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Doom 3 Gets Info On Demo, Linux, DVD, Xbox 100

Posted by simoniker from the no-such-gloom dept.
Eeknay writes "Following up yesterday's announcement about Doom 3 going Gold, id software today went into specifics on a Doom 3 demo and a Linux version of the full game, saying: 'We will release the demo as soon as it's done, but this probably won't happen until after the game has arrived on U.S. store shelves', and adding: 'Linux binaries will be available very soon after the PC game hits store shelves. There are no plans for boxed Linux games.'." Eurogamer also has a handy round-up of other Doom 3 news, noting, via CNN Money, that "Doom will apparently ship exclusively on CD", quoting Todd Hollenshead as saying of the Xbox version: "We can't say, at this point, that it's going to come out this year", and relaying on game length: "the [PC Gamer paper-mag] reviewer claims it took 23 hours to complete."
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Doom 3 Gets Info On Demo, Linux, DVD, Xbox More

Doom 3 Gets Info On Demo, Linux, DVD, Xbox

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  • Doom 3 demo. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eeknay ( 766740 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @11:18AM (#9708226)
    I still don't understand why more and more game companies push back demos to after the retail release; I want a demo to decide whether or not I want to buy your game. The sooner you give that to me, the sooner I buy your game. Simple.

    • Re:Doom 3 demo. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      'I still don't understand why more and more game companies push back demos to after the retail release; I want a demo to decide whether or not I want to buy your game. The sooner you give that to me, the sooner I buy your game. Simple."

      The problem is they already have a line of people ready to buy the game. Screw you, they're thinking, get to the people who are already sold.
      • Whoever modded me as 'flamebait' should really reread my post more carefully. I wasn't saying 'screw you' to the guy, I was suggesting what ID was probably thinking. No offense intended.
    • Because I think their priority is to get the actual game done, and after that they can cut a few pieces out of it, put some annoying limitations on it, and pump it to your local fileplanet clone.

      Or would you rather game companies focused on making a good demo first, rather than a good game that you're actually paying for first?

      And besides, what's the point of having a demo before the game is released on shelves? It's not like you can go "OMG THIS DEMO IS SO COOL! I'M GOING TO GO BUY IT RIGHT NOW... err wa
    • I thought it was obvious - it's bit risky giving people a full demonstration of what most might be considered a turkey - better to chance your arm for a few weeks so the retailers at least buy some copies. Of course I doubt Doom 3 even remotely resembles a Turkey and the lack of a Demo will probably only keep the buyers-to-be frothing at the mouth desperate to get a copy ASAP... This is the biggest hyped game I've yet encountered afterall...

      • Re:Doom 3 demo. (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Eeknay ( 766740 )
        I see your point. But with a game as hyped up as Doom 3, considering to be "revolutionary" and all that, you'd think they'd release a demo before hand to prove they've got a winner. By not releasing a demo, it seems to me as if they're hiding something. However, more and more companies are releasing late demos (or none at all), so there may not be any hidden intentions.

    • Re:Doom 3 demo. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shaka999 ( 335100 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @11:35AM (#9708401)
      For a highly anticipated game it probably makes more sense to release the game and follow with the demo.

      For a game that doesn't have public recognition it would be just the opposite.

      If you game is already getting the press that DOOM3 is then getting a demo out early would be more likely to keep people from buying the game than to encourage them to buy the game. I know this has worked on me several times. I go buy a hyped game and find out it sucks later. If there had been a demo I wouldn't have made the purchase.

      Now, if nobody knows anything about you or your game getting a demo out may help people pay for the whole version.

      Just my 2 cents....

      • Almost.... Almost.... I think your reasoning is good. Though the biggest reason to release a demo before hitting stores is to check a game against real world hardware requirements.

        It's just plain easier to fix problems when a million beta/demo testers at home lets you know where all the potholes versus fixing it as final patch 1.0 etc etc.

        • Good point...except for the fact that beta tests, demos and retail games should all be different. Nothing is more likely to turn off a potential customer than a buggy program called a "demo." Well, nothing except perhaps a buggy program called "gold" but even then you've presumably already made the sale. Who else is looking forward to eventually getting "lemon laws" for software?

