It has taken four years, but the creators of the “Doom” video game series have finally reached the next level. Read the interview with Carmack here.
In the background, a man at the forefront of ‘Doom 3’
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and well worth the money. Doom 3 really is Doom the way it was meant to be. This is the best game I have played in years.
Can’t wait for the Linux client to be released!!
I don’t mean to complain, but the linked article had paragraphs of background information, but exactly two quotes from Carmack. Did I miss something or was there no interview?
Can’t wait for the Mac client to be released!!
I wonder how the 9000Pro in my dual-1.25 will handle it..
If you’ve played the original Doom you’ve played this one too. Run around, find the correct key code, open door, proceed to the next area, oh and kill some monsters that magically appear behind you in that dark corner you just passed.
Doom 3 is nothing more than a technology showcase. Now i’m eagerly awaiting the REAL games that would make use of the Doom 3 engine.
Uh – Dude? That’s what DOOM is all about. This isn’t Sim City or Final Fantasy or Microsoft Flight Simulator. It’s DOOM. Everything you said is what DOOM is SUPPOSED to be. Maybe you don’t care for it, but many of us just ADORE it. Many millions of us. When we eventually get tired of the original levels, we then make our own levels and swap them on sites for people like us. If you don’t like DOOM, that’s fine. That’s why there are many other games. But don’t diss it for being what it’s supposed to be – DOOM.
The engine is beautiful looking, but as “me” said, it’s just another kill the zombies and various other hell spawn.
I’m glad I bought it, but I’m anxiously awaiting some of the mods – how about something couterstrike like with this beautiful engine? I’d like to see some large, open areas.
I’ve been playing the 30-day trial version of Evercrack after a 3 year hiatus. You would have to lower the polycount dramatically, but a MMOG would look incredible with the engine.
I don’t know about that, however Carmack is hot.
The Doom III engine was designed to be as atmospheric as possible, usually meaning compact killing grounds; I really don’t believe it was intended to be used for wide open spaces.
Besides you’ve got CS:Source for the new Valve engine soon enough 😉
I hear the doom3 engine is a lot more flexible with regards to large outdoor spaces, but i haven’t been following the gaming scene all that much recently.
maybe now they will start working on quake IV
Another team is already working on Quake 4.
Raven (the Hexen people I believe) have been working on it for about a year now, with the Doom III engine. Should be out next year.
Personally, while I’ll buy Doom III when it comes out over here in Ireland, I’m looking forward more to Half-Life 2. The graphics don’t look to be quite as good, but I’ve a feeling that the overall gameplay and environment will be far more immersive and “real”.
I have to agree with the others about the lackluster game play. Playing Doom 3 becomes very repeatitive very quickly. You walk into a very small room, a bunch of bad guys pop out, you blast them, you then find the exit and then repeat. There’s really minimal skill involved.
Now compare that to games like HALO, Far Cry, or Medal of Honor, which involve large complex environments where you actually need some tactics and skill to defeat the enemy. When I played Far Cry, I got ‘hooked’ very quickly and I could play for hours. When I play Doom 3, I find myself leaving the game much more frequently.
[And yes, I realize I’m not the first person to say this]
here’s more info on John Carmack
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/John%20Carmack
Actually, I played it in the early 90’s when it was called just Doom. As for the 3rd installment, a friend of mine had this to say about it:
I installed it on my system. Granted, my video card ain’t exactly tomorrow’s unit (i.e. didn’t cost $500). Using LOW QUALITY, 640×480 (in fact, letting the system choose the parameters) – I got about 5-8fps. This is a P4, 2.26 with 512MB of RAM and an MX4 card.
Now, I’m TOLD that I could get “acceptable” speed if I went into ADVANCED settings and started turning everything off. But then, we’re back to P&S vs WIDESCREEN. ID intended this game to be seen with these features on – and since I can’t play it without a SUBSTANTIAL investment, I’m simply going to ignore it and NOT recommend it to others.
There is NO GAME ON THE PLANET worth $500+ to play. Not D3… Not Half Life 2 … No … simply doesn’t exist.
