DOOM 3 will use P2P System? 223
Ant writes "From Page 6 of FiringSquad's QuakeCon 2002 Postmortem article: John Carmack said something at the end of the Q&A about how the multiplayer will be only four players?
Tim: After 2 hours of talking up at the podium, sometimes you leave a few details out. Doom 3 multiplayer will be fully scalable. It will be a peer to peer system. We haven't started working on it yet. Tell everyone not to panic - it will be fine. John just forgot to mention it'll be scalable past four players. It's hard to give a hard number because we haven't started working on it yet. Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game."
Eye candy! (Score:3, Interesting)
What could Wil Wright or Al Lowe or Sid Meier do with a badass graphics engine behind them?
We already know what Carmack can do.
Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox (Score:5, Interesting)
But what I found much more interesting was this quote:
"Absolutely, but Linux version basically means an NVIDIA version - that's the only safe bet for working video under Linux in Doom 3."
Gah!!! I hope ATI and Matrox see that and consider it a challenge. It's really discouraging that the only quasi-respected video drivers for Linux are proprietary.
P2P? (Score:2, Interesting)
"If this looks like Cairo, my lag must be awful."
Server monitor: a map showing the people running around in your server.
Or does P2P mean that everyone sends their status to all 30,000 other people in the game?
Really? What about security? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are FPS's perhaps already trusting the client anyway? Is a cheat-proof multiplayer FPS a myth?
Not article material (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone asks about the multiplayer Doom 3. They haven't worked on it yet. In the middle of a live Q&A session, Tim is assuring everyone the game will be multiplayer. He starts throwing out words even though he doesn't know the exact way it will work, because, hey, they haven't done multiplayer yet.
Tim blurts "It will be a peer to peer system." That's the entire discussion of that in the whole article. There is nothing else.
By "peer to peer" system he simply meant "yes, you will be able to hook up your computers and play together" and nothing else. Why does this deserve a front page article? It doesn't. It was obviously something he said while in a live situation and he wasn't sure of the details.
The poster of this article looks sillier than the stock market and Alan Greenspan. What's even more disturbing is that Taco fell for it too. Someone needs to send over good strong pot of coffee.
It's days like these when the trolls start to make sense.
This is great! (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted, I think it was made to work on a LAN only, but if ID could pull this sort of feat off with Doom 3, I'd be all for it!
I'm guessing that this would eliminate the need for one person to have tons of bandwidth and a good machine dedicated to be a server. This should allow virtually *anybody* to start a game (even those on dialup, maybe?)
As someone who's cable is limited to 128k up, I'm very excited about this development!
QUAKE? (Score:4, Interesting)
Peer to Peer Gaming Is Hardly New (Score:3, Interesting)
Peer to peer doesn't automatically equate to Napster. It just means people send stuff to each other instead of to and from one master server. Geez, Slashdot stories are like playing buzzword bingo these days.
Re:why? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm quite excited about the focus on single player, for one. I found myself playing a lot more half-life than I ever did quake 3, despite quake 3 being the technologically superior game. Why? Because running around killing bots is boring, and you can only play online if you have a fast connection (I live in the boonies...), and have hours to waste. I mean, I consider myself fairly good at these type of game, but I can in no way compete with a teenager that has all the time on his hands to play constantly. And running around killing over and over can get boring too... there needs to be some point, or some goal, IMO. If you're working towards something, and moving forward in the game, it gives me more reason to go back and play again... to see "what happens next".
When Doom came out, I remember it was the shit. I used to play all three ways... single player, deathmatch, coop. And it was enjoyable each way. Since it was pretty much the first of its type that had that sort of "deathmatch" available, I think deathmatch caught on really quick, and so they started focussing on that more in the later games. But it seems like the other parts of the game weren't stresed. I'm glad to see that iD is going back to the development model they used on Doom, because Doom proved that a game could be good at many different types of play, and do it all well.
I really hope they bring back cooperative mode too, that's one thing I've sorely missed since the doom series. The problem with deathmatch is that if you've only got 2 or 3 friends handy, there usually ends up being one person that gets better than the other(s). So after a while, it gets predictable.
So anyway....
Re:Eye candy! (Score:2, Interesting)
XBox? (Score:2, Interesting)
Carmack's being lazy? (Score:1, Interesting)
"I am still holding to my stronger networking belief, though -- centralized,
authoritative servers, as opposed to peer to peer interaction. I REALLY
think distributed simulation among clients is a VERY BAD idea for networked
games..."
But now he's gone P2P. That's a shame, because client-server is the only robust solution really, Carmack said it himself!
I'm assuming he hasn't gone back on these beliefs, but he's just basically being lazy, because another one of his beliefs is limit the focus of the game as much as possible so they can get it done.
You can build a single-player game without sacrificing any of the interactive elements or increasing workload if you build a strong client/server system where the clients are basically as dumb as the network conditions can allow. This is what I thought he was doing when he said it would need broadband.
Oh well, it'll work, but it's unfortunate, particularly for their licensees, who now have the job of rewriting the network code if they aren't going single-player only.
null (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, I've been a fan of Id since Commander Keen, I've bought *all* their games (Dangerous Dave - yay! =]) and liked/loved them. One thing I do remember though, is that they used to say they just made games they thought were cool and they liked to play, if other people liked them then even better. I also seem to remember hearing somewhere that multiplayer in Doom was a quick hack that they did because they thought it would be fun, and didn't expect other people to use it.
I noticed that with Quake 2 and 3 they seemed to listen to what gamers wanted, which is why I'd say that I don't like those games that much.
I'm glad to hear that with Doom 3 they're back to doing what they think is cool and great. It's looking great and I reckon it's going to be a great game to play - I know that I'm holding out on upgrading my computer until it comes out =]