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Doom 3 Vaporware no More 537
gilxa1226 writes "The waiting will soon be over... I was browsing Best Buy's website, and saw a preorder for Doom 3. It looks as though the release date is 4/1/2004. Doom 3.com also has info on presales."
4/1, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:4/1, eh? (Score:2)
wow (Score:5, Interesting)
It's almost as if that the doom3 monster *is* the mechanical robot covered in flesh.
Doom [doom3.com]
Robot [enryu.jp]
Re:4/1, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
WTF? 4/1/2004 has been and gone, 7 days ago, and I can't remember it being April yet.
Bizarre article headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:4/1, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect it's not specifically related to the date format, but rather the quite astounding arrogance and destructive provincialism your demonstrating which is what's so objectionable.
But you'd have to clarify that with the poster.
Seriously YYYY-MM-DD is the only really agreed on format, and MM/DD/YYYY only gets the year out of place (its usually left off because it is normally obvious). DD/MM/YYYY, is just backwards; Nothing wrong with using it but I don't see the point in advocating it.
YYYY-MM-DD us not merely 'the only really agreed on format' it's the ISO 8601 International Standard format for date notation. It is the most useful format for direct digital manipulation and more than that, it's a practical and symbolic political compromise between the predominant format in North America, and the predominant format in the rest of the world.
DD/MM/YYYY is most useful for humans who use western left-to-right languages, this is why the western world (with the exception of North America) uses this format when writing dates.
MM/DD/YYYY is useless screwup of a system used by North Americans that is neither optimal for digital manipulation nor for parsing from left to right.
People who prefer MM/DD/YYYY are also the sort of people that prefer the Imperial System to the Metric System. IME, they also tend not to be programmers (for reasons that should be obvious). It's demonstrably inferior to both systems (both for digital manipulation and for manual parsing) and this is why it restricted to common use only in North America. Like the Imperial System, it's an anachronism best left in the past where it belongs (though, also like the Imperial System, it appears that people will continue to use it for quite some time, no matter how obviously inferior it is to avalible alternatives).
Re:4/1, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, we're just people who say "May 4th" instead of "The 4th of May". That's why that 'system' is commonly used. It's confusing to hear "May 4th" and then see "04-05".
Not that it's that big of deal, people can get used to any format. Just saying that it's not some strange development that people spontaneously decided to choose. Go to other languages such as Spanish, and they actually do say "4th of May". So it's not so surprising that they would write 04-05. Now think about the various languages used in Europe and how it would have grown that way.
Lighten up, we're not all crazy. Just from different environments.
Re:4/1, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Though if pressed, I'd rather have the MM/DD/YYYY because you know first what month-- the general-- and then what day-- the specific.
Re:4/1, eh? (Score:3, Informative)
(a) The units are in order of significance (Days in Months in Years). It is very definately not arbitrary.
MM/DD/YYYY is however entirely arbirtary and much harder to organise or sort because of that.
While the ISO date standard of YYYY-MM-DD is certainly ultimately superior to either of the other two methods, you can still much more easily create an effetive sorting system based on DD/MM/YYYY than MM/DD/YYYY because there is some order (implie
Re:4/1, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
This article is crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but we get a bizarre headline calling Doom 3 "vaporware" for no apparent reason. Nobody thought it was vaporware. It has had a steady stream of screenshots, an alpha leak, and a multiplayer demo, as well as no release date to delay in the first place.
Get with it, Slashdot.
Re:This article is crap (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a story about Doom. It's important to us geeks because we will all be trading in our mothers to get the hardware needed to play this game. It will drive the PC gaming market and force everyone to upgrade meaning.
