DOOM 3 for PC and XBOX platforms!
Although the rumors of Doom III appearing on the Microsoft Xbox has been ongoing for some time, at QuakeCon, id Software CEO John Carmack spoke specifically on the subject. According to Carmack, Doom III can be transferred over to the XBOX without any graphical changes. He further claimed that currently the Sony PlayStation 2 isn't powerful enough to handle Doom III, without making serious graphical sacrifices. It's undoubtedly the most demanding game that id has ever designed. The game was born to take full advantage of the GeForce 3's graphical strengths. Carmack confirmed that there are no current plans to release Doom III on the PS2 and if at a later date a version is announced the project will be handed over to an outside developer.
CaptainStarMac (Carmac) send out some quotes regarding the upcoming Doom game about Doom Engine Performance. Obviously, any game done with the new Doom engine is going to run slower than a game done with Q3 technology. You can make some of it back up by going to the simpler lighting model and running at a lower resolution, but you just won't be able to hit 60+ fps on a GF2. The low end of our supported platforms will be a GF1 / 64 bit GF2Go / Radeon, and it is expected to chug a bit there, even with everything cut down.
There are several more Q3 engine games in the works that will continue to run great on existing systems, and Doom is still a long ways off in any case, so there will be a lot more upgrades and new systems. We are aiming to have a GF3 run Doom with all features enabled at 30 fps.
This game is going to be brilliant...
Work specifically for Doom III didn't start until about six months after id shipped Quake III: Arena. The team explored other game ideas first, looking for fresh ground for its next project to move beyond the world of Quake that had served as the company's focus for half a decade. After little more than a year, the game is still very much in its infancy, and most of what we know so far about the game comes from John Carmack's discussions of the game's underlying technology. What id has done best over the years is to design games that make the most of state-of-the-art graphics and turn this potential for visual realism into intense, visceral gameplay. Doom III should be no different. The graphics are unbelievable, combining realistic lighting with highly detailed characters and environments. While it's easy to fixate on a few tempting bits of eye candy, John Carmack, the programmer responsible for the graphics of several generations id games, says it's really not about effects. Doom III's impressive real-time lighting and shadows, for example, are not just a technical tour de force, but also an element that will help create a distinct atmosphere in the game.
The two demo sequences we've seen of the game have shown how id is translating the essence of the original Doom game into the new graphics engine. Doom, always reminiscent of Aliens with its mix of sci-fi and horror, is a space marine game in which there's no shortage of humanoid zombies and other nasty monsters to shoot. Already, the preview sequences have shown how several familiar faces will appear in the new game, including a pink demon, an imp, and a human zombie with a whip arm--any of which look capable of dealing you a gruesome end in a dark lonely corridor. One dramatic scene we saw took place in a white-tiled bathroom. A pink demon strode up to a bloated cadaver in the center of the room and tore a bloody chunk out of its stomach, revealing its entrails and spreading a pool of blood across the floor. The sequence was cinematic in quality, smoothly and believably animated. But it's tough to say what the engine will look like from a standard first-person view. The original Doom was characterized by hordes of monsters on the screen at once, and this may not be feasible with this complex graphics engine. Having many 3D enemies on the screen at once is much more taxing for PC hardware than moving animated 2D sprites around.
FOOTAGE FROM QUAKECON 2001!!
Check it out:
http://www.rocketserve.net/doom3vid.zip
(DOWNLOAD)
Carmack says that Doom III's graphics are a whole evolutionary step beyond the 3D-accelerated worlds of the Quake games. The heart of this change is the new real-time lighting model, which works uniformly for everything in the gameworld: architecture, objects, and characters. Of course, when it comes to lighting a scene, shadows are just as important as the lights that cause them. One environment from the demo sequences featured a spinning fan on the ceiling, with external light shining down through it. The fan cast down a wide moving shadow, even shadowing the appropriate parts of a character standing in the hallway below. Before this, we had never seen a game capable of such classic movie shots as the villain standing with his face hidden half in shadow, but now, such atmospheric shots are possible. Carmack's goal is to make surfaces look much more interesting with many-layered texture effects. In Doom III, every pixel will have at least a bump map applied, and some pixels will have layered effects of a magnitude more complex, requiring up to 50 passes for a current-generation GeForce or Radeon graphics card to render.
Doom III is about atmosphere rather than mad frame rates. Those used to getting well more than 100fps in Quake III will have to settle in for the steady 30fps average that Carmack targets for the game on a GeForce3. It's undoubtedly the most demanding game that id has ever designed. The game was born to take full advantage of the PC's growing graphical strengths and couldn't be ported over to the PlayStation 2 at the same level of detail,
although the XBOX could handle it easily.
Id is already thinking about ways to use sound to further enhance the game's atmosphere. In a surprise announcement, Carmack revealed at QuakeCon that id has a verbal agreement with Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame, to do the music for the Doom III game, just like he did for the original Quake--however, the deal is not a sure thing yet. Beyond the soundtrack, in-game audio will get a completely new sound engine, which will include 5.1 support.
It's incredibly exciting to have a game like Doom III on the horizon, but it is quite a ways away, probably much more than a year from shipping. Id has defined the look and feel for Doom III, and it's the test of the artists and designers to flesh out a single-player game that lives up to its potential and even surpasses the conventions established by Doom those many years ago. Id isn't the same company it was in 1993--Doom's original level designers have long since split off from the company to try their hand at other games--and first-person shooters haven't been the same since Half-Life. Even Gray Matter's Return to Castle Wolfenstein, whose development id is sponsoring and overseeing, shows the effect of story-based levels with its pre-mission briefings, so it's quite likely Doom III will do more than just turn you loose to clear the level of monsters and find the exit. In any case, I just can't wait to see more.
DOOM III VIDEO from Macworld Tokyo (stream)
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John Carmack Video Interview Part 4
While at QuakeCon 2001.
These are 4 clips of the interview.
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+4
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+4
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+4
John Carmack Video Interview Part 3
While at QuakeCon 2001. This clip is part 3 of the interview.
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+3
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+3
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+3
John Carmack Video Interview Part 2
While at QuakeCon 2001. This clip is part 2 of the interview.
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+2
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+2
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John Carmack Video Interview Part 1
While at QuakeCon 2001.
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+1
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+1
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http://www.gamespot.com/live/streame...terview+Part+1
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) OH lordy lordy...i simply cannot wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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