Doom 3 Linux Client

Brad writes "LinuxGames.com is reporting that the Doom 3 Linux Client has begun private testing. The Doom 3 Linux server has already been completed and will be released with the next win32 release."

Comments

Uh

[rakarnik]

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=117228&c id=9914322 What part of that comment did you not understand?!?! Talk about an even more misleading headline. Would it be so hard to add "in testing"?

But...

[redog]

Is there and ebuild for it yet?

Re:But...

[Apreche]

bash_3_prompt $ esearch -Sc doom
[ N] doomsday (1.8.1): A modern gaming engine for Doom, Heretic, and Hexen
[ N] lsdldoom (1.4.4.4): Port of ID's doom to SDL
[ N] doomlegacy (1.42): Doom legacy, THE doom port
[ N] freedoom (0.2): Freedoom - Open Source Doom resources
[ N] prboom (2.2.4-r1): Port of ID's doom to SDL and OpenGL
[ N] doom-data (1): collection of doom wad files from id
[ N] yadex (1.7.0): A Doom level (wad) editor
[ N] glbsp (2.05): A node builder specially designed for OpenGL ports of the DOOM game engine
[ N] wmdl (1.4.1): WindowMaker Doom Load dockapp
[ N] gkrellflynn (0.7): A funny GKrellM (1 or 2) load monitor (for Doom(tm) fans)

Not yet, but soon. Very soon.

Cool

[ChopsMIDI]

I'm excited to see what kind of performance difference there is between the Win32 and the linux client.

The Native Linux Client for Quake 3 ran MUCH faster for me than in Windows....to the point that I stopped playing Q3A in Windows altogether, simply because I could crank my Resolution much higher in Linux and it ran perfectly (like 100 FPS).

I hope it's the same for Doom3....It'll be like a free hardware upgrade.

Re:Cool

[grm_wnr]

Most FPSs do, but id software, for some reason, seems to prefer an OPEN, NON-MICROSOFT standard which is available for most platforms (OpenGL).

Re:Cool

[jwbozzy]

Ok, for the last time, Doom3 Win32 uses:

• OpenGL for graphics
• DirectX's DirectInput for input
• DirectX's DirectSound for sound

There is no Direct3D involved. Just remember, DirectX != Direct3D.

Re:Cool

[BinLadenMyHero]

Doom II had the same engine as Doom I.
Quake had no 3D acceleration (tought later glQuake was released).
Quake II had software rendering and 3D acceleration was an option.
Quake III was the first id game that required 3D acceleration.

Re:Cool

[FueledByRamen]

On the performance differences side, I had the same experience. The machine was an AMD K6/2 400 with a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 16MB AGP - Windows 2000 and (Redhat) Linux dual boot.

Under Windows - Quake3 was fine in 1024x768, slow to the point of unplayability at 1280x1024.

Under Linux - After finally getting hardware 3d acceleration working (wow, I never want to hear the words "Glide OpenGL Wrapper" ever again...) - completely playable in 1600x1200, highest detail settings, at 50 FPS (bottoming out at 30FPS with too many rockets onscreen). On a Voodoo 3. I was absolutely amazed.


I doubt the differences will be THAT pronounced (I blame it on 3dfx's Windows drivers being horrible), but it certainly would be nice to have the Linux port of Doom3 running faster than on Windows.

They don't use DirectX...

[Ayanami Rei]

Rather, they use OpenGL and a thin API over the other parts of DirectX (sound, input). OpenGL is cross-platform.

Porting is not bad...
1) Most resources are relative paths inside zip files or flat in a directory, so you remove filesystem issues (path seperators/case sensitivity).
2) The game code that uses DirectX for non-video stuff is kept to a library used specifically to interface the game code to the system.
Most of the work is just rewriting that library to use equivalent functions on Linux.
3) WineX has a DirectX emulation layer that can be used as a guide for 3.
4) Side note- SDL pretty much takes care of everything in DirectX, minus DirectShow. Can also be used as a guide.
5) NVidia has development tools (shader compilers and whatnot) that work on Linux.

