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Games Entertainment

Doom3 and OpenGL2.0 272

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-pater-gl-does-not-mean-green-lantern dept.
Screaming Lunatic writes "John Carmack has decided to write an OpenGL2.0 rendering path for Doom3. You can read his .plan or you can finger him. This will be huge for the development of OpenGL2.0. Video cards are typically benchmarked with respect to the framerate when running Quake3. Future benchmarks will be based on Doom3. This means IHVs will be somewhat forced to write good OpenGL2.0 implementations."
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Doom3 and OpenGL2.0 More

Doom3 and OpenGL2.0

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  • Easy Target (Score:3, Funny)

    by CaffeineAddict2001 ( 518485 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:42PM (#3788450)
    You can read his .plan or you can finger him.
    Okay, this is just too easy. This is +5 Funny bait if I ever saw it. It's just a matter of time.

  • And why would this be a good thing? (Score:4, Funny)

    by PissingInTheWind ( 573929 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:43PM (#3788465)
    DirectX has already won. OpenGL is dead.

    Why people can't just agree that it's a nice, easy standard, very powerful, flexible and open?

    oops, excuse me for a while, I think I forgot to take my medication today.

    • Maybe because it isn't open?

      I'll believe OpenGL is dead when I can run all my DirectX games on Linux.

      • It's not just games. Lightwave is cross platform (Mac -- PC, no Linux yet) and it relies HEAVILY on OpenGL. Nearly all 3D rendering progs use OpenGL for the interface.

        Personally, I'm all for anything that gets OpenGL development pushed. The more supported extensions, the more feedback I get from LW w/o having to render.
      • "I'll believe OpenGL is dead when I can run all my DirectX games on Linux."

        And my Mac.
    • Lol. Yeah, and OSX is dying too, since it's based on BSD, which is clearly dead. ;-)
    • as fun as it is to mock all things microsoft but directx has some very big advantages over opengl, most notably is the fact it works well with nearly every 3d card on the market from crappy SiS and trident to powerful nvidia and ati, dont forget that most pcs sold today come with some pretty crappy built in video cards that simply wont do opengl the only major disadvantage is its not portable to linux&mac but when you look at the numbers your more likely getting more pc customers by using directx then linux and mac users under opengl
      • That is a valid point regarding market share.

        However, how many of those crappy built in video cards are going to be able to run Doom3? In the case of Doom 3 you won't get any more potential customers by supporting PCs with crappy built in cards. On the other hand, there are Linux and Mac users with nice graphics cards that are capable of handling the graphics in Doom 3, but can't do DirectX. So in the case of Doom 3 using OpenGL instead of DirectX makes sense even just from a marketshare perspective.
        • your right, I wasnt trying to say that opengl does not have its place, if a developer wants to make a visually stunning game such as doom3 or quake3 or whatever directx just wont do, however simpler games such as froger or games ware you want the largest share possible with minimal tech support problems such as everquest directx is a better choice
          • What a load of hooey.

            I favor OpenGL over DirectX because OpenGL is an open standard and available on multiple platforms. DX is an ad hoc standard pushed by MS, not by anyone else.

            That said, if you think you can't make a "visually stunning" game in DX, you haven't played many DX games recently. Go take a look at DungeonSiege as one example. In fact, I'd bet that most of the more visually impressive games use DX, simply because the vast majority of games use DX. OpenGL doesn't give you some magical visual improvement over DX. Nor does DX give you the same over OpenGL. It's all about support (to the programmer, not to the end user) and knowledge bases.

            The reason that EQ looks like crap is that their engine is shit and their graphic artists wouldn't know how to reduce poly count if their lives were at stake.

            DX also doesn't give you any real advantage over OpenGL for end user support -- people have just as many (if not more) problems with DX as they do with OpenGL. Go talk to Verant about the joys they had upgrading the EQ engine to DX8.1 last year. And how they desupported every Win95 user in the process.

            As a final note, it certainly seems that DX is what's driving graphics board features today (or graphic board features are driving DX... one of the two, I'm not in the industry). DX9 will have features that aren't in any currently available boards - but the new ATI and Nvidia chips will be fully DX9 compliant. I'm sure that OpenGL can support the same features through extensions, but the whole schema for OpenGL extentions is hokey and one of the reasons that most developers shy away from it to start with (of course, DX has fallen down much the same path...)
        • Do you think Id has been making Linux ports and supporting OpenGL just to get some extra bucks (if they ever managed to cover the porting costs).

