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Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: Switchblade on 14 May 2005, 15:04

Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 14 May 2005, 15:04: Oh, yeah. For endless time, all we had was that one guy with the gun on his shoulder.

Now, we have development... and screenshots!

it uses the DOOM 3 engine, apparently, but makes use of some of the technology that DOOM 3 itself neglected - such as the potential for large numbers of friendly NPC's on screen at once, plus vehicles, team-based combat, large external locales and more!

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/quake-iv/604903p1.html?ui=rssFeed

I am excited.

*bounce*
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: c1utch on 14 May 2005, 22:31: I <3 Quake
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Super Dave on 14 May 2005, 22:41: I like how the article said Doom 3 had "Dramatic" lighting
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: McTaggart on 15 May 2005, 04:09: /me starts warming up his magic twitch for some epic railgunage.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 15 May 2005, 13:17: Once Quake 4 comes out, then hopefully RavenSoft will churn out Soldier of Fortune 3. Whee.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Schmung on 15 May 2005, 13:43: Just makes me want to snooze really. Everything I've seen yells 'HELLO I AM GENERIC'. Quake got b on it's fast pace and multiplayer, Quake 2 was rather average, but we didn't know better at the time.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 15 May 2005, 14:20: I'm going to have to disagree on those points - Quake, among other things, was one of the first true 3D FPS games. iD have a history of trying to push the technical envelope, and outsource the new technology they develop to people like Source. The Quake and Quake 3 engines both were (and in the latter case, still are) standards for the genre, and a lot of games (such as the "elite force" games) have been built on game engines designed by iD - including a forthcoming effort by Human Head Studios called "Prey" that's being built on the DOOM 3 engine... which, despite what people may say, is every inch as technically accomplished as Source, just in a few different ways.

Raven seem to be treating Quake IV as an excuse to see what they can do with that engine, and thus far, I'm seeing good things. They're abandoning the whole "pitch black and full of demons" thing for better light conditions (though still with plenty of shadows, of course) and all sorts of other shit that genuinely looks really cool. And I trust Raven to do a good job.

I'll try and hunt down a few more screenshots...
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Schmung on 15 May 2005, 14:43: Oh, no argument with Quake, I bloody well loved it. Endless hours spent over the lan and it had some of the coolest mods ever, Airquake, Quake Rally, NAVY Seals, stuff was revolutionary at the time. Plus all the crazy multiplayer mods that were about. I made my own once with a chaingun and exploding nails and various other things.

I actually wrote my dissertation about the Quake engine and it's pretty clever stuff, no doubt about that.

My irk though, is with the gameplay, Doom 3, from what I've played, was hugely tedious and while I like Ravens games, I'm just rather fed up with the whole Sci Fi shooter thing. Quake 2 was rather pish in the single player stakes and this looks muchly like an uprated version of that with a few more bells on. SOF 3 would be nice though.

From what I know of the D3 engine, it is in many ways, better than source, however, source is geared towards looking real rather than being clever and this is does very well. The environments rendered by source are a whole ton more believable than their D3 counterparts and the attempts I've seen by both engines too impersonate each other still put source on top. It's not as fancy, but it just tends to look better. This may have something to do with the fact that it's fairly similar (from a level design/art perspective) to HL1, so your skills are transferable.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 15 May 2005, 15:07: Point taken on Q2 - All it did, really, was to kinda fill the gap between Q1 and Q3.

Don't believe the people who tell you that Doom 3 was tedious, however. These are the people that either installed the "duct tape" mod, turned on God mode, or both. If either of those things are done, then the game becomes just another generic shooter, with decent graphics. Without them, it's dark and terrifying, and more often than not you have to choose between seeing where something is, and being able to kill it. I honestly can't play that game for more than about half an hour at a stretch - beyond that, I'm shakey, exhausted and unwilling to turn off the light and go to bed because I just KNOW that there's a fat zombie in the wardrobe with a wrench in his decaying hand...

The people who diss DOOM 3 have never played DOOM 3. They played something with the same plot, monsters, guns and graphics, sure, but everybody who has EVER put that game down simply hasn't played it properly, and missed out in a big way. Hell, I was scared just during the opening sequence when I knew I wasn't in danger of being attacked! That's how atmospheric and effective it is.