Same goes for MacOSX, really...

Re:They don't use DirectX...

[Ford Prefect]

Rather, they use OpenGL and a thin API over the other parts of DirectX (sound, input). OpenGL is cross-platform.

If it's anything like Quake 2, it'll have its own internal sound and display APIs, with some simple platform-specific stuff at the very end. I get the impression Quake 2 could be ported to a new system just by writing a couple of new files and using that as the target...

Actually, slightly irrelevantly, I've been busy poking around in the demo's .pk4 datafile, and most of the data is already portable. Textures are DDS or TGA, audio is OGG or WAV, and everything else is text-files. Models, animations, scripting, even the sodding maps - it's plain, human-readable text!

It's not XML (heh), but it's definitely not some endian-specific binary garbage...

Cedega

[Ford Prefect]

I downloaded the Windows demo earlier this week, in the hope of getting it to run on my (somewhat rubbish) PC. Of course, my games-only Windows 98 installation turned out to be somewhat insufficient - while the demo installed, it refused to run. Some hex-editing of the Doom3.exe as recommended for the full game turned out to be worthless, making it crash immediately after launch.

So, I decided to give Linux a try. I found a clever shell script for downloading the latest Cedega from CVS, and gave that a try. It worked brilliantly.

Absolutely no visual glitches, no audio glitches, and completely, utterly and boringly stable. Only criticism was that the frame rate was rather low, but I'm not surprised - my PC's below minimum specs processor-wise (1.1GHz Athlon), although merely low-end graphics-wise (128MB GF4Ti).

It'll be interesting to compare the performance of the native client with the running-on-Cedega one - I really wonder how much processor time Cedega takes to do all its API-translation thing.

As for the game? It's ... Interesting, but highly derivative. Pretty atmospheric, and an intriguing engine - but gameplay was rather dull, and the poor sound-effects really didn't help. Footsteps sounded horrible and far too repetitive, likewise a lot of the other sounds. Plus the repetition wasn't confined to the audio, with way too much scripting and linearity...

Will I buy the game? Probably, eventually, but only when it's come down in price. ;-)

Re:Cedega

[malejko]

*looks at the box for Doom 3*

Doesn't support Windoze 98. Win 2k/XP only.

Anyone can find the file ?

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Here they announce the beta is available on Shacknews but I cannot find it, which is a bit frustrating... full text here under :

"id Software's Robert Duffy updated his .plan file tonight to announce an open beta test for the Win32 DOOM 3 patch at Shacknews, an update in which he also commented on the status of the Linux dedicated server:

We have released the first update for DOOM 3 as a beta and on a limited scale ( it is only available on the File Shack at www.shacknews.com ). We don't anticipate any issues with it but felt it best to get it into the hands of a few thousand people rather than the entire customer base in case we missed something. We will release the update through our update server for wide release once we have verified there are no problems with it.

We will be releasing another update in the near future that will include Punk Busters cheat protection functionality for DOOM III.

The SDK is also ready to go and as soon as the update is out in non beta form the SDK will be made available for download.

The Linux Dedicated server is also ready to go and will also be available as soon as the update is non beta.

Presumably, this indicates the Linux client isn't all that far away either."

I found here all the I could on doom 3 and Id software in Fileshack...

So, almighty Slashcrowd, who can help mefind the precious , working Doom 3 for Linux ?

You misread it

[ReKleSS]

The only thing on shacknews is the beta of the patch - not the beta of the linux client. That's in private testing, not public testing.
-ReK

MacOS X?

[antdude]

I wonder when MacOS X version will be done.

WARNING!

[Aggrazel]

WARNING! As soon as you touch that nice shiney linux doom3 client, 20 demons are gonna jump out at you and eat you.

You just watch ...

Still waiting...

[harrkev]

I am still waiting to see this:

load "Doom3",8,1
OK

too late

[AliasTheRoot]

I woulda cared about it if theyd released it 2 months ago, as it is i played through it on the windows partition i maintain for games and uninstalled it. Well strictly speaking, I uninstalled it halfway through when I found it was boring.