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Games Entertainment

DOOM 3 will use P2P System? 223

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-believe-it-when-I'm-fragged-on-it dept.
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."
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DOOM 3 will use P2P System? More

DOOM 3 will use P2P System?

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  • DOOM 3 will use P2P System? (Score:3, Funny)

    by bsDaemon ( 87307 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:22AM (#4136273)
    This proves my suspicions that "gamers" are pirates and perverts. trolling is so much easier than being clever.
    • This article is a misconception altogether. Virtually all multiplayer games (including ego-shooters) are peer-to-peer systems, meaning that the players connect to each other. There is no server that does all the maths, basically every system is a client.

      This is true for all networked games (Doom,Quake,Starcraft,Diablo except MMORPGs like Everquest). There's nothing new about it either. Note that this has absolutely nothing to do with file sharing, warez and mp3s.
      ~ we hope the you choke
      • Shenanigans!!

        Counter-Strike anyone?
      • No it's not true for all networked games.

        The network part of the quake series is most certainly server/client.

        Ie the game client doesnt talk to the other clients but only talks to _one_ server, which indeed can be a player (listen server) but more often the usual setup (dedicated server).

      • That's odd...I distinctly remember always being the SERVER for Q2 and Q3 at school since I had the highest end machine. Everyone else connected to my game via the seach if they were on my segment, or via an IP I provided if they weren't.

        As long as there are configurable parameters in the game, I don't think they will ever seperate from a server based concept. One machine has got to be the athority on which map is being used and how much health the players have, etc... Now, perhaps all machines will advertize the games they are connected to so there doesn't have to be a need for GameSpy. It will be interresting to see how they implement this.

      • Every client has the ability to be a server, but most games are definately implemented as vanilla client/server. And for games which use a universal ladder/auth (ie Westwood games) the do communicate through a central server to maintain state, prevent cheats, keep ranks, etc.

        The crossover to real P2P is when all connected clients are also acting as servers to eachother concurrently. Of course the problem with that it introduces massive opportunities for cheats and DoS exploits. It's also hard to maintain a reasonable amount of latency.

        IMHO, games are best done through a state maintaining central server(s).
        • The crossover to real P2P is when all connected clients are also acting as servers to eachother concurrently. Of course the problem with that it introduces massive opportunities for cheats and DoS exploits. It's also hard to maintain a reasonable amount of latency.

          I'd guess that this would instead decrease the latency compared to anything seen in Quake and kind. In Quake every client has to send all the movement to the server which then calculates some stuff and sends the info to all the clients. With P2P system all the clients send that client's movements to all the other clients so there's one one-way-trip less to go for every packet and the latency should go down.

          In addition because every client is acting as a server the calculations should match. If a single client has different results you can be pretty sure that it's cheating and the others could vote it out. Though, incorrect results could be due lag or something but I think it could be made automatic so that other client would give a mistrust point if it seems that the other client is getting incorrect results and if some threshold is exceeded that client would be considered as a cheater. Perhaps add an centralized server for blacklisting the cheaters and hopefully we could happily live without cheating.

          The only question is if this is going to fly in the real world--you need more bandwidth to send all the stuff to all the clients and syncing the clients must be one hell of a job. If there's one game company that could successfully do this, it's id. Remains to be seen if that's enough.

  • Hey, as long as they keep the brown furry guys, I'll be happy.

  • Eye candy! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:23AM (#4136276) Homepage Journal
    Not to bash eye candy, but doesn't anyone have a better idea for gaming than FP shooters?

    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.
    • Sid Meier did yet another Civilization game, didn't he? With pretty graphics? I think its time he explored some more new ideas. An old idea with a new engine is a pretty weak excuse for charging anothing $50 for a "new" game.

      Bioware has Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com], it as pretty graphics and revolutionary features and blah blah blah. Morrowind. Driving games... etc. The fact is, however, that the FPS develops tend to lead the industry in the development of new technology in terms of graphics engines and network code. Other than them, its the massively-multiplayer crowd.

      • Re:Eye candy! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by grumpygrodyguy ( 603716 )
        Bioware has Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com], it as pretty graphics and revolutionary features and blah blah blah
        Yes NWN has some very original concepts...too bad Bioware doesn't know how to build a user interface [bioware.com].
    • Not to bash eye candy, but doesn't anyone have a better idea for gaming than FP shooters?
      I would say, "No."

