When will Doom3 be released?

[Guest Bloodspill25]

When will Doom3 be released? I can't wait to blow thoes zombies all to HELL to see there big arses laying on the blood spilled floor and the smell of the fragged zombies.

[Tetzlaff]

I think it will be released in 2002.

[AndrewB]

It's ridiculous to think that Doom 3 will be released in 2002. I wouldn't expect to see it until maybe 2004, earliest. I mean, think about it. They're making an engine from scratch. Focusing hard on the new technology.. Will be aiming at a 700MHz computer with a 128MB memory, and a high-end video card. Those system requirements are likely to go up.

If Diablo 2 took four years to make, I don't see why Doom 3 wouldn't take four or five years.

[Guest Humza]

I do not find it rediculous at all to think it will be released
in 2002. They are about 12 persons at Id Software working on the
game. I believe the next DOOM-game will due in the autumn of 2002.
I do not believe that it would take more than 2½ years to make an
engine for Id Software. If I'm not misstaking, there are three
persons at Id Software working on it.

As for the system requirements:
Sure, right now a 700 MHz cpu and 128 mb RAM seems expensive.
But two years ago I had only a 300 MHz cpu with 64 mb RAM.
And think about what kind of cpus there probably will be in 2½ years.
The p4 is soon to due and its stamina will begin at 1,5 GHz.
Intel was also able to push the clock-frequency up to 2 GHz,
they didn't reveal the cooling, though.
In 2½ years, a 1,5 GHz cpu will probably not be more expensive
than an AMD Duron 600Mhz right now.
The RAM-prices will probably not change much but one has a lot
of time to save money.
I don't believe that these requirements will go up.
How many were they to create D2? And how much did they work?

[deadnail]

March 3rd, 2003. I'm sure of it. That Goddamn cursed number 33 follows me everywhere, so why wouldn't the date of the newdoom release be on 3-3-3?

Don't forget though, the Pentium 4 is *NOT* a performance processor. It's got a lot more of that, "Hey! My Internet is better than YOUR Internet!" bullshit in there, but a spokesman for Intel stated on C-Net that a 1.5Ghz Athlon will definitely outperform a 1.5Ghz P4. Damn, looks like AMD's my company now...

In any case, in 2002 would the P6 or P7 be breaking news? P5's would be pretty damn cheap.

In ten years, the NeutronGameboy just released by Nintendo will have a 1Ghz processor. Why not? They say that in 2010 processor speeds should be between 10-15Ghz.

Cool! I buy a brand new top-of-the-line PC in 2010 and maybe, just maybe, I could play Trespasser at a decent framerate! Wow! Technology, what a sweet gift... although I bet that Daikatana 4 released months before then will still tend to crash every 10 minutes and have level design just like Doom 2. :/

Fuckin' Ion Storm.

Anyway, don't stress about the Doom release date. iD is sitting tight until they have something to show us, and when they do, it'll be worth it.

[Linguica]

AndrewB said:

It's ridiculous to think that Doom 3 will be released in 2002. I wouldn't expect to see it until maybe 2004, earliest. I mean, think about it. They're making an engine from scratch. Focusing hard on the new technology.. Will be aiming at a 700MHz computer with a 128MB memory, and a high-end video card. Those system requirements are likely to go up.

If Diablo 2 took four years to make, I don't see why Doom 3 wouldn't take four or five years.

The engine for Quake 3 was all but finished towards the end of 1999, so Carmack has already has had a good 10 months to a year to work on the new engine. Remember that this is going to be his fourth game with a fully-3D engine, and his second from scratch, so I am sure he has a good idea of what he is doing. While the engine isn't going to be finished yet, I bet that a good chunk of the architecture is in place already. The original Quake engine took maybe 2 years -- mid-1994 to mid-1996 -- but remember that that was Carmack's first stab at a true-3D engine, and he had to figure out all sorts of things to make it run at a decent clip (such as inventing the idea to preprocess the levels for visibility data and lighting effects, which we basically assume to be standard fare nowadays).

As for Diablo 2, the vast majority of the game was spent on the art, and more importantly, the gameplay balance. They had to make sure that the difficulty ramped up as the game continued without being unfair, they had to introduce new items which were not overpowered but still useful, they had to make sure all 5 classes were about equal in terms of usefulness and strength. The new Doom game is going to be infinitely easier to balance than Diablo 2 was -- there's one character, and you can just have QA play through the game a bunch of times to make sure the difficulty ramps up well. In a FPS you can avoid a Cyberdemon even when all you have is a pistol, but if you drop a level one barbarian into Act 4 of Diablo 2, he's going to be squished like a bug. That makes it harder to balance correctly.

[sirgalahadwizar]

deadnail said:

It doesn't seem nowadays that processor speeds make up for very much... but rather the hardware (video card) that does lots of the number crunching.

Doom3 will probably run on a 500 Mhz processor, but ram, HD space, and video card performance will be a whole 'nother ball game.

It may actually *require* 128 or 256 meg of ram, probably a few GIG on the HD (well, to some people that's not a problem), and I wont EVEN talk about video.

They may even put the damn thing on DVD just to make it really big (2+ gig probably).

3-3-3 makes 333 (which by coincidence is 1/2 that of 666).

[AndrewB]

deadnail said:

They say that in 2010 processor speeds should be between 10-15Ghz.

I think that's silly. By 2010, those computers using "cold light" or whatever it is will be making the scene. They'll be billions of times as fast and today's conventional PCs. And hey! No noisy CPU fan..

[deadnail]

I'm assuming using the chart of progess made in the last five years, not if anything "new and spectacular" breaks in. Mind you I wouldn't argue if it did!

So, this "Cold Light" thing... would it be cheap too? :)

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BTW, Linguica, why did my account get deleted?
Sorry, I'll lay off the profanity now. ^_^
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