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Doom 3 Gets Reviews, Piracy Questions, Exultation
Yeti Von Baseball writes "Now that Doom 3 has officially shipped to stores, Computer Gaming World just posted its Doom 3 review - they also posted about 100 or so new screens." Elsewhere, GameSpy has an in-progress weblog and first-look impressions on the "claustrophobic corridors" of the game, Telefragged posted one of the first reviews, praising "a grand slam of action, story, atmosphere, and pure terror", the BBC reports on how "potential sales could be hit by the extent of online piracy of the game", and Time Magazine has a feature on Doom 3 and id.
That troll post is bound to show up many times in this discussion.
Oh teh horror!
Multiplayer sucks. bad.
downloaded it a couple days ago cause i just couldn't wait, then bought it today as it hit the shelves. do youreself a favor - upgrade your pc then BUY THIS GAME!
First Phobos!!!
I'm curious to see what it gets. I noticed on Gamerankings.com that all the earliest magazine reviews gave it a 9.4 -- the site members were giving it about an 8.6. It did strike me as odd that the first 3 reviews were exactly the same rating...but I guess that's not impossible.
Moo.
doom4?
did you forget to take your meds?
No.
Jesus F. Christ. 0 comments and already slashdotted. I mean, really, editors. Jeez. Give us mirrors. Slashdot is a page whose main content isn't in the articles, it's in the links and comments. If the links are gone, the comments become troll, offtopic, or generally stupid. Do something to protect the content, please.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the OpenGL 3d format over Microsoft's competing Direct3d format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
It's just four players in multiplayer mode, right? Carmack was saying something about leaving eight person multiplayer to the modding community (as you'd have to play at less than 100% eye candy / framerate to support it).
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
And it's good :) doesn't run so hot on my setup though..
:-/ great for the story.. bad for my trigger finger
amd athlon xp 2400+
512mb ddr 400
7200rpm hard drive
nvidia geforce 4 ti 4400 (128mb)
it doesn't detect my surround sound setup (sb live! with klipsch pro media 4.1's)
it runs at medium detail @ 640x480 and gets pretty choppy in places...
my only complaint so far is that it's so dark that even the flashlight doesn't even really let you see much (i'm trying not to turn my brightness up but it seems i may have to so i don't keep running into guard rails and such)...
overall though.. i think the intro was a bit long.. i wanna kill stuff.. and kill it i shall... after the 15-20 minute introduction
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
will it look good in my really old ATI Radeon 7500 card?
I pirate games all the time...even though most of those just get uninstalled a day later. Even I bought Doom 3. Its fun ;-)
I'm going to buy Doom3 from id directly at the id Store. When there's a game I really get a lot out of (or plan to in this case), I try to buy directly from the developer to give them as big a cut of the pie as I can. They get full SRP instead of what's left from the middle man.
My way of thanking companies that still create good titles.
Its seems I've played this game before in many different incarnations: Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake 1-3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half-Life, Jedi Knight 1 and 2, Star Trek Elite Force....etc...etc...
With the apparent slashdotting, I don't believe their webserver has enough oomph to run Doom 3.
I've always been curious as to how you can rate the technology down to a single percent. Same goes for all the other parts of the game (interface 92%, Grpahics 95%).
Most sites have (wisely) abandonned such an approach and rather go with a 1-5 scale or A,B,C,D,E ratings (with +/-).
I mean come on...
Come on, linking to 100 screenshots of Doom III in a slashdot blurb? That's just cruel.
Alphanos
I hope this game isn't just another expose for id's new engine. I've heard there's actually a very immersive single player campaign, I hope the multiplayer is as strong. I haven't bought this game, nor do I plan to ( don't feel like plunking down $2000 for an upgrade, and also I'm afraid of being addicted ). However, I'm a supporter of id ( ok call me a fanboy ), so I'd like to see them succeed.
The large amount of piracy of this game (30000 people on one torrent the other day) can be largely attributed to the amount of hype surrounding this game. it could be said that id did this to itself by hyping this game up a bit too much. im sure, however, that Doom3's sales will provide quite a hefty amount of profit for id and its employees, as there is quite a large amount of the population that still believes in supporting the developers.
One problem that contributes to piracy is release dates. In the UK, Doom 3 will be released on the 13th, and, being such a long awaited game, it's inevitable that people here will download it, rather than waiting for over a week longer than those living in the US.
I've got 4 computers at my disposal of various capabilities, and this is how Doom3 has run on them:
XP 2600
Ati Rad 9800 Pro
2 x WD Raptor striped raid
1GB PC3200 Corsair
Can run smooth on High settings at 800x600, AA disabled. Game looks fantastic
------
XP 2000
Geforce FX 5200
80GB 2mb buffer maxtor
512MB PC2700 Generic
Barely runs at 640x480. Framerates are in the 10-20 range. Would not recommend purchasing if you have similar specs. Upgrading the CPU or video card would have the largest impact.
------------
P4 2.4Ghz B
ATI Radeon 9500
512MB PC2100
2 x 80GB Maxtor Striped RAID
Runs smooth on Medium settings at 640x480, or Low at 800x600. Definitely playable.
-----------
Haven't tried the 4th yet, but I don't hold much hope. It's an XP 1600 w/ GF4 Ti4200.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I don't know about the rest of the world but a new release PC game in Australia retails for $100+. Now to me that is not a relatively low price.
In fact the only game I've ever considered worth paying $100 for was half-life and this is only because it is still maintained and I got many (Half-life, Counterstrike, Day of Defeat etc.) games with it. Call me stingy but for me a game is worth at most $20 a year.
On a positive note, due to demand of Doom 3 I think that Bit Torrent has been proven to scale well. On one tracker it registered 50,000 peers. On another it said 30,000.
I just got it from CompUSA. (After being turned down at EB Games for not having "reserved" a copy - this game was harder to get than Britney tickets - although frankly, D3 warrents it and Britney doesn't :)
After the 1+ hour install, I launched the game, chose my strategy and POOF!! bye-bye doom3. Looks like I'll need a patch of some sort before I can play. Rats.
Has anyone else had stability issues with the game? Any pointers?
-mb
No wonder it's seemed unusually quiet on /. this afternoon!
This isn't a troll. It's so obviously a joke post that whoever modded it as a troll so obviously has no sense of humor.
The piracy numbers might have been a notch smaller if us europeans didn't have to wait ANOTHER FUCKING WEEK before getting our hands on the retail game.
my only complaint so far is that it's so dark that even the flashlight doesn't even really let you see much (i'm trying not to turn my brightness up but it seems i may have to so i don't keep running into guard rails and such)...
People used to say the same thing about Quake 1. However, if you got rid of all ambient light and played, you could see everything you were supposed to and without the washed out-ness that comes from upping your gamma too far.
When I was on the torrent yesterday there were over 350 people connected.
From the BBC article:
"Despite the relatively low price of PC games, many gamers are still choosing to resort to piracy rather than pay for legitimate boxed copies," said Matt Pierce, publisher of the computer games magazine, PC Gamer.
Relatively low price? Relative to what? A movie? A CD? A car? Amazon has it for 54.99. That is anywhere from 25% to 50% of the cost of a brand new console, depending on the platform (and yes, I know it is a PC game). I'm really curious as to what world he is living in that could justify that price as "relatively low".
In esscence, its not so much a bad thing, but it can be a harmful thing. Just when people return to the real world, as they have to, your virtual empire counts for nought.
Virtual stuff is way cool, but we have to remember we live in a reality, not in a virtual reality.
Karma whoring
Except. I downloaded it.
And then I bought my copy from EB yesterday.
So can someone strike my name off the "people who pirated" list? I don't want to be responsible for more skewed statistics.
If they can simultaneously release movies worldwide, there is nothing stopping a simultaneous release of games. Piracy would be lessened since everyone gets it at the same time unlike the rest of the world having to wait weeks after the US release. Why wait, download the pirate version, simple.
I wonder how my computer will run this game. I hope I can run 640 x 480 with high detail.
AthlonXP 2500+
1024MB ddr @ 333mhz
Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 256MB
I also hope it doesn't kill my radeon...
One of my favorite things in the original Doom games was getting monsters to fight each other. And id clearly designed some levels to encourage this.
If you could get a monster to shoot at you, and the shot hit a second monster, the second monster would get angry and turn towards the first and start attacking it. The the first would turn towards the second and attack, and they would ignore you and just beat on each other until one was dead. (This only worked for different types of monsters; if a grunt shot another grunt, they wouldn't fight. In fact, I don't believe that same-type monsters could even damage each other at all.)
The new game, with its insane system requirements, will only have a handful of monsters at a time (about three, if I understood the Telefragged review correctly). Still, it would be cool if you could sometimes get them to start fighting each other.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I will download Movies
I will download Music
I will download Software
I will download Games
I will not however, rip-off id software. Even a thief has some scruples.
This is like walking up to John Carmack and saying "Fuck you! And by the way, you write awesome games!"
Why? I can remotely understand if your a broke teenager, but employed adults have no excuse whatsoever to not buy the game.
Most pirates wouldnt have bought the game if it wasnt available for free.
Few sales were lost.
More were gained by people 'demoing' it before the fork over the cash..
If software had refunds, the need for piracy would be reduced greatly.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is this going to be Carmack's last engine?
Apparently the install doesn't like your computer if you have either CloneCD or Alcohol installed. I never had alcohol installed, but it wasn't giving me problems running the game. I uninstalled CloneCD and everything's fine. I hope the first patch they come out with gets rid of this crap. The "warez" version has been available for days, so it's already out...there's nothing to stop now :)
i agree that the price was high for this. $54.99 at best buy today. $58 and some change after taxes. i haven't bought any games recently but thought that it was kinda high.
;)
BUT the single player game is supposed to be incredible. and the benefit of any id game is that the mod community will have a blast with this. so they'll handle your multiplayer aspect i'm sure. trust me though. so far the single player experience is WOW... crap your pants fantastic
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
I am a pirate. har har.
I was one of the downloader's on Sunday which BBC reports of. But I don't agree with the fact that all the downloader's don't contribute to the game development. A lot of the leechers do.
Like me, thousands of people who downloaded the game will go and buy it once it is released.
I would like to argue for the fact that most of the downloader's actually buy games and hence feed the gaming industry.
And the game does two very annoying things; they like to surprise you with monsters appearing out of nowhere, which has always bugged me, and they like to just turn out all the lights so you can't see anything and just start throwing monsters at you. How is firing blindly in the dark while some monster that can somehow see perfectly is whittling down your health with a machine-gun fun? Yes it is scary, but not in a good way.
Please someone tell me it gets better, because right now I am unsure if I am ever going to bother to play any more and instead go load up one of the more interesting recent FPS games like Farcry or Call Of Duty.
I just picked up a copy from my local EB and the guy said that Half Life II has been confirmed to ship on September 2nd.
For those of you finding the game too dark try these settings:
1)In game bring down the console (ctrl alt ~)
2)r_gamma 1.3 - The default is 1, try a range from 1.2-1.4, some have said to go as high as 1.8 but that is way too bright and takes away from the atmosphere imho.
3)r_brightness 1.5 - Again the default is 1, try a range up 1.8 to what looks best for you.
4) Turn off AA, turn on vsync on.
To boost performance try this!
In your DOOM 3 directory, find "DoomConfig.cfg" (x:\Program Files\Doom 3\base). Open DoomConfig.cfg in Notepad.
Find the line:
seta image_cacheMegs "XX"
Where XX is try increasing this value in according to how much ram you have. I have 1 GB of ram, and set it to 256, HUGE boost in framerate, game runs a lot smoother now. Try these values: 32, 96, 128, 256.
Waited, shuffled my feet today morning, hoping my wife wouldnt notice, waiting till 9:30 to leave home so that I could pick up the game at 10:00 from the nearest store.
Store opened at 10:00, saw a bunch of people waiting for it to open, thought they all would be in line for the game. Felt like an old geek after realizing I was the only one to pick the game up. Felt real old waiting at the counter to pay for it.
Read reviews/previews/salivate over old screenshots all day. Didnt feel a bit guilty at getting paid for nothing.
Reached home, ignored wife completely, popped CD's in, installed, breathless now.
Fired it up on my not so humble box, encountering game freezes during cut screens/ loading textures etc.
Trying to pick up my jaw from the floor ever since.
Game rocks..its dark, deliciously creepy, I have a weak heart and I dont think I will play at night (also slightly considerate towards neighbours).
After two hours of getting creeped out, eaten alive, ass kicked, munched on. pulled down the ever so trusty in-game commandline, typed in the words:
spawn monster_boss_cyberdemon
Holy mother of God! Is that...omg!!...
Rapid Nirvana
Admit it, you know you were thinking the same thing. Shodan rules, Doom Guy drools!
I can't believe they are going to get this to run on X-Box. They should just license the half-life 2 engine and rewrite doom3 for it. oh wait..
Meet new people, and kill them.
If what you want in a game is basically Doom with shiny surfaces, then you're fine. If you want something new, or even something with a refreshing twist, then aside from the rendering engine you're basically out of luck.
The game is well produced. The voice acting is good. The facial animation is decent. The textures are all very detailed, but you know, the 'fun' bottleneck is no longer in the graphics. Its in the gameplay.
So the big news is the latest rendering engine from Id, the people who brought us the first widely released FPS. Well, I'm sorry to say that from what I've seen the rendering engine is about on par with the Source (Half Life 2), Crytek (Far Cry) and Unreal 3 (upcoming America's Army and Unreal releases) engines. There are probably purists out there that will say I'm insane for this and that Doom 3 does X that none of those others do, or do as well. Well, if I don't notice it when I'm playing it doesn't really matter does it? The most impressive things I saw were the distortions glass caused in anything beyond the glass, and the 'heat distortion' you could see in items that were extremely hot. The glass distortion was interesting for about 5 seconds the first time I saw it, and then distracting the rest of the time. The heat haze was interesting in one level, and almost completely obscured with smoke effects the rest of the time. Yes, the lighting was very nice, but since its mostly used to create vast areas of darkness to 'freak you out', I began to hate the lighting.
Gameplay was tedious. If you're a huge fan of haunted houses, maybe this will appeal. If you're not, this is just going to drive home why you typically don't see haunted houses year round. It seems like every corridor is filled with false panels. It also seems like hell's minions have absolutely nothing better to do than to go wait behind one of those panels, wait for you to walk past and then pop out behind you. This kind of mechanism should be used at most once or twice in a game. Here it shows up every 5 minutes or so.
Level design is repetitive. Carmack talks about how many levels use up to half a gig of textures. Yet the game comes on 3 CDs. Well the easy explanation for this is that the game has about 4 levels. It has the mars base level repeated ad naseum, the underground caverns level (seen for about 2 levels), Hell (seen in one level and basically the end game) and mars base being overrun by hell (1 level) which really isn't original at all but uses a mixture of textures and design from previous levels. All in all, there are maybe 2 really 'Wow' moments when you're looking around you. This isn't bad, except that the rest of the time, for me anyway, it wasn't so much a lack of 'Wow' but a 'Oh god not this again' feeling.
Sound is well used in the game, but then its only used to try to freak you out.
Overall this is the problem. THe game wants to freak you out. And not just a couple of really good scares, but rather it wants you constantly edgy and terrefied. This isn't really what I want in a game, or at least not what I want the entire game to be about. Think about the most suspenseful movie you've ever watched. Now think about the most suspensful 5 minutes of that movie. Now watch that 5 minutes over and over again. Either you're going to get bored or you're going to need
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Finally someone who isn't an Id fanboy. Now I'm a huge fan of most of Id's products, but I won't buy a product just because it's made by Id - I go on the merits of the game, not those of the company. I mostly play games multiplayer online, simply because I get through single-player games too fast and they get too repetitive to be fun anymore - shiny graphics engines are nothing up to constantly-changing game scenarios, and even the best AI is nothing compared to real human opponents - maybe it's the natural human competitive spirit, I don't know. Doom 3 has been overhyped from the beginning - even if it was the Holy Grail of gaming it wouldn't justify the amounts of hype it's had thrown at it since it's announcement, and if they haven't come up trumps with the multiplayer, then I'm even less likely to shell out a few hundred pounds on my machine just for the privilige of playing the thing. Shiny new technology be damned, I think I'll be sticking with Day of Defeat for the time being, thank you very much - I don't see why I should spend hundreds of pounds on an overhyped, over-shiny game when there are hugely entertaining games I can play on my current (and even much older) hardware without trouble - but then I think the Doom 3 phenomenon is a gamer fashion statement - you have to own it or you're just not 1337 enough... ...of course the big question is... was Hell purty?
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
It's basically a glorified version of half-life and relies far too heavily on good looks, shadows to give the monsters a fighting chance, and a storyline )which, gasp, leads you through hallway after hallway...) to deliver anything. Frankly, between the subtle heartbeats (and I mean, you've got to listen for them to even notice them, they only appear leading upto things), backround noise, and other utter bullshit they threw in from psychology research to set a "scene", I turned it off, deleted the iso's and threw out the disks. Whenever I get afraid, I overpower it with hate and this has progressed to such a point that when I get an adrenaline rush from fear, I immediatly bypass the "OMG something's here, EEK, shoot it!" to terminator mode; acquire target, take in strategic positioning, calculate chance of survival, and then attack/flee. This is what happens to all FPS players given enough time playing.
After about 6 hours of playing I was ready to smash something good as my blood at that point was pure adrenaline; needless to say, I was really REALLY agitated. Thank god I didn't pay out the ass for those 6 shitty hours of playtime, hence the reason I pirate before I buy. This game is not for your seasoned FPS player but more for the average guy who doesn't spend a lot of time playing games who likes to get freaked out at stuff and then shoot it.