      I don't see people moving along from first person shooters any sooner than I see them getting sick of auto racing and throwing it out for something "new and innovative." Sure, there are technological advances, but novelty is only a rather small part of the fun.

      Multiplayer computer games are just like multiplayer non-computer games (tennis, golf, what have you) in that it takes a while to get good enough to have fun. The interest comes from the other players.

      Look at the level of Starcraft competition in the far east. It would surprise me if some of those folks weren't still playing real-time stragegy games 30 years from now.

  • "So we can distribute DOOM III ISO image in DOOM III P2P network!!!"

  • P2P multiplayer (Score:3, Funny)

    by cdf12345 ( 412812 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:31AM (#4136296) Homepage Journal
    "Taking a cue from the RIAA, the gaming industry will attempt to place fake opponents onto the networks. These oppenents (bots) will appear normal, but will repeat themselfs after about 30 seconds."

    p2p gaming.....wow.

  • Slap-in-the-face to ATI and Matrox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ptbrown ( 79745 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:36AM (#4136311)
    P2P is a fad and I predict that sometime after the beta they'll have things set up in a more traditional client/server fashion... though they likely won't call it that.

    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.

  • so he's saying now that people can give each other files in a 3D world!? COOL!

  • why? (Score:1, Troll)

    by asv108 ( 141455 )
    Two questions:

    Why P2P for multiplay?

    Why Focus on single player?

    I can see using p2p for making servers scaleable across a network, but i hope they are abandoning client/server.

    Who gives a shit about single player? Really, they had it right with quake 3, nobody plays single player anymore, at least not repeatedly.

    • Why P2P for multiplay?

      Ditribute the load. Of course with each level of the P2P system [e.g. say its a N-way tree] you add delay so obviously you want a short tree.

      Consider a system with say four servers that host say 20 people each. As long as the ping between the four is low enough you can now host 80 people and distribute the load/cost over four different servers.

      Why Focus on single player?

      Because 9 out of 10 times I [personally] go on a DM net game the ping is ridiculously high with some people [stupid dialup shitheads] hitting over 900ms ping.

      I'd rather blast some inteligent bots than play online.

      Also games like RtCW and Elite are done with the Q3A engine and are decent single play games.

      Tom

    • Re:why? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sane? ( 179855 )
      Why focus on single player?

      Because you can't really do a good storyline if all people are doing is shooting their mates.

      Because only a subset of the gamer community is interested in multiplayer. Many more don't want to have to go online to play.

      Because, in the end, multiplayer limits what you can do, even in a FPS.

    • Re:why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @10:46AM (#4136491) Homepage Journal
      Probably hard marketing facts:

      At the height of the Quake-online frenzy, Doomworld ran a poll asking how many people played in each mode: single, deathmatch, coop. Turns out solo players outnumbered DMers by 4 to 1, and coop players by 20 to 1. (Sample size was several thousand, so statistically significant.)

      DOOM (primarily a solo game) outsold all versions of Quake (primarily a multiplayer game) *combined* by at least 3 to 1. And that's even tho DOOM came out when home computers were still a relative novelty, and priced out of many people's reach. By the time Quake came along, most households already had a computer (and PCs cost a lot less too). So -- Quake didn't sell as well even tho more people had PCs by then. Obviously, something went wrong with the spectrum of Quake's market appeal, and consensus is the lack of really good solo play.

      I'd hazard a guess that DOOM3 won't really be playable over the net unless you have broadband. Which would artificially limit its market to the small subset of net users who actually have broadband (the last figure I saw was under 20%). Which would be stupid, from a sales standpoint.

      In short, the single player market is a helluva lot larger than the multiplayer market. And idSoftware is really in the game *engine* business, which multiplies that market by a factor of however many companies they license their code to.

      • Re:why? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by KalvinB ( 205500 )
        "I'd hazard a guess that DOOM3 won't really be playable over the net unless you have broadband."

        Actually it should have no problem playing over the same connections as previous versions. The significant improvement in graphics doesn't change the amount of data that needs to be sent.

