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.
Handle the game. I was worried if my machine could handle UT2k4 since I only have a radeon 8500 but it handled the demo and then later the full version quite nicely. I hope doom3 is the same way since I dont have the cash right now to plunk down the money for a better video card. and I already got doom3 on preorder a friend of mine got it for me as a gift since im a huge doom fan.
"Multiplayer is client-server," laying to rest suggestions that Doom's four-player deathmatch mode might be peer-to-peer;
It's the good ol' client-server model again. You'll be able to host your server just like you did 10 years ago, except that this time, it won't be over a 14.4k modem :)
And on another note, I remember playing countless hours of DooM I and II by modem with only one friend at a time, and it was still a whole damn lot of fun, so I'm not worried about the "4 players limitation" either.