      • Re:Doom 3 demo. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ergo98 ( 9391 )
        Way back when the demo for Duke Nukem 3D came out months in advance of the real thing. Once it was really released myself and my friends were long since bored of it and had moved on to bigger and better things.

    • Re:Doom 3 demo. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kannibal_klown ( 531544 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @11:42AM (#9708483)
      It depends on a lot of things.

      Most people have already stated the obvious: a demo isn't really needed when a game has as much hype and fans as DOOM 3. They know they have those people locked into a sale.

      But demos can hurt a game in many ways. For examples:

      Deus Ex II: Invisible War - the demo showed everyone how sucky the game was. Poor performance, dummied-down concepts (hacking anyone), small maps, and weak relation to the original. It probably hurt sales, as some of those that were foaming at the mouth probably changed their minds or waited to get it as a gift for the holidays.

      Ground Control II - they shot themselves in the foot with the demo. The demo is great! The game is great! One problem - the demo had so much content in it that nobody bought the friggin game. Hordes of people are still on the demo servers, as the only thing they are missing out on is a few maps. Only a small number of people are on the retail servers.

      Between the time and funds that ned to go into fixing up a demo, it's more cost effective to get the interested early-birds to buy the games. You demo will do little to make them want it more.

      The ones that will buy it later, let them hear about the polished game and then try the demo later.
    • As many people said before...Q3 is already set to 'sell-out' as soon as it hits shelves. They don't need to drum up extra hype before release.

      HOWEVER!!, in the past, ID hasn't just released 'demo's, they've released 'tests'. Qtest, Q3test, etc, they've released them in order to get feed-back to improve the product. You may question why there was no D3test. (I know the gaming forums are asking this.)

      I can answer it though. Doom3 is a single-player game. The tests are for testing the multiplayer se
    • But, I did get 10 minutes with Doom 3 at E3 this year.

      Granted, 10 minutes isn;t a long time, but it was enough to say that I am looking forward to the game, now. And I had pretty much given up on Doom 3 after all the hype.

      Granted, this was also the Xbox version, not the PC version, but it was still very good. Much better than I expected.

      YMMV of course.

  • It'd be much more convenient if they could just ship the CD with several compiled versions of the software. The data is (usually) common to all versions, so it's just the code which changes and id seem to work cross-platform throughout rather than porting at the end.

    Still, my knackered old PC can't run it anyway, so I don't really know why I'm moaning! ;)

    • Re:Multiple Binaries on CD (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zed2K ( 313037 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @11:33AM (#9708379)
      Why should they delay the windows version just so that people that run OS's that are such a small percentage of the population should be able to play at the same time?

      It would be more convenient for linux and OSX users but not for Id or anyone else.

      • well, for starters, there should be minimal amount of OS specific code in the game from the get go.

        considering that they (iD) have released plenty of (multiplatform) this style games before, one could easily assume that they already have the OS specific code hammered out.

        • Re:Multiple Binaries on CD (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Zed2K ( 313037 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @02:59PM (#9710612)
          You are making a ton of assumptions about the setup of their development. I would think that doom 3 would be a lot more complex then an office application.

          Only Carmack would be able to answer for sure, but I bet each new engine has brand new code that needs to be written for each OS. It is never just a simple matter of copying the code to the new OS and compiling it there and fixing a few specific problems.

        • Re:Multiple Binaries on CD (Score:4, Insightful)

          by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @03:02PM (#9710645)
          Truly spoken like someone who has never written a commercial game.

          People often seem to assume that if you write an OpenGl game, there'll be very little work in making a port for another OS. That may be the case if you're writing some free thing that you can download from Sourceforge but when people are actually paying for a product, there's this little thing called 'Quality Assurance' that gets in the way.

          Basically, as well as porting your program over, you'd have to test it on a wide variety of machines for all the distributions you support. This takes a long time whatever OS you're running. You've also then got to fix all those niggly little isses while at the same time ensuring you don't break the setup for any of the other machine/graphics card/driver/distribution combinations you've got.