Movie-like mental state changing special effects do NOT belong in videogames; whereas a movie is 2 or 3 hours, a game is 40 or 50, and if you ask any psychiatrist, it isn't healthy to give someone that much of a dose, especially if they're going to play it 500 or 1000 hours. You turn into me.
Frankly, I really was hoping they'd be able to throw in some decent gameplay and actually add something to the FPS market besides an engine that can deliver pretty graphics and a mix n' match version of doom and then mask that with pretty graphics and mind altering "scene" setting sounds. I'll hope that they'll salvage the multiplayer so modders can do their thing and make some really kickass mods. It'd be really kewl to see natural selection on this engine, or when HL2 comes out on that one, since it'd compliment it so nicely. Then again, I won't have to deal with steam if I'm on doom3.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I dont know about the rest of the USA, or the world for that matter, but this game cost me 58 bucks tax included. Thats 5-10 bucks more than most brand new games lately. My question is, is gamestop gouging me because they knew that i'd pay the extra 5 bucks because its Doom 3 and i have to have it, or is it Id? Frankly i was really surprised at the bill for this one, and so was my friend. Then again we both proceeded to buy it, so, well...fuck you Id, or game stop, or the whole industry.
As for the game itself, all i can say is wow. For once a game has lived up to its hype, so far. good graphics, awesome gameplay and atmosphere.
stupid cumbersome tension building flashlight!
unfortunately due to the insane hw requirements there will probably be a maximum of 2-3 monsters on the screen at the same time, which really blows as in the original doom/doom2 part of the fun was also mowing down hordes of low-level monsters (imps, marines, flaming skulls) rather than doing the sneak-kill-1-monster-repeat routine.
Doom3 won't run on my box so I'm waiting for some 'real' reviews before deciding if it's worth upgrading now or later for HL2/CS-source. By 'real' I mean 'written by people who have played the whole game two or three times', as I'm sure EVERYBODY will be totally insanely blown away for the first hour, but not if they will be just as much when the novelty of the great graphics wears off.
It also worries me how most reviews seem to say that there are only 10-15 hours of gameplay in the game, which, considering that you probably have to creep around a lot, doesn't seem to point to the levels being that big and/or that many.
-- the cake is a lie
p4 2.4ghz 533fsb
512mb
geforce4 ti4200 64mb
i dont have $400 to buy geforce6 and doom3
I was psyched when I heard they were making this game until they announced they weren't going to put Cooperative play in it. Even the original had Cooperative play and that's part of what made it fun. There's at least 15-20 people I know who won't be buying the game because of that specific reason.
Horrible Multiplayer, no Cooperative play... that's essentially a one shot single player adventure for $54.99. If it was $29.99-$39.99 I would purchase it but now, I refuse to spend money on it. If I hear alot of good stuff about it, I'll ask for it for my birthday or Christmas or something.
Sure you do...they are called cram sessions before the final.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
When the game torrent was first posted on Suprnova last weekend, it had, at one point, 1700 seeders and 30,000 leechers. This was the largest torrent I've seen, probably the largest torrent ever so far. ;-)
I thought it would have been interesting to study such torrent transfer and see how the protocol behaves in these conditions. (br) As for me, I went out and bought the game the next day, of course.
The randomized screenshots viewer is the BOMB!
You click on the link and, POOF, you are redirected to a picture that is not the one you selected.
Leave it up to the id programming staff to create such innovative screenshot technology.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Well, I need a new video card anyway. What are your opinions? I've read all the reviews at Ars etc. I'm looking at under $300.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With the release of Doom3 today, I am taking two weeks of vacation effective immediately. I will not be reachable by direct email, cell phone or smoke signals. Should you feel the need to contact me, please leave a message and I will respond when I stop playing the game because I started hallucinating.
It make take me a while to respond as I expect my fingers to have fallen off by that point. Also, I will most likely be unintelligeable so be prepared not to understand a word I say. After two weeks, please alert all my co-workers to my return. They will need to prepare for my two weeks of body odor as well as purchase very dark sunglasses. I expect I will be very pale by then, perhaps blindingly pale.
Sincerely,
Your local Space Marine.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
to download it.. but only because it won't run on my dated hardware. I can't nor will I likely be able to run it within the next 2 years minimum... it makes one wonder if due to the specs that it will be long lived (because it will take awihle for people to be able to afford the hardware to run it).
I hate computers, upgrades every 6 months, windows... they suck.
Even worse, on my Hitachi 17" LCD screen, it was so dark I could not see what I was doing - literally. There's no gamma correction (only brightness), and the gamma correction that you can use from the ATI control panel seems to be over-ridden by Doom 3. Also, the ATI keys you can in theory use to change gamma in-game (I tried alt-f1, alt-f2), were also ignored.
So I took the game home to my gaming rig. P4, 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9700, 19" CRT, Hercules GameTheater XP surround sound. It reproducibly crashed only 2 minutes into the game. My ATI drivers were about 6 weeks old which I hoped would be late enough - but they weren't. Updated the drivers and I was away, no problems.
The game was perfectly playable at 800x600, including 2x anti-aliasing. The gamma was also not a problem (it just had the right balance, I didn't need to adjust anything). But the surround sound was broken; I heard only very, very feint noises from the rear speakers (perhaps 1/10th volume of front speakers?) and even then it seemed to be almost an echo of the front speakers, rather than positional audio. Very disappointed.
And the game play ? Well, the previous paragraphs are fact, this one is just my take. Honestly, I felt like I was playing the original half life, with a twist of System Shock. The 'plot' is just like half life, so is the atmosphere. It just not, well, as much *fun* as I was hoping :-( Sure, graphically it is superb. And it *is* well done, don't get me wrong. It's just that it's all been done before, just not with the same graphics.
Overall, I'd give it an 8 out of 10. 10 for gfx, but marked down for originality. I should add the caveat that I've only played about 2 1/2 hours of the game - but frankly I would rather be playing Far Cry.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
How long till a Linux binary appears?
I tried running it under WineX (Cedega) and it just went into an infinite loop loading. I tried installing win2k on a partition to run it, and the installer BSoD'ed. Too afraid to try it on my laptop.
The single player isn't incredible unless you've never played an FPS in your life.
Doom 3 offers absolutely nothing new, interesting, or even better, than the average FPS over the past 10 years, not including fancy graphics and scary sounds.
As for the mod community, well, I think Q3 was pretty much ignored mod-wise. ID games just haven't really lent themselves over to the sort of huge mod communities you find in games like Half-Life, or Battlefield 1942. Their mods are at best, slight alterations (Rocket Arena) or ports (TF for Q3). Doom 3 MP sucks so bad out of the box it'll take a small miracle (and an SDK released ASAP) for the community to put it's support behind it and make it fun.
And for some reason, I think all the good modders will simply be holding for HL2 anyway...
Here in California Best Buy is selling the game for about $55. I don't care how "awesome" the game is, or how long it took the developers, or how much marketing costs, or whatever. It's just too damn expensive!
The game pricing inflation has gotten way out of hand.
Okay, so we've established that this game requires a substantial rig to play at anything approaching reasonable rates. The kind of box that would definitely come with a DVD-ROM player or more likely, an 8X DVD Burner. So why, in 2004, are we still forced to load up three CDs?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
The amount of Doom III piracy going on is absolutely sickening.
A DAY BEFORE THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH, between the three torrents on suprnova there were 60,000 people downloading Doom III. This is ignoring the people who will dupe CDs and sell them on the streets of Hong Kong, the people who copy them off friends, and the people who get Doom III off of IRC/Kazaa/Hotline/Gnutella.
If you search Doom III in google, Suprnova comes up on the right side as an affiliate link "download Doom III from this link." If nothing else, if suprnova were an open secret in the g**k community before, it's about to go fucking mainstream.
This is fucking disgusting. More people will have pirated Doom III by Friday than many PC games even ever SELL in total.
I will admit that part of the problem is that ID hasn't released a demo, so no one has any way of knowing whether the game will run on their systems or not. And all the news coverage going "Sure, this game runs just fine on an Alienware 3.0 ghz P4 with a Radeon 9800 pro, although it does make my machine feel a little mediocre" (gamespy) really honestly is scaring the fuck out of me.
I'm buying this game though. I'll be fucked if the sales of this game make the beancounters realize that the only games that sell are the ones with secure multiplayer-only play. If piracy continues at the current rate, companies will start neglecting single player play and concentrating entirely on multiplayer play, simply because single player games are a million times easier to steal.
Piracy could easily kill entire genres. We might not get another Max Payne 2 or a Painkiller if the rate of piracy keeps increasing.
Don't pull that "I always buy games after I download them, so piracy doesn't really matter" bullshit. I've never done it before, I don't know anyone who does it, and it makes no rational sense to do so anyway. Pirates usually only actually purchase MMORPGS or games with secure online play - that's why you see City of Heroes and Final Fantasy XI and Evercrack and Counterstrike and such at the top of the sales charts, since everyone who would ordinarily "download and try the game first" simply is forced to buy the damn game if they want to play it.
Go ahead, keep on bittorrenting Doom III, you wankers. You're killing gaming as we know it. A few more years and there will BE no more Splinter Cells or Painkillers or Max Paynes or Far Crys any other games with godly single player modes but no online play.
I'm buying Doom III tomorrow when it finally comes out in my area. Good riddence to those whom this is addressed.
+set dedicated 1 doesnt seems to work, does anybody knows the dedicated server command line?
I think these are projected figures, and bare no relationship to the facts, other than they are directly related to the projected sales. Hey! One good fake number is as good as another one. The Pirates (and I mean the HArd Core Ones) are never going to buy the Product, no matter what we'd like to think. Also when these figures, are released they never mention the amount of sales the Games provide, once the game come into line with it's actual value. what I mean is once the games hype, and product cycle changes and it hits Walmarts', BigLots' and CompUSA's etc... Secondary sales tier, the $20 section, then the &10 Section and finally the Bargain Bin the Game is still generating sales and those that Pirated the game initially will keep the $$ coming in when the Company really needs it, during Dev time. I mean Hey what's the product actually worth? Now that Cd Burners are dirt cheap and almost anyone who's anyone knows Blanks, are like .20 Cents apiece, throw in some few dollars for marketing (90% word of mouth and Web Hypebole, and Fan loyalty.) So maybe the actuall Physical product is worth $5 or $10, now pay for the Dev and That adds on $50. Come on please... We've been through this ringer with the Music Industry price fixing CD's for years. Why continuing to buy into that malarky?
when have you ever seen the figures for the after release and Product Down-grade expextations? Never and you never will. That is the industries little dark secret, the trickle down sales.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
I know at least 10 people that "pirated" Doom 3. Then we all went out today and bought it when the store would finally sell it to us. Many, many people just wanted the game and it wasn't for sale yet.
It's an okay game, the graphics are "good" but they don't knock me off
my seat or anything like that. There is really nothing new here, it
reminds me a lot of Half-Life, just a lot darker. The environments are
so dark that it's hard to see anything. I know id wanted to scare us,
but after the first 30 minutes it gets repetitive. "Wow, look at that
dark area over there. Could there possibly be a monster in there??"
You pretty much have to use your flashlight constantly in the game,
and then switch over to your gun when you run into an enemy. This is
not fun, it's annoying. Couldn't the flashlight be mounted onto the
guns or something?
If you played Doom and Doom 2 back in the day, you remember rooms full
of enemies where you just go in blasting. It isn't like that in Doom
3, you pretty much take on one guy at a time. Also there's some lame
story element too, unlike the first two Dooms where the story was
"there's a bunch of bad guys and you gotta kill em all!!".
Multiplayer is a joke. 4 players max?? Forget about it, this is pretty
much a single player game.
So is this game worth $55? I would have to say no. The graphics are
neat but not revolutionary and the gameplay is nothing new. Overall
I'd say it's not up to the previous Doom and Quake games.
"Brand new console" is something of a misnomer here. Do you mean the 4-year-old console that was $300 when it came out (PS2) or the 3-year-old console that was also $300 (Xbox)?
Let's not forget that these consoles were sold *below* cost with the intention of making money on the games.
I'm not saying $55 isn't a lot for a video game, but comparing it to the price of 4-year-old consoles that were sold at a loss doesn't prove anything. What you should compare it to is console titles, because console titles are supposed to make up the loss on the consoles. OTOH, PC titles have no need to make up said loss, so why are they getting just as high as the console titles?
UT2004 was a nice exception, costing me only $25.
-Dan
has anyone pointed out that id traditionally has made the real bucks when they license the engine? if doom 3 was really a game to make money, it would have full multiplayer support - not this whimpy 4 player thing. as they did with quake 3, they will license the rendering engine for large chunks of cash. to me, doom 3 is just a showcase for thier real jewel - and a way to break even on the past few years of development
The game gets stale rather quickly. The monsters appearing out of nowhere are annoying. Poof! There's a monster. BANG! Poof! Another monster. BANG BANG! BTW, how many dead zombies can fit in a maintenance closet anyways... Although, the chubby bastards with the rocket launchers for arms were pretty cool.
Outside of the lackluster gameplay, the graphics are F***ing awesome. The detail and lighting effects on everything are incredible (P4 2.4Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI 9800 XT at 1280x1024 with AA). Everything looked on par with the Final Fantasy film graphics. Heat sources ripple the air and explosions ripple the air with concussions. The light from your plasma gun turns objects in front of it blue, etc... Interactivity with the environment is okay as well (objects can be shoved and positioned)
The AI is fairly decent with the gun toting SOBs using cover and ducking when you fire at them (at least on the VETERAN setting)
The $50+ I paid for it - not worth it - $30 maybe... I feel sorry for all those teens who plunk down their hard earned funds and realize the mistake too late...
Far Cry was much more interesting and better in game play value. Hopefully, the modders will make up some excellent improvements to the game and everyone can enjoy it even more. Hopefully, multiplayer will be better...
Where's my Beavertooth Chainsaw?
http://www.martianbuddy.com (Wonder how many hits this site got before the official release)
Cry me a river. You've already waited for four years. What's another week? Or do you have no ability to deal with delayed gratification?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I can't wait to see what McGee does with this engine. Too bad he doesn't work for ID anymore.
-Dan
...whilst I am content to wait for my pre-order to arrive some time next week; I know several of these "Pirates". They want to play the game NOW, not wait until they buy it (and they will) next week.
:)
Hell, if they had released a desent demo, I am certain that the piracy would be significantly reduced.
Course, I reflexively purchase EVERY game with a linux client or for linux as soon as I have the opportunity, so I am hardly a fair or balanced advocate for this kind of arguement
err!
jak.
Doom 3 looks cool, but I probably won't play it for a couple years.
Not just because the Mac version hasn't been released, but because my system works fine for 99% of the tasks I need it to, and probably will continue to for some time. I've upgraded the graphics card already (when UT2003 was released), and I'll probably add dual 1.3ghz G4s at some point. Even then, Doom will probably still perform poorly.
And it's really not a Mac thing. If I were a PC user I'd be responding the same way. It seems to me there has to be a market out there for games that perform well on mid-range computers. There is probably a market for computer gamers who aren't interested in shelling out hundreds of dollars every year -- for one game. Technical limitations shouldn't, and really don't stop one from producing a fun game. This is one of the reasons I enjoy playing emus far more than the latest releases; all the 3D crap gets out of hand sometimes.
A company needs to emerge, or a company like ID should seriously think of creating one kick-ass game targeted at low/mid-range systems; something people with 3 year old systems want just as bad as those with the latest and greatest. I think it's possible.
Older hardware still has a lot of life in it. I remember Sierra games released in the early 90s could still run on PCJrs released in the early 80s. A good game doesn't mean forcing people to splurge on expensive hardware. What I'm talking about here is a game just as well-developed and thought out as Doom 3, but targeted to run on older and newer hardware.
I don't think it's crazy. If anything it would generate more customers, especially if marketed correctly. There's people who enjoy the FPS genre, but aren't interested in the teenage upgrade cycle. Consoles are an answer to a certain extent, but FPS have rarely been executed correctly on them.
until you said "Go play Far Cry".
What does Far Cry have that Doom 3 doesn't, good or bad?
They both suffer from childish plots, but at least Doom 3 has somewhat good voice acting.
They're both praised on their technology, ignoring that games are games first, technological feats second.
They both have the same boring ass linear gameplay, albeit Far Cry is a bit more open. But then again, Doom 3 doesn't have enemies that run out in the open into a hail of bullets like idiots in Far Cry do.
They're both over-rated games because they are both powered by good technology. Technology aside, Far Cry is more open ended, whereas Doom 3 has better production values.
It's a tech demo.
Ok, I thought it would be a tech demo for the longest time. When I started playing it, I was impressed. It looked nice. The sounds of the marines when the base fell were impressivly cool.
The game gets real boring real fast.
There's no real oomph to the weapons. You feel like you're fighting with peashooters. The enemies don't reaact to being shot. The game feels so sterile. There are pretty cool scenes in it, and the graphics are nice...
The game itself is very bleh.
Yet all the game sites will give it top of the line reviews, mainly because they've been hyping it for so long, to go back on that now would look bad.
Compared to the latest and greatest, off the top of my head, Painkiller and Nitro Family were more enjoyable. It's all about the funfactor..something id forgot about.
Parent is TOTALLY correct. More games should have duct tape and stuff like that in it! Jury rig little bits and peices on to your weapons, or make a cool Ripley Flamethrower/Pulserifle combo, or stick on torches and stuff.
I'd mod you up if I hadn't wanted to post.
The ID crew should load up Thief 3 and play "The Cradle". "The Cradle" is scary but interesting. Instead of a never ending stream of monsters, you have a limited amount, and they're not actually all out to get you per default. You can engage, or you can sneak past. One option more than in Doom 3 (as far as I can tell)
"The Cradle" is scary because you'll imagine the worst possible thing happening all the time, and even though the worst possible thing that you imagine doesn't happen, the game use sound, visual and story-telling to keep you on your toes throughout.