          I'm not trolling really. I just happen to think he has a nice attitude towards open standard, always had, is unbiased in comparing card, etc. and is, all in all a faily good guy.

          I believe they do the posts because they don't sell themselves, they like Unix/Linux and that's about it. It's _not_ about the money, I could be on it.

    • I cannot stand people like this. They think, "why do we need OpenGL when we have DirectX?" They never stop to think it's maybe because DirectX isn't work crap for professional applications! And there are many others where DirectX (fka "direct DOS memory map") is quite limiting.

      There are probably another 1,000 different Microsoft technologies that are the same. Like MS Word for example. Publication companies don't use it because they need a standardized, documentation and typeset language underneath that doesn't change every 2 years!

    • OpenGL is dead.

      Yeah! Just like BSD...

  • Fingers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wrexen ( 151642 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:43PM (#3788468) Homepage
    ..or you can finger him...
    *pictures thousands of /.ers fingering him at once*
    I think this is going to be a very uncomfortable day for someone
    • If someone posted the goatse.cx pic at this point, would it be the first time ever it was ontopic?
      • Did they user finger for that picture or ....something else.

        Anyway posting about goatse.cx is always reason to be moderated off-topic. (until Taco post about it)

        Anyway if you smile about finger you must be a windows user.

        • Re:Fingers (Score:1, Funny)

          by ipjohnson ( 580042 )
          Alot of the unix commands still make me blush ... touch , unzip , finger , mount , unmount , sleep

          And I've been a unix developer for 5 years ;-)
      • No it was on topic one other time back when it was really getting in all over the place.

        If i remember right it was ranked at the top doing the code red virus outbreak with the heading:

        This is what the new microsoft security hole looks like.

        or something simiilar
    • Moderation Totals: Funny=4, Overrated=3, Total=7

      What the mods giveth, the mods taketh away

    • ..or you can finger him...

      Reminds me of my job description, HR copied and pasted it straight from a generic description:

      While performing the duties of this job, the employee is occassionally required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to finger, handle or feel; stoop, kneel; and taste or smell.

      I plan on retiring the day I'm asked to stoop/kneel and finger/taste anything.

  • A Proverb (Score:5, Funny)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:44PM (#3788470) Journal
    You can finger your girlfriend,
    You can finger John Carmack,
    But you can't get your girlfriend to write good vertex shading code!

  • Thankyou ! ! ! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:45PM (#3788477)
    That could make the difference between life and death for Open GL in the face of Direct X etc. Thankyou ID, even if I don't like your games!

  • Huge (Score:1)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 )
    This is fantabulous. Yay. MS will not own yet another chunk of the architecture I rely on. Woot. Etc. :)

  • OpenGL 2.0 and OpenSource (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dmarien ( 523922 ) <{dmarien} {at} {dmarien.com}> on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:50PM (#3788509) Homepage
    Well firstoff I'd like to commend Carmack on his choice to utilize the new OpenGL extensions -- I think this is the absolute best thing for graphic cards to be focusing on. It levels the playing field and doesn't favour certain chipset manufacturers with propietary extensions.

    Also, what are the (linux ported) open sourced applications (read: games) which use OpenGL for rendering?

    Are they common? Would this possibly mean that a future port of Doom3 would be (more) easily done once the game is finished?

    Also, does anyone know if there will be a supported version of Doom3 for Linux, or will we be relying on ported versions? If the latter is true, didn't Loki games file for Ch. 11? If they did, what is the likely hood of another company/group making the transistion. By the time Doom3 comes out I'll prolly buy a brand new system, and if I could throw linux on that brand new hardware and still play Doom3, well heck - that would be peachy :)
    • Quake3 was all done in house by id for Win32, Linux, and Mac. Loki did not port Quake3 to Linux, they just distributed it. Carmack writes code using OpenGL specificaly because it's a cross-platform standard. I'm sure that in standard id tradition we'll have a simultaneous release of Doom3 for all of the above mentioned operating systems.
    • Loki games did file for Ch.11 (it's mentioned on their website [lokigames.com]). I doubt id will out-source the linux conversion to anyone else, but to the best of my knowledge there's been no offical word on the matter. A sound bet would be that they'll go back to doing what they did in the past and just do it themselves and release it via the web after releasing the win32 version for retail.
    • Though I don't know a whole lot about it, I would assume almost any 3D game you're playing under Linux uses OpenGL for its rendering. On Windows, the other big option is Direct3D from Microsoft, which for obvious reasons has never been ported to Linux. So I imagine some implementation of OpenGL is what the majority of 3D games running under Linux use.

