Doom3 Goes Gold

#1 Still several titles using the Q3 engine, I think. Probably will be a bit yet, but I'm sure they will eventually :)

#2 Quake2 was GPL'd about two years after Quake3 was released. So look for Quake3 GPL in 2006! :)

#3 Yep I'm all kinds of excited for this title. Need a new rig though.

#4 In this Slashdot thread regarding the release of DOOM 3, id Software's John Carmack briefly touches on the topic of the Quake 3 engine going open source. Here's a copy and paste for your ogling pleasure:

Re:Quake3 engine open-source? When?
by John Carmack on Wednesday August 04, @03:13AM

By the end of the year. There are still a lot of higher priority things, but it is coming soon.

Hopefully punkbuster will keep the source release from having any negative impact on the player community.

John Carmack

#5 Awesome :)

Oh, and Doom3 is fantastic!

#6 Just what defines "Gold"?

#7 The original term comes from the fact that companies would burn the 'final' version of their game on a gold CD master I think.

It means that a game has passed all stages of quality assurance and testing, so it is ready for distribution and release.

#8 Ahh. I thought it was something like records & CDs, where they sold a certain number.

"Platinum" and all that.

Thanks.

#9 Finished it yesterday. Great game, though I did have a few things that I wasn't too happy with, overall it was awesome. Really brought me back to the old FPS days.

Oh, and to get full enjoyment out of it. Play only at night, with all the lights off and headphones.

#10 Heh, I thought that it had nice but repetitive graphics style, good but cheezy sound, crap gameplay, no AI and was for the most part a big disappointment. I was hoping they would have made a nice game, even the graphics were flawed as there was almost no ambient light despite having a hell of a lot of lighting.

Was hoping for something revolutionary in the FPS genre, instead we just gota slow paced old school game with pretty graphics ut no substance.

Oh well :(

#11 Whatever partner, you're Yin and I'm Yang ;P

Doom 3 rocks! Best game experience I've had all year. Nothing else made me feel so in the game. Almost tangible graphics, tension building sounds, and the AI ... who cares about AI with monsters ... the damn things were hard enough to kill as it was with them being stupid.

#12 Will it run on a P4 1.5GHz, 256MB of RAM, and GeForce 3 card??

If it does, how well will it perform?

I got FarCry a while back and its runs like molasses in January.

#13 I played through the whole game on a 1GHz Atlon, 512MB RAM, and a 128MB Radeon 9600XT ... oh with High Quality 800 X 600, 4X AA, and 8X AF on. With those extra features turned off it was very playable. The multiplayer is a bit of pain because in order to win you want to be running very smoothly which my system doesn't. Obviously, my processor though is way below the min spec. When I was engaged in combat was the only time it got slow and with the AA and AF turned down the fps dramatically increased during battle. You'll probably run into some choppy areas but I can say the whole game was able to be completed with only a 1GHz processor and the game seemed to more CPU limited than GPU limited. Of course my card does the rendering in 1 pass. The GeForce 3 requires 2 passes and sometimes 3. Expect the game to crawl in certain areas if you have the settings cranked up.

#14 Pretty good review on gamespot, and the reader reviews give you a pretty god overall impression of the game.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/doom3/review.html

certainly a lot more honest than most I have been reading out there.

Will: yeah it shoudl run ok on that system in low or perhaps medium settings if you tweak your settings well. I was getting 22-40 FPS on my 1.2 ghz but otherwise similar spec system, and that was with some extras like player shadow etc on. I'd recommend turning upi the gamma too r_gamma 1.2 or r_gamma 1.4 works pretty well.

#15 Personally (and I'm not being paid by id) I found a lot of depth and felt about the game just like PC Gamer did, only I liked the humor they added.

The above is a decent (nice) review from a guy who doesn't seem to like the game. Especially, the multiplayer where the reviewer completely ignores how much strategy is actually involved by turning off lights and hiding in dark corners. The flahslight is still a must in multiplayer and creates extra strategy whereby all players are sometimes subjected to only having out the flashlight and no gun.

There are some people that ask the wrong questions about a Doom game and are then disapointed. All his questions up front are ridiculous. It's Doom, it's supposed to be dark, you're supposed to feel weak, you're supposed to feel relieved when the robot helps you out. It's not supposed to be realistic on paper it's only supposed to feel real visceral by your most basic instincts. If you want to start getting technical about those sort of things then it's not a game anymore ... join the marines and your problems will be solved.

#16 @Jeremy: i know AA is anti-aliasing, but what is AF?

#17 @Will: I'm guessing that by AF they mean anisotropic filtering.

#18 Hmm, to me Doom 3 is almost the perfect example of a crap game that hides behind fancy graphics and hype to hide substance. I find it really funny that the people that scream for inovation in gameplay fall for a game of doom, that is as simple as it comes. Despite the nice graphics level design is generally poor, there is very little gameplay past point and shoot. The overly dark environment do little to heighten the suspense unless you suffer from Nyctohylophobia.

My overall impression of doom was a somewhat immatuer gorefest that was full of cliches and had very little imagination in its design at all. THere are far better games out there. A coupl eof months ago I would have thought it unlikely that Iwould find a game that would disappoint me as much as Deuse EX but Doom 3 takes the biscuit. At least there is a lot of potential for good games to be made with it once some inovative dev teams get hold of it.

Some usefull mods allready out for it that make the game a little better are the Duct Tape mod, that attaches a flashlight to your weapon, coop which makes the game marginally entertaining if you have a friend along for the ride. You can turn off the gib and have corpses lie around the scenery indefinately which is also a nice.

I have little respect for PC gamer and their ability to write unbiased objective reviews. And the fact that they got a world exclusive pretty much means they had to guarantee a great write up regardless of the quality of the game. Otherwise someone else would have gotten it. Gamespot actually spent some time with the game, wriote a first impression days before the final review, were pretty frank about its high points and short comings, and also have well over 100 reader reviews. I think they pretty much nailed doom on the head, its a great game for someone that likes a simple action oriented pick up and play game.

But games like Painkiller do the doom thing far better than Doom 3. similar point and shoot games I enjoyed more than doom recently were Call of Duty, painkiller and Max Payne 2.

#19 Rarely do you see a computer game with such great artwork, music, sfx, and code all working together well. I havent played Doom3, but when I look at the screens and videos, I can see something that is very polished and detailed. For that it deserves credit.

As far as innovative gameplay, I think there are alot of players who are comfortable with existing gameplay mechanics, but just want to see a new setting or environment and newly designed baddies to shoot, etc. Maybe id software's next work will be more innovative on the gameplay front, but it's obvious that is not their focus...

#20 "I have little respect for PC gamer and their ability to write unbiased objective reviews. And the fact that they got a world exclusive pretty much means they had to guarantee a great write up regardless of the quality of the game."

Does that mean you have little respect for me because I'd have given it a better review then they did! (I liked the humorous bits)

If you don't like it, you don't get it and that's fine, but no reason to go insulting it and along with it other people's opinions and credibility. Some people get it some people don't. It's not the game it's the state of mind.