In Doom 3, the worst possible thing pretty much happens every turn. If there's a ledge with an item on it, the ledge will fall as you walk on it. If you're backing into a dark corner, there will be a zombie waiting for you This is a much less rewarding experience overall.
Take the place where you find the first shotgun. ID's design: Put a piece of ammo/armor on the floor off the given path. Player jumps over rail the grab item, floor falls out, player ends up in dark room with three/four zombies attacking.
I would probably have designed it thus for a first try: .. player jumps over rail to grab item, floor falls out revealing dark room, player+floor ends up falling on zombie, killing it (can use humor here). Lessons learned: 1) Be careful where you walk. 2) Dangerous creatures are lurking for you in the darkness. 3) They can be killed by dropping heavy things in their heads.
Both approaches would teach the player that exploration is rewarded and that it can be dangerous, one just isn't so obvious about it.
Doom 3 just made me realize how good a game Thief really is. Way underrated.
At least in Thief the lighting made sense most of the time.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I didn't know that you could actually purchase a game until I read this article.
OK, in what way is a lengthy comment on the shortcomings of a game, in an article about that game, 'Trolling'? Holy crap people piss me off sometimes.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
You've hit the nail on the head. The graphics are 2005, but the game play is 1997. Just run around and shoot monsters in dark corridors.
Playing this game is more like a chore than actual entertainment, as I'm only now trying to justify the $55 bucks I spent.
But what I'm really waiting for are some of the really great mods that I know are probably coming out once modders get up and running.
The engine is great, I find myself just wandering around checking out the decor :)
Bringing class into it again. If there's ever going to be any progress...
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
If Doom 3 had been released last xmas I might have upgraded my PC in order to get it running smoothly at a decent resolution. Instead, I'm already waiting for the nForce4 and dual-cpu, dual-video support. It'll be a beast that runs Doom 3 at an impressive resolution and frame rate, but it won't be available until next year.
Hey, I've gone to a couple of websites referred to in the game (via PDAs I've picked up), anyone else do the same? One gave me a code to a locker with a chaingun in it.
p .com
http://www.martianbuddy.com/
http://www.ua-cor
that came out today?
my only complaint so far is that it's so dark that even the flashlight doesn't even really let you see much
I had the same problem, tried setting brightness to max in options, but the game was still much too dark to enjoy. Here is the real solution:
The game has 0-2 gamma levels, level 1 is standard. Open the Console (CTRL+ALT+~) and type in r_gamma 1.5. Now the game is bright enough to play!
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Whoa. You really know this stuff!
Not sarcasm: I'm impressed.
I imagine you are looking forward to Doom 3.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
1. i can't really tell if the graphics are any good or not because I CAN'T SEE SHIT!
2. i seem to recall playing this game four years ago when it was called 'system shock 2'
"Despite the relatively low price of PC games, many gamers are still choosing to resort to piracy rather than pay for legitimate boxed copies," said Matt Pierce, publisher of the computer games magazine, PC Gamer.
Low relative to what? Movies? Nope, sorry, $20 for a movie beats $50 for a game. Music? Nope, $15 for a CD. Maybe low relative to MS Office ($300), but MS Office is not entertainment. For a legitimate comparison you must compare games to other forms of entertainment, music, movies, and books, and games are relatively highly priced when compared to those things. Sorry Matt, you're FOS.
Sigs are for the weak.
The former was a joke but I think the latter is at least a worthwhile inquiry. Different people use different words for the same things. Legalistically, you are 100% correct. Copyright infringement is separate from theft. The reason the EFF, Lessig, and all those guys stress this so much is because calling it theft loudly is what leads to abominations like the DMCA and INDUCE at the federal level. Ok, fine. But if id invests millions of dollars to craft a work of art, or the parent poster toils for hours on a piece of software and simply wants to control to whom he gives it, I think he can be forgiven for feeling like it's a form of theft when he sees it on a p2p network.
Whether or not its presence there will affect sales and irrespective of the definitional differences between copyright infringement and theft, it's just odd to me that people want to jump down the throat of guys who feel like it's a form of theft just because it's not a painting. The fact that the creator doesn't lose his own copy is certainly relevant and important and all, and I'm not making an argument that copyright infringement is equivalent to theft, I'm just sayin that a codemonkey trying to feed his family can be forgiven for feeling like people are thieving his creations if his software finds its way onto p2p networks without his permission.
shrug.
I'm interested enough to give it a go, but if it sucks on my machine - it goes in the bin.
Perhaps you enjoy making uneducated buying decisions, but I do not. If it runs nice - I'll buy it. If it doesn't, it will have to wait.
Good for you that your morals are so well defined. Please don't push them on me. I buy the games I play.
Agreed. Just don't apply labels that don't fit.
Okay, okay. I was trying to make a distinction between the legal "label" and the common usage of the word...
Grrr.
But you're right, and I'm wrong.
(The "legal" and "moral" meanings are certainly not identical. That was what I had hoped to say by using the word "theft"... uh... imprecisely. Apologies all 'round.)
Again, though, don't make the mistake of assuming that the author of a work has some natural right to control the work.
Agreed, and understood - I intended to refer only to the "legal fiction" of such a right, not any "natural right."
<grrr>
...a trip to the cinema to see some inane big budget "ooh...they spent lots of money making it, therefore it must rock" movie by numbers. Cell phones going off every two fscking minutes and peoples stinky armpits a few feet away.
~Versus~
$50.00 for a well honed, blood-sweat-and-tears, state-of-the-art damn gorgeous and hella playable game that will give you many hours of enjoyment . I know the one I'd pick.
You really are getting more bang for your buck buying a decent computer game. Can you sell your movie ticket on ebay after using it? Well, you can sell anything on ebay, but you'll get a lot more for a copy of doom.
If you want to be cheap wait till it comes up in bargain bins the world over before buying it...sucks to be you missing out on all that gibbing now ;oP
Of course, we all know that Doom 3 doesn't really cost $50. First, you'll need a new rig ~$1000 say, then factor in the cost of unemployment when you fail to turn up for work for the rest of the week. Hmmm...maybe the cinema is a better option. ;o)
I am NaN
I was pretty shocked when I did a search for Doom 3 on Google and saw an AdWords ad for downloading Doom 3 on suprnova bittorrent. This is pretty much advertising pirating someone else's property to sell your service. I use AdWords for marketing and am pretty sure this is a violation of their TOS, as well as pretty damn slimey. Text of Ad: Doom 3 on BitTorrent Download Doom 3 using BitTorrent at Suprnova (aff) maybe someone can post an ad on how to rip off suprnova.
I've clocked in about 10 h of play so far, all on single player, so that's what I'll focus on.
The game has a half-life story: Bunch of monsters spawning because of wacko-scientific experiments. Whatever. The guns are all standard, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, grenade, rocket launcher, and of course BFG and plasma rifle; also nothing new.
Gameplay largely involves walking around identical looking factory/metal corridors. The lighting is always always dark. This is particularly frustrating since our hero is incapable of wielding both a flashlight and a weapon. Yes, that's right. The flashlight is technically a weapon, and you can't hold 2 weapons at the same time. That means you often find yourself shooting in the dark hoping you hit stuff. Highly annoying.
There is very little to figure out, all the maps are linear with no more than one-way to go. The 'secrets' in the game usually involve either looking behind a shelf for some ammo, or entering a code you found for some safe.
Because the engine is so taxing, there are very few monsters at any given time. Usually 2, at most 5. There are few open areas.
If you haven't gotten the idea, it's basically a very pretty, but utterly dull shoot 'em up. There is no secondary fire, and the weapons are unimaginative. The storyline is virtually nonexistant. After 10 levels, I still know next to nothing, except ****SPOILER*** there is some 'evil' scientist running around, and there's my marine captain trying to help us contact Earth. *** END SPOILER***.
Finding new monsters is undoubtable the 'coolest' thing, since they are so well made. But that is about the only thing that makes me come crawling back. I'd wait a bit before you consider picking this up.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
It also seems like hell's minions have absolutely nothing better to do than to go wait behind one of those panels, wait for you to walk past and then pop out behind you.
I remember that the best game I played in the modern era (Ultima 3 was the most engrossing when I was 13 or so) was the original Unreal.
I'm not much of a FPS person but I found that game superb. I spent most of the game in God mode because I prefered exploring and seeing the paradisial landscapes and hearing the lonely monastic windchimes.
But what was superb at the time was that the whole thing seemed to have a life of its own. You could sneak up behind monsters and they were standing there prodding and goading each other.
Once, on a dark night I was playing and I came down this winding stairs to find one of those green swamp things shooting at me, so I backed up and then inched slowly out and down the stairs. He was gone. I turned around to go back up the stairs and found him in the air, having jumped at me from behind. Gave quite the shout. But it was so great because the thing had actually found a route to sneak up on my back!
From the sounds of it, the AI in this isn't up to par, which is a pity. Really. At this stage, I would have thought we would be much better. That was on a Pentium 233MMX with a Voodoo 1 card. Now I keep reading about needing more than 10 times that clock speed and who knows how much more graphics just so monsters can sit behind walls?
Could have been worse, I saw "Thunderbirds" last night. $9.25 for an hour and a half of pure shit.
... it's the $2K for a new PC I'm finding hard to justify...
I think $55 for 30 hours of eye candy is reasonable.
Not all copyright infringement is criminal. In fact, most isn't. Hollywood is working very hard to change this, but hasn't completely succeeded yet. As of right now, breaking the copy protection (if any) for your own fair use is far worse in the eyes of the law than proceeding to use that copy for commercial gain.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/506.html
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I get so tired of hearing people claim that the game is unplayable with whatever video card.
:-)
Just to try it out (certainly not expecting anything!) I played the game on my old Radeon 7000 32-meg card. Sure, I had to put everything on the lowest settings, but you could not say that the game was unplayable. The player movement was nearly as smooth as with a higher-end video card.
I guess people have different definitions of "playable", but those people are spoiled brats
I agree with you, The Cradle level in Thief 3 had me saving and saving and saving, turning on the light, checking under my bed. The first time I walked into the attic I was terrified expecting that crazy Grand mother monster to be sitting there waiting for me while eating a child or two.
It was actually scarier because there were fewer monsters, you just thought the entire time 'something is about to happen' and the suspense kept on building. That level is truly a master piece, and cost me a nights sleep.
Doom 3 so far has just been really annoying as that it is really dark, enemies are hard to see and when you shoot them in the head 4 times they keep on coming. The engine would have been a lot better if it was brighter and the physics would mimic combat with actual humans instead of going crazy arcade
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
Looking at online torrent sites you can easily estimates that doom3 has way over 100000 concurrent downloads going on...
that's 0.1 to 0.2% of the net d/ling doom3 !!!
Until game manufacturers make buying the game a higher quality experience than pirating it, piracy is going to continue to be a "problem". To illustrate my point, let's compare my experience buying the game with that of my friend who downloaded it.
.iso image in sequence using Daemon Tools to install each disc (at much faster speeds than loading from a CD). He has no problems reading some cheaply produced CD. He just installs the no CD patch from the beginning, rather than trying to work around iD's ineffective copy protection. He's up and running with the game before I've had a chance to buy it.
Here's my experience: I bought the game just after midnight last night. I waited in line for about 25 minutes to pay $54.99 for the game. I missed getting the free T-shirt because too many other people showed up before me and they ran out. I go home and start to install the game from the CD's. Disc 1 has a serious problem and keeps failing reading at about 98% of the way through. Eventually after trying 2 different CD-ROM drives and cleaning the brand-new disc several times, I am able to get it to read and continue the install. Now, after the game is installed, I try to run it. It won't let me start without disc 1 in the drive. Okay, I get out disc 1 again and put it in the drive. Now it tells me it won't run because I have CD emulation software running. Okay, I disable daemon tools. Still, Doom 3 refuses to load. At this point, I give up and download the NoCD patch. After that, everything works fine.
Compare this experience to that of my friend. My friend just clicked the download link on a Bittorrent site and waited a few hours. After that, he loads each
Obviously, I'm being the good moral person by purchasing the game. However, the fact remains that my experience is notably worse than that of my friend who just pirated it. I guess the game developers don't care.
My other first post is car post.
Has anyone got any idea if Doom3 can take advantage of SMP capabilities? I've got a AMD MP 2400 system with 1GB Ram. I'm wondering if that would be enough?
medium quality, specular on, bumpmapping on, everything else off. Driver set to performance mode. The lowest I have seen the fps counter go is 12. Most of the time, wandering around corridors it's up around 40-45. With several monsters on the screen and/or a big room of course the framerates are at the lowest end (12 fps), but it's still playable and it still looks sweet.
;o).
If anything I'll probably play it on this and hold off upgrading my rig until half-life 2 comes out (gives me 4 more years to save...woohoo!
Other specs, it's playing off a second hd (40gig) that's just used for games and audio. XP 1800+ proc and 512mb ram. So, a fairly low spec machine by todays standards, but it does me fine.
I am NaN
...copyright infringement (it is not theft) is a civil offence. Murder is not.
Murder is one of those in-grained things that humans find abhorrent (unless they like wearing masks and beheading strangers). Copyright infringement and intellectual property are relatively new concepts in human evolution.
I am NaN
Why did you mark me as your foe? Just wondering...
http://linux.slashdot.org/~zoloto
The cheats and consoelc commands have changed some since the alpha version. One of our users posted a pretty good list here:
:)
Doom 3 Console Commands and cheats
If you figure out any more, please let me know.
I didn't really get that old doom feeling until I turned on noclip and walked through a few walls anyway.
I played the original Doom game on my Pentium computer when it first came out. Same with Wolfenstein. I think ID has been stuck with a culture which focuses a lot on the "wow" graphics factor to sell games. Quake I to III were fun but in retrospect they were nothing new.
FarCry while there is a lot of repetition in the gameplay, to some extent - hey it is an FPS - its the first FPS game which truly uses the outdoors to that extent. I don't remember ever seeing a game with a zoom that far on a sniper rifle. In most games you would be 200 m from your target tops. Splinter Cell really broke ground by having great graphics and an interesting edge on gameplay (it prob "borrowed" from Theif though I can't say cause I haven't played it).
My hope is that the success of Far Cry, Splinter Cell and HL2 (as over-hyped as it is) makes ID realize - hey - we need gameplay too! ID can produce wonderfully technical, complete games. Its the polishing of gameplay that is always missing.
Mod parent -1, Disrespecting The Fanboys
I downloaded this beast Saturday night and have played about 4 hours into it.
I'm not one to run around screaming "This game roxors!", and I do understand what many of the complaints here are about. No, there really isn't anything groundbreaking going on (graphics and sound excluded). However, having scarred my lungs from chainsmoking through the original Doom back in the 90's I think id has done a damn good job at recreating Doom for the modern PC.
If you had asked me to justify my usenet leeching Saturday night, I would have responded that I would buy a copy as soon as the linux binaries were released and I knew that it would run acceptably on my box. Truth be told, I'll be picking the box up tomorrow, filing the CD's away for safe keeping, reinstalling my downloaded copy with a legit serial and re-applying the patch.
Why? Because id made a kick ass game and I'll support it.
Something I think that the BBC (and so many in the market) are not considering is this... yes, there's going to be more than the usual amount of piracy going on with D3. Simply speaking, there are a lot of people who just are not sure if their hardware can take it... I wasn't. Now that I am (and that I know linux binaries are on the way), I'll happily throw down my change for the legal copy.
All of that being said... I was damn pleased to see [H]ard|OCP was playing it (mostly) straight. My AMD XP 2500+, 768 Mb, PNY Gefrorce 5600 Ultra, with XP Pro runs this just fine at 800x600 with medium detail. In a few places, I've turned it up to 1024x768 with fully glory effects and just stood still to examine the screen. Usually, if I do this I'm damned disappointed when I go back to playable settings... this time, I wasn't.
Anyway... longwided and sounding a bit like a fanboy, I know. But I just wanted to add my two cents in. Heavy piracy won't surprise me. Neither will users buying the game after they've tested it out, either.
The big reasons for going legit will be Coop mode. Whether it's a really well done user created mod, or an id add-on... that'll be the biggest reason for many to drop their burned CD's and pickup a serial.
#SickNotWeak
Very well said !
Exactly what I felt.
And there are actually some things in FarCry which were done better. For example, the way the hanging tubelights move and their light looks in the smoke.
Water in Farcry looks excellent. Havent seen water in Doom3 yet.
Then the vehicles. Including very realistic water craft. Not to mention the hang glider. There are also a number of guns/cannon you can take control of.
A very interesting sniper rifle. And many weapons.
You dont have to change your gun to throw grenades ! How simple is that ?!
Enemy in Farcry is definitely smarter than Doom3. In doom, only the soldiers seem to hide or take cover. The others simply rush you. The "scare" factor in Doom is no longer scary, but simply tedious.
Basically, a number of things were done well by Crytek. Only thing they screwed up BigTime in was having no quick save. The 1.2 patch was supposed to fix this but that was since recalled. But they did release their SDK to make mods etc.
You can find Farcry for 35$. Definitely worth it. Cant say the same for Doom3.
No, dipshit.
Lets get one thing Straight Right now. doom3 is not about making money off the masses doom 3 is another ID tech Demo for other game developers, they are anticipating other companies signing up to use the engine. multplayer in doom 3 is an outright joke looks just like the old 4 person shoot'm up from yor and damnit i want dwango support in it. you can ballyhoo all you want for or against piracy ids business as of late has been creating engine tech that others used, look at half life, it was based off quake2 and just Think of how many spins off came of quake3. thats where the cash cow is.
