No Doom 3 this year?

Lord FlatHead said:

Interactivity isn't just the ability to use computers. In Half-Life, you can pick up objects in the world and use them against your enemies - something I don't see Doom III doing.

I really don´t think that will make the gameplay better. You have your weapons to use against the enemies. Throwing parts of the inventory against your enemies could be fun for the first time you do it, but I can´t figure out how it should be implemented into the combat on a regular base without being just a gimmick.

For example the scene in the HL2-Movie, where the player ripps the radiator off the wall with the gravity gun to shield himself against one enemy. Would it actually make sense to do that in this situation, or wouldn´t it be much more effective simply to shoot him before he can harm you?

Carmack said:

There are some tough judgement calls to be made during development about whether something is an elegant extension of our chosen technical paradigm, or if it is unjustified work. Having the inclination and authority to just say "no" to feature requests has been an important aspect to being able to write quality code.

That's about code, but I believe it applies to game content too.

Tetzlaff said:

For example the scene in the HL2-Movie, where the player ripps the radiator off the wall with the gravity gun to shield himself against one enemy. Would it actually make sense to do that in this situation, or wouldn´t it be much more effective simply to shoot him before he can harm you?

I agree. I don't know if you noticed, but it seemed to me Gordan was shot many times before he used the radiator.

Tetzlaff said:

I really don´t think that will make the gameplay better. You have your weapons to use against the enemies. Throwing parts of the inventory against your enemies could be fun for the first time you do it, but I can´t figure out how it should be implemented into the combat on a regular base without being just a gimmick.

It is a weapon, it shoots things at people - in a similar fashion as to the projectile weapons in other games. It's an unconventional and original weapon, which makes it all the better. You say it might get boring after the first time, but look at the weapons we've seen in Doom3 - how many times have we seen a pistol, a chaingun, a shotgun, a rocket launcher? From that viewpoint these would get boring even quicker, especially considering they are utterly standard staples of the FPS genre.

I can see quite a few uses for the gun as well - imagine you have a bunch of guys (and I reckon you will die fairly quickly in HL2) slightly spread out so you can't take them out all at once without getting hit. Using this weapon, you can basically shield yourself as you run for better cover, or run straight up to people to get that perfect shot. I mean, I can't wait to suck up a nice big object, hold it there and run right up up to somebody and unload it in his face to watch him fly backwards through the air.

Dubh said:

Ahh shit, thats bad news. I am just about to buy my rig dammit!!!
This week!!!!

I bought my new rig last week. It's a bit less advanced in comparison to your future rig, but it will do

P4 2.6 HT
1GB RAM
80GB Harddisk
GeForce FX5600

It's too bad the Doom3 release date is pushed into 2004. But I didn't buy my computer just to play Doom3. I also enjoy the increased performance in Enemy Territory. And if HL2 gets released on time, I'll be ready for it.

Me wonders what DSM will say about this.

That and it'll kinda be dumb for this to be a big porky http://www.homelanfed.com/images/jcal/e3b1.JPG
*contibuted by disorder*

ToXiCFLUFF said:

It is a weapon, it shoots things at people - in a similar fashion as to the projectile weapons in other games. It's an unconventional and original weapon, which makes it all the better. You say it might get boring after the first time, but look at the weapons we've seen in Doom3 - how many times have we seen a pistol, a chaingun, a shotgun, a rocket launcher? From that viewpoint these would get boring even quicker, especially considering they are utterly standard staples of the FPS genre.

Of course I see no problem with new original weapons like that gravity gun - as long as it´s implemented well. And I doubt in the case of the gravity gun that it will be very useful, but let´s just wait until it´s finished.

On the other hand, a shotgun and a rocketlauncher don´t become boring for me just because there have been shotguns and rocketlaunchers in FPS since day one. Those weapons are just essential for a good shooter, and it´s more important how they are implemented, not what they are.