          It's easy to say it's easy - it's not easy to do it.
      • "Why should they delay the windows version just so that people that run OS's that are such a small percentage of the population should be able to play at the same time?"

        Who said anything about delaying the Windows release?

        Adding two binary packages to the disk image (one for Mac OS X and one for Linux) plus a couple of platform specific Read Me files and then sending off a new hybrid image for future masters would not in any way require the release to be delayed. You just have one initial release for Win
        • "Adding two binary packages to the disk image (one for Mac OS X and one for Linux) plus a couple of platform specific Read Me files and then sending off a new hybrid image for future masters would not in any way require the release to be delayed. You just have one initial release for Windows, and a second that's multiplatform."

          That means new boxes, new manuals, new cd cases, new SKU's, shelf space requests from stores, new pressing runs. It is not just a matter of just make a new master when its done. It
          • That means new boxes, new manuals, new cd cases, new SKU's, shelf space requests from stores, new pressing runs. It is not just a matter of just make a new master when its done. It costs money to do that. Money that could be spent better in other ways instead of catering to the very small market that is mac and linux gaming.

            But we know some extra expense (e.g. printing a new run of boxes) would need to happen anyway so your 'argument' makes no sense.

            And FWIW, no you don't need 'shelf space requests', 'ne
    • Are you suggesting id to make Doom 3 shareware? If so, that's a pretty good idea... but I don't think it'd last very long in today's world of hackers and crackers. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think John Carmack cares about making that much money off of this -- he's rich enough as it is and he's not greedy... unlike Mr. Gates. John had his life set with just the release of Doom -- Quake just finalized it.

  • Duh, what me work for PC Gamer (Score:5, Informative)

    by hambonewilkins ( 739531 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @11:23AM (#9708280)
    the [PC Gamer paper-mag] reviewer claims it took 23 hours to complete.

    Having read PC Gamer, I believe it.

    Seriously, though, it's widely assumed that PC Gamer reviewed a non-shipping preview version of the game, which seems pretty shady to me. Though similar to the final version, the games are likely to have SOME differences. After all, Ebert doesn't review rough cuts of films, does he?

    • After all, Ebert doesn't review rough cuts of films, does he?

      With the quality of movies being released in the last year, you could have fooled me. . .

      In all honesty, I notice lots of magazines seem to do this with almost any game. And since it is a preview, the magazines and gaming sites have nothing but good things to say about what they saw.

      When the game is finally released, they turn around and SLAM it. Couldn't you consider a somewhat critical preview as a type of constructive criticism? In all hone

    • Re:Duh, what me work for PC Gamer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @12:37PM (#9709088)
      After all, Ebert doesn't review rough cuts of films, does he?

      No, but Ebert doesn't write magazine based reviews. He writes newspaper reviews and does television shows.

      Magazines typically have a 75-90 day lead time. No game magazine in their right mind is going to review a finished game knowing that it won't be out on the stands for a full 3 months. They'd constantly be scooped by the game oriented internet sites and TV shows.

      • Plus, movies tend to be finished quite a bit in advance of the release date, allowing reviewers to attend advance screenings or DVD copies distributed esecially for reviewers. In the case of video games, especially those with unspecified release dates like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, et cetera, production and distribution tend to occur as soon as possible after a publisher-approved build is achieved. And you don't tend to run into last-minute compatibility or performance problems with movies.
      • Magazines typically have a 75-90 day lead time.

        Isn't that... Like... Ages?

        Shouldn't the games magazines be looking into reviewing things in a much shorter timeframe? Much of the magazine can be prepared in advance, but hot news and reviews done at the last minute?