        If I shoot a rocket all I need to send everyone else is the velocity, angle and starting position of the rocket which can be done in less than 20 bytes. If it hits a wall, all the clients will know about it and destroy the wall (or anything else that's destructable) without any further information being sent.

        The only data being sent on a regular basis is still position, velocity and angle like every other FPS multiplayer game.

        If you can play Quake III on-line you'll be able to play Doom3 on-line.

        Ben
    • If it bothers you that much, skip Doom III and hold out for Quake4.

    • Re:why? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by JofCoRe ( 315438 )
      Who gives a shit about single player? Really, they had it right with quake 3, nobody plays single player anymore, at least not repeatedly

      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....

  • P2P? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 )
    So what does P2P mean in this situation....Can we keep running in one direction, passing through an endless series of different servers handling their own collection of rooms?

    "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?

  • ahem (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So this means the RIAA can hack into Doom servers when players exchange maps? I hope they enjoy Martian moons...

  • P2P in gaming. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Karhgath ( 312043 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:43AM (#4136337)
    P2P architecture has existed way before any P2P file exchange system.

    Previous iD's games used a client-server architecture. Now, they changed it to use a Peer to Peer 'protocol' and architecture.

    What does it mean? Since it won't use a client-server protocol, you won't be able to join a game that has already started(that was stated at QuakeCon). The game is 'hosted' on each player's computer that exchange data about the current state of the game. There is no central server that handles all the load. Each player communicate in peer to exchange the information, hence the name.

    Peer to peer architecture is what is used in most Real-Time Strategy(RTS) games like Starcraft, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, Age of Empire, etc.

    So, there's absolutely no relation to P2P file exchange like kazaa and such, just he architecture that has been used extensively before.

    Now... the question is: why? Also, won't that allow hackers to create better hacks? Usually, games go from P2P to Client-Server because of security concerns, even if Client-Server is usually 'slower'. They rarely go the other way around. But that's another completely different topic.
  • John just forgot to mention it'll be scalable past four players

    Why should this be better than servers ?
    P2P will least introduce a scale of lag, and it will probably even cause bandwidth issues (remember that the peers might be connected with lines It seems that they are in fact fucking up a good game just to be on the P2P bandwagon.
    I'm rather surprised that Carmack didn't notice that a system like Quake is not an easily distributable computing problem.
    Some people say that with money and fame the brain melts.

    • By peer-to-peer they meant clients only. No servers. It's not the same breed of peer-to-peer as you see in file sharing applications.

      Think of a "peer" as a "client". Client-to-client. It just means that there are no dedicated servers, one player connects to another player when they want to play a game. Just like in Quake 3 when you are not all joining a dedicated server.
      • It's still client-server in quake3... both with listen & dedicated modes.

        The listen "server" just runs a renderer/client on top of the "dedicated".

        Every client still talks to the same server - the listen guy just talks to himself(the server) and get ping 0.
    • This isnt better, its just easier to write.

      The original doom used a peer to peer networking system too. In a peer to peer game, every player has their own copy of the game running on their machine. The multiple games are kept "in sync" by exchanging data about inputs (which keys are pressed, mouse movements etc). As long as the games all have the same exact inputs they should stay in sync.

      Most modern games (Quake and above) have adopted a client-server system. In client-server systems, there is only one copy of the game running, on the server. The clients send their inputs to this server, and the server sends information about the changing state of the game world to the clients. This has the advantage of being more flexible: you can do things like in-game joining (join a game while it is running) and it is not possible for the game to go out of sync (in peer to peer if things differ slightly they go out of sync).

      id have obviously decided to do this because it is the easiest solution. They want there to be some kind of Multiplayer available but they dont want to spend too much time on it. P2P multiplayer systems in general are easier to write. They have already stated they will be concentrating on Single Player for Doom 3.

  • Really? What about security? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Maggot75 ( 163103 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:45AM (#4136342) Homepage
    I'm very interested to see how they will tackle the security part. In general, you cannot trust the client. Ever. Introducing a P2P network will enable one hacked client to wreak havoc on other clients. Some redundancy might be introduced to prevent cheating, but that would increase bandwidth, neh?
    Are FPS's perhaps already trusting the client anyway? Is a cheat-proof multiplayer FPS a myth?
    • Starcraft uses p2p, and it's almost completely unhacked after four years (yeah, I know about maphack, but that's not much compared to the hacking in a lot of other games).