I think all this talk of the gravity gun being simply a new gimmicky 'weapon' misses the point entirely.

Sure, it can be used as a weapon, to grab things and then shot them at enemies. But (supposedly) Half Life 2 will have this uber-interactive world, and I see the gravity gun as the tool you use to interact with the world. In other games before, 'interacting' with movable objects was a bit awkward - I definately found it a pain in the ass to move boxes about in the original half life. The gravity gun looks like it will make all this a lot easier, and will (hopefully) be more than just something you use to grab objects to shot enemies with.

Im having thoughts on this whole released in 2004 and im thinking maybe they are covering it up and its actully close to completion so when the all of a sudden say guess what SHES GONE GOLD people will flip and buy it like crazy.

No

I don't get why people are whining when ID never said Doom 3 would be out in 2003 anyway (no the E3 sign does NOT count, because that was done by Activision, not ID).

Heh, I seem to recall a D3 release date discussion a few months ago when I said I doubted it would be out until at least early 2004 :)

officially about 3 and a half years for this game counting when it was announced by id to be in production, if it does come out sometime in 2004.

thats a damn long time. (yeah, dont even make a DNF joke)

Actually, 3.5 to 4 years is the usual time it takes to make a game.

Assmaster said:

Actually, 3.5 to 4 years is the usual time it takes to make a game.

It is? Where does it say that?

Read a book on game design.

I can see some poor D3 fanatic who was having a REALLY bad day, comes on here and sees this shit and commits suicide.

[repressing desire to grab the shotgun, not thinking about whether to use it offensively or not]

Okay, I have now read everything in every forum regarding this Activistion nonsense and I have drawn my own conclusions. They are as follows:

Activision has never been given a release date for Doom so they cannot put it on their projections for this year until id give them the go-ahead. I believe they are covering their backs in case the worst happens and the game is put back a few more months. In the event that the game is released before Christmas, I guess all that Activision will do is update their projection/release lists.
The matter that their share price has gone down isn't that relevant, BUT, why release a game after Christmas when everybody is smashed broke until March. Shitty sales compared to the Christmas boom.
Activision are not developing this game and id can tell them to piss-off at any point so why should Activision ruin possibly one of their bigges clients by pissing them off and pressurising them for a release date? What do they do? They cover their backs by announcing that they don't think it will be out this year. They never said it wouldn't for definite!!!!

The amount of speculation and the tendancy to blow things way out of proportion for this game is unique. We have never seen hype like this before. I stand firmly on the ground that the release date will be in or around December 9th. When it's done folks.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing much has changed, only maybe the fact that we are even more anxious than we were before.

I am buying my new rig next week and HL2 will keep me happy until D3 comes out. And whoever speculated that id weren't releasing D3 until after xmas because of HL2 need their heads examined.

The Flange Peddler said:

I think all this talk of the gravity gun being simply a new gimmicky 'weapon' misses the point entirely.

Sure, it can be used as a weapon, to grab things and then shot them at enemies. But (supposedly) Half Life 2 will have this uber-interactive world, and I see the gravity gun as the tool you use to interact with the world. In other games before, 'interacting' with movable objects was a bit awkward - I definately found it a pain in the ass to move boxes about in the original half life. The gravity gun looks like it will make all this a lot easier, and will (hopefully) be more than just something you use to grab objects to shot enemies with.

No, the tool to interact with the world is the now-gay crowbar. In case you weren't paying attention to the video, now the crowbar is CLICK-SMASH instead of CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-SMASH. While this makes smashing crates more convenient, it also becomes far less satisfying, and whacking things with a crowbar was one of the things that made HL1 so enjoyable.

Arioch said:

No, the tool to interact with the world is the now-gay crowbar. In case you weren't paying attention to the video, now the crowbar is CLICK-SMASH instead of CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-SMASH. While this makes smashing crates more convenient, it also becomes far less satisfying, and whacking things with a crowbar was one of the things that made HL1 so enjoyable.