1. I will be playing it.
2. I will be getting a lot of calls from people wanting me to "fix" their machines (for $$$) so they can play it.
Dec 10 1993 was when it all started. (Hard to believe its been over 10 years. From that day forward a group of gamers were turned truly geek. They sat up long hours tweaking their machines to get that extra 1-2 fps. They learned the basics of networking for multiplayer.(Funny, same day my mother and stepfather got married? Coincidence? I think not)
Doom got me and a lot of my friends interested in networking to the point where we all became sysadmins. We started on tweaking ipxodi.com to run high for doom and it led to working with novell servers. From there Windows servers, and in the end Linux.
I'm glad Slashdot reported it. Even if it is an early Aprils Fools joke, it's related very much to my lifestyle, my friends, nerds.
BTW i'm going to tangent this thread here, who's not buying new hardware till they can have Doom3, PCI express video and a 64bit CPU?
Doom3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doom3 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doom3 (Score:3, Informative)
Half-Life 2 For Sale In Ukraine
Following the news yesterday, of several high profile games being leaked onto the Internet, it has transpired that copies of Half-Life 2 (and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero) are being sold on the black market in the Ukraine.
The boxed software is be
Early April Fool? (Score:2)
I'll wait to HL2 anyway
Re:Early April Fool? (Score:2)
To quote penny arcade... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, what a great engine!
I can't wait till someone makes a game with it.
Re:To quote penny arcade... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I could care less about whether a game is innovative. I just want a game that's well-made and fun. id has always delievered at least that much in the past.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To quote penny arcade... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To quote penny arcade... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. They invented the entire FPS genre.
Re:To quote penny arcade... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, but it does not mean they have to stay with that very same gameplay for the rest of the studio's life, does it ? Actually is does sound like it is their plan.
To me, Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog and Lionhead have been much more inventive than ID Software. This does not mean ID games suck, it just mean ID takes no risk and innovates only in technology, not game design.
Re:To quote penny arcade... (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing is that id guys had a lot of ideas for their next game, including a very innovative Prey (IIRC). But ultimately they decided that they want to make Doom3, because they loved the original Doom and felt like the possibilities were simply to great to be ignored. This was neither milking the cash cow, nor investors' decision. The programmers (designers) made the decision.
Then you might also think about the reason FPS games are popular. It's because there is very specific behaviour that we humans enjoy very much - wreaking havoc. We have a very good picture of what we want to experience in such games and the FPS genre is doomed to assimptotically approach the image in our minds. That's why FPS game can't be too innovative, we are already close enough to the perfect experience and changing too much would be straying in the wrong direction.
Re:To quote penny arcade... (Score:5, Funny)
I have problems with id software continually releasing the same kind of "evil" dark games. Why can't they make something a little lighter? All the Dooms and Quakes concentrated on evil satanic monsters and nothing but mindless killing. As a Christian I have to wonder what this is doing to the children who end up playing these games behind their parents' backs (for example at a friend's house who has liberal parents or a single mom who is working hard to support the family). id should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such garbage. Why can't they make a good quality game about American soldiers hunting down evil terrorists?
Re:To quote penny arcade... (Score:3, Funny)
old news (Score:5, Informative)
but there is no promises as to when you are able to get your copy, so dont get your hopes up too much about it coming out very soon.
Re:old news (Score:5, Funny)
First week of april, NOOOOO! (Score:5, Funny)
4/1/03...where was I??? (Score:3, Funny)
So what? (Score:5, Informative)
This is completely meaningless. Stores put release dates out that are wrong quite often. Move on, move on.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
It can be vapor until it's shipped.
In other news... (Score:2)
Never was vaporware (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure our doom "vaporware" existed only at games.slashdot.org.
Regardless, a date is always nice, although it doesn't guarentee anything (even with pre-orders).
Re:Never was vaporware (Score:3, Insightful)
There will probably be many derivitives and mission packs to follow over the next couple of years. At this pace, however, we can expect to see Carmack's next graphics engine in 2010.
It's vaporware 'till I can run it... (Score:2, Insightful)
on my Linux box!
Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's vaporware 'till I can run it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Cheers!