    • I don't know how'll they'll secure this baby. Maybe they've just given.

      RTSs have been using p2p like systems for awhile.

      In Total Annihilation each client transmits its own game data to other clients, other clients trusts its correct. That means one client can suddenly pull 100 units out of its ass and the others will be none the wiser. The advantages of this method is less data is transmitted and less system resources are used auditing the other clients.

      In Starcraft you can't just pull 100 carriers out of your ass but since everything has to be synced there's more overhead and things like maphack are possible.

      Security wise, starcraft has the better model but that would mean, instead of just a central server keeping track of game sync (like it does now), every client has to assume the role of server and do the auditing. In other words, why bother?

      Anyone know some other way this could be done?

  • Not article material (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:46AM (#4136348) Homepage Journal
    OK.

    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.
    • actually, before this article Carmack said that there will be a p2p system but it will be capped at 4 players. This article is refuting the 4 player limit that caused many people to gag.

      Also don't you think an enginner working at ID is a little more careful with his words than saying p2p when meaning playable online?
    • 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.
      Wrong.
      This was revealed during John Carmack's Q&A session, a man who doesn't usually "throw out words" when he doesn't know "the exact way it will work".

      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.
      Wrong.
      The talk with Tim was after Carmack's speech, and it was a 1-on-1 with a reporter, Tim wasn't talking to a crowd.

      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.
      Wrong, again.
      By "peer to peer" he meant, *gasp*, peer to peer. He is not stupid and realizes what peer to peer means. To answer your question: it deserves a front page article because the new Doom is using a different type of networking code than the Quakes. We're all big fans of the id games and this is "New for nerds, stuff that matters"

      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.
      Cultural reference drivel. Next.

  • DOOM 3 will use P2P System? (Score:5, Informative)

    by James Foster ( 226728 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @09:48AM (#4136351)
    Why is there a question mark after the title of this? It's been stated by id, that DOOM 3 will use a peer-to-peer network architecture. There's nothing uncertain about that.
    This has been known for around about an entire week now... it's been stated multiple times.

    Also, to clarify, when they say "peer-to-peer", they don't mean a network of users like Kazaa or file sharing applications, they mean that it is client-to-client as opposed to client-to-server.
    The best way of thinking about DOOM 3's multiplayer is as being the same as the original DOOM's multiplayer. 4 players, and no such thing as a "server".
    The only actual uncertainty is the 4 player limit. It was initially mentioned, but now Willits has said that it is scalable beyond that... This is unclear as we don't know if he means that the game can go beyond that, but the network code is ideal for 4 players, or means that the game will have a hard limit of 4 players, but mods and games based on the engine will be able to scale beyond 4 players.

    Also, it is known for definate that once a game has started, additional players cannot join. This limitation is due mainly to DOOM 3's physics engine. Basically, there is so much physics data that would need to be synchronised, that if a player had to "catch up" with the physics data, it would probably be a lot of data to send, and since it's constantly changing data, it is likely that as the player recieves the data, it becomes invalid.

    It will be interesting to see how other games deal with the problem of physics data. As physics engines in games become increasingly complex, it will become harder for programmers to cope with players joining a game that has already started. Perhaps if all games employed "rounds" (like Counter-Strike), then player's wouldn't have to wait long until the game restarts and they can start playing. This already has to happen when a player joins a Counter-Strike game that's already in play.
    • hey! carmack just may be the first person to think of a use for quantum cryptography: encrypted doom3 pr0n sharing!

      god bless you Mr. Carmack!
    • Also, it is known for definate that once a game has started, additional players cannot join. This limitation is due mainly to DOOM 3's physics engine. Basically, there is so much physics data that would need to be synchronised, that if a player had to "catch up" with the physics data, it would probably be a lot of data to send, and since it's constantly changing data, it is likely that as the player recieves the data, it becomes invalid.
      Oh come on, all the client needs to know is where the items are. What in the world would the DOOM3 engine have that the Q3A engine didnt have which allowed the client/server based games. All FPS related games today do client/server.