Comparing Source with the D3 engine... I have to agree on Source being a highly accomplished engine, and yes, superior to D3... but that in no way makes D3 an inferior engine (if you see what I mean). Valve's engine is GREAT for modders (I love Garry's Mod so much, for example), but I predict that D3 will see more usage by game studios for producing actual games - the same scenario as existed between the Q3 engine and the Half-Life engine. Ever seen a whole game running on the HL engine that wasn't either made by Valve? Total conversion mods don't count. iD, on the other hand, make the vast majority of their money by producing these brutally powerful and versatile engines, and then letting other studios have their merry way with them, and they've built D3 with a phenomenal degree of versatility and potential - I'm guessing that it's going to be at least five years before people quit using that engine, whereas Source is probably never going to see anywhere near as much use. Sure, Source looks great, and there ARE depths there that haven't been plumbed... but I reckon that, whereas HL2 and, soon, the "hidden coast" expansion make for a pretty decent showcase of the engine's power and capacity, I'd lay good money down that D3 hasn't even been scratched, not even by the Raven team.

Besides, there's nothing wrong with a distinctive look and feel, especially in the code of an engine like D3 - check this guy out:

(http://www.gamer-talk.net/images/screenshots/4_1219/1.jpg)
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 15 May 2005, 16:51: Sorry, but there's no way you can tell me that D3 was any fun. For the first hour or two, certainly, but after that, it was exactly what you said: tedious. Ooh, scary things that jump out at me, silly puzzles to solve to unlock a door. Whoop-d-shit. Half Life 2 demolished D3 in terms of a story line, and the engine kicks ass to boot.

iD whores their engine out to anybody to use it. This isn't news. How many games were based on the Q3/A engine? Tens, if not a few hundred. That's all well and good for them, but they could have just released it as an engine, instead of making people pay $60 for a technology demo (D3). Honestly, I think that'll be the last thing out of iD for a while in terms of engines. Without Carmack at the helm, nothing huge or new will come out. Though, honestly, his relevance is also somewhat passe in my opinion.

Quake 4 is also a game that holds no sway over me. I didn't buy Q3, I certainly won't buy Q4. At least Q3 was the original engine, Q4 is just a modified Doom 3 engine. I hope that it doesn't even bother with an SP element, because that strikes me as being entirely pointless. D3, Q4, same thing. Honestly. Ooh, alieny creepy things again. Pff. The only reason I even care about Q4 is because I hope that Raven will decide to churn out a SoF3. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't care one way or another. Honestly, there has been no FPS out since SoF2 that even begins to hold my interest for more then an hour.

CSS? Pfft. It's a prettier CS. Why would I want to play that? I got tired of CS just as it went 1.0, certainly cannot bother with it now. CoD? Another tired game, with random everything. Shots that hit the same spot that hit for different amounts? That's just creative. In a bad way. I'll wait for Serious Sam 2 later this year, play the hell out of that, and then get back to moping about the lack of good FPSs. (And mod SS2.)
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Johnny C on 15 May 2005, 18:50: You must lead the world's most boring life.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Kai on 15 May 2005, 19:14: He makes a point though; Serious Sam is the best FPS ever.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Hostile on 15 May 2005, 23:59: See, the Doom3 engine sucks. Because every game on it ends up looking just like it. Prey is a great example, and Q4.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Schmung on 16 May 2005, 03:07: Indeed. I saw someone doing a realistic thing in D3 and it all still looked like plastic.

No-one used the HL engine because it was a messy hodgepodge of Q1 and Q2 code with some custom bits on it. People will use Source because Valve are pimping the shit out of it and because of the strong mod community, meaning a ready pool of talent to hire. It's part of the reason the UT engine and Q3 engines are so popular, modders aplently with skills game companies can use at cut prices because said people are desperate to get into the games industry.

Which engine gets used depends on cost and what you're trying to do I would imagine.

As for Q4, well, Raven amke decent games, but the subject matter and visual style are putting me right off.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 16 May 2005, 03:13: Quote
the Doom3 engine sucks. Because every game on it ends up looking just like it

PLEASE, that statement is like saying that everything made on the Quake 3 engine looks like Quake 3. The same would apply for Source as well - anything made on a certain game engine LOOKS like it was made on that engine, that's one of the defining features of a game engine.

Over time, of course, people will probably tweak and customise the engine, upgrade and improve it, and produce some different-looking stuff, but for now, sure, stuff made on the D3 engine is going to look a lot like D3. I fail to see why that's a bad thing, however. I like the way the D3 engine looks.

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they could have just released it as an engine, instead of making people pay $60 for a technology demo (D3)

I don't know where the hell you buy your games from, but they charge too much mate. I got my copy of DOOM 3 for £20 (about $40). Besides, if Prey or Q4 had been the first games to use that engine, then you'd be calling it the "Prey" engine, or the "Quake 4" engine, denouncing those games as the "tech demo" and still saying that the engine sucks. Which it patently doesn't. In fact, if it wasn't for Source, it could well be the best engine on the market. It's just being overshadowed by a superior competitor that was released at exactly the same time, which means that people are unfairly treating it as a much inferior product.