    • Re:OpenGL 2.0 and OpenSource (Score:5, Informative)

      by ToLu the Happy Furby ( 63586 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:14PM (#3788659)
      Also, does anyone know if there will be a supported version of Doom3 for Linux, or will we be relying on ported versions?

      id has released nearly simultaneous Linux binaries for all of their games (client and server) since Quake 1, and released Linux patches for Doom 1 and 2 as well. Loki was involved inasmuch as they published a retail box of Linux Q3; however, this was never really important because you could always get Linux Q3 by buying the Windows version and downloading a small patch from id. (Indeed, the retail Linux version sold poorly, probably because it was released a couple weeks after the Windows version and thus many people went the buy-Windows-and-download-patch route.)

      I believe id has officially announced that Doom 3 will available for Linux (and Mac), but if not it's still a virtual certainty. id has always been a tremendous supporter of open standards; Carmack chose OpenGL over DirectX for Quake (and thereby single-handedly created the consumer OpenGL market), and in addition to working on Mac, Linux and Windows versions of all 3 Quake games simultaneously, released Doom ports for Next (id developed on Next workstations back then), Solaris, IRIX (I think, or maybe that was unofficial), and I believe even Linux on Alpha in addition to the already mentioned x86 Linux ports.

      Again, id has always done the port themselves; most likely, you will have to buy the Windows version and download a patch which will almost certainly be available within days of release.

  • Great. More time wasted installing in Linux (Score:3, Funny)

    by cculianu ( 183926 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:56PM (#3788539) Homepage
    GREAT. Just when I managed to FINALLY get OpenGL 1.2 working in Linux, I have to now struggle with getting OpenGL 2.0 working. Can you say: sleepless nights and/or much frustration?

    Also, I hope the card manufacturers get off their derriers and actually release OpenGL 2.0 drivers and libraries faster than like 2 years after they do it for Windows. Stupid MS loving bastardos!!

  • Isn't it about time (Score:4, Funny)

    by CaffeineAddict2001 ( 518485 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:56PM (#3788540)
    You made a carmack icon? Impale it on a stick for extra grins.

  • Not as great as it sounds for OpenGL 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VenTatsu ( 24306 ) <ventatsu@noSPaM.gmail.com> on Friday June 28, 2002 @02:57PM (#3788549) Homepage
    This won't force companies to write good OpenGL 2.0 drivers, it will only force them to write drivers that impement those functions that DOOM 3 uses, the other functions may not even be implemented properly or implemeted at all.

    As a former VooDoo (various versions) owner this is just fine if you only want to play games made by a few big name companies, but if your like me and looking to play smaller or indy games you'll find that your lucky if the games even run.
    • Good point, but at least we have something better than the card manufacturers only focusing on DirectX.
    • Getting them to provide some functionality is better than not getting any at all.

      The difference between this situation and that of 3Dfx's minidrivers is that the mini-drivers were made on a per-game basis, with a separate .dll for each game on your system (i.e. a 3dfxgl.dll file in each of your quake, quake2, half-life) rather than on a system-wide basis (one .dll for any game you throw at it). IIRC, Carmack railed against them for this, and with Quake3 discontinued support of the minidriver implementations, requiring 3Dfx to get off its ass and produce a full working OpenGL ICD.

      So I really don't think we'll have the same problem as the Voodoo cards had. Thankfully.

      -A

      • Re:Not as great as it sounds for OpenGL 2.0 (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Actually all the "seperate DLLs" were the same files, just in different directories, probably to help stupid people figure out how to use the MiniGL. I know that's the case, as I did a FC on them and there's no difference. There are 4 different 3dfx MiniGLs out, all of which you can get at http://3dfxunderground.cjb.net if you're curious.

    • But at least (Score:2, Insightful)

      by germinatoras ( 465782 )

      ...they're using it in the first place. The original "mini-GL" driver for GLQuake was wildly successful even though it was only a partial implementation of OpenGL 1.x. Down the road, we now have full hardware openGL implementations, which probably would never had happened without the initial momentum that GLQuake caused. The video card vendors will never release OpenGL drivers for their hardware if they have no demand for it - this accountment will give them just that. There is now a business case for assigning developer hours to the project.