      It is more likely that they do this because they want to get the game out as soon as possible; id software makes the real money on licensing their engine. Thus they don't have to spend precious time on creating a good multiplayer aspect, but can instead release an addon later (and maybe sell it for some extra $$$).

      Going from client/server to Peer To Peer in online gaming is a serious setback, it's like going back to the old Doom days again. Not only is there the cheat aspect when everything is client based, but a player can't join a game that has already been started.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • What's so hard to get about this? I haven't been following the coverage here, but if id has said the physics engine in Doom 3 makes it hard to support mid-game joining, then they mean just that. I'm assuming the client no longer needs to know just where the items are, but also which walls have been damaged by bullets and explosions, where people have died and in what situations they died (to calculate body positions and postures), how injured people (both living and dead) are and where they've been hit, and so on and so forth. If they're already saturating the bandwidth just updating this information continuously, you're obviously going to have a "catching up" problem when you join in mid-game.

        Of course, if id hasn't said this and it's just a conjecture by the parent poster, then I'm a bit more dubious. But either way, his argument makes sense, while yours doesn't. Why would using a peer-to-peer network architecture help them release sooner?
  • "Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game."

    What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only? Probably the original Doom. I don't know about you lot, but I like playing FPS because they let me pit my wits against other people.
    • What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only?

      Max Payne. It was a decent sized hit.

      Half-life was before that. That's bigger.

      I suppose it wasn't ONLY single player, but neither is this. However if a single player FPS is good enough to get everyone interested in the genre to have a play-through, and then those clever mod-makers realize how many people are playing Doom 3 and begin work on the next counterstrike, well, it's a path to success.

      I'll agree, multi-player is the key to longevity, but there's nothing wrong with a good ol' solo romp through Hell before you get around to Deathmatch.

    • single player claim to fame. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kaisyain ( 15013 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @10:17AM (#4136418)
      What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only? Probably the original Doom.

      You're joking, right? Goldeneye 007, Half-Life, Deux Ex, Thief, System Shock, Rainbow 6, Jedi Knight, Medal of Honor: Frontline, No One Lives Forever, MDK, Outlaws, Hitman, Shogo.

      I like playing FPS because they let me pit my wits against other people.

      You can play most games online, from Backgammon to Chess to every RTS made nowadays.
    • HL was the last game I remember being an FPS with a decent storyline. Sure, nobody really went into great detail about the plot when they were discussing it on the smoke deck- they always talked about the weapons, character interaction, facial movements, enemy and ally AI... Halflife had a LOT of really nifty things that kicked ass for single player- things that just didn't apply to the multiplayer aspect.

      I fiddled with UT and Q3 when they came available, but HalfLife spanked the pants off of them both- if anything of that caliber single-player ever comes around, I'll probably check it out. Until then, I'm sticking with RPGs. I like FPS, but I fucking HATE multiplayer.... it's great to see iD focusing on the one thing that makes a game great- the single-player experience.
      • I really liked Half-Life. I played a few other things, but the only game I've enjoyed as much since was Halo.

        I've played Halo through a number of times, at different difficulty levels - Legendary has a slightly different ending, and Easy gives more opportunities for driving tanks & flying Banshees - both as a single player and cooperative with a friend. Multiplayer kicks ass too. Played it quite a bit more than Half-Life, in fact.

        If you have access to an Xbox I can definitely recommend checking it out - or wait till the PC version finally arrives.

      • Jedi Knight II would be the 'last' FPS game with a decent storyline that I played.

    • Ever hear of Half Life? Deus Ex? No One Lives Forever? Medal Of Honor? Dude, get with it. It's so obvious that most people on slashdot, despite being geeks, aren't really gamers. You don't know anything about games.

    • QUAKE? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by veddermatic ( 143964 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @10:33AM (#4136460) Homepage
      Last time I checked, that was a singleplayer game that they threw a few LAN maps into at the last minute.... the rest is history.
    • Umm... Hello? How about Unreal, Quake, Quake2, Half-Life, No One Lives Forever, Soldier of Fortune 1&2, Aliens Vs Predator 1&2, Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt?

      I know I've seen on this thread the hatred for modem users and their effect on the multiplayer games... they make them so PAINFULLY slow, that its unbearable to even try and play. I've got DSL, and unless I'm the server, I HATE playing online because of the LAG.