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Great! (Score:2)
When it's finished... (Score:3, Funny)
No dates yet. (Score:5, Informative)
Please note: id Software has NOT supplied a release date for this title. We will provide a date as soon as one is announced. Pricing listed is an estimate and is subject to change.
So anyone who has some specific date marked is just guessing.
What's the big deal anyway? It's just a game.
Just a game?? (Score:2)
jsut a game? why havent you heard? this is the next big thing in scare-the-shit-out-of-you-ware.....seriously. the alpha leak was scary as hell even at about 3fps....not that i played it...
Re:No dates yet. (Score:2)
I think we all know how far that got.
Re:No dates yet. (Score:2)
Seriously tho, Quake3 was definitly badass and a ton of fun, and with all the maps available, as well as mods and add-ons, it was an amazing game!
Re:No dates yet. (Score:2)
ID Software's greatest hits (Score:2)
Return To Castle Wolfenstein: The teamplay is is a great addi(c)tion, IMHO. Unless the team you're in has never heard of teamplay. It then becomes very depressing.
Or did you just mean they didn't make any great Doom-successor?
Re:ID Software's greatest hits (Score:2, Insightful)
QuakeI and the release of Quakeworld I belive it was, when we finally started hearing more from Carmak and less from Romero since Carmack was working on client side prediction and working out the server client model was great.
The game is still a great MP game.
And at the time I had allot of fun playing the single player game just to see what was the first true 3D polygon based model engine. It was a awsom
Re:No dates yet. (Score:2)
Yup.
Re:No dates yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
GameStop and EB have varied Ship dates (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GameStop and EB have varied Ship dates (Score:2, Funny)
Large format trailer (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't slept for more then 24 hours but I didn't see a link to the large format trailer on the site so here it is:
Slashdot Me [doom3.com]
Of course, I already grabbed it myself.
odd that (Score:2)
01 April 2004 .... (Score:5, Funny)
Did you hear that wailing sound? (Score:5, Funny)
That was the sound of utter terror from ten-thousand Nvidia, Ati, AMD and Intel engineers who can now look forward to putting out a bleeding-edge new graphics card / CPU in less then four months. Expect casualties.
Re:Did you hear that wailing sound? (Score:5, Funny)
And the spontaneous orgasms of thousands of Nvidia, Ati, AMD and Intel sales persons awaiting the gullible geeks desperate for a video card upgrade to enjoy the full splendour of a video game for > 300
Re:Did you hear that wailing sound? (Score:2)
And the simple acknowlegement of people like me that can buy the new knocked down Geforce9's to replace my voodoo 3 and play some modern games
Re:Did you hear that wailing sound? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Did you hear that wailing sound? (Score:5, Informative)
The only real FUD going on is that ATI and Valve are cross-promoting eachother's products, and to that end, Valve is coming out saying "the way we wrote the game, it's going to perform better on ATI's current cards."
Re:Did you hear that wailing sound? (Score:4, Funny)
didn't they already do that? (Score:2)
You see, the funny thing is, I upgraded my computer in November of 2002 specifically to play Doom3.
P4 2.4GHz, Radeon 9700 Pro, 512MB memory. I was ready!!
time passes....
No my computer is getting old. It never even got to run Doom3 (except for the leaked alpha). And guess what? I'll be upgrading again this spring, specifically to play Doom3.
Curse you id software. Curse you.
Re:Did you hear that wailing sound? (Score:2)
Dont worry, They'll just take the latest chips/cards, slap "ultra extreme edition XT second edition" on them and resell them at $500.
PS: On a weird note, a friend just got a GeForce FX 5600 Ultra XT. I thought the XT thing was ATI's? Oh wait, I mean IBM's
Yeah ! (Score:2, Funny)
Trailer on doom3.com (Score:2)
Why does that soldier's helmet say "ARSE"? Did any one else notice that?