      Besides, what would you rather have? An impetus for groundbreaking work on a hardware OpenGL 2.0 implementation, or another ringing endorsement for DirectX 8?

    • It won't be very easy to selectively implement the parts of OpenGL 2.0 that DOOM 3 uses. It's kind of like the developers of gcc trying to pick which parts of C++ that DOOM 3 uses, and only support those. (It's probably easier to just do it right!)

      I know what you're saying, but that kind of trickiness is much, much harder to pull of with OpenGL 2.0 than it was with OpenGL 1.x.
    • "This won't force companies to write good OpenGL 2.0 drivers, it will only force them to write drivers that impement those functions that DOOM 3 uses, the other functions may not even be implemented properly or implemeted at all."

      I think you're being a little cynical, though there is some truth to what you're saying. I've heard of drivers being tweaked especially for Quake 3. Pretty nasty, eh?

      The good news, though, is that the 3D Rendering market uses gaming cards. This is a case where if the card doesn't perform, actual money can be lost, and I'm reasonably sure most card manufacturers would rather avoid those potential problems.

      If that's not enough, Nvidia has a form of 'global driver' that works on any of their chipsets. I have a feeling this idea may catch on. I personally trust NVidia and keep an eye on what they're up to. I'm a little hesitant with other cards like Radeon.

      I do have a piece of advice for new card shoppers though: Best Buy has a pretty good return policy. You get 30 days price match and satisfaction guaranteed. CompUSA, though, is 14 days and I think they charge a restocking fee for returns. If you go shopping for a card, look for stores that have a policy similar to Best Buy. The reason I mention BB in particular is that you can order from the web and return at the store.

      Cheers.
      • I think you and others don't understand OpenGL 2.0 like the person you replied to. OpenGL 2.0 makes almost everything programable meaninging that there are much closer to infinite possibilites of how the program can use OpenGL. In 1.x everything was fixed and only had a few ways that things were typically done. Now it's doubtfull that two games will use OpenGL 2.0 quite the same. Sure there will be faster ways to pass the vertex data and generally smarter ways to write code, but I don't think we'll see anything to the same extent as with OpenGL 1.0.
        • "I think you and others don't understand OpenGL 2.0 like the person you replied to. OpenGL 2.0 makes almost everything programable meaninging that there are much closer to infinite possibilites of how the program can use OpenGL."

          Interesting...

          Question: How do they deal with all these possibilites? Do they compile a little dll with each game that gets called? *Confused*

          Is there a layman's reference I can read about how OpenGL 2.0 works? I think you're right, I'm a little confused now.
  • He's todays modern day Leonardo da Vinci! His brain is an untapped resource. We need to tap into his brain directy. A digital connection from his brain straight to PC.
  • I really think that it's both sad and wonderful that gameplaying abilities drive graphics cards. It's sad that there's no better use for them and wonderful because, well hell ... they make for GREAT games!

  • Doom Source (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:00PM (#3788571)
    void Mordor(Doom as Mountain){
    One Doom::Ring to rule('') them(ALL)
    One Doom::Ring to bind('') them(NULL)
    One Doom::Ring to bring('') them(ALL)
    In VRTX_SHADER("Darkness") bind('') them(NULL)

    return Frodo;
    }

    Wait. Wrong doom... nevermind

  • You'll need more to bring about OpenGL support... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:03PM (#3788592)
    Just because DoomIII uses OpenGL I don't believe card manufactures will race out to upgrade their OpenGL support. If a dozen or so games do, that's another story but to bend over for one game just doesn't make sense financial, especially since the other 95% of games use DirectX.

    Sure my Nvidia 4400 might not get Doom to run as well as Serious Sam, Unreal II, Star Wars Galaxies, Neverwinter Nights, etc. etc. but who honestly cares? If Nvidia increases their support of OpenGL more power to em, that would be great, but one game won't decide the future, even if it is Doom III (Which I believe will fail to live up to hype).

    Not intended as a flame by any means (it seems anything with a negative viewpoint is a 'flame'...whatever....) but there's a lot of hype on Doom III and some of it is deserved and some of it is just hype. I'm guessing it won't meet expectations when it does come out and won't be in the same spirit of the original Doom games (which were frag fests and fun not horror and lighting).

