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The Art and Design of Quake 4
Gamespy has a feature discussing the upcoming first person shooter Quake 4. More details about the title are revealed in an interview and screenshots provided by some of the folks at Raven. From the article: "I think we have a lot of diversity throughout the entire game. We have some dark areas, and we have outdoor areas that are brighter. I think how diverse everything is will really go a long way. We didn't really set out saying, 'This game is going to be dark, this game is going to be light' -- we set out to make a cohesive environment where you go through different extremes and you'll see a bunch of different stuff."
One of my good (internet) friends is a programmer on Quake 4, and I know a few other guys on the Activision tech team and such. The story is a continuation of Quake 2, but you can expect Q3A style multiplayer awesomeness as well. It's going to be a great game.
I'm hoping to have my massive 32/64-player Quake 2 DM level, Aquaphobia, done before Quake 4 comes out. I only been working on it (on-and-off-but-mostly-off) for the last six years.
Aquaphobia Project Page
After I get done with Quake 4 single player, I'll start working on some new levels for that game.
Doom 3 was a poor game. It amounts to hours and hours of running down cramped hallways, encountering monsters that other than visually don't really differ much. It gets really boring really quick.
The game feels more like one long technology demo, than something built to provide compelling entertainment. And even being a technology demo, the results are less than impressive. The vast, lush environments in HL2 make the cramped environments in Doom 3 look quaint in comparison, even if the Doom 3 engine, with its real time lighting, is ultimately more advanced. I wonder if Doom 3 can even handle environments that have the same scope as HL2. The portions of Doom 3 that take place on the outside of Mars look really bad. Hell ends up being a bit more impressive, but it quickly reverts back to the familiar small enclosed envirnoment.
Hopefully the Quake 4 team will be able to make a more compelling game.
If you want good co-op games you can play with your wife, you can't go wrong with Bioware. The Baldurs Gate series in particular is great for playing with chicks... the ability to pause the game at any time is great for those who don't have the highly developed fast-twitch mousing ability :P
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
You might want to check in with Serious sam, just a funny game with a ridiculously insane (in a good way) engine. Wonder why that engine never kicked off...?
It's kind of weird, but -lots- of what the doom3 engine -can- do wasn't in the game. If you look through the SDK, there's plenty of stuff that seemingly didn't make it into the game (like support for vihicles, etc.) They could've made it FPS for part of the game, then have the player ride a tank like in UT2004, then fly around, etc. Dunno why they didn't do it.
Oh, and the engine can support huge open maps (just like Team Arena terrain maps).
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Quaker IV?