Future Shop has a good deal going on Doom 3...
Buy Doom 3 and get Knights of the Republic free, along with a poster (oooooohhhhh) and a figurine (aaaahhhh).
Not a bad deal.
Indeed.
As for more interesting games, considering Call of Duty takes place during WWII, I'd say you don't play too many 'interesting' games.
Why did I bother paying for the game when i'm forced to goto gamecopyworld in order to get it to do anything ?
Is anyone else having these problems ?
I just want to know when they'll open source the Quake3 engine!
There's an old "rule" in various occupations that you should put in as much as you need, no more.
Good writers strive to cut out as much filler as they can. You write, and then for each sentence you go "Could I say this more succinctly?", "Could I cut this?". This makes the story tight. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
It's been said that you can tell an amateur artist from the master at a glance, based on the fact that the amateur will overdo it and put a lot of things into the painting/sculpture/set, where the master will approach the problem without the clutter.
An old-style founder will tell you that it's the simple lines that are the hardest to get right, not the ornaments. Mastery of the simple lines is what sets you apart from the grunts in the middle of the pack.
This seems to be the failure of Doom 3.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
"Shalebridge Cradle" is the most terrifying experience I've ever had in a video game (and that's saying something, System Shock 2 had me jumping out of my skin more than once). That one level alone is reason enough to buy Thief: Deadly Shadows....it is a work of pure, twisted genius.
I said it before and I'll say it again: If ID was serious about making a really scary game they should have hired or contracted some ex-Looking Glass alums (like the ones involved with Thief over at Ion Storm). "Shalebridge Cradle" is a prime example of what the medium of the video game can create--sheer, horrifying atmosphere. That one level made the hair on the back of my neck stand up--I had to stop playing because it SERIOUSLY creeped me out (and I was jumping at every creek my house made afterwards). And that part of the mission was empty! It was all done with pure visual atmosphere and sound! When the "residents" of The Cradle showed up...well, play the damn game. Seriously.
Doom 3 is a carnival haunted house compared to "Shalebridge Cradle".
"A fixation with hell imagery that most of us grew out of after junior high."
You understand that IS the target audience?
How old are you?
I get about 10-15 fps on my Athlon 2600, 512mb, Nvidia FX 5200 Ultra. This is a fast computer for everything BUT Doom, and the game runs like ass.
Owning doom without a killer machine is like buying a mercedes benz before they paved the roads in your town. So I will now remove my desktop shortcut and will look for it again in 2-3 years when the price is right to upgrade.
Damn yous all to HELL!!! The Mastercard is for emergency use only. Stop TEASING ME!!! I don't get paid until Thursday, you bastards. :P
Been out of touch with the warez scene for a few years now, but which warez group gets the sheer geek karma for releasing it?
I was wielding double shotguns in Marathon 2 ages ago.
if you like linux, and would like more hardware support (hey, games [largely] drive consumer hardware), buy linux build of doom 3.
even if you dont play games, buy this game to support linux, if other companies see some remarkable sales for a linux title, then they are more likely to want to spend time developing for linux.
money talks. (i think that buying this game will make more of an industy impact, but support your local distro too! free for you costs someone somewhere something)
|plastic....or gasoline?|
So, i suppose an AMD 1ghz TB, 512meg of ddr and a GF2 GTS / 32meg is utterly unusable? In terms of playability when all fancy gfx & fancy sound are turned off/limited to basic sound?
/isn't/ AAO we're talking about, and i did read the min specs listed elsewhere.
America's army plays with it fine. Yes, i know this
---
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."- Friedrich Nietzsche
Fueled by hype and its obvious availability I thought about DL'ing Doom3 to see what all the fuss was about.
I will never purchase this game, but I may have "pirated" it out of curiosity. So I go with they aren't losing any money on me arguement. Yeah you heard that one before, but there is a reason I would never buy it. I can't play FPS games as they give me motion sickness. So if I DL it just to have a look, am I a "Pirate", am I costing ID money? I don't think so...
In the end I didn't download it, not because of some sense of moral quandry, but because I figure there will be a much smaller demo in the offing that will tie up my connection for a shorter time and be easier to install.
I wonder how many would not DL the game if the demo was available. Couldn't have that though, you wouldn't be able to raise the "Piracy" hue and cry if 90% of the people DL'd the demo and 10% the "Pirate" version of the game...
Wow. Who knew id would beat Valve to releasing Half Life 2 to the public.
In about four years, I figure I'll pick up Doom 3 for a similar price, assuming that it doesn't suck.
Why on Earth people are in such a hurry I have no idea. The game isn't going to vanish if you don't buy it the first day, and it's not like it's the only good game in existence.
The cake is a pie
Is the Doom 3 Engine done in OpenGL or DirectX?
Give id credit for their work, guys. From every moment I'm in the game I see the considerable amount of work put into every square meter of the level. I got the game today, and I can say that this is the most complete, engrossing, and well-executed FPS I have ever played. Its lack of innovation, instead of making me dislike the game (new wheels don't have to be invented to make a great game!) makes me want to strangle all other FPSes to at least get them to the level of Doom 3. Judging from the more negative reviews of the game, the main cause of the feelings is more overly high expectations than anything else--did you really expect (Doom 3 > FPS > shooting at lots of AI bots) to return true? I didn't. But, in my opinion, iD has taken a very tired, though tried and true, formula and made it so the formula wasn't so easy to see. Repetitive play? When the individual elements that are being repetitive are greater than the sum of their parts, it gives you a high--a reason to go on to the next room, a reason to press the quick load key. It's like repeatedly doing very well in Counterstrike and proving time and time again to the rival clan memebr who thinks he owns you that he is t3h nub. Far Cry had a similar level of repetitiveness, but it didn't feel creative, it didn't give me the sense of chaos and unending mayhem that Doom 3 does. You scream repetition, but I gladly agree with you. Just not with "Doom 3 sucking."
A game can be hugely innovative, executing the most ambitious of design docs--but all of this falls flat without sufficient Little Things That Add Up (TM). It makes me feel as if people are bashing Doom 3 because when they are playing, they aren't really "playing" it--they spend so much time looking for the big picture (Doom 3 is just another FPS) that they miss those little things.
Well put.
#SickNotWeak
Gateway 2000 486DX2/50
784kb RAM
Generic S3 video card
Windows 3.1
Haven't finished copying it to 5.25" disks yet but I'll let you know when I'm done installing it!
How dare you draw a comparison from the violent crime that can permenatlly damage the victim both physically, and mentally to someone copying a game!
You need to get some priorities straight asswipe.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can hardly wait!
The multiplayer is forgettable overall. It seemed like an afterthought (or a bone tossed to the kiddies who refuse to play anything that they can't pwnz0r other people at online), which it was, since Doom 3 was meant to be primarily single player.
The single player starts out tense and atmospheric, and quickly gets dull. A lot of people will try comparing this game to System Shock 2, but outside of the audio/video logs and oddly designed facilities, the scares never really change.
Idiots will probably respond to this with, "ZOMG ITS ANN FPS WAT D U EXPCT", but the scares almost never change. Enemies bust out of strangely hidden compartments in the walls and cealing behind and in front of you, and you'll be able to guess exactly where the lights will mysteriously go out after about an hour of playing.
Comparing Doom 3 to Half Life is just stupid. The grunts in HL actually try to flank you and use grenades to drive you out of cover. The zombie marines in Doom 3 either run up and empty their clip at you, or find a single spot of cover and pop out every couple seconds to shoot. Pretty much everything demonic just rushes you from whatever wall compartment you walked by.
Did I mention that your flashlight is separate from your guns, and you can't even have a pistol and flashlight out at the same time? Combine that with how freaking dark Doom 3 is (and it is VERY dark), and you'll either be getting chewed up switching back and forth from flashlight to gun, or just firing blindly in the dark. Yeah, that's fun alright.
Doom 3 makes an awesome first impression, but in the end the whole experience is just shallow. The engine is incredible and no doubt the mod scene will do some amazing stuff with it, but Doom 3 isn't revolutionary. Hell, it's barely evolutionary.
Pick it up now if you're starved for a passable singleplayer FPS, or if you're looking to impress all the l33t kiddies with your framerate counts.
For everyone else, wait until Id comes to their senses and drops the price to $45-50.
Grand theft Auto?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Does Doom3 have a co-op mode? because if it does, I'll go buy it right NOW. If not, I'll wait a bit - fun co-op games are rare, and if it's honestly that creepy, 2 makes for twice the fun.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I haven't read all previous comments yet, but am I the only one under the impression that id Software actualy released Half-Life 2 before Valve?
I mean... With all due respect, Doom 3 is not Doom. It is Half-Life all the way, from the dying co-workers who use ther last breath to tell you something, to the monsters appearing in a lightning bolt, to the failed-scientific-experiment scenario, to the vending machines in the cafeterias, to the various scientific heavy machinery, and the list could go on...
The more I play (whoops. Yup, go the, erm, "pre-release" from the net. I plan to buy it anyway.), so, the more I play, the less I feel I am actualy playing Doom. It is just like returning to Half-Life, but with better graphics, some new monsters and a brand new PDA.
This sequel is far from the gloomy libraries, the mighty cyber-spiders and the whole "satanic" mood I loved so much in Doom I & II. Somehow, it is more mature, and had Half-Life not been created yet, it would be a great game. But despite the terror I feel in the dark corridors and the stress between each quick-saves, I can't help but think that Valve already came up with that game before.
Actualy, I feel just as if George Lucas had directed Doom 3. I feel betrayed. id don't owe me anything, but what I was yearning for is not what I got while playing Doom 3.
Oh. And whoever at id who got the silly idea of making the flashlight your main and most important weapon should be raped.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
It's old school, but I remember seeing Atari 2600 Asteroids priced over $50 (in 1980's dollars!) when it came out, and that's around 20 years ago.
$54.99 for a quality interactive sci-fi / horror movie like that seems cheap as hell in comparison. Quit yer bitchin'.
I saw "Thunderbirds" last night
*gasp* You poor bastard. Call 911 immediately; there may still be time to save yourself.
Also, if you see Bill Paxton's or Ben Kingsley's careers in the emergency room say a little prayer for them.
id really are damned if they do and damned if they don't with all the people who think they know what makes a good game.
Everyone screams that id doesn't make games with good stories, conveniently forgetting that what they've traditionally made are arcade-action games. Now they finally turn around and make a deep and intense game with a decent story and everyone derides it as crap, boring, repetitive and nothing new.
Hey, guess what - games are by their nature repetitive! You yourself even say that you don't like the sort of game that Doom is - so what the fuck are you complaining for? It's a remake of Doom, what else did you expect other than running around a base on Mars gunning down monsters? Do you think a base on Mars overrun by demons and shit would be anything other than dark corridors and rooms? FFS! The story seems like Half-Life because Half-Life seems like the original premise of Doom!
I've only played an hour of the game so far because I'm too tied up at work (where I make games) this week, but from what I've seen so far it's an amazingly polished game. I'm hanging for the weekend when I'll have the time to setup my new surround sound system and be able to sit down in a dark room for a long time and immerse myself in the experience. I hope it continuously scares the shit out of me when I'm not oohing and aahing at the polished design.
Good luck running Windows 3.1 on 784k of RAM. I actually was around when Win3.1 was the OS of choice (with a 486SX-33) and 4MB was considered the minimum. The hardcore geeks had an unimaginable 16MB.
...and you expect them to have Doom 5 out by 2014?! Try 2041, if we're lucky ;)
A while back Epic patched UT2004 to stop checking the CD. Makes me happy since I HATE hunting down CDs. I am not good with CD care and oringals are likely to get destroyed if I keep them on my desk. I much prefer to install the game, pack it back in the box, and deposit that on my games shelf.
The not working with CD-ROMs is getting to be a real problem too. I happen to have one that all the protections like so far, but I know plenty of people that don't. The new SecureROM is a particular whore about this. It is so damn agressive that it just won't work at all on a ton of CD drives out there. Talk about an unacceptable situation.
The sad fact is that you CAN'T legally crack or download a game you bought. You'd think so, I mean you paid for it, who cares if you remove the CD protection? Well it didn't used to matter, but thanks to the DMCA, that's now illegal in the US (I assume we are speaking of the US here since that's the only country I know of that Doom 3 is out in). So you can buy a game, and literally have no legal way to play it other than to also buy a new CD-ROM. Ya, THAT'S fair.
I wish developers would do a little more research. I have a feeling that copy protection makes about fuck-all difference in copying rates. Think: a professional group will get the game, and release a crack. That will get circulated online, so there will be an unprotected version available to those that would break the law. What does it really matter then if a normal person could just make a copy? I mean I am aware of no CD, dongle, key server, etc protection that doesn't get broken. Games with the latest whiz-bang SecureROM protection, apps that use FlexLM, all cracked and available online.
I would be willing to bet that if they really got down to it, the amount it cost them to purchase the protection (the stuff isn't free and is generally a per copy sold cost) is greater than or equal to the amount it saves in copying. Those that want to copy it illegally can do so anyhow, thus I bet it serves no other purpose than to poss off legit consumers and to make the CEO types have a warm fuxxy feeling of false security.
Turning up gamma and brightness settings on your computer won't help, and nor are they meant to. You see, as I have discovered, id has deliberately made this game so that the above won't work. Why? Because that would destroy the best part of the fear factor that makes this game so great.
In layman's terms, what they have done is set black 0,0,0 as absolute darkenss, and then set anything in shadow to that same colour. So unless something is actually lit up by a proper light source, YOU WON'T SEE IT even if you bump your brightness etc to max. That's the beauty of using a real lighting engine instead of fake lighting as every other game before it has done. Now you NEED to use the flashlight to get around. Yes, it freaks you out when a creature jumps out at you and you need to fumble for your shotgun etc. But that's the point! It's a fear factor game. Enjoy it for what it is, don't try to game the system (which you can't do anyway).
Visceral Psyche Films
So you're all set. For those of us, and I'm not claiming its all of us or even a majority, who want a little more out of our gameplay, well this just doesn't fit the bill. Just because its a remake of a previous game doesn't mean it should be constrained to do ONLY what the original game did.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
I know I'm probably in the minority, but I use Windows Server 2003 as my desktop environment (seems to be more stable than Windows XP, and in general the system seems a hair bit more responsive). The thing with DOOM 3 is that it won't install on Windows Server 2003 (even tried with compatibility mode set to Windows 2000 and Windows XP, no dice). Just something for anyone else running WS2003 to keep in mind.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
what prey-tell is this mystical "engaging story" I keep hearing people associate with Half-Life?
Did we play the same game? I spent most of my time quick saving and reloading.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're bitching as if this is something new. When Doom and Doom 2 were out, the situation was nearly the same. In fact, I knew dozens of people in my college dorm that played Doom 1/2 all the way through, and played all the damn time. I think of the 20-30, I can think of only two that had legit copies. Most had the pirated version, and others had only the shareware version.
Proportionately, I'm fairly certain that the numbers of legit users to pirates are probably the same. Sure, there's a lot more pirates numerically, but I think that the ratio is probably no more than it was 10-15 years ago.
An online author, and for the life of me I can't remember who (someone who linked to the article would be doing a huge favor), wrote a year or two ago that online piracy was a fact of life and should be considered a tax of popularity. Besides, how many people listen to the radio for one or two good songs from an album instead of buying the album? How many people read a book through their local library instead of buying it? How many people buy used games or music (and not a dollar of which sees iD or, say, Island Records)? Even if we're not talking intellectual property, how many jeans are stolen at the Gap?
I think iD will walk out of Doom 3 quite a bit richer than if they hadn't released it all, so I wouldn't worry about John Carmack starving on the streets with a sign reading "Will Code Huge Hit Game for Food." If rampant piracy of their game somehow surprises iD, shame on them. People getting your product for free is part of doing business.
How many times do I have to see:
"10 out of 10!! I can't wait to play it!!!"
WTF? That's not really a review is it.....
it doesn't detect my surround sound setup (sb live! with klipsch pro media 4.1's)
I had this problem with an Audigy 2, but I found a solution. I dunno if it would translate to a Live!, though.
I went into the speaker settings in Control Panel, and set the speakers to "5.1" -- this is a Windows setting, not a setting with the EAX software. Because the EAX software was still set to 4/4.1 speakers, there was no loss of audio (ie, the card was still outputting 'center' channel sounds to the left and right speakers simultaneously). Doing that, I was able to get proper surround sound from the game.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
"Despite the relatively low price of PC games, many gamers are still choosing to resort to piracy rather than pay for legitimate boxed copies," said Matt Pierce, publisher of the computer games magazine, PC Gamer.
Forgive me for being a cynic, but I don't see 60 bucks as "relatively low price". Give me the game for 20 bucks (like counterstrike) and I'll go out and pay money. Try to sell it for 60 (especially a single player game) and I won't buy it. Either I just won't get it at all, or I'll just download or copy a friend's CD or (heavens no) I'll wait until he's done with it and play it afterwards. I can only assume that constitutes fair use of a single-computer licence, but I wouldn't be suprised if it were forbidden by the EULA.
Yes,
Very well written! Kudos!
Duck tape (for attaching flashlights to guns)
I haven't seen much complaints in here so far, but it seems like a lot of people with Radeons (me included) complain about intermittent graphic lockups and freezes...
I started having those problems after the first few objectives, starting in Alpha Labs.
After trying all the obvious solutions (updating drivers for various hardware, trying the different sound settings in dxdiag, etc.), I found that turning AGP completely off makes the game stop freezing.
Hope this helps any of you, because I was just about to throw the Doom3 CDs out the window when I found the solution.
.. from when the first ^%$# flame-spitting nasty guy jumped out of a dark corner... damn, haven't had a game get my pulse up like this in years.