      And to everyone who says "Well, its not _that_ bad." is just fooling themselves.

      I never bought Quake3. why? because I hate lan games. and besides ID never wanted that one to fly that well anyway--they were making that game purely for the licensing of the engine. Which is making lots of cash I hear...

      The rule of the world is that for every one person who likes something, there is another person who dislikes it with just as much. I personally don't give a hoot about online play. I've got a super-fast computer, that can do billions of operations a second. I want my games to look, feel, react, move, and think as realistically as absolutely possible.

      I wanted to know exactly how far could we get with realism, and I came upon some algorithm that can accurately simulate the flow of water, mud, syrup, etc. etc...

      the game I want is the game that is simply so real, and so detailed, that it would be up to the MOD community to make games for it.

      Can you imagine a engine that was just SO good, that anything was possible? How about realistic flight, that uses the density of air and the physics of it over the wings to truly give a unique and different feel to each plane in the game? Same thing goes for cars, bikes, carts, 4-wheelers, ect. ect. If you coded in the BASIC rules of our world, then the game world would simply fall into place.

      But, I'm just a lowly coder who knows noting more than a few shell scripts and a teensy amount of C. so I don't get to voice my opinion... oh wait. ^_-
      • Lagging players doesnt affect you in any way - other than the guy may be warping around if it's bad, ofcourse there are more issues with listen servers servers.

        It's not fun to play on listen servers - but there are thousands of servers at ISP's and the like which are dedicated. Find the servers with either Gamespy [gamespy3d.com] or the more powerfull All Seeing Eye [udpsoft.com]

        Unless you're a part of a gaming community/clan on irc these tools are must have.

        On a sidenote i get ping 20-40 on the servers i play on - with dsl. Not that different from LAN really.

    • What was the last FPS that made it's claim to fame in single player mode only? Probably the original Doom

      Ah I believe that would be Quake, NIN did the soundtrack? Its engine and its progeny power almost every FPS. Perhapse you have heard of it? I believe the focus of that game was making a "kickass, over the top single player game"...

      He didn't say exclusively single player, just a single player game first... after that...

  • I remember the other DOOM games - I think they didn't use a real client/server setup either. If memory doesn't fail me here, you just said "4 player multiplayer game" to the setup program, and the different machines found themselves through broadcasting. The protocol was also just pure broadcasting of packets that brought many a network to its knees :-)


    Also, wouldn't true p2p be a cheaters heaven? I mean there are a lot of cheaters now in current games that have a "central authority" kind of server. What would happen if every client is itself responsible for calculating the player's actions? I imagine it would be trivial for cheaters to crack such a system.

  • This is great! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JediTrainer ( 314273 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @10:16AM (#4136412)
    This is what I've always loved about Descent! For those of you who're not familiar with it, Descent was P2P, not requiring any one machine to be a server. Somehow the load was shared amongst all the clients. It was never a problem if one machine in particular crashed or disconnected - the game continued between the rest.

    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!

    • Re:This is great! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Manes ( 17325 )
      > This is what I've always loved about Descent!

      You know what i really hated about Descent?

      That due to the system you praise above, anyone with a trainer could give themself unlimited health and weapons and whatnot, and since there was no authorative server, they could get away with it!

      Cheats totally ruined Descent 1 and 2, anyone could just be an asshole and cheat if he felt like it.

      Client/Server is the only way to go to have decent cheat-protection!
  • An article all about this [gamespy.com] that makes one wonder why this story was posted at all.

    They are making it like Warcraft / most RTS games where you all "gather" in a waiting room, then start the server. Big deal....

    DOOM3 is a SINGLE PLAYER game... anything they say about MP is probably invalid as it's leaving thier mouths... id knows damn well that there will be MP gaming in DOOM 3, but they aren't thinking about it now.

    Besides, if you want multiplayer gaming with the DOOM 3 engine, one could always play Quake 4, which is in the works as well.

  • Cool! (Score:4, Funny)

    by trauma ( 62841 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @10:22AM (#4136427)
    A game that can warez itself!

    (Yes, I know what peer networking really means in the context of the article, but it wasn't funny that way.)
  • A few years ago, prior to Quake 3 I recall Carmack speaking around this issue. The buzzword at the time was "portal" technology but the concept was the same. Distribute the clockcycles and network load around.