DOOM3 feels like a MARKETING TOOL FOR NVIDIA. I’d be willing to bet that if you did the research, you would find that NVIDIA paid substantial amounts for Doom 3’s development.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/02/technology/doom3/index.htm?cnn=yes
Pretty much sums it up:
1) People are stupid enough to spend $500 to play a video game.
2) NVidia probably paid millions to be “recommended card of choice”.
3) Tech demos are now more important than fresh, new game play
4) People are stupid enough to be ‘scared’ by a video game.
Don’t spread this bull. Doom III works perfectly fine on my AMD 1800+, 512MB, with a 9700 Pro at 800×600 with medium settings. I could probably even turn the res up a bit and still have a reasonable framerate. I do not have a $500 video card (NewEgg prices the 9700 at just under $200) nor do I have the most up-to-date processor or even near a large amount of RAM (I do not consider 512 to be large anymore).
It’s a game that requires some power, yes, but complaining about your speed because you bought an —MX— nVidia card and are trying to run one of the most demanding game on it is absolutely laughable. The game is fun, it is indeed scary (though in some parts fairly repetitious), and freakin’ beautiful technically; about what I expected after getting over the hype. It’s certainly not a “tech demo”.
>>1) People are stupid enough to spend $500 to play a video >>game.
>>2) NVidia probably paid millions to be “recommended card of >>choice”.
>>3) Tech demos are now more important than fresh, new game play
>>4) People are stupid enough to be ‘scared’ by a video game.
5) People are stupid enough to buy MX cards and expect they can play serious games.
Come on, if you consider playing games stay away from any card with MX in it’s name. And no I’m not talking about buying a card for 500$!
an MX card was a POS even when it was released, and would probably only run you like 20$ now-a-days…. I don’t even think geforce 4 cards are really supported(do they have DirectX 9.0b support?).
If nothing else go to a wal*mart and grap a geforce fx5200 for like 90$ I’ve seen the benchmarks for them on doom3, not that great, but still playable…(about 20fps avg from what i remember)
just because you’re a tight-wad and can’t think of D3’s possibilities for modding, does not mean that this game is bad…
It did not work well on my computer either (Athlon 2200+, Radeon 9000) until I upgraded my video drivers to the newest version.
I’m playing the game on a geforce2 MX for goodness sake !! (2!!!) The thing about this game is that it downgrades very elegantly, pusing the limit of my video card, but yet still being totally playable.
If you can appreciate the genre, there’s really something neat about the game. I just finished the single player game a few minutes ago. Compared to pretty much all the other id titles, this one actually has a fun little story to follow, and the lighting effects really do make you jump at times. In many ways it seems Half-Life-influenced, which I suppose isn’t totally surprising, considering their similar premises.
In any case, I think I’ll still like Halo 2 more, but I can very much appreciate the work that went into the Doom 3 engine; I doubt we’ll see anything beat it in terms of quality for quite a while.
Don’t spread this bull. Doom III works perfectly fine on my AMD 1800+, 512MB, with a 9700 Pro at 800×600 with medium settings.
Alright, so you need 1800+ and a 9700 vid card to play it ….. on medium ??? What kinda horsepower do you need in order to play it the way the developers intended the game to be played?
I’m tested this on my nForce 2 (GeForce 4 MX) using 128MB shared dual channel memory, and I got pretty decent framerates with the default settings (medium 640×480) without turning off those features (really the game doesn’t look right without specular lighting 🙂 ).
It must be something with your setup (like drivers)
Also “4) People are stupid enough to be ‘scared’ by a video game.” – I could say the same thing about Movies, TV Shows, books, campfire stories, etc. but I wouldn’t, because THAT would be stupid.
Don’t forget this engine will be used for years to come.
Two years from now I’ll build a system with a bottom-of-the-line Pentium 3.6 Ghz machine with 2 GB of RAM and a “low-end” video card that surpasses the performance of today’s best cards. And I’ll build it for a LOT less than $1000. Doom 3, as well as other games that are built upon its engine, will look great on it.
Sure, I can build a computer today that will display Doom 3 excellently, but it’ll cost me more than $3000, an amount too great for me. However, the option is there.