Yeah, I know a lot of people stole it. As usual, the rest of us pick up the tab for them. In this case, it's well worth it.
They (now?) have a visible hit counter. Wed, 4 August 2004 Total unique visits: 60911 Unique visitors today: 14636
The running joke among BBSers in my area when Doom I and II came out was; "Only one person has actually ever purchased a copy of this game!"... Every decent board had a copy of Doom(x), it took me until Ultimate Doom ('bout the time local BBSing turned to corporate MBBSs) for my to buy a copy.
Doom is synonomous with piracy. If someone tallied the most pirated game, it would be DoomI.
Speaking of, can't someone set up a poll or tally of the amount of people who use piracy as "try-before-buy"? When someone posts "I pirated it to see if it sucked", 10,000 people tell them that their the only one. This annoys me, I think it is a common practice, especially in games where the rumors say that God would have a hard time comeing up with a system to play it.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Gamespot and the BBC are reporting that several thousands of illegal copies of Doom 3 were pirated over the weekend, shaping up to be one of the most pirated pieces of software of all time. One technology correspondent estimates that Activision and id Software lost up to "$2,749,500 worth of software at Doom 3's $54.99 sticker price." Activision has no comment, but Matt Pierce of PC Gamer has some harsh words. John Carmack is reportedly very unhappy. The game was legally scheduled for release today.
The spiritual successor to SS2...
Read Pynchon.
I expected something to differentiate it enough to make me want to play. Is that so much to ask?
Half-Life was different. That's why I liked it. Deus Ex was different. That's why I liked it. Far Cry was different...you get the idea.
Hell, I've already SEEN this shadowy bump-mapped corridor thing done in Far Cry's interior levels. Yet those areas were interspersed between buggy/boat driving, gorgeous tropical outdoor environments...hell, even hangliding.
I'm hugely disappointed. I was a big fan of the original Doom games, but even they provided more variety than this. EVERY SINGLE ROOM is dark and shadowy. After a while, I was predicting every corner that something would be hiding in and pop out of. It felt so contrived.
Think about this--would this game be getting the press it's getting if it was done by a company other than id Software and wasn't carrying the name "Doom" on the box? No...people would be saying the bump-mapping is nice, but the gameplay is repetitive. How PC Gamer gave this a 94% amazes me. Wait, I forgot, id Software is the gaming media's darling child. Meanwhile, Epic, CryTek, Valve, and more have all caught up to id and surprassed them.
It's like id Software made a FPS from the 90s. Run, shoot, run. But with even less variety than the original Doom! They haven't caught onto the current FPS genre at all. Nice engine, but boring game.
were actually linked to by the SAME image in thumbnail, as opposed to having thumbnails that link to completely different pics most of the time. You'd think they'd proofread or something.
Christ, I thought the exact thing when I first received my pistol and went into a dark room.
"Four years of development, and they never thought to combine both weapon and light source?"
Hey, at least the Imps have multiple eyes now. If I could see them.
From what I've read in various posts, would someone like to show the main character how to duct tape his torch to his gun?
I felt exactly as you did the first 20 minutes. When I went into the base, and the UAC promo played on that kiosk, I was thinking this was the best single-player experience ever. I went into the kitchen and watch the news until the video ended. I was soaking in this incredible environment.
:( Hopefully I'll want to play again tomorrow, but damn, Far Cry is looking good right now.
Then I found the scientist and the enemies came and the lights went out.
Congratulations on discovering the other 19 hours and 40 minutes of the game--entering pitch black rooms with things in the corners! Then, after that, you get to enter a semi pitch black room with things in the corners! All that detail seems to disappear except for the random PDAs you find.
Huge disappointment for me. I was actually so bored, I quit the game just to post here on Slashdot!
You can hardly see where you are walking, for crying out loud. And don't mention the pathetic flashlight.
Now FarCry was a game that was well lit, give us more of those.
Yes, that's right, it's called freedom, where you get to sue someone if you want to, and courts can, if they so choose, throw out a case or hear it.
Believe it or not, just because someone gets sued somewhere and wins doesn't mean all the other 49 states are the same way. Or all the other judges, for that matter. Marketplace of ideas and all that.
Now they finally turn around and make a deep and intense game with a decent story and everyone derides it as crap, boring, repetitive and nothing new.
Maybe because the "intense game with a decent story" is crap, boring, repetitive, and nothing new? Sorry, but turning out the lights and then throwing a guy with perfect aim at me isn't my idea of a good story or an intense game. You want intense? How about a squadron of mercenaries hunting me in the jungle while their patrolling helicopter circles overhead, whooshing the grass below? Yes, I'm talking about Far Cry.
I loved Doom 3 the first 20 minutes. After hell invaded and all the lights went out, the story and gameplay suddenly disappeared. I find that actually battling the enemies sucks because I have no room to do it in, and most of the time it's in pitch black stencil shadows in which they can see perfectly and I can't. Didn't we move past that four years ago? I remember hiding from enemies in the shadows way back in Deus Ex.
I'm sorry, but I just wasn't impressed. It's a polished game, but that's all I can tell. That corpse without the head sure looks pretty! But after I've seen it, what's left? A pretty corpse.
It's dominated by games like Roller Coaster Tycoon and--the holy grail--The Sims.
Expect The Sims 2 to dominate when it comes out this year.
The game is so smegging linear that it makes me cry. It's like they took the level design from the original doom.
:-(
I wonder what the martian base designers were thinking when they started adding small closets with blinking emergency lights all around the complex, and it's weird how all those nasty demons from hell go hide in them.
I'd also pay good money to have electric tape in Doom3, like to tape the smeggin' flashlight to a weapon or something.
Halflife is better. I wish I'd saved my money for halflife2.
I'm sorry, I really, really tried hard to enjoy it. It's not that I need big bright graphics to tide me over. I loved the hell out of Deus Ex back in the day.
I thought Doom 3 was the greatest game ever for the first 20-30 minutes. Checking out the news channel and viewing UAC's promo vids was sheer heaven. After hell took over and all the lights went out, suddenly I picked up the formula. After a while, I was guessing every corner something would be in. Sure enough. It got to the point where for every new room I entered, I would run in to hit the trigger than backgrack and just wait for whatever it was to appear so I could kill it and move on. I didn't feel like I had any real room to fight the monsters, and it was too dark for me to get any good shots, so that's how it mostly was for me. Run in, run out, wait for baddies to come to me so I could pick them off.
It just got stale. Believe me, I wanted to enjoy it as much as you clearly want me to. I'm not bashing id's efforts or the engine itself (even if it is way too dark). I can appreciate id's hard work while still criticizing the final product's shortcomings.
20 hours of black, silver, and red? No thanks!
All this game shows is that Carmack needs Romero as much as Romero needs Carmack.
They compliment each other and apart things are only half done.
512 ram (2100, i think)
32 meg Gfarce MX200 (I know, I know)
5200rpm 40gig HD
Performance is on the high end of unplayable, or the very low end of playable. (compared to UT2003 which was pretty good)
On the lowest setting @ 640x480 it's somewhat better than quake 1 on a 4 meg S3. Playable until you have to kill things. I think. I was freakin'. Scary. I'm not even sure if it was me or the poor 32 meg vid card. I quit after the monsters came.
Speaking of video...wow. Eye f'ing candy. Even on the lowest setting, everything is sweet sweet eyecandy. Really. I had to try the high setting at 1024 - that was mindboggling. Everything was very render-y. The whole 'playing a cutscene' is no joke. However it plays like Myst at that point.
I can see a videocard in my future. Maybe a new motherboard. Some more ram. A faster hard drive.
Oh. And a money tree growing out of my ass.
I could not agree with your post more. As I play through Doom 3 I keep thinking about Thief 3. "The Cradle" was terrifying - I could not play it at night. It was exceedingly well done.
As you say - the worst happens to you ALL THE TIME. So, it really just becomes a case of "run through level fast - shoot anything that moves".
So, for me, I don't find it scary. Beautiful graphics? Yes. Good voice Acting? Yes.
Interesting? Sorta...
I played the original Half Life single player again over the weekend, and I found that to be a better game too. id has done what they always do with a game. They have produced an excellent engine, and I wonder when someone will make a good game out of it. Half life was excellent, and not always "creepy dark" like Doom 3. Thief 3 was excellent, and mostly "Creepy Dark", but then, that is Thief, and the whole game is based around hiding in the shadows.
I agree with you - after being surprised a few times, it just gets old. I have been "surprised" by monsters more times than I can count now, and I have rarely been startled.
I have not tried the Multiplayer yet, but it should be more rewarding than the massive multiplayer out there. I will enjoy seeing what the Mod scene does with this.
For those who are checking system specs (outside of HardOCP)
I have:
AMD Athlon 2500 Overclocked at 3200
ATI All In Wonder 9800 Pro 128 MB
512 MB Ram
160 GB 7200 8MB Cache Hard Drive
Nforce 2 Chipset with Soundstorm Sound
The game is playable at 1024X768 with High Quality settings, but unfortunately, whenever I approach a door, my framerate drops into 1-2 frames per second or lower. Otherwise, when not loading level sections, the game runs above 30 FPS. Also, when loading certain sounds, the game drops into low framerates.
Generally, I play at 800 X 600 with Medium Quality settings, but this does not totally eliminate the "door issue".
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Speaking of, can't someone set up a poll or tally of the amount of people who use piracy as "try-before-buy"?
Wish granted.
Ok, maybe not as bad as B&W, but clearly all the first reviews are overrating the game... badly.
The game is more linear than y=kx+m and AI is yet to be seen. Some say it's a sneaking game, but then how is it you are unable to hide from enemies? (except running away half the level).
Graphics and shadows are nice but in my opinion Thief III was a much scarier game (Asylum? did you *really* play with sound on all the time?).
Out of the 5 people that say they thought it was crap, 4 of them admitted to playing only a few hours and then stopping.
To these people, I say this.
PUSSY!
As for me, I'm heading back to Mars, this game is the most immersive scary goddamn soul burningly freaky horror fest of infinte scariness ever. I had to play this game *for* my friend on *his* computer, because he was too scared to play it. I'm also fairly sure that his chair is the proud owner of several of my most spontaneous stool samples.
Big thumbs up from me, BUY THIS GAME!
What kind of horrendous crap hardware do you have that you can't make it through an install? just curious.
About a month ago, I upgraded my motherboard, memory, and CPU to handle Doom 3. Today, I spent $400 on a GeForce 6800GT. Playing D3 is honestly amazing.
The ironic part? After spending all of that money on hardware to play Doom 3, I got the game from a bit torrent. It feels a bit funny to have blown almost $1,000 on hardware to play a game, but not spend the $50 to buy the game itself.
Next paycheck, I think I'll go buy the game.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
For those of us, and I'm not claiming its all of us or even a majority, who want a little more out of our gameplay, well this just doesn't fit the bill.
Then why don't you shove your self-superiority and go find some different games? We have more than enough pretentious assholes around here already.
A generation is defining itself through virtual combat, without the casualties or consequences of World War II and the Vietnam War.
Hey, Time! Or rather, Lev Whateveryournameis! If you'd take your mouth off Chuck Palahniuk's ("Our war is spiritual") worm-ridden wang for ten seconds, you'd see that we have a fucking war! And yes, people of gamer age are dying in it.
Sheesh. Damn lazy journalists.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
666 comments? Now if that isn't totally appropriate given the subject matter, I don't know what is. :-)
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
And there are actually some things in FarCry which were done better. For example, the way the hanging tubelights move and their light looks in the smoke.
Whoop de frikkin do. I don't recall Carmack ever saying that the game would be the be-all and end-all of game engines, but there are probably many things that Doom 3 does better than Far Cry. But then, Carmack isn't a pretentious little dick who sees fit to bitch about other people's work despite never having done any of his own.
Enemy in Farcry is definitely smarter than Doom3. In doom, only the soldiers seem to hide or take cover. The others simply rush you. The "scare" factor in Doom is no longer scary, but simply tedious.
Mindless zombies that use tactics would be a bit of a contradiction, no? If they're too easy for you, kick up the difficulty and wait for the harder enemies.
If a game can't hold my attention enough for me not to do this then its not a good game.
Are you one of those kids whose mother plopped you in front of a TV all of your life, and now can't pay attention to anything if it doesn't have bright, colorful shapes bouncing in your face?
I've played a lot of games, and used cheat codes on virtually all of them at one point or another. I can honestly say that the more cheating I did in a game, the less enjoyable it was, and the less I wanted to play it.
Do yourself a favor, stop backing down from the challenges.
THe game wants to freak you out. And not just a couple of really good scares, but rather it wants you constantly edgy and terrefied. This isn't really what I want in a game, or at least not what I want the entire game to be about
Well, then why did you even bother playing it? Carmack has been telling us for years that the game would be like that.
steve
First paragraph: Getting directly to the point, I like that. Starting off with a definition of your subject: kinda tired.
"...a little boy's wish, a grown man's hope..." - nice one there.
"frag-laden joyness" - 'frag-laden' makes me cringe a bit but making up words like joyness I like.
"hunger gnawing" - hunger always gnaws. Try something else.
"my unblinked eyes drying out as mosquito after mosquito lay filthy eggs on my unmoving door-focused corneas" - bad attempt at Fight-Club-esque gross-out narrative. Unblinked/unmoving is clumsy and redundant.
"setting paws" - a bit cliche.
"I shall then flee home..." - shifting into future tense, nice touch there, but you aren't consistent with your tenses.
"demented air conditioner" - demented: cliche.
"struggles... shared SDRAM that it so tenuously controls..." - the anthropomorphic sense is great here. We can almost personally experience the struggle.
"megabyte after megabyte" - remember 'mosquito after mosquito'? Let's find other ways of saying 'a lot'.
"another flow of hot piss" - The reader hasn't forgotton that you piss yourself. There's no need to allude to it 3 times in a paragraph.
"Suddenly, " - Make the reader feel the suddenness with you, instead of simply stating, "it was sudden." The previous paragraph gives the game away.
"sucking, pumping and routing" - recalls "punching, kicking and gouging"
"Then, it hits me." - unfunny pun. And trim the next sentence down a bit.
The conclusion: after finally installing Doom3, you are thwarted at the last moment. Tell us how you feel about that!
Good effort, some genuinely interesting writing in parts - B+
I am extremely proud of Doom 3. I think it is the best game we have ever made, and it exceeded all of my expectations. That is a rather trite phrase, but it is literally true -- I had a good set of expectations for how the game would turn out based on the technologies that it was built on, and it wound up being just plain better than that.
We think a lot of people will like it.
I don't follow gaming message boards, because, at its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior. This slashdot story is about as close as I want to go...
Amidst all the various Doom ports and expansions, we are starting up on our next game. It will have a new rendering engine, which will be keeping me busy for a while, but the only other thing we are saying for now is that it won't be a sequel to any of our previous work. We have a really solid team that did a lot of maturing through Doom's development, so I have high hopes that it won't be another four year odyssey.
John Carmack
Oh, I see... if only I tried harder I'd enjoy the game? Like I said, there have been plenty of other recent games that were interesting (and challenging) enough for me to play through to the end without cheat codes. I'm sorry, but when I am compelled to use a cheat code or stop playing its because the game has failed to hold my interest. It would be the exact same thing if I felt compelled to fast forward to the end of a movie, or stop watching it completely. Is that my failing, or is it the movie's?
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
because otherwise it will be another 3 days before I can get to the shops and grab a copy, assuming it is in stock by then, assuming it is going to be at the recommended retail price of 44.99 UK pounds, and seeing as I was grabbing a bought and paid for copy anyway I didn't see any harm in trying the warezed copy.
So, I'm here to tell you that piracy does indeed cost the industry money, because within a few hours I got totally bored, and there is no way I'm parting with good money for a piece of shit game like this.
I was so amazed thinking "this can't be it, must get better later" that I went out looking for a cheat, well that was hard...
+set sv-cheats 1
ALT+CTRL+Tilde
god=god mode
give all = all weapons and ammo
noclip = noclip
and the cheat codes pretty much sum it up perfectly, yet another been done before man-in-a-corridor-with-a-gun game where the only thing that changes as you progess through the game is the gun and the bad guys both slowly get bigger.
Yes, the graphics are nicer than doom 1, so what, the gameplay is years out of date, the weapons are years out of date and the only people who will truly enjoy this are those who have never heard of or played quake....
so valve will be getting my money instead.
(PS, it may well be down to the fact it was warez, but LOTS of people reported problems with ati radeon cards freezing all the time, I did too (rad8500) and no amount of directx updating to 9c beta or catalyst upating of trying scigraphs opengl instead of ati etc made a blind bit of difference, pop in an old GF2 MX and it played glitch free)
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Seriously, give it a couple weeks and it will be on sale for 5$-10$ off very shortly at all the usual places...you gotta give them credit for trying to make a buck while it's new and shiny!
It's been a slow couple of years for the PC games industry, and for the fps genre in particular. Until the release of Farcry earlier this year, there had been little in the way of technological progress since iD released Quake 3. Since then, we've seen countless games using Quake 3's engine, but little in the way of genuine innovation. 2004 promises to change this; there have been three really promising titles this year, namely Farcry, Doom III and Half-Life 2.
The middle of these three titles in terms of release date, Doom III has perhaps the most impressive pedigree. iD software created the first modern fps with Doom, over 10 years ago. Since then, their Quake series, while often felt to be lacking in terms of gameplay, has given us the technical milestones that have marked the progression of the genre. Doom 3 has been in development for four years and from the very beginning of its development, we've been told to expect something groundbreaking.