Re:Trailer on doom3.com (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Trailer on doom3.com (Score:2)
The sensible way to buy it... (Score:2)
1. Wait three to six months.
2. Then buy a near-high-end computer.
3. Marvel as you get 30 fps.
The Date (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok.. Whats next? (Score:5, Funny)
Duke nukem forever announced for late '04?
-- Jim.
Notice! (Score:2, Informative)
Cool! (Score:2)
Am I the only one (Score:2)
Their games, while aesthetically pleasing are far from original anymore. Doom3 is just going to be another run-and-jump-shoot-that-rocket game.
At least with UT2k4 they're adding new game modes and vehicles and such.
Also from all the stuff I've read it won't play decently on anything short of a 500$ graphics card and a 3Ghz processor.... Which leaves my main windows box [laptop] in the dust...
Tom
Re:Am I the only one (Score:2)
Look at wolfenstein? Decent game based on the craptastic Quake3 game in the same way the next interesting game will probably be based off the Doom3 engine.
So I'm not terribly excited to see Doom3, I'd rather see the real games that come after it.
ummm... (Score:3, Informative)
That's a little late for that 4/1 prediction, doncha think?
Old News. EB says Doom3/HL2 4/1/04 (Score:2)
Whimsical Release Dates (Score:5, Funny)
Funny enough, sitting right next to it is Counter Strike: Condition Zero. It's release date has changed twice as well. I see people go by all the time and go "It's OUT! YES!" and then bitch and swear when they see pre-order.
same with Half-Life 2 (Score:5, Informative)
But if you must pre-order, EBgames does have a cute figurine for Doom 3. (I preordered the harvest moon game for the gba, just to get a stuffed cow that's sitting on top of my computer, along with diablo and arthas...)
preorders mean nothing (Score:2)
Suspicious plot... (Score:3, Interesting)
Organisation conducting experiments into reaching other worlds; experiment goes wrong; creatures and entities from other world start appearing.
I'm sure I saw a ginger haired guy with glasses near that reactor... hmmm
DooM for Columbine (Score:2)
(Shameless plug)
Check my .sig for details.
/. ? Run by Nerds? (Score:2)
Retailers have been listing release dates that are no where near anything official for years now. If retailers were right, I would have had HL2 on 11/15 like they promised. It's been shown OVER AND OVER AGAIN that retailers don't know ANY more about game release dates than average joe game buyer.
I honestly can't believe that slashdot even accepted this story let alone posted it on the main page.
If you want REAL game news, go to shacknews.com. People who actua
All release dates for Doom 3 are false (Score:5, Informative)
id has a very specific policy regarding release dates: There are none. They will release the game when it is done, but until that point, any date you see is pure speculation.
At one point, Amazon was actually offering a discount if you bought Doom 3 together with Half-Life 2, which I thought was pretty amusing.
Team Fortress 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Offical (Score:3, Funny)
Good horror game! (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen to this... these are the best types of games to play. Nothing is better than playing these in the pitch black at 2 AM when no one else is up.
Not that it's truly terrifying, but the fact that a game can remotely trigger the emotions to creep you the f'k out.. that's some quality stuff.
I can't wait to see what comes out in the future.
No, it IS still vaporware... (Score:3, Interesting)
Until there is actual software available to install on system. idSoftware could have started making "preorders" available a year ago for all that means. It would be no less vaporware.
When the game actually exists for purchase. When it is available to reviewers for, well, actually reviewing (instead of simply looking at nifty video clips from in-house), THEN it wont be vaporware.
The fact of the matter is, it is STILL vaporware, just as much as it was last year or the year before. Preorder or not.