Don’t complain because you can’t play Doom 3 at its greatest. You’ll be either to play it perfectly in a few years or tomorrow–if you get a second mortgage for a new computer. If a person feels it’s worth it to build a new ultimate computer to play Doom 3, that’s fine with me.
Jeff
The engine this game uses will be used for years to come and is meant to be more demanding than today’s hardware will allow. Nobody can play this game at 1600×1200 with high settings and full antialiasing, but future hardware will have this capability. They wanted to create an engine that wasn’t dated the moment it went final.
What a huge disappointment!
There isn’t one good thing about this game!
Performance is horrible, even on a good system. P4 2.4Gz HT, Gfx5700 and 1Gb RAM and the game is choppy at 1024×768 at low quality setting. That’s not acceptable. And who want’s to play at lower resolution? Not me! Sub 1024×768 resolutions are not acceptable in this day and age. I din’t use lower resolutions 5 years ago and I will not start now.
Gfx5700 is not a low end card, the game should fly on it.
The game is plaing ugly. The textures are ugly. And most of the time you can’t see anything because it’s so dark.
Walking in narrow dark corridors with a flash light. Why? I can do that in my basement for free.
The gameplay is 10 year old. No new ideas, same old boring kill some monsters.
And only 4 player multiplayer games? Why? Are we going back to 10 years ago?
Who plays single player games any more? The most fun is in 20+ player games when you have two teams slug it out.
And even Serious Sam (both 1 and 2 ) had a much more fun single player and way nicer maps. At least you could see where you’re going.
I quit playing Doom3 after about 20min in a total disqust and I’m sorry I wasted 3 blank CD’s on it. Boy would I be pissed if I actully bought this crap game.
Want to try Doom3 people? Do this.
Tie a blind around you head, put some scary music on, grab a hocky stick and walk down to your basement blindfolded and without switching the lights on. Hit a few buckets along the way and you’re playing Doom3. That’s about all there is to it.
That’s because you forgot to upgrade drivers. Upgrade your video drivers NOW. I mean it. Perhaps you were using the default driver which shipped w/ your video card. And that’ll be probably about 1year old. :3
Also, don’t forget to check any spywares or registry problems. Ah, did you checked your DirectX?
Many people tried DOOM3 w/ almost same hardware spec and ran doom w/ medium quality just fine…and you condemn “DOOM3 sucks!!” while (apparently) your system drivers desperately need to be updated… (Some people complained unexpected slowness but later fixed by installing up-to-date video driver)
Stop trolling, kid.
@Gnomaniacal Perlmonger
Thanks for the great ideas!!!
But FYI, I have everything updated, and no spywares or viruses on this machine have ever or ever will be found.
What probably gets you confused my little “grasshopper”, is that the would be satisfied players run Doom3 in 800×600 or even lower in 640×480 and then they claim the speed is ok.
Sure it’s ok, at 640×480 you shold be able to run Doom3 on a 486-66Mz machine because that’s what was used 10 years ago.
Well, I already stated in my first post that I’m not going to do that! I refuse to run at anything less than 1024×768.
Sure the game would run great if I turned it down to 640×480, but I’m not going to use a resolution from 10 years ago.
So once again, Doom3 sucks like nothing ever before!
I can’t even remember when I was disappointed with a game as much as I’m with Doom3.
Well, it’s time to change your thinking.
Until now, the “High End” was far more than sufficient than what games required to run w/ full options and high resolution and etc…but, DOOM3 is much more.
Anyway…did you know that even the fastest PC cannot run DOOM3 w/ everything turned on and high resolution without any frame drop?
And even in 640×480, you need quite beefy hardwares to run Doom 3 without any sluggishness. Saying 640×480 is used 10 yrs ago so 486DX can run Doom3 is NOTHING BUT A STUPID TROLLING.
Welcome to the future. John Carmack has created a new standard for us. And it is my opinion that this DOOM 3 engine will survive much longer than Quake 3 TA engine.
Anyway….
>Well, I already stated in my first post that I’m not going to do that! I refuse to run at anything less than 1024×768.