Some retailers jumped the gun slightly on iD's release date. This meant I had a chance to play the game early and was coming to the end of it just as most players were getting started. I'm writing this review on the basis of a single playthrough on the "normal" difficulty setting and I've not yet really touched on the multiplayer, so I won't be factoring that in.
iD have made it clear from the beginning that we'd be needing an absolutely monster PC to play this game well. I don't really have one. The system used for the purpose of this review was:
Pentium 4 2.0ghz Northwood
512 mb RDRAM
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Sound Blaster AWE 32.
Not exactly obsolete, but hardly cutting edge.
So, with the preliminaries out of the way, how does the game shape up?
Pretty well, all things considered. On loading up, I'm confronted with the normal array of options. I customise my controls to my liking and then decide on some graphics settings. I'm a sucker for detail and will generally put up with a bit of framerate loss in return for an extra touch of "wow factor". First of all, I try the "ultra" detail settings in 1024x768 resolution. It takes me 30 seconds to find this is completely unplayable. No real surprise there. So I change the detail level down to "high", which, annoyingly, requires me to quit and restart the game. To my surprise, things now run fairly well. Although I experiment a bit further, I end up playing through the game with these settings. By and large, it's pretty good, although a couple of the bigger areas do cause fairly severe slowdown,
The opening sections of the game are very much reminiscent of Half-Life. You wander through the colony while people go about their lives and work around you. Expect to spend several minutes more than is strictly necessary here, just gawping at the level of detail. The visuals really are like nothing we've seen before. Farcry's outdoor sections were stunning, but the effect broke down indoors. Here, the indoor areas look almost photorealistic at times. There's a solid, gritty feeling to everything and it all fits together very well.
You're given a few "go to point A then point B" objectives and then, predictably, all hell quite literally breaks loose. It's hard to get over in a review just how terrifying it is when everything goes wrong. My reaction as the people around me started deforming into hideous monsters was verging on outright panic. I stayed in a pretty much constant state of fear for about the next 5 hours of the game, with occasional resurgences right through to the end.
Once the shooting starts, the nature of the game stays pretty much constant. You get an objective, usually to go to a location or find a way of opening a door, over your communicator. Accomplishing the objective involves moving through a sequence of rooms and corridors, dealing with any enemies you come across with extreme prejudice. As I've already said, this is extremely scary at first. Everywhere is very dark (more on this later) and the enemies really are quite unpleasant. Expect
Holy fuck I haven't laughed this hard in ages, if I had mod points, you sir, would be SWIMMING IN THEM.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Does the Windows retail box have the Linux installer like UT2004 does? Or will I have to wait for a Linux specific box of the game?
It's just I haven't seen any mention of Linux anywhere except to say that there is a Linux and Mac version.
Very nicely put, (mr?) swillden. i would like to copy that and repeat it every time this rather contentious issues appears on /.
Someone posted an interesting comment long ago about this idea - when graphics become so effective (i.e. close to reality) they begin to look slightly less "realistic" or "natural" than more crudely drawn representations.
I have no doubt Doom 3 is a blast, but when I look at the stills I find them overly clinical and slightly jarring when compared to less advanced graphics engines. I guess its different once you see it *moving*. Not much chance of that on my 1.4Ghz PC.
I have the same feeling with some CG animation. To be honest, I'd rather go for an abstract representation (not that I have a choice with my PC) that my tiny brain can fill in the gaps with, than an an attempt to create this type of photo-realism.
When the release time comes around, don't wait 2 frelling weeks between the US and the UK release. Sooo many people I know are just downloading this game rather than enduring the release-lag . A simultaneous release would earn HL2 so much more money.
Am i just getting old but doom 3 was just blain boring experience. Everything is seen before. It's just in more fancy format, dynamic lights etc...
The maps are boring, the missions are as stupid as they have allways been; shoot and kill and get to the elevator. In next map; shoot & kill and get to the elevator. Listen boring lectures from pda's just to get code to open locked doors....
Not gona waste any bucks on it.
First time I saw someone admit they're incorrect in their usage of the word "theft". Bravo.
But you're right on the moral aspect. As lame as it might sound, it wouldn't have been as exciting, if I just copied the game rather than buy it (like I did). Besides, now I got that stupid figurine that comes with it... =)
I used to buy my games. Still got a 30 centimeter tall stack of CD's (phantasmagoria is about half of them to be honest). I easily bought 2 games sometimes more per month.
And I stopped. Why? I simply came to realize that games are becoming less and less value. if I compare play time of old titles like x-wing, the "ufo enemy unknown/x-com" series, transport tycoon, the sims, fallout, etc etc to more modern games I can't help but feel cheated. Farcry is a case in point. Nice engine, got sick of the boring arcade combat hit god mode and lost all interest just after a couple of hours. Max Payne, ugh. Got it at discount and it was still to much.
I think the game industry is making a dangerous mistake. By going mainstream, making games easier and simpler to play they are losing their core paying audience and getting a larger non-paying audience.
There are still games worth paying for but less and less. Doom3 is a difficult one. The orginal quake was my first bought ID game and that was an extremely good buy. I bought it the moment it came out, saved me a lot of hassle downloading it AND instantly shut the bosses up who were afraid of letting pirated software on their network. Sorry, got the official CD right here boss. Oh afraid of pirating because we are playing it with a group and I got only the 1 cd? No problem, we just only install the demo from the cd. Brilliant.
Doom3 however is an entirely different game, it is closer to max payne. Now am I willing to pay about 15x/25x a movie ticket for something that is not going to last nearly as long?
I think it is not piracy that is killing games. I think it is game developers aiming more and more to the kind of people that pirate that are hurting games. You will note that "the sims" still sells, years later at far to high prices. Lucasarts adventures all sold well enough to make a small profit. How many adventures has lucasarts released lately? They are aiming for bigger crowds now, sadly that also seems to mean fewer sales. It killed sierra, who is next.
So ID's dilemma is this. It scored with the pirates. Does it also score with the store buyers? I am undeciced at the moment. The lack of copy protection probably has me buy it, at least that quarantees that I can play the damn thing (the hardware is not a problem).
In short I think you are reversing cause and effect, A few more years of Splinter Cells or Painkillers or Max Paynes or Far Crys and there will BE no more any other games with godly single player modes but no online play. Remember there are other genres then "lone wanker" saves the world with a gun.
Then again we don't know how well Doom3 will sell yet. It could easily be that I am the only one who switched from buyers to pirates. Maybe there are two seperate gaming groups in the world. The theft figures of the pirates are in. Now we got to wait for the sales figures from the buyers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I haven't had a chance to play the game yet.
But since the engines of id software have always driven the development of game graphics, I would like to know this:
What makes the game engine of Doom 3 unique in comparison to f.e. Thief 3 or Splinter Cell 2?
Thank you,
Jens
PS: Nice hover
For those that are vorried about the high number of Internet copies being made. Dont worry, you just have to remember what happened when the original Doom was released..
The Internet link between USA and Europe went down *twice* during the night, and no Im not kidding.
Practically everybody had a copy and we fragged for months like there was no tomorrow (or school, but thats another story)..
I don't think the high number of copies being made will make a dent in ID's profits.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Well, I was sitting here (in UK) planning about how I was going to go to the store on Oxford Street and buy a copy of Doom 3, like I bought my last game, and then reading your post I find I have to wait for HOW long, TANTALIZED by those glowing reviews??
Time to fire up the ol' bittorrent, after which I may or may not bother to buy a copy, depending on whether I have anything better to do.
I honestly have no clue why companies do this -- excuse me, why consumer-oriented companies who seem to rely on extreme apathy in their chosen market do this.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
n/m
They wanted to let you know ATI revamped their windows drivers completely and that their flaky drivers are a thing from the past.
The guy didn't mention "finishing" the game, but gameplay. You know, some games are worth replaying. Too bad you don't know the experience.
X-Box
Guess the author you can't remember is Tim O'Really, and the article is Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution.
My next comment will be ready soon, but moderators can beat the rush and mod it up early.
Having a look at gamerankings.com reveals:
:(.
PC Gamer 9/1/2004 94 out of 100 94.0%
Gamer's Hell 8/3/2004 9.4 out of 10 94.0%
PGNx Media 8/3/2004 9.4 out of 10 94.0%
Telefragged 8/2/2004 94 out of 100 94.0%
I find it rather obvious that those 94% have been bought
Thought I'd point that out.
Which will be the price the BBC are referring to.
Just preordered mine, and think that is perfectly good value.
Good lord someone is trying very hard to justify $55 on a mediocre game.
Presently here, but not there.
I stated this at gamerankings, and my (non rant, non troll) post was just deleted... hmm...
You're absolutely right!
And when the day comes that I'm legally allowed copy a baker's bread by means of nanotech copying, is the day you'll be legally allowed to copy my software.
Until that day, I have to buy my bread to eat, and you have to pay up if you want my software.
Not Id's ineffective copy protection, Macrovision's ineffective copy protection that Activision forces upon its developers.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had pranced around with his belly out instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Britney Spears is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using her gifts at whatever it is she exactly does instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Spears could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead she simply slithers around shaking her stuff at teenagers.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Well, ....no, not really.
My insterest in Doom3 and similiar games are their use for machinima (particularly if I can do it under linux and switch back and forth between it, the gimp, blender, and transcode). I do a lot of blendering, and choreographing scenes in real time, with multiple actors / sprites, has some real appeal vs. offline rendering.
Any chance you guys are planning some add-ons to specifically support machinima type activities (character/sprite editing, etc.), lighting editors, etc?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How was parent a flamebait??!
Let's get one thing clear - coding != software engineering, software engineering != coding.
I have seen some fantastic coders who produced slick, good, fast code. But they weren't engineers by any means. They were coders. I have seen good software engineers that didn't code. I have been in software engineering for 10 years, but my coding skills are pretty rusty. Coding is one small piece of engineering. I deal with the good/bad coders/engineers every day. They are definitely NOT the same thing.
The single most valuable class that I took in college was Software Engineering. I am looking at the book from that class on my shelf right now. We did ZERO coding in that class. I brought my final project from that class with me when I graduated and started interviewing, and I was told later that it really helped to get me the job. It showed that I had depth of knowledge and wasn't just a coder. I knew the software lifecycle, from requirements through support. I knew about estimation techniques and the different types of testing. I am still amazed at how little many "seasoned" professionals know about any of this stuff.
Yes, you need good coders, they are invaluable. But coders are not necessarily software engineers.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I loved Doom III, however, I have a Soundblaster Audigy Gamer, and when I enable surround sound in Doom III... it works until some arbitrary new sound is introduced in the game.. and then it stops... I have to go to the options, toggle surround setting on and off.. then I get the sound for another 10-15 minutes.. if surround sound is off I do not get this problem.
Just my experience
http://dtum.livejournal.com
I assume you are one of the thiefs that stole the game before it was released.
You only borrow stuff when you give it back.
Unless you uploaded your copy of DOOM3 to ID after "borrowing" it then you stole it. The fact that they have a near infitie suppy of them does not change the fact that taking without returning is theft!
After about 5 hours of playing, I must say I love it. Personally I couldn't stand FAr Cry, not that exciting to me. But Doom 3 single player is amazing, their have been at least 3 times where I got so scared. Now what I do not like is the multiplayer, b/c frankly it sucks.
I am about the same. Picked it up and first thing I saw that the multi player was between useless and useless. This is 2004 guys, and a multiplayer with a max of maby 4 players. 8 if you got a oc3. ITs a good game in general, but not near the ground smashing hit it was ment to be. Graphics are impressive In ahver to admit and I can't wate to see quake 4 using this game engine. but doom 3 itself is just somehow lacking. and other gaming friends are all saying the same thing. Cool pop a monster BAM. But in reality thats al there is. Again good game but nothing special like I wanted. And the fun part, I never was hiped about this game so can't say I got so excited and expected a huge amount or anything.
if
even if it had 320x200 or some xmode with only filled polys in dazzling 256color palette...
if it had a plot. whatever plot. not monsters and guns again.
and not a nvidia-sponsored-ati-glitching demo again.
boring*boring*boring.
Dear Carmack and friends,
Have You ever seen demo scene? You know - all those are for free. So ppl don't get mad if they download crappy thing - they just delete it. (And in most cases 90ties tech demos with software graphics do impress more than anb ordinary x/z y/z vector space visualizer). And the concept is - Engine wins, not the marketing hype impressing thundreds of dorks sleeping at game stores waiting for being among the first ones getting "The Another Legend".
*sigh*
dude screw this guy did you even play the original doom?? fuckin shit if i want some involved FPS game experience, where i sneak past bad guys, distribute attribute points, and talk endlessly to characters then i'll go play theif, Deus Ex, or morrowind if i wanna fucking RIP SHIT UP, kick you in the face, not know if that walls really a door to 8 imps, break out the chainsaw, kill EVERYTHING that moves and/or tries to scare me in a BLOODY fucking DEMONIC MESS THEN....THEN I WILL PLAY MOTHERFUCKING DOOM ok you can go back and get your "refreshing twists" ok....twist all the way down HELL so i can take a shotgun to your face
is there wasn't one. Something about a government conspiracy and aliens, and a man in black you could never catch. An X-Files story arc mixed with Biohazard plotline does not == engaging story.
It was, however, an excellent backdrop for environments that get increasingly weird. It's good as far as FPSs go, but I think Myst had a bit more weight to it's "story".
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I don't have the money to spend on games. I bum them off friends to try them out, or play them at a friend's house or something. Doom3 is one of the few games that I'm confident I will be happy with buying. I don't think piracy is going to have a significant impact on Doom3's sales. We like the game and the company too much.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
we've been waiting since 1996 for DNF and it's still not done!! If time correlates with quality this game will kick doom 3's ass!! (after they spend another 3 years switching game engines for the umpteenth time)
To those whining that $55USD is too much... try doing a little leg work before bitching.
Microcenter has a coupon to purchase it until 8/8/04 for $46.87.
Circuit City has it online for $44.99 with free shipping.
Best Buy will price match (in store purchase only) for the difference plus 10%.
What does this mean? You can easily pick up Doom 3 for less than $46USD. Quit your whining and start playing!
Thanks,
--
Matt
That's pretty scary. If they had charged $164.97 for the game, they would have lost $8,248,500!!! They're ruined!
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
oh, I don:t deny for a second taht it isn:t breaking the law, just pointing out it`s very easy to see a situation where 12 year old johnny wants a game, has a computer than can play it, and yet, cannot convince those parents to buy it is all.
I assume you are one of the thiefs that stole the game before it was released.
You must be responding to someone else. Either that or you need to learn to read.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
$2K for a new PC just to play DOOM 3? Yes, I would say it's unreasonable. However, I'd like to contest your statement on two points:
:)
:)
1) I just spent LESS than $1K upgrading my computer, which is now more than capable of playing DOOM3. The old parts consist of: case, monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, CD drive. You're overstating the expenses involved
2) As far as I know, most of us periodically upgrade our computers regardless of a particular game such as DOOM 3. It would indeed be stupid to upgrade just to play DOOM 3. If you do upgrade, you'll have a fast computer, and one benefit of having said computer is that it'll be able to play DOOM 3... and the future games that rival DOOM 3 technologically. Personally, I did not upgrade just to play DOOM 3. My main excuse was actually a fried motherboard
Karma be damned, but fuck YOU.
It's selfish, me-first-and-screw-everyone-else attitudes like that that ruin it for everyone else. And it's for people like you that I would HAPPILY give up any rights I have remaining just to piss you off and make your job of pirating even harder.
You know, I've learned something today... Just because I _can_ pirate something doesn't mean I _should_. And what makes me think I'm so goddamned special that I can go out and take whatever I want, just to see if it's special enough to spend $50 on it? Can you walk into a clothing store and try out those new jeans for a few weeks, to see if you like them? Can you go to a restaurant, order a great lobster dinner, and then get up and walk out because you decide it wasn't what you wanted?
Yes, there are laws that let us return things if they're unsatisfactory, and most of those don't extend to software in many cases. Guess what? Them's the breaks. Go get yourself a brain and READ SOME REVIEWS before plunking down your hard-earned cash. If 90% of people say it's cool, but not worth it, then DON'T FUCKING BUY IT! If you DO go buy it, and don't like it, SELL IT ON eBAY.
But for fuck's sake, stop stealing stuff off of the internet (or infringing, or copying, or whatever pitiful excuse you use to make yourself feel better) and claiming, "Yeah, I was just checking it out to see if it was worth my money." Life sometimes sucks, but it's usually pretty cool. Oh, yeah. You're a prick.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Pardon my ignorance, but could you link to a post like the one you are referring to? Just curious...
are horror-based (I can't handle them anymore), sports, or some kind of japanese car simulation. What's out there that's NOT Resident Doom Evil 3, Madden 5000, or Gran Turismo X: The Rice Capades?
Ah, you frikken winny...
Go piss on your own face.
http://img28.imageshack.us/my.php?loc=img28&image= therewego.jpg
:)
Thanks to Shacknews.
-Styopa
Tell me where I even mentioned the word "realism" in my post.
However, I did mention the word "fun."
It does bog down in places but I have yet to tweak my settings.
Level load times are high. It has been a long time since a game came along that made me consider buying new hardware.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Grand Theft Auto is not found in Black's Law Dictionary. Grand Larceny is though. My guess is that people are charged with Grand Larceny, but the "street" term used by police and criminals is GTA. But that's just my guess.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
At the beginning after the first couple of hours I was disappointed at the repetitiveness and linearity. That was gone by the end. The linearity was still there, but the repetitiveness was removed a bit and the game got a lot more interesting.
IMHO you should go for Virtual Reality now.
I really hate to have to tell people this, but id doesn't make games for you. They make graphics engines to license to other companies. Doom3 is the demo of their latest product. It is expected to be a standard of graphics capabilities for a few years, until their next one comes out, so of course it will chug on your mid-range machine.
