DOOM 3 is on its way

[lacywest]

http://www.idsoftware.com/

Quote --- Quote from ID Software Site


It's no secret now that DOOM 3 is on its way to retail shelves everywhere. Now, the official DOOM 3 flash web site is live at www.doom3.com. On the site, you can browse through screenshots, download desktop images or a short clip of the DOOM 3 theme song, and watch trailers and interviews with the id team. There is a ton of great DOOM 3 content to whet your appetite, and we'll be adding more stuff over the next several weeks and months.

$54 bucks .... at CompUSA

[marvel2020]

Bit late with that news m8.

There are already copys of it on the web.

SO much for security.

[§kipTracer65]

yeah indeed there was mass hysteria in warez circles yeasterday even the manual was released, like every thing else these days dont think itll have the same effect on me as playing doom 2 during my school days, getting nostalgic now id better stop

[JohnnyCNote]

I came across this courtesy of Anandtech.com:

Doom 3 leaked over p2p networks

The reviewer on ISOnews has made some nasty claims about the game, and is quoted on the forums as saying: "Guys, I officially disown this firstlook. I've never done that before, but I do admit when I'm wrong, and I am wrong this time. The first couple hours were much more than fun the last 5, and I'm bored to tears now. All the shadow effects in the world can't make up for what is essentially 1991 "run into room, kill spawned monsters, find key, open door" gameplay." He goes on to say that he'd have his review deleted if he could.

[RottenFoxBreath]

yeh i kinda agree that it gets boring after a while.
its not the same doom i remember,so i think that its like all sequels and "updates".nice for what it is,but its nothing like the originals.

[lacywest]

Well ... now that I got your attention ... I downloaded ... over a year ... that prerelease version and it ran very slow.

So is it optimized now ??

Can my Athlon XP 2500 w/Barton core ... running at 2004 mhz

with a ATI AIW 7500 video card and a Gig of DDR ram ... play the game ?

Or ... do I need to pass on my ATI AIW 7500 to my daughter and upgrade to a more faster ATI AIW card.

And I'm not to gungho on spending over $350 bucks for a new video card.

I've seen the ATI AIW 9600 for a reasonable price.

Talking about the 9600 ... what is up with the extra letters ... XT ... I think ... what extra features does it do ... is it worth it ??

[sunderland]

you want to be looking at the fx5900 and ati 9800pro at the least for the up comming games

[ViRaL1]

Talking about the 9600 ... what is up with the extra letters ... XT ... I think ... what extra features does it do ... is it worth it ??

Different engine clock and memory clock speeds...

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9600/radeon9600pro/compare.html

Also, if you want to run dual monitors, the AIW 9600 will support them, but the AIW 9800 won't.

[888888]

I came across this courtesy of Anandtech.com:

The reviewer on ISOnews has made some nasty claims about the game, and is quoted on the forums as saying: "Guys, I officially disown this firstlook. I've never done that before, but I do admit when I'm wrong, and I am wrong this time. The first couple hours were much more than fun the last 5, and I'm bored to tears now. All the shadow effects in the world can't make up for what is essentially 1991 "run into room, kill spawned monsters, find key, open door" gameplay." He goes on to say that he'd have his review deleted if he could.

Wow, and PC Gamer gave it a 94% score. How about that for differing opinions.

[JohnnyCNote]

It's to be expected. It's a classic example of the old "one man's trash is another man's treasure" thing....

[pyscrow]

Got my copy yesterday, looks ok, only real comment is that it is really really dark. Even with the brightness set up at max in the game, I had to up my monitor levels to get acceptable viewing.

[Nilfennasion]

I suspect I am going to have the same opinion of Doom 3 as I did of Quake, Quake II, and Quake III Arena. The FPS genre is dying because with all these new releases, they have yet to bring one new thing to the table. When Quake was about to be released, there was a big hoopla about "locational damage" or something to that effect, and how it would revolutionise the strategy of such games. In essence, it meant that when you hit something in the arm with a shotgun, the arm would come off, and the enemy would have to adapt to find a new way to fight. Three games after Quake, I'm still waiting for that one.

[JohnnyCNote]

The last game I played that I liked was Half Life, but I've never been a big gamer anway. I'm hoping Half Life 2 is as good, but I'm not holding my breath. As far as Doom 3 goes, I'm waiting for the demo...

