Well, I got it yesterday morning. I installed it first on my work machine; 2.8Ghz P4, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9200 video card. It was like almost unplayable at 640x480.
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.
Mod me down as flamebait if you really must, but what really was the point of this exercise ? I'm sure Google would find it an interesting test -assuming they've not already tried it themselves - but as the author says, he's never actually told anybody at google about it. It just doesn't strike me as particularly constructive...
'As of this afternoon we were playing DOOM 3 on a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 box with a GeForce 4 MX440 video card and having a surprisingly good gaming experience.
Presumably because they were able to play a hand of poker while waiting for each frame to be rendered.
Well, welcome to the real world. This is exactly the policy you can expect to find in an enterprise environment. I see no good reason why it should not be applied to colleges/schools as well. After all, you are being plugged into their network infrastructure, and it's their job to keep the network running and available for all students.
I've taken a two-stage approach to the exact same problem.
1. I have decided to remain a contractor rather than opt for a full time job.
2. I am also working on a commercial application that will provide me with a second income stream. This will supplement when I have a contract, and provide a modest income for when I don't.
The point of these two decisions is to allow me to spend more time at home more often. Although writing my own product and doing contracts both make significant demands upon me, these demands are tempered by having periods of a few weeks at a time where I can spend time at home playing and teaching and supporting and all that good stuff. When not working a contract I also get to pick and choose my hours (within reason) with my own company's product development, thereby once again affording me more flexibility about when I can stay at home with my family.
It all comes down to having as much independence as possible. Independence for me has come at the cost of losing a guaranteed regular income (i.e. not have a permanent job), but as I have gotten older (I'm 35) money has become less and less important anyway. Quite frankly, I have come to really enjoy not working for "The Man" and I am much happier, if less well off, that I have ever been.
That reminds me of a job I worked as a tech lead. We supported the application we wrote, about 1200 users on an intranet. Occassionally, our application server software (that we wrote) would seize up. We rebooted it from time to time, but then new management types took over the IT department and went nuts about devs rebooting machines (even though there were no operators as such in the IT dept). So from that point forward, we referred to rebooting as "flushing the buffers". None the wiser, management were happy with that...
Allow me to remind you that a/. poll last year found that (something like) 80% of respondents were in fact Windows users. As am I. Yes, I've tried Linux, I've even developed under it. I just don't like it.
If you are a Windows user, check out GBPVR. Really very good indeed, puts some of the commercial stuff to shame. Free at the moment, although the author has started taking donations.
My brother-in-law is an experienced contract lawyer. He has made the point to me that the key issue when working with somebody is that good faith must be present on both sides. Irrespective of what any contract says, if it gets nasty and either party starts "enforcing" that contract, the only people that win are the lawyers. I thought that was extremely interesting.
Well, it's not been abandonned so how badly delayed has it been ? There's nuclear power stations just about everywhere (New Zealand being one of bugger all countries which has declaured itself nuclear free).
Slashdot Mirror
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.
Who said anything about saying in advance ? I'm just talking about reporting what he did and the issues with his account.
1. He made out it was a load test.
2. gmail is in beta; one of the points of using gmail at the moment is to report any problems you have.
Mod me down as flamebait if you really must, but what really was the point of this exercise ? I'm sure Google would find it an interesting test -assuming they've not already tried it themselves - but as the author says, he's never actually told anybody at google about it. It just doesn't strike me as particularly constructive...
Presumably because they were able to play a hand of poker while waiting for each frame to be rendered.
Well, welcome to the real world. This is exactly the policy you can expect to find in an enterprise environment. I see no good reason why it should not be applied to colleges/schools as well. After all, you are being plugged into their network infrastructure, and it's their job to keep the network running and available for all students.
Here's a better link that goes straight to the download page: Here
1. I have decided to remain a contractor rather than opt for a full time job.
2. I am also working on a commercial application that will provide me with a second income stream. This will supplement when I have a contract, and provide a modest income for when I don't.
The point of these two decisions is to allow me to spend more time at home more often. Although writing my own product and doing contracts both make significant demands upon me, these demands are tempered by having periods of a few weeks at a time where I can spend time at home playing and teaching and supporting and all that good stuff. When not working a contract I also get to pick and choose my hours (within reason) with my own company's product development, thereby once again affording me more flexibility about when I can stay at home with my family.
It all comes down to having as much independence as possible. Independence for me has come at the cost of losing a guaranteed regular income (i.e. not have a permanent job), but as I have gotten older (I'm 35) money has become less and less important anyway. Quite frankly, I have come to really enjoy not working for "The Man" and I am much happier, if less well off, that I have ever been.
That reminds me of a job I worked as a tech lead. We supported the application we wrote, about 1200 users on an intranet. Occassionally, our application server software (that we wrote) would seize up. We rebooted it from time to time, but then new management types took over the IT department and went nuts about devs rebooting machines (even though there were no operators as such in the IT dept). So from that point forward, we referred to rebooting as "flushing the buffers". None the wiser, management were happy with that...
Allow me to remind you that a /. poll last year found that (something like) 80% of respondents were in fact Windows users. As am I. Yes, I've tried Linux, I've even developed under it. I just don't like it.
Anything I download or get from an untrusted source I run in a clean Virtual PC first. Easy.
I think that anybody who thinks that the eradication of piracy would lead to the big companies lowering their prices is very sadly mistaken.
Burn to cd ? Not so useful. But burn to your iPod there and then.. now *that* would be good.
If you are a Windows user, check out GBPVR. Really very good indeed, puts some of the commercial stuff to shame. Free at the moment, although the author has started taking donations.
So how can I moderate an article's headline as "-1 Flamebait" then ?
My brother-in-law is an experienced contract lawyer. He has made the point to me that the key issue when working with somebody is that good faith must be present on both sides. Irrespective of what any contract says, if it gets nasty and either party starts "enforcing" that contract, the only people that win are the lawyers. I thought that was extremely interesting.
Am I the only person here that has absolutely no idea what any of that means ? It kind of lost me after '$300 million...'.
So when exactly did you undergo your complete sense of humour bypass operation ? Did it hurt ?
Great, a localised version of OpenOffice for Rwanda. Now open source can dominate the market for all 5 PCs in the country.
FFS....
That's the second funniest comment I've ever read here.
I think I need some of this in my shorts.
Must stop consuming so much curry and beer.
But again, that's not ethical or environmental, it's purely economic, isn't it ?
So referring to my original post... DDTs r&d was not affected by environmental or ethical considerations then - it was political.
Well, it's not been abandonned so how badly delayed has it been ? There's nuclear power stations just about everywhere (New Zealand being one of bugger all countries which has declaured itself nuclear free).