Doom 3 Vaporware no More

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."

Doom3

[Anonymous Coward]

What with the leaked Alpha, numerous screenshots on every gaming site, I never really thought of Doom3 as vaporware. DNF is another story

Never was vaporware

[klueless]

What about the E3 Demo? This thing was playable a LONG time ago.

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).

It's vaporware 'till I can run it...

[goljerp]

Sorry, it's still vaporware until I can run it...

on my Linux box!

Completely Meaningless

[Pave Low]

Taking pre-orders for upcoming games is nothing new or interesting. That doesn't mean the release date still can't move back. It's still vaporware until it hits the shelves.

Amazon's has been taking pre-orders too [amazon.com], but the release date listed is 3/01/2004.

The Date

[Timmmm]

4/1/2004 .... That was about a week ago...

Re:So what?

[Zardoz44]

Not only that. Didn't DNF have pre-orders at one point?

It can be vapor until it's shipped.

Re:Never was vaporware

[l810c]

While i do think the term 'vaporware' is being tossed about a bit too freely in this case, this has definatally been id's longest development cycle. The game was announced June 1, 2000 and the famed E3 demo was over 1 1/2 years ago. If they make Fool's day release they will come in just under 4 years.

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.

Re:ID Software's greatest hits

[Comen]

QuakeI was definitly a great game, people that say id cant make a good game should be whipped repeatidly.
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 awsome game, I still love it.

Re:No dates yet.

[drinkypoo]

There is something wrong with you. Quake was both a groundbreaking title (being the first truly three dimensional textured FPS) and fun to play. Quake held my attention longer than any other game, before or since. In fact, I still play Quake even now. Its modular, extensible architecture and scripting language enabled it to be reborn countless times in countless forms. I remember how excited I was when the transparent water patch came out for gldoom. Likewise, I remember how excited I was that the game was playable on my 486DX33. Quake is one of the greatest games of all time, and will be remembered as such.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[ziggles]

Ya know, maybe I'm weird, but I like to play games before deciding they suck and their only redeeming feature is their engine. It's not like id has a track record of making crappy games. They may not be great innovators, but every game they've made has been of high quality. You may be bored of FPS games, but that doesn't mean they all suck.

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.

Good horror game!

[DroopyStonx]

I've been reading reviews and previews since the day this thing was announced, and they claim that this game will seriously scare the piss outta you mainly due to the graphics and lighting, but also due to the enemy AI. They'll actually HIDE from you only to jump your ass when you run by. Or you'll be walking down a faintly lit corridor only to see a vague silhouette of something moving, but by the time you think "..what was tha-," something's swiping and screeching at you.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Bizarre article headline

[Overly Critical Guy]

Who thought Doom 3 was "vaporware?" There was no reason to. I don't think anybody did. Wtf?

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[fredrikj]

They may not be great innovators

Bullshit. They invented the entire FPS genre.

Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[Aeolusz]

I disagree. Call of Duty had an awesome single-player game which is actually better than the multi-player (hundreds of losers hopping around, camping in underbrush, and playing stupidly). The excellent sound, the story, and the frantic pace makes it an excellent single-player game. It immerses you in the war much more than bf1942 ever did. Doom3 could be really awesome and I do not think the fact that it is single-player will be a detriment to it if they can pull off the story.

Re:To quote penny arcade...

[ziggles]

I think it's great that they have such ridiculous designs. This is a Doom game, it should carry on in the tradition of Doom 1 & 2. If this was some other game about a mars base being overtaken by demons from hell then you may have a point.. but it's not. And actually, the game's plot (mars base overtaken by demons from hell? come on!) is so ridiculous, having "inspired" art direction would seem out of place regardless of the past Doom games.

Re:sorry ID. Single player games just dont swing.

[simetra]

Uh, yeah.

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 of buddies sitting there waiting to do something, but in the real world, single player games do still make more sense for most casual game users.

This article is crap

[Overly Critical Guy]

Wow, Slashdot is posting retailer release dates now? After all these years, this supposed "geek site" doesn't know that every retailer has different dates that are never true? This is ridiculous. Why would Taco post this? According to EBGames last year, I should have gotten Half-Life 2 in November...since we're believing random retailers now. Right, I'm sure Best Buy is really in the know about id's release schedule.

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:To quote penny arcade...

[theefer]

Bullshit. They invented the entire FPS genre.
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:This article is crap

[t0qer]

Wow, Slashdot is posting retailer release dates now?

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?

Re:4/1, eh?

[@madeus]

You want us to die because we use a different date format? Isn't that a bit absurd?

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).