>Sure the game would run great if I turned it down to 640×480, but I’m not going to use a resolution from 10 years ago.
>So once again, Doom3 sucks like nothing ever before!
>I can’t even remember when I was disappointed with a game as much as I’m with Doom3.
Because you cannot run Doom 3 with 1024×768 so that DOOM3 sucks is, (ahem) illogical. (Live long and prosper!)
It will be much more correct to say “your machines sucks(sorry!) because your machine cannot run DOOM3 with 1024×768”.(sigh)
To run DOOM 3 with everything on and 1024×768, you will need at least a Athlon64 class CPU and 1GB RAM and GF6800 Ultra…however…even those rich who got that kind of monster machine said there are still occasional frame drop…
Anyway, have no fear…John Carmack has created another standard, and everybody will follow. I think within few years, the high-end vpus can run Doom 3 with high-resolution with more than 30 fps. (or let us hope)
By the way, what about game console like PS2 or XBOX? :3
It’s hilarious watching you get so bitter because you don’t have a beefy enough machine to play the game. I’m sure people will follow your advice and not get the game because your machine doesn’t play it right.
Quote:
@Gnomaniacal Perlmonger
Thanks for the great ideas!!!
But FYI, I have everything updated, and no spywares or viruses on this machine have ever or ever will be found.
End Quote:
Your comment about spyware make me think that you have not updated your system at all. The idea of a MS machine never having spyware on it is not very believable. That you have removed within minutes of getting the latest cleanup updates yes, but I am always finding new spyware after getting a new update on my cleanup programs.
So what version video drivers do you have?
The idea of a MS machine never having spyware on it is not very believable.
It is possible my mate… all you have to do is: Avoid Outlook*.* and Avoid I.E.
Use Opera or Firefox, use a decent secure mail client and don’t execute stupid attachments. My XP box never had spyware (nor a virus). I have F-Prot as Antivirus (lightweight) and I’ve intercepted a few viruses but never ever got infected. Neither Ad-Aware nor PestPatrol find anything on my system (apart from a few cookies which I either eliminate or ignore).
It can Be Done, but tweaking a windows box to “resist” user misuse is difficult… unless, as I’ve told you, you know what you’re doing (like me).
Regarding Doom III… I wonder why people has already tried it when it’s supposed to be released in september.
Either there’s a beta or some people are abusing peer to peer networks and piracy… oh doh!
that an OpenBSD firewall is protecting my box… (yes I know… it’s unfair).
I wouldn’t run windows without a firewall protecting it. Would you?
@Gnomaniacal Perlmonger
Lol, you’re hilarious.
My machine may not be top of the line rigg but it’s certainly not a POS.
You’re obviously out of touch with online gaming.
Pople are used to at least 100+ fps these days and mostly 200+ and anything less than that is considered unplayable.
ID may make some money off Doom3 because of all the hype so people will go and buy it.
But nobody will play it.
Even if it was fun to play, people just don’t have the hardware to run this POS, Gfx6800 cards are just getting to the stores now and are very expensive.
Maybe someone will make good games using the Doom3 engine, that’s possible but as for Doom3, it’s dead.
ID has not been very successful lately.
Wolfstein was mediocre success and they had to give away Enemy Territory for free because it wouldn’t sell (god bless them for that, they have my outmost respect as it’s a fun game).
Quake3 TA was their last successful game.
Don’t get me wrong. I like ID because they’ve done a lot of good things. Gave us Linux games and one free game, so hats down to them for that.
But Doom3 still sucks no matter how great ID is.
I hope Quake4 is a success because I’m a diehard Quaker.
@Earl Colby Pottinger
Well, you may find new mallware on your machine, that’s you and your choice of software you’re using.
I use almost exclusively open source software both in Windows and in Linux.
Mozilla, OpenOffice.org office, Gimp, Filezilla, Azureus, Shareaza, Gaim, VLC etc. (you can find enough to cover most of your everyday needs)
I do research before I download something to make sure it has “no strings attached”.
And my computers are behind Smoothwall firewall.