    Let's also not forgot a general user who will have a higher end machine and not comprehend how their other games look gorgous and run exceptionally well and Doom III just doesn't meet their framerate and effects expectations due to the fact its in OpenGL instead of DirectX.

    I hope they support both standards as DirectX isn't going away anytime soon and like it or not, it is a great set of tools which have helped bring about computer gaming to what it is today.

  • Doom3 != Good OpenGl 2 Implementation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RaboKrabekian ( 461040 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:04PM (#3788600) Journal
    this will mean that card makers write drivers that are *optimized for Doom 3's use of OpenGL 2*, not that they'll write good OpenGl drivers in general. This has been the case sicne Quake 2. Drivers are optimized to score well on Quake benchmarks above all else, which hurts their performnce in a more generalized sense. This will help adoption of OpenGL 2, but not as quickly or as robustly as many would like to see.
    • Not necessarily bad news.

      Look at it this way, a "Doom 3" OpenGL2 implementation at least gets it mindshare, and gets IHVs used to working with it. Back in the GLQuake days, there were a bunch of Quake-only OpenGL implementations.

      But those restricted implementations eventually were dropped in favor of full ones. They were a good steppingstone.
    • ...you'll have OGL2 drivers that are fully implimented.

      why?

      3DLabs developed OGL2, becuase OGL1.x couldn't keep up with DirectX anymore. 3DLabs sells high end cards for *NIX boxen, and DirectX isn't available for those OSs, so they extended OGL1.x.

      My GVX1 is still an awsome card, hope it runs doom3.

    • OpenGL 2.0 is a shader language specification amongst other things. In order to support Doom3, you're going to very likely have to support all of it pretty well- it'd be like someone stripping out features from GCC or VC++ so that it compiled Doom3 better than anything else.

  • Great! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by labratuk ( 204918 )
    This is really great news. This was one area where OpenGL was under threat of being overrun by Direct3D and/or proprietary, vendor specific extensions.

    In recent months I have become worried that OpenGL 2.0 would be dead in the water as a standard, because progress seemed slow. I was wondering whether we would ever see OpenGL 2.0 as an accepted standard. Now that is far more likely. This is definately a Good Thing as far as standards are concerned. Nice one, Mr. Carmack!

  • Nothing like a little Carmack... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:09PM (#3788623) Homepage
    ...to make me feel both ignorant and stupid at the same time. Really puts things in perspective. Sure, I may be smart, but there's no comparison.

    • You think that's bad (Score:4, Informative)

      by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:18PM (#3788679) Homepage
      Go read some of Abrash's Black Book. The guy makes jokes out of assembly language. The only laughing I ever did was that nervous kind that you do while thinking, "Boy, am I out of my league..."

    • Re:Nothing like a little Carmack... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dr. Awktagon ( 233360 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:36PM (#3788759) Homepage

      No kidding..

      their implementation of hardware displacement mapping is NOT quad based. ... so even if we don't use it because of the geometry amplification issues, I think it will serve the noble purpose of killing dead any proposal to implement a quad based solution.

      Yes! I was thinking the same thing myself! Geometry amplification is key here.

      support for both the fallback ARB_ extension path (without specular highlights), and the NV10 NVidia register combiners path. ..... They don't support NV_vertex_program_1_1, which I use for the NV20 path, and when I hacked my programs back to 1.0 support for testing, an issue did show up..

      Definitely, any fool could see that! Watch those extension paths!

      A GL2 driver won't give any theoretical advantage over the current back ends optimized for cards with 7+ texture capability

      It certainly won't! 7+ is definitely not the optimized back-end texture capability quad rendering shade vertex OpenGL. Specular highlight.. Phong.. wireframe.. raycasting ... shadow cache.. texture map.. bump map... uh.. BFG 9000!!

      • Re:Nothing like a little Carmack... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Forkenhoppen ( 16574 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @05:57PM (#3789570)
        Quad-based geometry has to be converted back to triangles at some point for rendering anyways. Since this can be done two ways (quads don't have to be square, or even equilateral, but imagine a sandwich on texas toast; you can cut it top left to bottom right or top right to bottom left) geometry can look slightly different with different implementations. If the points don't exist on a plain, then the normal won't be correct either, which is another problem. (ie; What do you do if your quad's warped?)

        Also, if your triangles don't map perfectly with the texture, you'll get tearing along the crease between the two triangles. To fix this, you have to subdivide the triangles further until it's no longer as noticeable. It's a real bother..