I'm convinced that there's a utility and power in that engine which simply hasn't been touched yet, nor is likely to be for the next couple of years, but after those couple of years are over, people are going to remember the D3 engine as being a very good one.

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Serious Sam is the best FPS ever.

"Best" is stretching it. I give that honour to HL2. But I'll certainly agree that Serious Sam is fun...

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Ooh, scary things that jump out at me, silly puzzles to solve to unlock a door.

Ever tried fending off an Imp with the flashlight? Every time the fucker scratches you, the screen shakes and flinches, and you can't draw a decent bead on the bastard, can't hurt it properly, and if you switch to something that can actually hurt it, you still can't get a decent shot off because you can't SEE the damned thing. That's a scary experience compared to those fast head crab zombies.

I'm sorry, you're unfairly treating D3 - Yes, it's an inferior game to HL2. that's a given. But it is NOT a bad game. Were it not for HL2, it would easily have ranked as the best FPS of 2004. you've been spoiled by Valve for what is a genuinely accomplished and excellent game. Quit being so cynical and play it in a dark room without the "oh look, another zombie that I couldn't see when I entered the room" mentality...
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 16 May 2005, 07:40: Quote from: Switchblade
PLEASE, that statement is like saying that everything made on the Quake 3 engine looks like Quake 3.

That's entirely true, though. Soldier of Fortune 2, Call of Duty, they both felt like a Q3-based game. And that was fine by me, because I was damn good at Q3, and tweaking the engine to play well. So any Q3-based game was just owned. Didn't like Q3 itself, but hey, that's just a personal thing. Like everything else here. You can argue till your face turns blue that D3 is an awesome game, but you're not going to change my mind. I played it, and I didn't like it.

Quote from: Switchblade
I don't know where the hell you buy your games from, but they charge too much mate. I got my copy of DOOM 3 for £20 (about $40).

Hey, I'm a Canadian, $50-70 is the cost of games.

Quote from: Switchblade
Besides, if Prey or Q4 had been the first games to use that engine, then you'd be calling it the "Prey" engine, or the "Quake 4" engine, denouncing those games as the "tech demo" and still saying that the engine sucks. Which it patently doesn't. In fact, if it wasn't for Source, it could well be the best engine on the market. It's just being overshadowed by a superior competitor that was released at exactly the same time, which means that people are unfairly treating it as a much inferior product.

HL2 came out after Doom 3. I didn't compare it in any way; I disliked it on it's own. Having something to compare it against only made it easier to point out what my likes/dislikes were.

Quote from: Switchblade
I'm convinced that there's a utility and power in that engine which simply hasn't been touched yet, nor is likely to be for the next couple of years, but after those couple of years are over, people are going to remember the D3 engine as being a very good one.

That's entirely likely; iD does develop engines that are ahead of their time. That said, Q3 itself sold in massive quantities, and that helped make it ubiquitous. D3 doesn't have that same advantage. The market has also changed and matured since Q3 was the only real engine to license on the block. Epic has its own series of engines (Unreal Engine 3 destroys visually, but there's no hope of even attempting to power it), Croteam is pushing their engine hard, and cannot foget Valve with Source. Valve is pushing the engine in every way possible. This'll put pressure on iD and the D3 engine. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Quote from: Switchblade
I'm sorry, you're unfairly treating D3 - Yes, it's an inferior game to HL2. that's a given. But it is NOT a bad game. Were it not for HL2, it would easily have ranked as the best FPS of 2004. you've been spoiled by Valve for what is a genuinely accomplished and excellent game. Quit being so cynical and play it in a dark room without the "oh look, another zombie that I couldn't see when I entered the room" mentality...

As I said, I played D3 before HL2 since it was released first. Didn't have anything to compare it to, didn't like it. Oh, I tried to play it in the dark and run with the scary thing, but I got over it quickly. Game just wasn't immersive enough; had nothing to draw me in. At this point, you just cannot change my mind as to the playability of the game. I will say that the engine itself is good, though not great. Why not great? It chugs, it's slow, it isn't as optimized as it could be. We'll see what happens with Q4, that's when I'll sit down to judge the engine again.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Sideways on 16 May 2005, 10:27: Quote from: Super Dave
I like how the article said Doom 3 had "Dramatic" lighting

Yeah... next time the power goes out in my apartment, I'll refer to it as 'dramatic lighting' whereas I used to refer to it as; 'can't fucking see shit... OW, MY GODDAMN SHIN!!'.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 16 May 2005, 12:35: Quote from: nihilist
That's entirely true, though. Soldier of Fortune 2, Call of Duty, they both felt like a Q3-based game. And that was fine by me, because I was damn good at Q3, and tweaking the engine to play well. So any Q3-based game was just owned. Didn't like Q3 itself, but hey, that's just a personal thing. Like everything else here. You can argue till your face turns blue that D3 is an awesome game, but you're not going to change my mind. I played it, and I didn't like it.

your call. Guess we'll just have to disagree. I do have a few gripes with D3 (the shotgun is WAY too weedy, for starters) but msotly I enjoy it. Discussion over on that point, I guess.