Doom3 hardware information (Score:4, Informative)
"GeForce 3 isn't capable of running the shaders that Doom 3 needs. You would need to have a GeForce 4 at the very least"
nVidia has five generations of cards worth talking about;
nv0x-TNT series
nv1x-GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce4MX, nForce, nForce2, etc
nv2x-GeForce3, GeForce4Ti, Xbox
nv3x-GeForceFX series
nv4x-next generation unannounced cards
A GeForce3 is tweaked GeForce4 and will run Doom3 well. For ATI's cards we have this chart:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1
r1x0-Radeon, Radeon 7000/7200/7500
r2x0-8500/9000/9100/9200
r3x0-95
Doom3 is going to have at least five methods of rendering according to a year old post by John Carmack:
http://www.webdog.org/plans/1/
ARB1-pr
NV1x-five passes, renders all features
NV2x-two or three rendering passes, renders all features
R200-usually single pass, renders all features
NV3x-single pass, renders all features
ARB2-advanced standard OpenGL, single pass, renders all features. This will be used by all DX9 and better cards other than the GeForceFX which has a special optimized rendering path.
The ATI Radeon and Intel Extreme Integrated Graphics will use the ARB1 path. The Matrox Parhelia will probably fall back to the standard DX7 path and not use its ability to do things like vertex programs. I'm not sure where the WildcatVP falls in, it supports nvidia's register combiner extensions so it could pretend to be a GeForce1/4MX, but I seem to remember a
ARB3-basically be the exact same as ARB2, but using vertex/fragment shaders instead of vertex/fragment programs (high level language instead of low level asm shading language). Currently only supported by WildcatVP, but presumably ATI and nvidia would support this soon too. And any other DX9 level cards.
The XGI Volari and S3 DeltaChrome would use the ARB2 path as would ATI's next generation card. Not sure about the NV4x... Users would probably have the option to choose any rendering path their hardware can do if they want.
*rumour*
The PowerVR Kyro is possibly not going to be able to run Doom3 because it can't do Cube Maps. If they allow Doom3 to run without CubeMaps then I guess the nvidia TNT, ATI Rage, Matrox G400, S3 Savage 2000, 3dfx cards, and Intel 815G integrated graphics, will be able to run it too. In theory
If Doom3 supports fragment/vertex shader it'll be the first on the market to do so. The only other advanced OpenGL game on the market for windows I know of is Homeworld2 which uses new extensions like fragment programs and vertex buffer objects.
Finally there have been Doom3 benchmarks released:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc
Medium Quality: 1024x768:
104fps - GeForceFX 5900 Ultra
95fps - GeForceFX 5800 Ultra
77fps - Radeon 9800 Pro
55fps - GeForceFX 5600 Ultra
40fps - Radeon 9600 Pro
47fps - GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
19fps - Radeon 9200
Those are from May 12th, 2003. Probably a full year before the game ships. But it gives you an idea of how well the GeForceFX can do when partial precision floating point is used via the NV3x fragment program extension (there standard OpenGL fragment program extension only allows you to hint fastest, don't care, or nicest for the entire program while AFAIK the nvidia extension allows you to specify per instruction if you want 16bit or 32bit precission) and how well the GeForceFX "ultra shadow" technology works.
I'm really looking forward to this game!
Re:April fools day! (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly, another similarly named company, EB Games may want you to know a more accurate date- so they can sell more copies of Doom III, and share in the profits with the game designers, publishers, etc.
Re:bad site (Score:2, Informative)
Re:bad site (Score:2)
*sigh* a programmer explains: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:April Fool's Day Release? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SO DOOM3 IS ALLREADY OUT? (Score:2)
Re:Completely Meaningless (Score:2, Funny)
Sweet!
Please note that release dates are subject to change.
Aww...
Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would be willing to bet $12 that there are more geeks out there WITHOUT a LAN and dedicated game server than there are WITH. Not to mention the hassle of getting other people to participate. Plus there's the convenience factor of popping in a cd and playing a while whenever you want. I was personally disappointed with Quake 3, as it's not great as a 1st person. In fact, I'd rather replay Quake 2 over and over. Multiplayer games are fine in geekland where you do have a LAN set up and a bunch
Re:DOOM3 for Linux??? (Score:5, Informative)