        ARB_ path refers to what we're used to; multiple texture rendering stages, dot3 bump mapping and the like. Stuff that works on Geforce 2s, ATi Radeons, etc. These are standards agreed on by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, usually extensions that will be promoted to being part of the standard in the next version of OpenGL.

        The NV20 path is for Geforce 3 and up. A vertex program is NVidia terminology for vertex shader. Assuming the OpenGL version numbers reflect the DirectX ones, version 1.0 was a holdover from pre-release; it's missing a register that's required to do index/palette-based matrix skinning. 1.1 has this register. Other than that, there is no difference.

    • Re:Nothing like a little Carmack... (Score:4, Funny)

      by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:36PM (#3788761) Journal
      Don't feel too bad, when you ask Carmack to speak about something other than 3D graphics, it sounds something like this:

      John: My underwear have my name in them. Aye'm. They say John Carmack. These are definitely not my underwear. I get my underwear at K-Mart in Cincinatti, Ohio. Aye'm.

      You: Did you fart? Did you fart, John? Did you fucking fart? How can you stand that, John? How can you fucking stand that?

      John: I don't mind. Aye'm.

      You: I'm gonna let ya' in on a little secret, John. K-Mart sucks.

      John: Five minutes 'til Wapner.

      You: OK, back to your area of normalcy, John. If you were going to draw a cube, what lengths for x, y, and z would you use?

      John: 82, 82, 82.

  • What I would really like (Score:3, Interesting)

    by javilon ( 99157 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:13PM (#3788646) Homepage
    Is the Doom3 test been released about a month or maybe two weeks before the windows test.

    In previous releases idsoftware has released test versions of their games before the full release, in order to do some beta testing.

    If they decide to release a linux version of Doom3, and given Carmack's good attitude towards open source and OpenGL, I really really would love if they go and piss off Mr Gates by releasing the test for Linux first.

    I bet that a zillion gamers would install Linux just to be able to test Doom3. They have been waiting for years!!
    • If they decide to release a linux version of Doom3, and given Carmack's good attitude towards open source and OpenGL, I really really would love if they go and piss off Mr Gates by releasing the test for Linux first.

      Could happen. For Q3, id released the first test for Mac only, to keep the beta testing group small enough for the first round. (Later tests were of course released for Windows, once the first round of bugs was ironed out.)

      I bet that a zillion gamers would install Linux just to be able to test Doom3. They have been waiting for years!!

      Wouldn't that be a hoot. Anyways, that just might be the reason for id *not* to release the D3 test on Linux first; it's a lot easier and cheaper for gamers to install Linux to run the D3 test than it is to install Mac OS X, so the test group might not stay small enough for their purposes.

      OTOH, the main purpose of the Q3 test was to iron out netcode issues, stuff they couldn't easily test in the lab. As D3 is focused heavily on single player and probably will not contain much new in the way of netcode, they might even do without a test altogether...
    • If they decide to release a linux version of Doom3, and given Carmack's good attitude towards open source and OpenGL, I really really would love if they go and piss off Mr Gates by releasing the test for Linux first.

      I bet that a zillion gamers would install Linux just to be able to test Doom3. They have been waiting for years!!

      That would really rock.

      I have friends flocking to GNU/Linux anyway (literally people I do not do any evangelizing to coming up and asking me to install GNU/Linux on their systems ... its truly amazing how many lay people are simply sick of Microsoft in virtually every resepct), but this would be a remarkable thing from the coolness factor point of view ("now you get to try out Doom 3 weeks ahead of all your friends who run the 'Doze")

      Even cooler: ship a bootable CD that starts up GNU/Linux, snatches the network settings from the windows hard drive, and runs the game, allowing Windows users to run Linux+Doom3 without having installed Linux, and never release a windows version [evil grin]. No game or OS installation required, and no Microsoft compromises in speed or stability required. Well, one can dream [grin]

    • Re:What I would really like (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jondor ( 55589 ) <gerhard@frappe.x[ ]ll.nl ['s4a' in gap]> on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:59PM (#3788916) Homepage
      I bet that a zillion gamers would install Linux just to be able to test Doom3. They have been waiting for>years!!

      Yeah, and they would rush back to windows at the release of the next big title. In the meantime they would endlessly complain about everything which was to complicatied for their single-minded view.