        Newspapers and news weeklies seem to cope okay, games sites on the web manage to write reviews in less than a couple of months... Plus, it seems ridiculous that a game can go from gold master, through duplication to the stores in significantly
        • working in a magazine printing plant, we are printing up september issues of several magazines that shipping date is in a week or two.

          why magazines do this? i havent a clue. but the month on the issue means absolute squat.

          after the research is done for a magazine, it can be put together quickly in a couple days or a week.
          • The reason magazines traditionally have cover dates at least a month later than the shipping date is that the cover dates are supposed to tell the retailer when to take the issues OFF the shelf and return them to their distributor. This is because magazines are, as a rule, sold on consignment and not actually purchased by retailers (as with most other retail products).
  • Considering the hype surrounding Doom 3, I guess my first stop on the release date for Europe will be the closest game store! Now how am I going schedule Doom 3 time around my job that week...
    • Most gamers are asking themselves:

      "How will I schedule my job around my Doom 3 time?"

      Personally, I'm anticipating this release, but I'm not gung-ho about it. To me, it will just be another FPS. At most, it will remind me of the fun and fear I felt when playing the original version at night on my 486 DX 33.
      • True, the good old days when PCs were sold with 486/33's, 8MB Ram, some sort of inbuilt video processing and one of those ultra modern 4 speed CD-ROMs - well, at least it got me through Doom and Duke Nukem... Looking forward to contrasting both versions... Now about scheduling...:)
      • Personally, I'm anticipating this release, but I'm not gung-ho about it.

        That is how I feel about it. I Loved Doom 2 and Half Life is one of my all time favorite games, as a result I'll be buying Doom 3 and Half Life 2. But I can't help but feel that these games are being way overhyped to the point that they just will not be able to live up to many peoples extremely high expectations.

        I loved the original Wolfenstein games. ID then made Return to Castle Wolfenstein which was OK but didn't blow me away. I
  • id was working on Windows, Linux, Mac and Xbox ports all at once. Mac OS X and Xbox ports are not finished yet, but are coming. Go id!

  • Speed Demo People (Score:5, Funny)

    by -=[Dr. AJAX]=- ( 17537 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @12:16PM (#9708869) Homepage
    "Bah", I say to the alleged 23 hour completion time. Speed Demo people, I expect to see a 1 hr 37 min demo (maximum, of course) one week after Doom 3 hits the shelves.
  • I've seen little to no mention of a dedicated server.. I would like to be able to run my own server.. just like i do with CS/DOD... i know different engine.. shut up..

    Has anyone found anything out about this yet?
    • At least the last time id mentioned multiplayer it was said that Doom3 is peer-to-peer only. No servers needed (and they would be pretty silly with a 4 player limit). There was talk that this could change however. I suspect the engine is (or maybe more accurately will be) able to handle a server-client setup, because future games using it will probably do more with multiplayer. But I doubt Doom3 would see any benefit from this.

    • Re:Dedicated Server (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dekar ( 754945 )
      According to the handy round-up article: [eurogamer.net]
      "Multiplayer is client-server," laying to rest suggestions that Doom's four-player deathmatch mode might be peer-to-peer;

      It's the good ol' client-server model again. You'll be able to host your server just like you did 10 years ago, except that this time, it won't be over a 14.4k modem :)

      And on another note, I remember playing countless hours of DooM I and II by modem with only one friend at a time, and it was still a whole damn lot of fun, so I'm not worried ab

  • "the [PC Gamer paper-mag] reviewer claims it took 23 hours to complete."

    Time sleeping, bathroom runs, stopping to take notes for the review, stopping to get cool screenshots to be printed, stopping to call over the other staff to see another 'cool thing', among other things which would kill time? After looking at how short some games are, you'll have to excuse my skeptism (23 hours? I beat Max Payne 2 in less than 15 and I didn't even play the first one.)

  • I really wanna get my hands on that demo when it's ready. Doom 3 seems like the type of game I'd only play for like 10 minutes at a time to oogle at anyway. I'm just wondering how big that download will be, as the bootleged "alpha" was like 1 GB after un-raring it.
  • Handle the game. I was worried if my machine could handle UT2k4 since I only have a radeon 8500 but it handled the demo and then later the full version quite nicely. I hope doom3 is the same way since I dont have the cash right now to plunk down the money for a better video card. and I already got doom3 on preorder a friend of mine got it for me as a gift since im a huge doom fan.
  • for them to get hacked, and the game gets pushed back another year. wait.. :/

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