But most importantly I am in Linux 99% of the time and only go to Windows very rarely.
I do update my XP with the latest pathes, and that’s the ONLY time I start Internet Explorer.
And I never open email attachments without saving and scanning them first. I use Mozilla for email too.
So, no, no spyware or viruses here.
And I used Nvidia drivers version 61.77 to test Doom3 on my Gfx5700 and it ran like POS.
So Doom3 still sucks!
Androo
The engine this game uses will be used for years to come
Which means we can look forward to developers repackaging and selling Doom 3 for many years to come – engine whoring at its finest. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the graphics get up to movie quality and they hit the wall with technology, and they won’t be able to fuck you over by selling you a ‘prettier’ version of the same game over and over and over again.
Lumbergh
It’s hilarious watching you get so bitter because you don’t have a beefy enough machine to play the game.
The quote about the lower-end system was not from me. I have a P4 2.8ghz machine and could probably run this game, but won’t because as I said before, I’ve played it many times already.
I’m sure people will follow your advice and not get the game because your machine doesn’t play it right.
No, I’m telling them not to get the game because the gameplay is tired and unoriginal. The fact that people are spending mega bucks to play this tired and unoriginal game just adds fuel to the fire. But even if somebody had a P4 3.4ghz w/2gb of RAM and the best video card on the market, I still wouldn’t recommend it.
Earl Colby Pottinger
Your comment about spyware make me think that you have not updated your system at all. The idea of a MS machine never having spyware on it is not very believable.
Not only is it possible to have a Windows box without spyware, it’s actually quite trivial. Want some advice? Stop using IE.
I’m running the game quite nicely on a P4 3.2GHz /w 1.5gb RAM, with a Radeon 9500 Pro (overclocked). My machine is a workhorse and I enjoy putting it through beatings. It was no suprise that running Doom 3 @ 1024×768 high resolution was no problem for my system, but running it in Ultra High settings is unbearable, although extremely pretty it’s just not playable. It does make me wonder indeed what kind of hardware you’d have to have to run this game at it’s peak settings.
I’m eagerly awaiting mods, and future games to use this engine, hopefully they’ll be able to optimize some settings to get the best out of the engine.
The game trailer makes it look at this time impressive with detailed models, textures, shading and lighting. Although I wonder how well it will stack up against games like the one for Riddick. Is this game going to be multi-player or is it strictly one man against Hell? Does anyone know if there will be a Linux port? If there isn’t going to be a Linux port I do hope this game will play as well on Cedega (formally called WineX) as other games.
When I said High resolution I meant High Quality setting.
Whoops
Erhmm, yeah, it need one. So what? I can run it on my Athlon 1.2/512/gf3 at 800*600*medium. Not bad. Ok, I don’t have 200fps(still, we do not need physically more than 60 – and 24 is enough to seem mostly smooth. We, human, are limited. Don’t forget that), but it’s playable. I have to tweak some param in a text file, but most of us can do it with Linux, so why not for a game?
Carmack made some advance with this engine – the only complain I have about it is that the shadow is not black in life. Minor problem, add to the mood of the game.
That’s one of the first game who use our hardware. And seriously, newer game will hurt it more – Half Life 2 seem too a ressource hog
And why do you play this game if you only like multiplayer game??? Crazy… I don’t like multiplayer game, so I don’t play them, easy enough! What’s hard to understand with that? They’ve allways say it’s a single player game with a little mp, but nothing great.
jbet : ultra high quality need graphic card with 512mb onboard
Some workstation card got it, but I don’t think you use them to play game 
)
Go over to guru3d.com and get yourself some newer (beta) drivers, install directx 9.0c and read the “Doom3 Tweak Guide“:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=803fd1560f4c647b6bff89ac2…
doom does whar it does, and its great at it, the other more strategy based games like medal of honor, have dfferent style. In my preference, I find those games that you have to follow an entire course before in order to know how to play the game. I just dont have the patience. There are board games for that. Much rather take a course to do something other than playing a game. Maybe Im a bit lazy, but when it comes to computergames I tend to prefer just plain fragging and alien destroying.