That being said I'm enjoying Doom3, about 12 hours into it on Normal difficulty. Anyone complaining about stupid AI is probably playing it on easy so they can breeze through it and say they've played it.
Here's a thought. Maybe they don't make games for people who play them 10 hours a day & see the lack of secondary fire as a fatal game destroying flaw. Maybe they make games for people who play them for fun. You know, fun, sit down for a few hours & have a bash after work.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
My point was Farcry is a better buy. Considering that I bought both games, it does give me a right to bitch about their value.
but there are probably many things that Doom 3 does better than Far Cry. Definitely there must be some things that Doom3 does better. But it still ends up looking only a notch better than Farcry and that too not in all respects.
Mindless zombies that use tactics would be a bit of a contradiction, no?
Maybe you didnt notice...but its a game. There are already enough contradictions. I'd pick better gameplay over crap realism anyday.
That's it. Thanks. =)
"You Wish You Could Have Me" is such a perfect name for the genre.
And for the record, the Internet is a biiiig place. If you really want to see Albert Einstein prancing about with his belly exposed, I can hook you up. Video clips, baby. Oh, and I've even managed to convert a few from the OM to the OE format. You'll love 'em !
--LordPixie
In addition, there is the concept of Archvile supremacy. If the Archvile ever gets attacked, it will in turn attack the thing that attacked it, and the enemy who attacked it will never retaliate for the archie attacking it. Simply put, no other monster will attack an archie on purpose, only by you misdirecting enemy attacks at it.
Also, more monster trivia.
* An archvile attack does exactly 88 points of damage, assuming the victem is not wearing any armor.
* It is possible to use the blast from getting hit by an archvile to get places you normally couldn't go. It's called an Archvile-jump
* Normally, a Pain Elemental explodes into nothingness. However, if it is crushed by a crushing ceiling, it turns into a puddle of blood. An Archvile can resurrect this puddle of blood, but what he resurrects is a very buggy Pain Elemental. I've never had this happen to me, but from what I have heard, the Pain Elemental becomes invisible, immune to almost all forms of damage, and able to pass through walls. So yeah, you're screwed if this happens to you.
* It's very hard to misdirect scratch or bite attacks from Demons or Imps or the like, but it's certainly possible, and Demons/Spectres will attack their own kind.
* The Cyberdemon is immune to splash damage to any kind. This is because the cyb shoots rockets, and if it hit itself with its own splash damage, it would attempt to kill itself. This is why only direct rocket hits will damage the Cyb. (Also, in earlier versions of Doom, it was possible for a Baron to kill itself somehow, but by v1.666 it was fixed)
* In earlier versions of Doom 2,, E1M2 had a sargent that hung out behind some bars. Even with the bars open, however, it could not see you until you attacked it, due to a bug that usedt to be in Doom2's line of sight calculations.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
My absolute all time favorite feature of Doom is the one that has never returned - co-operative mode. Running through the campaign with your buddies on a network fighting demons together is heaps of fun. I don't understand why they don't reintroduce this feature, unless it's because their storylines are so singularly linear that it just isn't fun to play co-op.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=52311&cid=5193 131
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
Stop posting the same carbon copy garbage and use whatever "talents" you have to do something worthwhile. Either that, or stop breathing. Thanks.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Just 32k views. Or it's just a 5 digit counter and, the views actually went over 100k?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Sure, there's your standard types who will pirate anything, but I am of the personal opinion that a lot of piracy could be lessoned if the games were distributed faster to the stores, and if price were cheaper. Take ESPN 2K4 this year. It's $20 bucks, and it's a top notch high quality game. Games that cheap are almost not worth pirating, as you have to spend a few hours downloading them, then unarchiving them, and burning them. You wasted four hours when you could have went to the store and in 15 minutes come home with the $20 game. I'm sure some people still pirated it, but I'm also sure a lot less people pirated it than if it were the full $49.99. Another problem is the distribution. A lot of games go gold and then just sit in a warehouse. This is probably due to some marketing genious who figured out if it came out two weeks later, it would make more money due to less competition of other games, blockbuster movies, or something else that came out. This gives the pirates more time to get ahold of it, crack it, and distribute it. And if you have a casual pirate who was willing to buy the game, and is anxiously awaiting it, if it comes out a week prior to ship date through the pirate channels, they're going to go that route instead. Depending on their morals, they might still buy it, but they also might not.
Well, I admit I was exaggerating on the cost, but it would come to near enough £1,000 to upgrade the computers in my house I use regularly to be able to run Doom 3 at a good level.
What I was saying was I'm not going to spend out a lot of money (I usually upgrade one component at a time on my systems) to be able to play Doom 3.
To get it working on my main machine (let alone the others) I'd need more RAM, a better graphics card and probably a new soundcard. I'd also probably want to upgrade my ancient Gateway monitor. That's a lot to spend out that I wouldn't normally do, and if Doom's multiplayer isn't up to scratch and most of my PC gaming is done online, then even a more realistic price (still a few hundred pounds I don't have - most of my money goes on my consoles or music equipment) is too much to pay for a couple of dozen hours of play.
When the true next generation of games (the ones that will inevitably be running the Doom 3 engine) are released, then I will have a whole host of reasons to upgrade my computer, and a little longer to stagger the upgrades instead of doing them all at once.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
> hell I'm running with gamma at 2.0 and brightness
:)
> almost maxed and I'm lost in the dark half the
> time...
Err... I think that was kind of the idea. You know, atmosphere and all.
Gamma at 2.0 with the brightness maxed out? You're cheating yourself.
Doom 3 + empty house with all the lights off + 5.1 sound = the most fear you're going to get without actually putting yourself in harms way...
In fact I'm dying to play right now but I refuse to during the daytime.
Just wondering....
Disclaimer: Haven't gotten Doom 3 yet
When I first played W3D, my impression was: hey, what happened to all the cool things you could do in Apple II/Atari 800 "Castle Wolfenstein/Beyond CW" - e.g., wearing a stolen uniform and impersonating a guard, sneaking up on a soldier and stabbing him to get to the fuse box because shooting him would set off the alarm, figuring out the passcode for a floor, etc.
But, the graphics were cool, and I had fun anyway. I figured that all those cool 8-bit cerebral features that made the original Wolfenstein game so much fun would come back someday.
I'm still waiting. Maybe I'm too much of a puzzle kind of guy. But Doom & Quake always seem so action heavy without the puzzle & fun stuff compared to, say Duke Nuken 3D, Jedi Knight, Thief and/or Half Life. When I read repeated comments that this visual masterpiece gets old after a few levels I realize that it id is still in the same mode as they were with W3D.
But the graphics are cool and I'll probably have fun anyway.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Hello, everyone.
I'm in the process of putting together a site to collect Doom 3 Tweaks.
My goal is to provide enough helpful links/material, so that the fans can get a more pleasurable experience out of the game, without resorting to costly PC upgrades.
If you'd like to contribute, please visit http://doomtweaks.net/
Thanks!
-jc
"The id Store doesn't seem to be selling Doom 3."
Hmmm. I'm still keeping an eye out for it. Hollenshead's .plan file (July 14th entry) states "Last, but not least, the id Store: we will have copies of DOOM 3 available, but only after we get them.
I'm sure that some of the hardcore game retailers will get them even before we do. Check our website for
updates on this. We certainly appreciate everyone who has helped to make the id Store a huge success this
year."
Maybe another few days. My guess is they'd want to give the mainstream retailers a chance to cash in on the early purchases exclusively.
Get an XBOX. Play these games on the XBOX. Honestly, the experience is just about as good if you're not going to worry about comparing a console experience to a high end PC experience. The gaming experience/fun factor is what counts.
;)
For example, I was playing Splinter Cell on my XBOX for a while. Fun stuff.. I was having a blast. Then I found a cheap copy of it for the PC too, so I gave that a spin. It's the same game! It's the same experience. It's just as much fun either way. In fact, one could argue that the console experience is even better: I don't have to dork around with my machine to either upgrade it, or to even install the game. It just works.
So, if you want to get off the upgrade hamster wheel, just use a console. Heck, for $200 (which is what a shiny new ATI 9800 Pro card will run you), you can buy two of the three major consoles! And they'll never need upgrading!
I suppose that solution is too simple though. People seem to like to suffer in this respect. Oh well, enjoy!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Oh they also say Doom "pioneered multiplayer gaming over networks" which is about 20 years too late. This puts Carmack in a position where if he can't get a correction published, crediting Plato, he looks bad to the real pioneers of multiplayer gaming over networks. This isn't fair of course -- Carmack shouldn't really be held to account for Grossman's facile portrayal of history -- but it is a practical consequence of Grossman's behavior.
Seastead this.
I've tried... Halo on the XBox was enough to make me want to toss the thing. Great game, horrid controls. And anybody who thinks 480i looks as good as a moderate PC gaming system could probably stand to visit an eye doctor. I got to the point where I could play well, but I just didn't like playing an FPS without a mouse and keyboard. My gamecube and dreamcast get quite a bit of use for other types of games, though...
I am staying off the hamster wheel for now. I'll step on again when the jump to the next tier isn't so large-- like in six months or so. The nice thing about playing old PC games is that they get FAR cheaper than console games ever do. I bought Max Payne for $4.95, two years ago. Console gaming makes up for the cheap hardware with high-priced games and add-ons pretty quickly. The Gamecube cost a whopping $90, but the ten games I have for it were more like $500. Toss in four controllers, two memory cards, a 480p cable and the link cables for Four Swords and Crystal Chronicles (we won't add the GBAs), and it gets mighty close to my $700 gaming PC with a stack of last years' games.
The difference is not as large as you think-- there's probably only two hundred dollars between my PC with 20 games and my 'cube with 10.
But I'm obviously not a one-or-the-other person. Consoles cannot replace PC gaming, and PCs don't replace consoles.
YHL.
HAND.
Without trying to earn a redundant score, I bought a copy of the game myself last night. Normally I don't buy games anymore - I am a senior programmer with management responsibilities and have to keep up appearances. Gaming is officially frowned upon where I work.
Anyhow, I received an email from an old friend who tracked me down to tell me Doom III was released. I hadn't heard from this guy in 8 years and he emailed about 30 people going by my name until he found me. We used to play Doom together in multiplayer while in college, and we both gave up gaming when real life set in.
So, I stopped by Best Buy, got the game, and fired it up on my workstation:
MSI KD8 Master 3 with Dual Opterons
NVidia GeForce FX 5700 w/ 256 MB RAM
1.5 GB RAM
21' Trinitron
Immediately after installation the phone rang, it was the neighbors telling me the dog was loose and digging through their trash. I ran over to collect the animal and I found out he also dug a hole under the fence and ate up some decorative cabbage. I apologize, pay the neighbor for his losses and fill in the hole under the fence with dirt left over from when the sprinkler system was installed.
Back to the game. I get an IM from Riordan (my buddy who sent the original email), who tells me Basil, Umberto, Cheeks, Smarty and Kellogg all have copies too. We are all ready to go at it. Kellogg's wife, though, wants him to take her out shopping first. We decide to wait for Kellogg to get back. I start the game up in single player, witness the amazing graphics and walk around the station on patrol for a while before I get a phone call from work telling me the dev server died. I spend 20 minutes on the phone explaining to this person he should follow the recovery instructions he wrote and restore the latest hourly backup. He explains he doesn't know how to do something he wrote the procedure for and I explain that's his problem. Then I am hungry.
I walk over to get something quick so I can get back to those awesome graphics. I'm thinking about Kellogg and remembering his wife, who was my girlfriend before he met her and what a rotten lay she was. 'Can't believe he married her', I'm thinking as I heat up some chili in the microwave. Then, as I take out the hot bowl and head back to the workstation, I smell something very un-chililike and look down to notice the dog puked up the decorative cabbage he ate from next door. I put down the chili and race to the supply closet to get the mop and some cleaning supplies. I scrape up the nastiness and put the dog outside, he's curling up in the middle at this stage and looking like he will be sick again.
After this fiasco I notice my friends are still IMing each other about how awesome the game is. My daughter walks in from swim practice and I mention to her I just bought this very violent computer game, and she asks if it is as violent as the 101 Dalmations game she has been playing for the last month. I explain she needs to go up and get her bath and not pay so much attention to what is on the screen.
I put the daughter in the bathtub and tab back to Doom 3, finally ready to play. The smell of the chili has become unappetizing after cleaning up the dog puke. I take a bite or two and feel really put off by the feel of it in my mouth, which leads me to dump the chili and open a window to clean out the air. As I go to heat up the last microwave burrito we have, my daughter comes back to tell me there are no clean towels and she can't take a shower.
Still wanting to experience the exciting new combat features before my friends do, I run upstairs before my daughter, pull a dirty towel out of the hamper and stuff it under a blanket. I ask her if she bothered to look under the blanket, she pulls the towel out with a suspicious look then slowly vanishes into the bathroom. As I lean to go back downstairs, she calls out from in the bathroom asking me if I can get her robe. I look in her room, which is a disaster site, and cannot find the robe. She insists she must have it t
You know forget the piracy stuff for a moment. I was begging for a demo just to see how my hardware holds up. I bought the full version waited in line forever. And my new ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128MB has worked for every game except Doom 3. The snowy spots are all over the place, and NO my card's not overheated. Every game works fine.
This company could have done the fans a favor with a demo so we can get some time to configure drivers etc.
I'm posting this higher up in the discussion mostly just so people see it. Over at GameFAQs, people have discovered that if you open the PK4 files in WinRAR and extract the contents to the game's "base" folder, overwriting any duplicates, and then renaming or deleting the original PK4 files, you get an almost double performance boost because the CPU isn't decompressing game content as you play. You must rename or delete the PK4 files, or Doom 3 will just continue reading from them regardless.
Try it out, but keep your PK4s on backup just in case. Also note that this increases the size of the Doom folder by about 2.5GB.
Your work has inspired me to no end. I agree that this game is surprisingly amazing and peppy given current hardware. Truly good work! And I hope you manage to send a rocket to space or whatever it was you were working on..
The best way to get a good gamepad for the PC is just to use one of your console gamepads. You just need a USB adapter. I have a couple that support N64 and PSX gamepads, and use those, but they make them for just about everything. Here's a link to a place selling a hojillion varieties, including a 4-controller xbox-to-usb adapter for $20. You just plug it in and windows detects it and uses it like any other multi-axis analog gamepad. You'll need to do some button mapping, but that's it. $20, and use your existing favorite gamepads-- and you're off to the races!
Doom3 looks pretty impressive overall, gameplay might be a bit to much run&shoot, but after all its meant to be a Doom, not a DeusEx, so I guess that is ok for those people who like that kind of games.
However one thing that really didn't impresse me was the representation of the player. It is again, like in far too many FPS before, just a flying pair of airms, no feet, no body. If you climb ladder he doesn't even use his arms. I mean how lame is that? 'Bugs' like that where tolerable in the early days of FPS, but with Doom3 being pretty much the technically most advance game of its genre its kind of sad that they havn't tried to make the player something more than just this flying body-less camera.
Well perhaps, if little johnny's parents said he shouldn't have the game, then maybe he shouldn't...
Why is a 12 year old playing a rated M game anyway?
And next time they may learn to release it world wide at the same time ;)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
AMD Athlop XP (Barton) 2800+
MSI K6TV Mobo
2x 256mb Micron PC2100 DDR
ATI Radeon 9200
1x 120 GB Samsung 5400 RPM IDE
3x 160 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM SATA
NEC ND-1300A DVD+/-RW
It's not crap hardware, win2k just BSoD'ed when I gave it a non-empty partition, and I'm not in the mood to mess with it.
My point was Farcry is a better buy.
My point is that that is just your opinion, dumbass. There are a lot of gamers who are going to like Doom 3 more than Far Cry, but I bet a majority of them wont be total snobs about it.
Maybe you didnt notice...but its a game.
Speak for yourself, dumbass. You're the one who didn't seem to grasp the fact that mindless zombies will act like...mindless zombies. And anyone who bought Doom 3 not expecting to fight some is a dumbass.
Are there crates!?
Are there big powerfull rockets who can't make a dent in the walls?!
Are there tiny rooms and corridors very badly lit?
Are there keycards!?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
nt
A guy over a Bluesnews came up with the perfect way to make your own Doom 3! And save the money!:
For all of you that have yet to buy the game, you can easily recreate it: Go in your living room around midnight, pull all the blinds down. Buy a two dollar flashlight and stand in the center of your living room. Have your friends quietly walk around you, every once in a while yelling in your ear and punching you in the face. You can punch back, but you have to shut the light off first. There yah go, all kinds of money saved.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Christ, I thought the exact thing when I first received my pistol and went into a dark room."
:-)
To heck with the duck tape. I have two hands. You can even see them by switching to the "Fists" weapon. I can hold a pistol with my right and a flashlight with my left. That lets me be able to aim and shoot *at the same time*. What a concept. Yet instead I'm running around like a headless chicken because the game's too stupid to let me use both, unless I'm punching someone. Argghhh!
I mean, obviously, you need two hands for anything larger then a pistol. And I am well-aware of the fact that a two-handed grip yields far better accuracy even for a wide-bore pistol. But being able to see your target yields better accuracy, too.
It's not like I'm asking a lot, id.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I played Doom 3 for a little over an hour at one of those "computer game center" places. I was really impressed. My original thought was that the game would not be worth the $500 or so I will have to spend to upgrade my home game rig to play Doon 3. I have changed my mind; I will be upgrading and buying Doom 3 soon. Good job.
:-)
FYI, I've heard that game publishers don't like those "computer game centers" because they feel they are losing revenue (i.e., royalties). In my case, at least, you gained a customer -- you didn't lose one. If, on the other hand, I was not able to try the game cheaply and easily as I did, I likely would still be planning on holding off on my purchase.
