Doom 1 and 2 being ported to idtech 5 for PSN

[Marnetmar]

According to this Examiner article, Doom 1 and 2 are being ported to Rage's engine for the PS3 version of Doom 3 BFG Edition. You read that right, no redesigned maps or anything.

[DoomUK]

Will be interesting to find out how faithful it is and whether there's any subtle differences in movement speed, monster behaviour etc.

[DooM_RO]

I don't see any reason for this.

[DoomUK]

DooM_RO said:

I don't see any reason for this.

To make money?

[Stroggos]

Hmm...

[Caffeine Freak]

I'm a bit confused about this. I can't be sure, but it seems from the quote in the article that Tim Willits is referring specifically to the networking aspect of the games.

"We never released Doom 1 and Doom 2 on the PlayStation Network. So we're like, 'OK, what's the easiest way to do this?' And what the guys did instead of rewriting all the network support, [support for] friends, and all that kind of stuff, is they took Rage, took out all the 'Rage' bits and put Doom 1 and 2 on top of it."

Like I said, I can't be sure, I could be wrong. In any case, the article also says the games will be identical to their original versions. And that's pretty much common sense. Any changes to them would be met with fan backlash. Hell, Carmack got backlash when he modified the look of the pistol in Wolfenstein for the iPhone verson, so I doubt they'd change anything here.

[ASD]

I'm losing my interest of buying this for PS3 now.

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

It would be interesting to see how the games will run with the idtech 5 engine...I hope. I might get it just out of curiosity, but seriously, using Rage's engine? Why not just use a more reasonable engine?

[Gez]

From what Willits said, it'll still be the old Doom engine, the only Rage part will be the netcode.

I doubt it'd be any easier and faster to make the Rage rendering engine work Doom data than to plug Rage's netcode in Doom.

[hardcore_gamer]

The games aren't being ported to Idtech 5, they are just getting a new net code.

Talking about blowing things out of proportion.

[schwerpunk]

I downloaded Doom for my ex's 360 when I last visited, and it was nice to be able to play it on a chesterfield. Anything that allows me to do the same (as I'm a PS3 owner), is a + imho.

Also I guess this would technically be a port? Ports are always interesting to me, so that's a double ++ now.

[Lizardcommando]

It's about damn time. Now how about making PSX Doom downloadable from PSN next?

[Maes]

It will probably be an interactive texture like that Doom 3 mod that allows playing Doom inside Doom 3. The gory stuff like most of Doom's game logic will probably reside in a binary blob or VM of sorts, and the only rewritten portion will be the part where network I/O and peer-to-peer hosting is performed: those aspects will somehow be packaged in a format the Rage engine understands ("move data blob X from interactive surface A to surface B over the network")/

Certainly, that's much easier to do than e.g. making an automated IWAD converter to RAGE format and hacking the Rage engine to display 2D sprites and try to recreate all of the Doom engine's quirk with scripting. Still....what they won't do for a buck.

[Blastfrog]

Maes said:

hacking the Rage engine to display 2D sprites

RAGE already uses 2D sprites for some scenery, though.

[julz_d]

The Xbox ports have been in bad need of new netcode for a long long time now. If they have a decent netcode for PS3, 360 could surely use it too.

[hardcore_gamer]

julz_d said:

The Xbox ports have been in bad need of new netcode for a long long time now. If they have a decent netcode for PS3, 360 could surely use it too.

The article says that the Xbox version isn't getting the new netcode.

[julz_d]

hardcore_gamer said:

The article says that the Xbox version isn't getting the new netcode.

Figures - typical Xbox Live.

[schwerpunk]

New netcode will be DLC.

I wish I could say this statement was entirely sarcasm.

[alexz721]

I remember when Doom 3 was pushing new systems to the limit. Now it needs a graphics update. It's amazing how far technology progresses each year.

[Gez]

schwerpunk said:

New netcode will be DLC.

Nah, it wouldn't be worth it.

You've gotta pay Microsoft a bazillion ton of money in order to put anything -- even a bugfix patch -- on the Xbox downloady thingy. Which is why you only put free stuff here if you absolutely need to (like bugfix patches).

A netcode DLC for an old game like Doom 2 would never be profitable enough to be worth the attempt.