Doom 3 Reaches Gold Master, Due August 5th

Rogerpq3 writes "Yes, this is the official word that [long-awaited PC FPS] DOOM 3 has been code released and has been approved for manufacturing! According to the .plan file of id CEO Todd Hollenshead: 'We literally just hung up with Activision and have confirmed that our latest release candidate has been mutually approved and is finally GOLD. So, the next question is release dates. Retailers in the States will be allowed to pick up games starting at 12:01 AM on August 3rd. The official street date is actually August 5th in the U.S.A., but some of your favorite stores will probably have it early for those of you who have to have it first. Check with your local retailer for that information... [Internationally] the UK will probably get it first, on or about August 6th. Everywhere else will probably be Friday, August 13th (cue Twilight Zone Theme) or close to that date, with just a few exceptions (e.g. Russia and Poland)'."

Hey stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, if you want to combat piracy, release it on the same date world-wide. This one-week-later crap will only result in lots of illegal copies in "late" countries.

Re:The end of the universe is nigh....

[koreth]

I'd hardly call time spent attempting to produce children wasted.

Re:very cool

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are true to their form, it will "work" in an unexpected way: sarcastic error message, stronger enemies, or maybe just an instadeath.

If they were really '733t, it would launch DOOM I, a la Day of the Tentacle, or at least 'port you into a DOOM I-alike level.

Re:Ah... I can't... oh no...

[Rei]

You can take consolation in the fact that, when you buy Doom 3, you're supporting ameteur rocketry. ;)

Re:Hardware Requirements?

[jrockway]

These people always write dumb-sounding articles:

> 3. PCI Express enhances NOTHING.

i.e. "I didn't have PCI Express and the game worked fine." Thanks for that insight.

> 8...The sound engine is entirely CPU dependant. Therefore a crappy soundcard works flawlessly. Not to worry, the enfine only uses a small percentage of cycles, much less than if the engine relied on a soundcard.

Yes. Processing something in the CPU is much faster than offloading it to something else for processing. "The graphics is entirely CPU dependant... it uses software rendering. Not to worry, the enfine only uses 150% of cycles, much less than if the engine relied on a soundcard :-!"

Nice try. But I'll bet that using EAX would have been faster. Fine with me, though, considering that stuff doesn't work under Linux.

Nice review, but I think things that you're (not you the poster, you the actual person who wrote this that you copied from) passing off your thoughts as fact, which is bad journalism in my opinion.

Re:Ah... I can't... oh no...

[Idealius]

Actually, that's a bit misguided.

It really is more related to the Doom engine in design because Quake was "real 3D" where as the Doom/Build engines were basically hacks which is why they ran so much faster.

For instance, it was really a challenge for the developer of the Build engine to have support of a room directly above another room.

Build/Doom engines are raycasters. That's why when you looked up or down (or 3rd-person mode) in the Build/Doom engines walls looked skewed.

The Quake engine was actual 3D and never had this problem.

But, I will say that Duke 3D and Quake came out about the same time and were direct competitors.

Buggy releases

[Quinn_Inuit]

Given the tendency to release games too early, I suspect that this one will be playable around the time they get the fifth patch out in October.

Re:Half-Life 2 == Vapourware?

[Talon33]

Umm, that's rediculous. People have played HL2. To even think that it is Vaporware is simply ignorant. Yes, it has a very delayed launch, I personally spoke with some of the lead designers at valve last may at E3. I also attented the sneak peak conference which showed off Half Life 2. let's just say they've spent a lot of their time on that physics engine, which was absolutely amazing. I won't be the only one who will spend entirely too much time playing with the gravity gun.

What this really boils down to is that Valve has all the money in the world. Just like ID. They can take their sweet time making games. They don't have to meet deadlines, because they get to set them. They are concerned with making the best game they can and getting it to us when it's finished. I will take that ANYDAY over a rushed to market product that is riddled with bugs and the ending chopped and nice features left off for "expansion packs". If you'll notice well funded companies that actually finish their games rarely need "expansion packs" every 6 months, which is the industries new way of making you pay for a beta test, and then pay again for the finished product.

Thank god Blizzard is taking this same stance with WoW. I'm in Beta, they don't have all the classes even finished yet, there's no way they are releasing in August, and they won't. Every blizzard game has been delayed, and everyone complains, yet how many copies did Diablo 2 sell? Yeaaah ...

Re:Ah... I can't... oh no...

[Ollierose]

Don't forget to round it up to $9700, and have a copy of the game to play

Re:Ah... I can't... oh no...

[chrismcdirty]

I'm not quite sure exactly why you need a DVD burner, 24" monitor, or whatever the nVentiv things are (presumably cooling system?). The game will run extremely well with the other components you listed.

Re:Hey stupid

[Innova]

If you RTF.P (Read the Flippin' .plan), you would understand why it isn't released at the same time world wide.

Everywhere else will probably be Friday, August 13th (que Twilight Zone Theme) or close to that date, with just a few exceptions (e.g. Russia and Poland). This isn't because we don't have love for you folks outside the U.S., but the localization and manufacturing process takes a bit longer outside the U.S. where we will have JVC run 24/7 to get the units built. I guess the European manufacturers prefer to give their employees nights and weekends off. Go figure!