    My memory (link tba) recalls that the context was along the lines of contesting the MMORPG's vision of enormous proprietary systems with something a bit more... flexible.

    Aragorn!
  • Either this seems like a really bad idea or I'm guessing the details wrong... Say you connect to someone who's connected to 3 others. Your ping to the 3 others is then compounded with the guy in between you. If you have 2 people in between, that's your ping plus the ping of both of them.

    As one could imagine, this wouldn't work too far out. There'd have to mostly be a central hub for it all.

    Also, lack of server = greater ability to cheat. If each client is responsible for its own .. life or death, just modify the exe to not die. Say you get shot, and it's up to the user's client to recognize that. It could just ignore it. Or, if other clients are responsible for it, they could lie and kill someone across the map.

    Now, say multiple clients must be in on it.. bad spot there too. Multiple cheaters being one. Another.. the ping issue. Where someone is on one client's screen could be slightly different than on another client's, due to that whole compounded ping thing I mentioned above. So, one client would say "Yeah, he got me," another could say "nah, he missed that guy by a few feet," another could say either way. Far too much chance in such a thing, imo.

    I think I had one other thought, but I can't remember it, so 'th th th that's all for now, folks!"

    -DrkShadow
  • The slashdot crowd has already come out in support of cable-broadband companies banning P2P on their networks because the only use of P2P is for piracy. Sorry that you didn't think of possible future uses when you had the chance.
    • Sure, slashdot is a heterogenous collection of people with different views, and that's good.

      However:

      When I started reading slashdot a couple of years ago, there were always many post promoting free software or open source and justifying copyright infringement. And this was good. I agree with those views.

      These days when I read the highest moderated posts they're often promoting propretary software, they're speaking out against "piracy", they're almost MPAA-loving microsoftians.

      Has the slashdot readership changed that much? Hmm, maybe time to do a statistical study...
  • nice :) this is just excellent for p2p technologies... So gaming would go faster and everything...
  • Gosh! Peer to peer. Truly distributed. No central server. Bingo ! Bingo ! Bingo !

    Aside from that fact that I just won Bulshit Bingo, this means cheating hell.

    Hello, Mr Carmack, been busy coding for the last few years, have you ? never noticed those problems game communities have with people hacking their software to gain unfair advantages ? never heard of the likes of punkbuster and co ? never wondered why Blizzard went away from a real P2P-Game system in Diablo 1 to a strict client-server system in Diablo 2, to even have a chance to control cheating ?

    Bah!
    • diablo2 was also the most patched game in history, so i wouldn't exactly hail blizzard


      • diablo2 was also the most patched game in history, so i wouldn't exactly hail blizzard
        Huh ? Diablo2 is now at 1.09. That means 9 patches alltogether, some of which never reached the public (like 1.07). All this includes the expansion, which added a substantial number of features.

        In all there were 5 or 6 patches to Diablo2.

        Doom had _way_ more patches. Don't know about quake.

        And, patches or not, Blizzard's client-server architecture is the right way to go.

    • Actually, if they do it right it should be possible for there to be little to no cheating at all. The only possible cheats would probably be client side things like seeing through walls, aimbots etc. which still affect client server architecture anyway. Any attempt to modify the game (if it is designed right) would throw the whole game out of sync.
    • Fortunately, id has network software engineers like you to explain to them how to design game engines.

      You think they're stupid? There are plenty of ways to deal with this...do things like have several computers maintain duplicate state (though no computer stores all state), then compute hashes based on known game state and exchange them periodically (and that's off the top of my head).

      Now, with that system you may be able to cheat if there are multiple players in collusion and have complete control over the binaries (sounds good in theory...may not be that nasty in practice) -- if half the people are working together, you may just be screwed.

      I rather suspect that id is going to do something new and interesting with distributed program design, and that Carmack really doesn't need lots of video gamers telling him what to do.

      • Fortunately, id has network software engineers like you to explain to them how to design game engines.
        Unfortunately id apparently doesn't have scurity specialists that tell them how to design secure systems.

        You cannot trust code running in an untrustworthy environment. Period.
        • You don't *need* to do so. The system I just gave as an example does not trust unknown code on any one computer -- faulty information *cannot* be propogated throughout the system.

