Doom 3 Reaches Gold Master, Due August 5th 753
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)'."
Editor included? (Score:5, Interesting)
The bar has been raised with regards to packaged content editors, after all. Heck, the Morrowind editing tools would let you re-create the entire game!
very cool (Score:5, Interesting)
do you think iddqd will still work?
First Doom3 review (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is an interesting post [nvnews.net] in the nvNews boards, with the full review, hardware and multiplayer details
Will we see a spike in Intel today, given this PR? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know some will think I am an idiot, but I am an unapologetic id fan. I have played most other FPS games out there, and id just seems to get the "feel" of FPS down to a science. The instant snap is perfect.
I just wish they had included cooperative mode, like in the original Doom. Some of my best gaming experiences were all night coop Doom on nightmare mode. Good times.
Todd
Reviews and Box Quotes (Score:5, Interesting)
Over on GameTab you can see the large version of the game box and information on the PC Gamer review [gametab.com]. Only time will tell whether the other reviews and gamers fall in line with PC Gamer's opinion.
I'm stunned. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, not the release of Doom 3. To quote the poster:
According to the
Somebody's actually running a finger daemon, and it does more than just say "finger disabled for privacy reasons, try sending an e-mail".
What about Germany? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ah... I can't... oh no... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also... aren't we all waiting for the Duke Nukem movie [3drealms.com] as well?
Re:Ah... I can't... oh no... (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember the rumours that LucasArts had pulled the Doom engine apart to develop Dark Forces.
OS X Port? (Score:2, Interesting)
But I haven't read anything recently on anything except the PC and XBOX versions.
What about the DEMO? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about SMP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ah... I can't... oh no... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't remember any level designs in Duke Nukem 3D where there were rooms directly above other rooms. (In fact, I'm not sure it was possible at all given the way that the builder worked.)
Instead, they would be clever and use teleport to move the user to a different part of the grid where the "upper" room would be (but you wouldn't be able to see out of that upper room). Multi-level towers were usually just built at multiple spots on the world grid with teleports between the levels.
Or they'd play around with the layout so that after running around in a big circle, it felt like you were above the other room.
Sure, it wasn't real 3D, but it was extremely easy to bang out levels since you weren't trying to layout 3D objects without all of the tools of a 3D CAD program. With the builder, you could map out your level design in 2D, then you just went in and changed your floor/ceiling heights to be whatever you wanted. (Duke 3D didn't have "outdoors", just textures that sorta looked like they were outdoors.)
Designing Quake's 3D levels, OTOH, was definitely an order of magnitude more difficult, and you really had to plan ahead. (I'd guess that more modern tools are easier to use... this was back in the 1997-1999 timeframe.)
Re:Ah... I can't... oh no... (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm... Quake had gravity? Descent was block-based while Quake was polygon based? Descent spread their people and their RAM more thinly? Descent's artists were obsessed with high-color contrast, which only accentuated the blockyness of it all, while Quake featured muted browns that almost didn't make it look like you were being attacked by Mr. Square and his 2D minions?
Art direction and design decisions can go a long way to the differences between games. It can't hurt, though, that quake was implemented by a bunch of truly top notch coders.
Re:Ah... I can't... oh no... (Score:4, Interesting)
For the sake of adding a bit more info to your explanation...
In later games using Duke's BUILD engine (written by then-teen-programmer Ken Silverman [advsys.net]) the developers make the "room-over-room" illusion even better by simply doing two render passes. If you are in the upper part, then the first render pass will be the lower room, which since you are outside it doesn't include the ceiling, and then the second render pass renders the upper room using a null texture for the floor making it transparent. You had to line it all up quite carefully, but you could then get a room-above-room illusion that you can actually see, which was pretty neat.
Ken also later added support for voxel (volume pixel) objects, allowing true 3D objects to take the place of selected in-world sprites, although that implementation used low-res voxels so they looked a little blocky.
Re:Ah... I can't... oh no... (Score:3, Interesting)
Meaning, from each room, you can see and move to the rooms that connected to it. You could infact make a complete circle, and place different things in the same "real" space, but it would work cuz it connects the objects to the rooms, and the rooms are different.
Same thing could be made in the Descent engine (a rather underrated engine, while actually being the first almost real 3D engine, before DN3D and quake). In Descent, the rooms were created by adding 3D shapes to existing walls and therefore connecting them. You could, if you wanted, to make 10 loops that occupy the same "real" space, but could only move thru the connected parts.
There a user made map called "Pandora's Box" (iirc), which was a cube where u could fly around the outer part of it, and every cycle it would change. It was really mad, and playing these maps in multiplayer is really interesting!
Another cool thing you could have done, is have a cube in the middle of the room, and instead of connecting it normally, you could have corridors coming from the outside of the cube and continuing outside the room! So you could have a cube in the middle of the room, that actually let you go to 6 different areas of the map!
Re:What about SMP? (Score:3, Interesting)
1st attempt [planetquake.com]
2nd attempt [planetquake.com]