Ignore all the people complaining that Doom 3 is just like Doom and Doom ][. I guess they must not have noticed the word "Doom" in the title.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"If what you want in a game is basically Doom with shiny surfaces, then you're fine."
It seems like a lot of people are complaining that Doom 3 is just like the original Doom and Doom 2. This seems rather obvious to me. I certainly expected Doom 3 to be like Doom 1 and Doom 2.
Complaining about this seems like complaining that the movie Titanic was too predictable. (Hint: The ship sinks.)
Obviously, Doom's style of gameplay isn't for everyone. I'm certainly not going to try and tell anyone that they have to like Doom 3. Or Far Cry, for that matter. But I am surprised that so many people were themselves surprised that this sequel to a sequel is just like it's predecessors.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
My point is that that is just your opinion, dumbass.
It should be obvious that its just my opinioin... this is an online discussion forum if you didnt notice. So you disagree.. but how does that make either one of us a pretentious dick or a dumass or a snob(where-did-you-get-that?)? Maybe you've been away from the real world too long. Get off the net and games for a while.(Read as: Don't bother replying)
mindless zombies will act like...mindless zombies.
Perhaps...but zombies dont make up 100% of D3 enemy population... and they all rush at you. Thats all I'm fighting. Half-life 1 was better with this...
And some more bitching just for you ! For all the great hardware that Doom3 demands, I dont even get decent round barrels !
Hand
If it makes you feel better, I'm still too scared to play it in the dark.
And I'm 26!
Mission accomplished, I'd say.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Ok lets revise that comment "do yourself a favor, stop backing down from the challenges" to "do yourself a favor and get laid." Believe me, getting laid helps loosen the corks up the ass, of course you wouldn't know this. Just enjoy the game because it has hot graphics, good lighting, and decent gameplay. IT FUCKING WOULDN'T BE DOOM IF IT DIDN'T HAVE DEMONS SPAWNING AT EVERY CORNER! IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT GAMEPLAY WHY THE FUCK DID YOU BUY DOOM IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I hope you're still enjoying the game so much when it rolls around to november that you don't make it out to vote.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Why is a 12 year old playing a rated M game anyway?
not quite sure, but I know I did at 12, also was watching R rated movies when I was 9 and lots of other things that I wasn:t supposed to do. All I know is as soon as someone tells me I can`t do something because of something like age, I`ll find some way to do it just to spite them. And since I came up with little johnny, he is going to be like that as well;)
Maybe not. But he did say this:
No, he's just insisted on working on Doom 3 when the company wanted to do something else:
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
John Marketing:I'm proud of it., John Honestly: Right now working on brand new engine
This is first game of id software which really disappoints me. In contrast to previous games, every title was groundbreaking in one or many gaming/graphics areas. This is not the case of Doom3. Why?:
- Engine is not impressive at all, FarCry, Stalker look way better. Damn, it looks like Half Life 1 with bump maps or (at best) Taenebrae with 3d shadows.
- Very small rooms, low poly details, repetitive gameplay, boring (obvious) story.
- It looks nice only on gaming very high-end hardware. On quite good system, that runs other (mentioned games) with very nice visuals, Doom3 is scaled down to shitty graphics (low res bumpmaps and textures).
- non-existent (yes) MP
So it is no suprise to me that John Carmack says few days after release of his brand-new-engine game that he starts work on new game with new engine. Every other previous engine lasted thru at least 2-3 id's made games and many licenced ones. Not this time.
I dont believe you have ever tryed the game.
People who bought this game expecting some kind of gameplay revolution were rather foolish. I was actually slightly disappointed at first myself, but the more I played, the more I realized how well everything was put together. Doom 3 is easily the most atmospheric intense FPS I have ever played (except for perhaps System Shock 2), and the gameplay is very tightly designed. I don't care one whit that it's not wildly innovative, as I never expected it to be.
The graphics are also the best I've seen, far better than Far Cry (what was so great about that games graphics anyway? It had good water and vegetation, but anything man-made looked pretty mediocre from what I've played).
I suspect that years from now, I will be listing this near the top of my "most underrated games" list.
Heartfelt thanks to you and your team John for all the hard work!!!
Cheers!
Billy Bad Ass
bamph
I'd love to see Id or someone else port the mpterra1 map from Quake 3: Team Arena to Doom 3. That map was one of the most fun team deathmatch and capture the flag maps of all time. I guess I'll have to wait until CTF is added to Doom 3.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Because otherwise you'd have at least a slight idea what you were talking about.
FarCry is a completely different type of engine: it's not mean to have incredibly realistic shadows or lighting, nor is it an engine meant for close-quarters, detailed rendering. The entire purpose of the CryEngine is to produce massive open areas using long-distance detail scaling and a sh*tload of sprites for various ephemera. Everything in FarCry looked like an over-done cartoon - a very pretty cartoon, mind you, but a cartoon nonetheless. I don't think ANYONE would buy DoomIII if it looked like it was produced by Disney.
Stalker... not even out yet, you've seen nothing but screenshots and maybe two trailers, and you're already saying it looks better than DoomIII? Ha. I won't even bother with this one.
And let's talk about hardware. I run a system with a 2.4Ghz Athlon XP, 512MB RAM, and a Ti4200. FarCry? Had to drop the detail levels so low to get frame rates above 20fps that it was like playing in a desert, not a deserted island.
Stalker? Of course I haven't played it yet, and neither have you. ("On quite good system, that runs other mentioned games with very nice visuals.") Wait until the game is actually released before pretending you know how it runs.
Doom3, however, I could play on high detail, with only the shadows and Anti-aliasing turned off, at 1024x768. And the only time I found myself lagging a bit was when there were massive lightshows going on.
And non-existent MP? That's funny, I must've been dreaming last night when I played on my LAN with two friends for about four hours. Weird. I'll have to stop eating before I go to bed, it gives me the most VIVID dreams.
Go post somewhere else, troll.
..., with a bad attitude!
they gained the ability to simultaneously carry a pistol, shotgun, machine gun, chain-gun, rocket launcher, a BFG, and all necessary power cells and ammo AND instantaneously switch between them.
.. GIVE THE DUCT TAPE THREAD A REST!!!!!
I think later in the game there is an NPC the offers to trade you a shotgun with a flashlight duct-taped to it for your entire arsenal up to that point.
It's a game
(just kidding of course, but I had to throw in my 2 cents on JC's behalf)
A goal is a dream with a deadline
And I really appreciate the suckers^wearly adopters for subsidizing my entertainment.
The cake is a pie
Thanks Bit-Torrent Network!!!
> I am extremely proud of Doom 3. I think it is the best game we have ever made, and it exceeded all of my expectations.
:-)
:-)
I'm proud to be one of the modders hard at work coming up with ideas to add hours of enjoyment to your wonderful game. We are having a blast, and you've created so much for us to do with the game... it's just a total leap forward into a new level of game design.
> Amidst all the various Doom ports and expansions, we are starting up on our next game.
And we'll mod *that* too, I expect.
> It will have a new rendering engine, which will be keeping me busy for a while, but the only other thing we are saying for now is that it won't be a sequel to any of our previous work.
Trinity? For real?
> We have a really solid team that did a lot of maturing through Doom's development, so I have high hopes that it won't be another four year odyssey.
Even though you say that D3 was a four year oddessey, which it likely felt like to you, I think the game matured so much in that time that it has become so much better as a result. From all the modders out there, and I think I speak for all of them, thanks for the ongoing support and really cool toys to play with!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Why don't you guys come to my house first and make sure I'm wearing clean underware before letting me start the game?
This guy is on crack. I'm sure JC didn't post here to be hit with techsup replies. *sigh*
So what is Jesus Christ's position on heavy weapons? I always pictured him as a double-barrel shotgun kind of guy, but maybe I'm projecting.
LOL i wish i was 18 or else i'd definetily vote for Kerry. Thanks for your concern though!
Decent question, seeing that he is "god-like"...then again, the whole thing is getting Unreal.... ;)
A goal is a dream with a deadline
The QuakeWorld community have some engines that use a external dll that is what you say. Not all, and not netquake.
Its easy to cheat at Quake, and at all FPS titles. Look at Counter-Strike.
The problem is not technical but social. And Its imposible to solve. If the game not provide crosshairs, a player will paint the crossiar in the screen with a pen. DONE: the player have one adventaje over others.
-Woof woof woof!
But he did say this:
So? Was he wrong?
No, he's just insisted on working on Doom 3 when the company wanted to do something else:
Bzzt. No, most of the company wanted to do Doom 3, but "Kevin and Adrian" did not. They took a vote on it. Look it up.
Kevin & Adrian owned over 50% of the company, so yes, the company wanted to do something else, regardless of how many employees wanted to do Doom 3. A) The quote from Carmack doesn't indicate a vote. It indicates an ultimatim, essentially blackmail. B) You don't get to vote on what a company does unless you have a controlling interest.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Kevin & Adrian owned over 50% of the company, so yes, the company wanted to do something else
:) I would think that having almost every employee for it and two owners against it would equate to "wants to, but not allowed to". Regardless, this was a decision made by the majority of id's employee's, not a case of Carmack going on an ego trip and demanding that the company do what *he* wanted to do, followed by maniacal laughter.
Now that's just quibbling.
"Why is a 12 year old playing a rated M game anyway?"
Well maybe because the Rating is a "guide" for parents, not a moral absolute.
Movie theaters do not allow admittance to some movies based on their ratings (NC-17) even if there is a guardian present, but this is based on the theater's choice not an actual Law.
"While the decision to enforce the rating system is purely voluntary, the overwhelming majority of theaters follow the Classification and Rating Administration's guidelines and diligently enforce its provisions."
http://www.bigscreen.com/MPAA_RatingsInfo.php
Hello world,
Just finished the game on my trusty Geforce 2 GTS 32 meg card. (system: Athlon xp 1600+, 768 megs ram)
Ran in 800x600 on low settings without too many slowdows. Except when 5+ enemies were on screen it was quite smooth, not 60 fps but at least 20. And it didn't crash every other level like Far Cry did on me.
They didn't do the remakes. The Japanese companies did the ports and Working Designs did their crappy translation where they change the names and make up stupid political jokes and toilet humor. Then they package the thing in some expensive package with a hardbound user manual and a cloth map that's totally useless since the game is totally linear and there's only one place to go to at a time on the map anyway. I've been boycotting WD for several years now. I'll still play the GameArts games, but I'll buy the Japanese versions. The Japanese versions are usually cheaper, even buying from expensive import shops and paying shipping charges, than the WD version is. Plus, I get to play them 4 years earlier.
WD sucks. They need to go out of business.
My other first post is car post.
His next project is a game called "Hell" and it features a space marine who is caught in a deep space colony where the gateway between this universe and hell has been opened.
This is not a Doom sequel. This is a completely different game.
It should be obvious that its just my opinioin.
Because you were making statements as if they were factual and applied to everyone. Duh.
Get off the net and games for a while.(Read as: Don't bother replying)
I can't as my 6800 GT is backordered. Unlike you, however, who obviously can play Far Cry, The Greatest Game Every, who also took time to come to this thread and uber fickle.
Thats all I'm fighting. Half-life 1 was better with this...
How so? The enemies with ranged attacks shot at you as soon as they saw you, and the ones with melee attacks charged. Only the marines would duck and find cover.
I dont even get decent round barrels !
That IS odd. They brought out curved surfaces in Q3A, so you'd think that by now that wouldn't be an issue.
What I don't like about your post is that you try to incriminate Carmack for all teen's bad behaviour. You use the popularity of gaming, particularly 1st person shooting as the reason for crimes that are related reasons that are probably a lot more important than the games they play.
>>using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity
No one has any obligation to use his intellect to the use of a greater (?) purpose if he so desire.
As a human being, Jon have rights. As such, he may use his intelligence to do whatever it is that he likes as long as that use does not cause harm in a way carmack can be knowingly or not related to.
Carmack likes programming, game programming. As a matter of fact, he excels at it, so much that he became a reference in the gaming industry.
YES, some people like the bastards at columbine did play Doom, which ironically, is a killing game.
Facts : 1. Millions of kids have played Doom 2. Less than 0.5% of these kids have actually done something very wrong (like killing) 3. That's lower than the average criminal rate per capita.
Nowadays, we see it just too often that people search for a victim, they search for a culprit, a guilty whose head is to be cutted to alleviate people conscience.
So, Carmack wrote several violent games and popularized the genre.
Does that make him a criminal mind ?
Instead of looking at possibly the most irrelevant cause for increasing crimes, why don't you investigate
- The increasing rate of drug consumption
- Inflation that forces both parents to work in order to keep up
- Less attention being given to kids, leaving their education to be desired
- Why don't you do something about firearms being so readily avaiable on the market
You see, instead of looking at what they're playing, why don't you look at how they live, how they were raised, where they lived, who surrounds them.You fail to realize its our whole modern society that his the problem, not some genius who actually used his mind at something.
I'm not writing this to defend Carmack, the guy makes good games but I don't give a sh#t about him.
But I do despise the action of putting the responsibility on someone else than the person who did it.
For all I know, you could be a parent who's neglecting his kid, giving trouble with your kid, leaving you in a position where you want to know why.
I'm not an expert, I'm just someone that take responsibility for what I do. If someday I go and steal a car, don't go think its because I really like GTA, its gonna be because I have problems in my life and that I will have sunk really down to resort to that. I will probably do it out of money problems, maybe I'll be scared for my life, maybe it'll be because I'll try to escape from something but it certainly won't be because some game made me do it.
Heck, MOVIES have been around for decades, killing, blood spilling deadly movies have been there for quite some time and that didn't change a lot.
Besides, we're not forced to view the movies, we're not forced to play the games. Also, I'm enough of an adult to judge all by myself what is good and what is not. I'm intelligent enough to know that a game is a game.
Also, you could see it on the other way around. What if we played Doom just to avoid fighting in the street. What if we saw Doom as a passive way of expressing violence....
There are a thousand reasons why people kill each other. I don't mean to say Doom isn't one of them, but there are lot more pressing matters than Carmack's decision to use his intellect to create killing games.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
I dunno if JC reads all the responses to his posts, especially if those reponses come in a bit late, but I wanted to post this.
.plans that don't smack of the sort of marketroid-sterilized content that would come from EA. Really, I'd very much like to see games all include a brief video clip in the intro of the development team grinning and saying "Good luck!" or whatnot to keep that link alive.
I've been advocating that an effective method of dissuading people from just swiping content is to put forward the human element. People *tip* waitresses, barbers and bellhops. People don't even blink before swiping the latest EA football game. What's the difference? People have a hard time ripping people off if they actually see them as people -- we've built up mental structures that dissuade us from screwing over *people*.
Corporations, on the other hand, are easy to screw over. They aren't *people*.
Somewhere along the line, publishers decided that they needed to try to market themselves. They demand that games be categorized under their name, that they appear before the developer on the title intro (and sometimes in an unskippable intro), so on and so forth. The problem is, nobody buys a game based on who publishes it. It's the development house that matters. Plus, developers provide that crucial human element -- "Sid Meyer" is a *person* who made a nice game, and when people pirate Civilization, they are taking away sales from him.
I think that John Carmack does one of the best jobs I've ever seen of promoting a human element, and deliberately or not, enjoys the benefits of the loyalty that comes with such. He posts about software that he's working on, and he puts out quite straightforward
One of the most effective tools that the RIAA has used (and has never been shot down) is that a pirate is "taking from the artist". People arguing with the RIAA didn't even bother to try to argue against this -- they just worked on pointing out that the RIAA doesn't give a whole lot of the CD royalties to the artist. We know that taking from content creators is bad. Publishers -- ah, nobody cares.
I wish more publishers and developers would do what Sid Meyer, John Carmack, and a few others do -- present a *human* face, let people associate *creators* with a game. That doesn't mean a carefully organized marketing scheme with a scantily clad female developer on staff, that means just letting the human "oh, that's a *person* who I shouldn't screw over" mechanism kick in.
May we never see th
What did u expect? This is
The Greatest Game Ever,...
Did I say that ? No. I said its better than D3. Check barrels in FC. Much better. Barrels, Weapons, Water, Enemies, vehicles, Island environ, lights(some) make FC better than D3.
Btw How much did u really play D3 ? I went to up the communiaction level and am totally bored.
I can't as my 6800 GT is backordered.
Same here...
Get the e-vga one if u stil can. Its got Farcry free with it!
What did u expect? This is /.
:) Most of what bugs me about the "Doom suxors!!!!" posts is that they all seem to be written by people who made up their minds to hate the game before they ever bought/downloaded it. Here's a good example of a review by someone who was dissapointed by the gameplay. He makes the point the Deux Ex 2 is a good game with a bad expereince, while Doom 3 is a bad game with a great experience.
:-]
:)
True.
Get the e-vga one if u stil can. Its got Farcry free with it!
I would consider it, but I got a good deal on a PNY card. Actually, I ordered it, then my order was cancelled because PNY raised the price on the reseller by $100 after the fact. At that point I put PNY on my "do not buy, ever" list. However, the reseller strong armed PNY into honoring their origional price, and I reinstated my order...not that I'm taking PNY off my list, the only reason I'm still buying it is because PNY is taking a loss on the card. Much like how the only Microsoft product I will ever purchase is an Xbox, and that's because it will cost them money.
I ask because can't decide if I should stick with my AMD-XP upgrade path from (1500+ to 2500+) or take the plung and switch to Intel's P4 HT or true Duel CPU mobo before I buy the game!
You should definitely go with Duel CPUs. Nothing beats them for one-on-one combat.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - horror/sci fi FPS game developer John Carmack was found dead in his UAC barracks on Mars this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to Satanic culture. Truly an American icon.
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