          If you have ten people, any six of whom can trust each other, this system would reduce the maximum load on any system from calculating the full world to calculating half as many things going on -- each piece of information is calculated by five different people, and hashes exchanged. You *cannot* slip something by in an environment like that. Any conspiracy would involve at most four people, and the system checks against five different values.

          Take SETI@Home. Their solution to the problem -- they want to build a trustworthy system as a whole, but cannot trust individual nodes -- is to have nodes compute blocks, and then have randomly chosen other nodes recompute those blocks.

          Actually, to some degree a well-made distributed id gaming system would be more secure -- you can't have someone set up a bogus server (or just break into the server) and immediately have godlike ability to cheat.
  • What is so incredibly amazing about DOOM 3 is the 3D engine , not so much the game itself. Even if the gameplay sucks, it doesn't matter. It's all about the 3D engine that John Carmack is creating. It's like no other before it. Not only does it raise the bar for other game engine developers, it will also be licensed out just as the Quake engine has been. John knows what he's doing -- if he thinks P2P is best for DOOM 3, then he's obviously the most qualified person to make that decision right now. I think they decided to make a single player game for a number of reasons; the original DOOM was single player oriented, and they've also been focusing on multiplayer for so many years that it must be refreshing to take a break and work on a single player game for a change.

    Personally I can't wait to play it because I'm also a Resident Evil fan. I remember playing the very first publicly released version of DOOM when it came out.. I had nightmares from playing it so much. :) This "scary" type of gameplay isn't for everyone, but a lot of people do enjoy it and I'm one of them. Oh, you want something else? A multiplayer game? A roleplaying game? A strategy game? Wait for other game developers to catch up or license the DOOM 3 engine. It's just a matter of time. The important thing is that there is now a new level for the other guys to catch up to, and that fact alone will benefit everyone. I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of the same old recycled 3D engines, it's great to see something new! :)

    I think they are limiting it to 4 players because the game is so resource intensive. Anything above 4 players would be a strain on the system. This is also probably one of the reasons they don't have a lot of monsters on the screen at the same time. In my opinion for this particular type of gameplay, dozens of "A.I. dumb" monsters on the screen isn't very exciting. I personally prefer sacrificing quantity over quality. But what is so incredible about DOOM 3 is the wonderful 3D engine John has created! Shadows and lighting are the most important things to me in a game, and from what I've seen of the screenshots and videos, DOOM 3 does it beautifully. :)

  • Peer to Peer Gaming Is Hardly New (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Robotech_Master ( 14247 ) on Sunday August 25, 2002 @12:13PM (#4136711) Homepage Journal
    Look at Battlenet [battle.net]. It has a lot of the characterics of a peer to peer system. If you host a Starcraft game where only one person has the map, first it downloads from that one person to one more person, then from those two people to two more people, then from those four people to the other four people (if it's an 8-player game)--in other words, from peer to peer. And there is no one specific set host--Battlenet itself assigns the host based on who has the best bandwidth and processor power...and if that person gets dropped, someone else's machine takes over.

    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.
  • I remember when quakeworld came out the guys at Id were fantasizing about huge levels with portals to other servers that you could just jump through and continue playing on another server. The worlds would have hundreds of people and the game would run fine. Well as we've seen the # of players will go down because there's too much detail in each player model. So will we ever see huge FPS games with tons of players? Quake 3 came the closest with 32-64 players... with a P2P system this is all but impossible. Not many people will have the bandiwth to support that many players. A client-server connection made the only issue you had to worry about to be that of your ping time between you and the server. With a P2P style game, you'll have to worry about the ping between you and each player as well as your total upstream and downstream bandwith.
    Doesn't this seem like a step back for internet gaming??

  • XBox? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by XMunkki ( 533952 )
    It *could* be possible, now that the xbox version is official, that the 4 player multiplayer game comes from 4 player splitscreen on the XBox (now idea if it has the balls to run it, though). Just an idea (although a vague one).

  • null (Score:2, Interesting)

    by shplorb ( 24647 )
    Reading the posts above, it's pretty clear to me that 90% of posters don't have a clue what they're talking about.

    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 =]

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