[Nilfennasion]

I'm more a real-time strategy type, but I am still waiting for a RTS game that measures up to the original Command & Conquer. I think most game developers are losing the plot when it comes to gameplay.

[FulciLives]

Well I was in my 2nd year of college when the original ID 3D game CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN 3D came out.

I since have played DOOM, DOOM II, and all the QUAKE games. I also enjoyed the heck out of UNREAL and HALF LIFE.

In fact of them all I think I liked the original UNREAL the best ... at least in terms of single player game play ... have to admit HALF LIFE was close as well.

But ID is at the forefront of this technology ... UNREAL and HALF LIFE would not have existed if not for ID so YES I am very excited about playing DOOM 3

However ... having said that ... I will NOT be buying it anytime soon. I know for a fact that my current system is just WAY too slow and even a maxed out system with an ATI 9800 would probably barely play it well ... I'm guessing ... but I bet I'm not too wrong.

So no DOOM 3 for me until:

1.) I buy a new faster computer which is faster than what can be bought today
2.) I can buy a video card that is at least as good as the ATI 9800 or better ... such as the next generation that replaces the ATI 9800

In other words ... wait for technology to catch up so that a system close to max but not 100% max can still play the game well ... without spending the max price. We all know that the 2nd fastest processor or video card is substantialy cheaper than the 1st fastest. Computer pricing has been like this for a long time.

I'm not cheap ... Just poor! ... and have been through this before!

I remember a time when I would do a computer upgrade just to play a new game and even then just barely get a decent level of playability from the game only to see 6 months to a year later a faster computer/video card that could play at a much increased level of playability (high FPS with full graphics turned up) at a much LOWER price.

So by the time I can afford a computer that can play DOOM 3 well it will probably be a game that is a year old hehehe

However ... that will be as exciting a day to me as those that will be buying DOOM 3 the day it comes out ... and I salute those with powerful enough computers NOW to be able to play it NOW!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[zoneless]

When Quake was about to be released, there was a big hoopla about "locational damage" or something to that effect, and how it would revolutionise the strategy of such games. In essence, it meant that when you hit something in the arm with a shotgun, the arm would come off, and the enemy would have to adapt to find a new way to fight. Three games after Quake, I'm still waiting for that one.

Hmm... the closest thing i remember that comes close to the locational damage feature is Mech Warrior, but it's simulation, not very FPS. worth a try though.

[lacywest]

I just want to say ... thanks for the input your providing here

I would like to give my ATI AIW 7500 to my daughter and update my video card ... so I guess I better if I'm going to be able to play Doom 3

but man ... even the ATI AIW 9800 isn't good enuff or is

Okay ... anybody know where to go to find the system requirements for this game.

Okay I used the link below and went to the site

Link >>> http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDU=

Here is what I found:

Minimum Required System

As mentioned in the beginning of this guide, id Software wanted the min spec system to be a viable system for playing DOOM 3, and that's exactly what has happened. Here are the minimum system requirements as supplied by id Software.


DX 9.0 compatible 3D card w/ 64MB RAM*
MS Windows 2000/XP
Pentium 4 1.5 GHz or Athlon XP 1500+
384 MB RAM
8x CD-ROM
2.2 GB of HD space
Broadband (for multiplayer)

*Supported 3D Graphics chipsets:
ATI: Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
NVIDIA: GeForce 3, GeForce 4MX, GeForce 4 Titanium, GeForce FX, GeForce 6


The min spec system is the one piece of equipment we tested with that was not our own. The system belongs to id Software and they had been using it in their own testing. Although we were tempted to come into the offices and start working with the latest and greatest video cards, motherboards, and CPUs, we chose not to. We started our testing on the min spec system. By doing this, we felt our experience would be more like the one you might have at home. Basically, we did not want our min spec system experience to be jaded or overshadowed by a few hours of gaming at 1600x1200 on thousands of dollars worth of hardware.

Minimum Required Specification System

[D_Knife]

http://www.hardocp.com/
seems to have the "official" hardware specs and also a comprhensive breakdown of older cards

Also it seems that ID have heavily optimised the game for Nvidia chipsets as the latest NV 6800 easily beats a ATI x800

Yet for other games this isn't always the case

interesting reading though...