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HL2 came out after Doom 3. I didn't compare it in any way; I disliked it on it's own. Having something to compare it against only made it easier to point out what my likes/dislikes were.

Also fair - if we didn't have high standards to compare any given effort against, then we wouldn't have any good games at all.

Quote
As I said, I played D3 before HL2 since it was released first. Didn't have anything to compare it to, didn't like it. Oh, I tried to play it in the dark and run with the scary thing, but I got over it quickly. Game just wasn't immersive enough; had nothing to draw me in. At this point, you just cannot change my mind as to the playability of the game. I will say that the engine itself is good, though not great. Why not great? It chugs, it's slow, it isn't as optimized as it could be. We'll see what happens with Q4, that's when I'll sit down to judge the engine again.

hmm.. i didn't get any of the slowness/chugging, but then again I brought the game about three days after buying my PC, and the PC's pretty incredibly potent. If I turn all the graphics options up, then it struggles, but it's fine at the "good" setting, just not at "best"

What kind of rig are you running it on?
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 16 May 2005, 13:00: I've got it on a P4 3.4, 2GB dual channel DDR 400, Radeon 9800XT. Certainly not the fastest PC available, but when Doom 3 came out it wasn't the slowest performer on the block. Didn't have anything cranked up way high, blah blah blah. Sucks, cuz I can run CSS at 1600x1200, but Doom 3 was chuggy at 1024x768.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: happybirthdaygelatin on 16 May 2005, 16:01: Ah, I have Doom 3 on the Xbox and like it for about the same reasons Switchblade does. I like it more then Halo/Halo 2. I'm wondering if they'll port Quake 4.

I prefer weird sci-fi sort of based FPS just because with the combination of realisticly intense "modern" (WW2 games to current I guess) based games andfrom hearing too many stories from my grandfather (three war vetern) and also a friend of his who was a POW in a German camp during WW2.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 16 May 2005, 16:20: I find that the WW2 genre is just a bit too played-out. And wildly innaccurate. I prefer more modern stuff, especially games that do not have rocket launchers, or other area weapons. Hate hate hate!
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: happybirthdaygelatin on 16 May 2005, 16:49: Oh, I just read that the America Army game is being ported to consoles. I may give it a rental.

I really am liking Unreal Championship 2 but have noticed I end up playing it in the third person view most of the time.

What time period is the SoF games sit in or do they change from game to game?

Crap, I just tried to imagine playing a FPS with muskets, blunderbusses, etc. That is an amusing thought.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 16 May 2005, 17:02: SoF2 is a 'now' kind of game. M4s and AK-74s, and one grenade a piece. Lots of fun at the time, none now due to proliferation of cheating.

Haha, a blunderbuss. That'd be awesome.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Johnny C on 16 May 2005, 19:14: Also am I correct in remembering that Doom 3's best settings can't even be powered yet?
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 16 May 2005, 19:21: Need a 512MB card to power it, which weren't even on the market when it came out. Even now I think they're still only hitting production.

Whoops, found ONE:
BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB GDDR3 SLI Ready PCI-E w/ TV-Out, Dual DVI (Special Order Item) $1,149.00 (CDN)
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 17 May 2005, 02:16: right... I think that I'm putting a 512 Mb card on my christmas wishlist...

Actually, I think I'll wait for the Radeon version, and clear the last of the jagged lines out of HL2.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 17 May 2005, 07:01: The memory will only really help with textures, not really help with performance. I'd suggest you wait for the next gen set of cards; they should be seeing the light of day soon, especially since the ATI one will be found in the Xbox 360. Which means that it actually exists. :)
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: happybirthdaygelatin on 18 May 2005, 12:23: Quote from: nihilist
SoF2 is a 'now' kind of game. M4s and AK-74s, and one grenade a piece. Lots of fun at the time, none now due to proliferation of cheating.

Haha, a blunderbuss. That'd be awesome.