I’ve got a P4 2.4GHz i845 (4xAGP) chipset
512MB RAM
GeForce FX5200 (not great but cheap) with 128MB
Doom 3 recommended 640×480 medium quality with all effects enabled. It is completely playable and looks good, except for heavy aliasing on things like guard rails.
I’ve since upped it to 800×600 and it still runs fine. An extremely busy firefight might make it too choppy for comfort though.
Your machine may not be POS for ANCIENT GAMES LIKE QUAKE3 and ULREAL2, but sorry….your machine IS OUTDATED for DOOM3.
Your machine sucks…no matter how you troll or insult DOOM 3 w/ illogical reasons. Give me a logical answer please, not troll.
Is it just me that finds the original doom’s more stimulating?
I know it can be argued that all games are variations on pac-man but this games doesn’t give us anything new at all! Through out the game you are supposed to a) find locker combinations to get health and ammo and b) read/hear/see the totally unconnected story. The locker puzzle was fun the first times, but a good game would require me to solve the puzzles or at least give me some exiting secrets that way. Remeber the found secrets score in the original doom? The story on the other hand doesn’t connect witht he gameplay at all. There is nothing to gain from seeing the movies or reading all those mails. It’s all just follow the dotted line to the next level.
It’s like that game where the story is “The aliens are going to make hamburgers of humanity, kill them…”
On the positive side, there are a few interesting moments, the moving slime on the walls adds a lot of atomsphere. Some scaring scenes are really good. Once you learn the pattern of where the monsters are the scaring bit wears of though.
Alien vs. Predator (2?) mastered this part. I just love how they had three (!) levels with no monstres just to keep you on your toes.
MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 w/64mb RAM
P4C 2.6 GHz CPU w/865PE MB
512MB RAM.
Detonator 45.32 drivers (old, rolled back to them a while ago)
Played through entire game happily at 800×600 @ Medium quality without any noticeable slowdowns. Tried 1024×768 @ Low but it couldn’t cope with multiple baddies onscreen.
duke nukem forever being released
“The game is plaing ugly. The textures are ugly. And most of the time you can’t see anything because it’s so dark.”
That’s the point of the game you moron. Hit ‘f’, or go play farcry and quit trolling.
yes duke nukem 4 is gonna rock!
I’ve played for a few hours now. I gotta say that the engine has really impressed me. Even on my 2 year old machine, it looks really good.
GF4 Ti4200 (stock speed)
P4 2.4 (oc to ~2.6)
i845 Mobo (single channel DDR)
512MB RAM
I run at 800×600 at medium quality. It generally runs at 30fps, though it often drops into the 20s. Still, I don’t really notice many shutters. The Far Cry engine is definitely harder on my system. The confined areas in Doom3 almost certainly help with keeping the frame rate up. I’m really curious how this engine will do with larger spaces (maybe we’ll see with Raven’s QuakeIV.
The gameplay of Doom3 is definitely not earth-shattering, but I wouldn’t call it bad either. If you are expecting something new, you’ll be disappointed. It has a very cool, creepy atmosphere. Still, I expect more out of the gameplay of HL2, STALKER, and Halo2.
Performance is horrible, even on a good system. P4 2.4Gz HT, Gfx5700 and 1Gb RAM and the game is choppy at 1024×768 at low quality setting.
What the hell? I have a virtually identical system (P4 2.4Ghz non-HT, GFX *5600* (older/cheaper than your 5700) and 1GB of RAM and the game runs at around 40-60FPS at 1024×768 at High quality.
There’s something seriously wrong with software setup (video drivers most likely) if you’re getting ‘unacceptable’ framerates even at low quality.
The GFX 5600 which I bought about 6-12 months ago cost me only $180 at Best Buy. It doesn’t take a $500 card to get good performance out of Doom 3 so stop the FUD please.
From that guy’s perspective, I guest the “Good frame” means something beyond 100 frames per second… :3
Anything below than 100fps, he will say “HORRIBLE AND SUCKS”
….And he is still dreaming about old good quake 3 era…while the cold and merciless reality tells you something different!