Were you one of those compulsive crate and corpse smashers Arioch?

ToXiCFLUFF said:

Were you one of those compulsive crate and corpse smashers Arioch?

....i like smashing peo...things..

ToXiCFLUFF said:

Were you one of those compulsive crate and corpse smashers Arioch?

I was. Nothing was safe from my crobar. No body was left ungibbed.

Enjay said:

Yeah, delays mean better games. That's why I just know Duke 4ever is gonna kick all sorts of ass :-P

Your right, Duke 4ever will kick all kinds of ass, just it will be kicking our great grand childrens ass :-P

That sucks. The only thing that I worry about is that once it is released, in comparison to all the other games out there at the time, will it be as awesome then as if its had been released sooner. A porche is a stunning car, unless all the other porches and say ferraris pull up. Half-life two is going to make a giant dent in what is expected from games in the future. The benchmark will be set. Then comes all the games in between that and Doom 3. Given that we've seen a lot in that time from the game, how well will it stand in the consumer eye? In mine it will still be kick ass, but I think it will hurt sales and perhaps popularity. Also, does anyone know the usual time between when a game is finished to when it hits the shelves?

Scabbed Angel said:

That sucks. The only thing that I worry about is that once it is released, in comparison to all the other games out there at the time, will it be as awesome then as if its had been released sooner

Yea It could very well happen although all these hardcore doomers wont mind on the whole I dont think the majority really will be stunned at that point anymore.


Also, does anyone know the usual time between when a game is finished to when it hits the shelves? [/quote]As for that I have no clue.

That's cool man. You're right, we won't mind, but the factor that helped D1 to be a phenomenon won't be there as much I think. If it came out in 2000 for example, man, that would have blown the world away. But the longer the wait . . .

As far as the time ??, I'm just wondering because someone (Carmack in the Wired article??) said that the game was like 90% done. So if the game is that close to being finished, should it really be that long? Also, once it is finished, is it in Activision's hands at that point?

And whoever speculated that id weren't releasing D3 until after xmas because of HL2 need their heads examined.

Competition will do that to companies, no one knows for sure the motives behind the delay.

But the longer ID leave it, the less advanced their game is looking. More and more games are being developed with bumpmapping, normalmapping, stencil shadows and specular highlights so Doom3 isn't looking as amazing graphically any more. I think if they hadn't shown the first movie of the engine at Macworld back in 2001 and then followed it with the Legacy movie, there would be less of these games that use Doom3's principal gfx features (I say this because I do believe that ID are very influential engine-wise).

I agree with you on that. I believe that if ID had waited longer to announce it the game would be more of a shock to us consumers and it would have kept it in a league of its own. I always thought that if ID had waited a year longer to announce it, the general public wouldn’t have been so pushy for it. I’m not upset that they never made a clear release date (because you cant predict those type of things), but what does get to me is it seems ID was (at first) kind of taunting us with the game. Because ever since the release the lack of info from all sides of the project leads me to assume the announcement was a tad premature.

Apprehensive about half life 2 are we now???

ROFL.

doomedout said:

Apprehensive about half life 2 are we now???

ROFL.

Meh, even if HL2 is any good at time of release, just give Valve a few months time to patch it up to a state of unplayability.

Scabbed Angel said:

As far as the time ??, I'm just wondering because someone (Carmack in the Wired article??) said that the game was like 90% done. So if the game is that close to being finished, should it really be that long?

The person in question (I don't remember who it was either) stated in that same article that the last 10% of the game takes about as long to do as the first 90%.

I really have no problem with HL2 or any other game using the same engine, or a similar one, coming out before D3, because I won't be fuckin playing them! MUHUHAHAHAHAHA
So how much I'm impressed won't be affected at all.

Assmaster said:

I was. Nothing was safe from my crobar. No body was left ungibbed.

Heh, I like the way you phrased that.