      If you want get people to use linux, they have to come for a better reason. That they can play their games under linux too is a very nice bonus.
    • This actually happened with Q3Test; they released Mac first, then Linux, and finally Windows. Carmack wanted to go in order of least gamers to most in order to shake out the bugs before it hit a really wide audience.

      I seriously doubt Apple or Red Hat's sales jumped much overnight over it. A few gaming sites with way too much money on their hands bought iMacs to try it out, but that's about it. Installing a new OS (or switching hardware platforms entirely!) is an awfully daunting task for a couple of weeks of early play.

  • John Carmack (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RichiP ( 18379 )
    If there was any doubt of it before, this finally proves it: John Carmack, You Da Man!

    I've been reading the OpenGL 2.0 whitepaper and it has a lot of things I like. Let's just hope that 3DLabs, et al. will finish with it soon.
  • ... For this game to come out! I just went on my super cool linux box and renamed all my OpenGL1.2.1 files to OpenGL2.0.0!!! I am soooo ready for doom3!

    • Re:I Can't Wait... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      your attempt is futile without using:

      ldconfig

      I feel so ashamed to be compelled to correct you in such a way. I feel ashamed more of myself than of you. Haven't I taught you everything there is to know about trolling, Son? I don't think I can live with myself. (*cries) (*blam******thud*)

  • OpenGL patents (Score:3, Interesting)

    by flacco ( 324089 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @03:21PM (#3788690)
    Didn't MS buy OpenGL patents from SGI recently?

  • What will nVidia do (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Screaming Lunatic ( 526975 ) on Friday June 28, 2002 @06:13PM (#3789659) Homepage
    Firstly here is a mirror [shacknews.com] and another mirror [webdog.org]

    From reading various bits of info on the web, there seem to be four different code paths. An nVidia codepath, an ATI codepath, a default codepath, and now the OpenGL2.0 codepath.

    So Matrox and 3DLabs pretty much have to put out OpenGL2.0 drivers to run Doom3 or they can implement nVidia/ATI OpenGL1.3 extensions. But the interesting case is the nVidia codepath.

    The Geforce3/4 has 4 texture units. The Radeon8500 has 6 texture units. You would have to assume that the next line of nVidia cards would have more texture units. To take advantage of the extra texture units, it would seem that nVidia would have to write OpenGL2.0 drivers. This is definitely a good thing.

  • take this in the spirit it is written in (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28, 2002 @06:16PM (#3789684)
    honest, this isn't a troll. true story, a sad one.

    good friend of mine, a roommate for years , was in a decent learning stage with computers. Blue collar worker, saved his nickles and dimes, bought a decent but used and still almost new computer. Was doing fine, learning new things, etc.

    got a copy of doom.

    He became addicted, I got to the point I hated that evil sound coming from that game. He would stay up until very late playing it, lost all interest in learning about computers. His modem screwed up and he didn't bother to get another one, stopped surfing. He started mising work sometimes, claimed he was "sick", but it was doom and beer and lack of sleep. He worked at that demon fucking game like a job paying triple time. We're talking some days 16-18 hours playing doom.

    One day he gets in a small beef at work, it was reallynothing, but he walks off the job, goes home. (we worked the same place). I get home later, he's drunk playing doom, oblivious, not responsive, wouldn't haerdly acknowledge a "HI0what happened today?" from me.

    He stayed up all night playing doom, getting drunker.

    In the morning, I had to go to work, I see him stagger into the kitchen and go to the cupboard and barely be able to uncap an aspirin bottle, shakes a few out, goes back to doom.

    So, I'm hitting the shower, got to go to work. a few minutes later Ihear BANG!

    He'd walked out into the front yard in surburbia, stuck a 12 gauge in his mouth, and there was pieces of skull and brains and hair all over the front yard.

    fuck doom and the doom developers. fuck them all to hell and back. I knew that game was evil first time I saw him play it, along with the subsonics in the audio youcould feel. it's just "wrong". that shit is evil. so are a bunch of other video games I've seen. Not all of them by any means, but some certainly are. They are jack off violence pornographic. That's as simple and clear as it can be put into the english language. They implicity revel in heinous repulsive activity, merely "simulated". It's porno, admit it, sickass violent porno.