[FulciLives]

Well I scaned through the HARDOP website link and it seems that an ATI 9800 would work VERY WELL at 800x600 but 1024x768 still seems a bit low.

In short you want a video card that will never go below 30fps ... that should be the minimum for maximized quality at the Frames Per Second level.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[D_Knife]

But what I thought was interesting is in this game ID capped the fps at 60

[FulciLives]

But what I thought was interesting is in this game ID capped the fps at 60

Well 30fps is more or less considered optimal ... I heard in the past some people claim 60fps as the most optimal but as long as it is always 30fps or higher it should be fine.

Surely anything over 60fps is overkill which is probably why they did that if they did do that.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[haloblack]

Surely anything over 60fps is overkill which is probably why they did that if they did do that.

from ign.com...

October 22, 2003 - At a recent NVIDIA Editors' Day, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead announced that DOOM 3 will be capped to 60 frames per second in the rendering engine.

We checked with John Carmack himself about why DOOM 3 will be hard-capped at 60fps in the renderer, and he had this to say:

"The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz, so if it rendered any faster, it would just be rendering identical frames. A fixed tic rate removes issues like Quake 3 had, where some jumps could only be made at certain framerates. In Doom, the same player inputs will produce the same motions, no matter what the framerate is."

[lacywest]

Wow ... we're getting some good conversation here.

So ... summary ... is ... looking at my profile/details ... I just need a new Video card.

Ooooweeee ... and it's going to be an expensive one too !!!!

Well ... I recently bought a Dell Laptop 5150 ... and it's paid for ... so shouldn't be too hard to obtain a newer and fancier video card.

I wonder what is on Ebay ??

I borrowed the money from a friend ... and paid him back $200 every two weeks.

I've got three Compaq Presario 1210US laptops from Ebay but I wanted one decent one.

The Dell 5150 ... does play the PainKiller demos ... I haven't tried the full game version on the laptop. It does play fine on my main PC.

P.S. ... I reformated the Dell 40 GB harddrive ... I couldn't stand all the crap that was on it. I reinstalled WIN XP without all the Dell Crap.

[ViRaL1]

I don't know if DELL still does this, but they used to keep the restore files / info on a separate partition. If you want / need to go back to the way it was, hopefully you didn't nuke that partition.

[FulciLives]

I don't know if DELL still does this, but they used to keep the restore files / info on a separate partition. If you want / need to go back to the way it was, hopefully you didn't nuke that partition.

I don't see that being a big issue ... many companies that you buy pre-configured computers from include a set of CD discs that are an "image" of the computer as it is pre-configured.

This way you can totally re-format the HDD and restore it to "like new exactly the way it left Dell" condition.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[ViRaL1]

That was DELL's alternative to sending you restore CDs. They MAY have switched to (or back to) sending you a restore CD, but when they had the restore information on a separate partition, there was no restore CD.

[JohnnyCNote]

I think most manufacturers have gone to putting restore files on a separate partition instead of CD's. I know that HP and Compaq (before they merged) and IBM have done this...

[lacywest]

I don't know if DELL still does this, but they used to keep the restore files / info on a separate partition. If you want / need to go back to the way it was, hopefully you didn't nuke that partition.

I nuked all of it ... when I reinstalled WinXP ... it gave me some options as to whether I wanted this partition or that partition ... I zapped all of them.

Before ... I did ... I installed ICQ with another user account and transfered the folders with the driver files back to my main computer.

Dell had something installed that was preventing me from installing programs such as GetRight 5.02 [the one I prefer to use].

And I kept getting errors when installing my version of Norton Internet Security ... so I decided I was tired of the bullshit.

Besides ... the Setup CDs that came with the box ... were all I needed to install the modem and video drivers.

My Dell Laptop is running fine ... I use a Linksys Wireless "G" card to connect to the laptop from my PacBell DSL modem in my bedroom.

[ViRaL1]

I think that's about all they give you these days, an OS CD and drivers (and maybe some very standard basic apps). As long as you have no desire to go back to the way it was before you nuked it, you're fine.

ICQ???

No sharing set up?

[spiderman2k1]

I might just wait until Doom 3 for X-box. Then i do not have to go out and buy a new video card new CPU and other stuff. My AMD 1.8XP not bad but not top of the line. I also heard far cry is a killer game. I like PC game's but one thing I hate upgrading and install window's. And setting up driver's.