They would love to release it the same day world wide, but it's just not possible. And the thought of making the US wait until Friday the 13th for this game, well that's just crazy talk.

August 5th = LinuxWorld

[jwkane]

Release date for Doom III == final day of LinuxWorld.

Coincidence?

If they were friggin' brilliant they would have a Linux build, an ongoing lan game, and a huge mountain of units shrinkwraped and ready-to-sell.

Re:What about the DEMO?

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Personally I won't be impressed with anything until I can actually play a little taste of the game without having to pay id a cent.

Oh, get off it. Has id ever made a bad game? Yes Quake 2 wasn't exactly the pinnacle of their achievements, but it was fun and had some interesting ideas.

Do you have to believe the hype? No. Do you need a demo to prove id's worthiness of your cash? I see very few people in your state of mind.

I have a little thing called loyalty. It has, by en large, served me well. I follow and trust certain people and products until they screw up or do me wrong. Then I don't buy from them again. id has always steered me in the right. I've always enjoyed their work.

I'm sure a demo will come, but this is a game designed for a single-player experience with a multiplayer option on the back-end. Quake 3 had a net demo because it was meant to work on the net, and needed the kind of testing only an open beta client could provide.

Doom 3 needed months of tweaking and graphic/sound design to truly make it hit home. 30 minutes of this type of gameplay would be the worst type of storytelling.

It's like reading a single chapter from a good book: One chapter won't tell you much, but taken as a whole it represents a greater achievement.

Re:Ah... I can't... oh no...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one factor in the smaller splash made by Descent was the steeper learning curve to play it. It was in effect a flight simulator with full 6 degrees freedom of movement, and mastering the controls just to move around took some time.

On the other hand, Quake (like Doom and Duke 3D) only required the player to move forward and backward & turn left and right to move around. Even side-step and jump were optional just to go from room to room.

Also, the level designs in Descent went from relatively simple to very complex much too quickly IMHO for most players. Forming mental images of Quake was easy, since they were essentially 2D floor plans like real world buildings. The Descent maps, with hallways going off in any direction, curving in multiple planes, etc. took a while to learn how to visualize, and many palyers simply gave up when the learning curve got too steep.

Re:Ah... I can't... oh no...

[nine-times]

I don't really think so. Duke Nukem 3D was a terrific game, but not because it blew everyone else out of the water as far as technological achievement or anything. As I remember, it looked much better than a lot of games when it first came out, but Tomb Raider and Quake were both out not long after, and Duke was suddenly a 2.5 dimension game in a 3D world. But the weapons were kind of clever (pipe-bombs, shrink-rays, jetpacks), and the level design was kinda cool, and it was just fun to play. Plus, it wasn't too hard to make maps for the BUILD engine, and it came with an editor, so you could always download some new maps and stuff.

I think game companies are too often trying to be the newest to the market with yet-unheard-of new graphics that only run on $500 video cards, but that really only appeals to a relatively small audience. Grand Theft Auto has been one of the most successful games lately, and it hasn't been because of the graphics. Make a game fun, just really fun, and even if it doesn't put other games' graphics to shame, people will dig it. At this point, I'd be happy if they're just remake Duke Nukem 3D in a new engine, not even so much to improve the graphics, but just so I can play what was a really fun game on my current computer.

Re:Oh sweet honey yes

[PerpetualMonkey]

Yes, and what are the hardware requirements?

Re:What about the DEMO?

[ShinmaWa]

One chapter won't tell you much...

It'll sure tell me if attempting to read the story with my 18-month-old 1.4GHz AMD/GF4MX eyeballs will blow their retinas out.

it's on cnn too

[Magius_AR]

CNN article [cnn.com] One of my personal peeves is addressed in the CNN article:

The game will ship on either three or four CDs. Despite the hopes of hard-core gamers, though, there will not be a DVD version of the game, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead told CNN/Money.

"There's just not a compelling reason," he said, taking a break from a company celebration.

"I know some gamers are hoping to use the DVD players on their machines for something other than watching movies, but there are downsides," he said. "For us the cost of the goods and the cost of the replication and having to make two masters just isn't worth it."

Compelling reason? TWO masters? Man, everyone and their mother has a DVD drive in their comp nowadays. How about doing a DVD ONLY release. Backwards compatibility is great and all, but frankly if you can't afford 20 bucks for a DVD drive and/or don't have one by now, you probably wouldn't buy this game in the first place.

What's the damn holdup with the transition to DVD games? I'm fed up with this Multi-CD crap.

Re:Ah... I can't... oh no...

[G-funk]

Build/Doom engines are raycasters. That's why when you looked up or down (or 3rd-person mode) in the Build/Doom engines walls looked skewed.

Wow, even in this day and age, even after the source was released, slashdotters still sprout this old axim. I can't speak for the build engine, but doom was not a raycaster (wolf was), it was a polygon renderer, with bsp-based culling and sorting. The reason the look up-look down was skewed is because the polygons were never meant to be rotated on the x/z axes, and so they were just skewed.

And yes I know you couldn't look up in doom, but you could in a few doom-based games (hexen?)