    This is a real story, happened 4 years ago. This is also after around 50,000 or so estimated forum and news posts I've done on the net over the years the most I have ever cursed in a single post. In fact I hardly ever curse, I really can't cuss this shit out enough. Ya, he did it to himself, it was his "choice" but I'm telling you, that fucking doom had something to do with it, too, it was obvious as shit. It hit him same as any hard drug, and I'd bet a years pay there's people here just as addicted to doom or something like that, or theyknow someone like that, but are chicken shit to go against geekdom and admit that some things are just plain "wrong"and shouldn't be done.

    If there's an doom developers read this, I fucking hate you. You are some sick people.
    • If this is true dude, thats some real sad shit.

      There are a lot of things that can 'hook' people tho. I've seen grown men turn into hermits by CIV.And IRC can sure do it too.

      Either way. Sad sad sad.
    • First of all - sorry about your roomie. I've lost those close to me from addiction as well. But want to know something terribly sad? Almost everything is addictive. There have been people who have eaten themselves to death with food addcitons. Adreneline junkes have often pushed their need for thrills to fatal levels. Once i even say somebodies fanscination with books drive him away from family, friends, and eventaully all normal life.

      Everything is horrible, at a certain level. People should be taught to recognize when they reach unacceptable levels of any activity. And if they are lucky, they will have friends that will intervene when their behavior becomes dangerous.

      As far as violent online games - you're wrong. For many people, its about skill. I met my future wife in a game of quake, over 3 years ago. We have a sharing, loving relationship, and still play together. Its not a "sickass violent porno", but as a challenge to eachother, a test of skills. Its also incredibly good as a part of conflict resolution. Some of the cooler, more interesting people i know i have met in violent online games. I've never seen any of them at all violent in real life.

      As far you you telling the doom devs they are sick, and you hate them... Its your right to hate whomever you want. But you can't make a judgement call on people you don't know for what they choose to do with their time. I do wonder if some of your haterd at others is really misplaced hate for yourself when you did nothing (or didn't do enough) to help your roomie who was obviously an addictive personality, lost in a game addiction, so similar to so many peoples television addiction.

    • You are so wrong. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Karellen ( 104380 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @03:51PM (#3793060) Homepage
      Get a grip dude. Doom is not evil.

      I have to admit, that is a tragic story and something no-one should ever have to go through.

      That said, it's a fucking computer game. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not a physically addictive chemical. It wasn't created from a pact with the devil, in an attempt to lure people to sinful (suicidal) deaths. It's pixels (blocky ones at that) on a screen, and a pretty limited set of sounds being repeated through a set of (normally pretty crappy) speakers.

      Your friend got addicted to it - well I'm sorry, but don't go blaming anyone else, even the people that made it.

      Your friend started skipping work and playing 18+hours/day? Shit, didn't that clue him into the fact that something was getting a bit fucked up with his priorities and he ought to stop? When I started playing CivIII until 3:00 in the morning and I had to get up at 6:30 for work, I realised that it was time to delete the thing. Do I blame the writers for making such a great game? No. I congratulate them. And then I deleted it. When I realised that I was really _needing_ a drink to get me going some days a while back after I'd started drinking heavily for a month or so after a girlfriend left me, I realised it was time to stop drinking completely for a while and just get over her. Do I blame beer for being a seductive place of solace, or the brewers who made it? No. Do I blame by girlfriend? No. She didn't see a future for us and ended it. What was she supposed to do? Stay in a relationship she didn't like for the sole purpose of not hurting my feelings? Hell no. That's part of being an adult. You realise when your life isn't doing what it should, and sort it out. It's your life, and you gotta take responsibility for it.

      Shit, didn't it occur to _you_ that you oughta talk your friend out of this sort of behaviour? Or force him out of it? Get rid of the source of his fix? Some fucking friend you turned out to be.

      All Doom had to do with your friends unforunate demise was be there.

      It's not `wrong'. It's not `evil'. Neither is it `right' or `good'. It just is. And you or your friend or anyone else on the planet can take it or leave it. What they get out of it is entirely their own responsibility. That's one of the breaks of being an adult in a free country.

      Stop blaming other people for your friend's death. It's not their fault. Get. Over. It.

      K.
      • with John. He was asked "Hey, you guy are incredibly talented. Why don't you use it for more seriuos purposes".

        The answer was that they made games because nobody will die if they make a bug or if something does not work.

        How things turned out. Ok, this guy that commited suicide was ill, but if it's true, they did end up killing people indirectly (not that they really killed anyone, but in the sense that you can't know what would have happened if they haven't programmed Doom).

        Anyone remembers that interview? (it's been a long time since then!)

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