Doom 3 and Conclusion
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Another one of the big draws to the Quakecon 2003 show was for news of the long anticipated Doom 3. While we found out not too long ago that the game would once again be delayed, this time into 2004, there was a playable demo of the multiplayer feature of Doom 3 in the exhibitor area that all attendees could view and try out. There was no demo of the single player game and there wasn’t anything offered to the general public as far as a downloadable or distributed demo. When I asked Todd Hollenstead about this, he said he didn’t want to give any comment on when a demo might be available to the public, but they definitely wanted to get one out before the launch of the game itself.I did get a chance to play Doom 3 for myself, right at the closing on Sunday afternoon. The multiplayer engine now is limited to 4 players maximum, and it doesn’t appear that this feature will be changing, unfortunately. As for looks, the game looked as stunning in the multiplayer mode as it did on the original demos and movies we have seen. The real time lighting as well as the extreme amount of dump map detail made it simply jaw dropping. However, the frame rate was not consistently smooth and I noticed where several times the rate dropped enough for me to be annoyed. And, while the game did look very good, I thought that perhaps Doom 3 creator was correct in their original opinion that the engine isn’t very compelling for a multiplayer game. Several times I found myself jumping at my own shadow as well as overlooking other players simply because the game is so dark, in general. While this makes for a very compelling single player experience, the multiplayer aspects to me, still need to be tweaked some. Either way, I am sure Doom 3 will be a great game and be extremely successful.
Conclusion
It has been another great year at Quakecon, and I just want to thank the guys at id Software for putting on such a great show, and thanks to all the sponsors, NVIDIA, AMD, VIA, etc for making it all possible. I hope to see the show grow even more, and you can be sure I will be there to cover it for years to come. Where else can you mix work and play so effectively? 😉