Right on. I really like not-so-far-futristic sort of weaponery in FPS games. Smart guns and such not. Not as much as I like the blunderbuss and muskett idea though I kind of wonder how alot of gamers would respond "WTF it takz me allmos a minut to reload 1 shot!?"
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 18 May 2005, 12:32: But if you could choose what to load in your blunderbuss... "Hrm, I think I'll put in some screws, bolts, ball bearings, and some rock salt." Hahah!
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: happybirthdaygelatin on 18 May 2005, 12:37: "Hrm how 'bout a squirrels, rock salts, carrots and some tattors!"

That would be Cletus' stew shot. Damn, if you could load up anything you could see that would be as cool, maybe more so, then the live ammo crossbow in Strangers' Wrath.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Trav on 25 May 2005, 20:17: Quake world > Quake *

No fps will be as much fun as Quake World, EVER!
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: harvest17 on 29 May 2005, 16:06: You are all drunk. Doom 1 is the best FPS ever. :P ;)

Seriously, though. Seminal, fast-paced, at times really scary, and the only FPS that let you take on 30 dudes at once (Serious Sam's "infinite dudes" doesn't count).

(dons asbestos suit)

Anyway, back on topic... Quake 4 = Doom 3. The trailer makes this painfully obvious. Quake 4 < Killzone 2

All you need to know about these types of games: Something Awful reviews Doom 3 (http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2304)
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Druid on 30 May 2005, 01:32: The original is the original, and you can't really beat it there.

My thoughts on first person shooters: Screw storyline I just want to kill stuff.

The Quake line's strength was always it's multiplayer mode, so I'll have to wait and see how that feature pans out.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 30 May 2005, 09:24: Quote from: harvest17
Anyway, back on topic... Quake 4 = Doom 3.

uh... no... Quake 4 = Quake 4.

It just LOOKS like Doom 3. Because it uses the same engine.

Dude, nobody said that Raven had to come up with their own engine for the game, did they? Considering how good they are at using iD's stuff, I really don't give a shit what it looks like, or which engine it's been produced using, I'm more looking forward to it being a good game - which seems quite likely right now.

Now will everybody PLEASE stop getting hung up on which engine its using? YES, it's using the Doom 3 engine! You all win fifty genius points for SPOTTING THE FUCKING OBVIOUS!

However it turns out, it is still a standalone game, sporting some genuinely nifty stuff - aside from the (admittedly, by now, cliched) "team combat" and "vehicles" features,
(click to show/hide)
you actually get Stroggified halfway through, and there's fuck all you can do to avoid it
. That's gotta be cool.

I hate that people are looking at this game and just shrugging it off with a thought process that appears to be "Nurrr, it uses the Doom 3 engine, which means that it is Doom 3. Again. Meh." People really ought to try to judge a game on its own, standalone merits, rather than "Oh, this game uses the engine from a game I didn't like, therefore I won't like this game".

what kind of a stupid-ass line of reasoning is that?

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The Quake line's strength was always it's multiplayer mode, so I'll have to wait and see how that feature pans out.

True that. it seems more like they're focusing on the single-player mode this time, but I doubt they'll skimp on the multiplayer - the DOOM series never was really categorized by its MP play, so it was hardly surprising, really, that D3 multiplayer was limited to four-person deathmatch.

I think the only thing to do, really, is sit and wait for the real thing to come out.

In the mean time, I'd like to raise a social finger at the "something Awful" reviewer. Learn to have fun, man, and quit complaining. Shit doesn't always make sense. so there are inexplicable exploding barrels next to important computer hardware in the game. Big deal. Does it have to make sense? No! they're there to go boom and help you kill the monsters, not to make sense. Asshat.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 30 May 2005, 12:01: D3 == Q4. Not because of the engine, but because of the content. If you look at the SP game, they both have similar everything. Same genre, same basic plot outline, blah blah blah. If you were going to buy Q4 for the SP and you already owned D3, I'd tell you not to bother. However, it's the MP that sets it apart. D3 MP is ass. Q4 MP should be all sorts of good. At least, I'm hoping so. Cuz then the Q4 engine should be the engine of choice for the future. Right? :p
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 30 May 2005, 15:28: Can we maybe compromise on "Similar"? Granted there will be similar aspects - I don't think we can really expect much from an iD/Raven colalboration other than running and gunning, but it IS going to be different. Here's the deal:

1: the plot and structure are different. you aren't just some lone badass marine versus all of hell, or Stroggos, or whatever, you're PART of the war macjhine - one grunt among millions, supported by a colossal starship/mobile HQ. The Game storyline pivots around the idea that you're just another tooth on another cog in one small part of the war machine. I mean, OKAy, you'r an important tooth that inevitably brings about victory for the human race (presumably) but the fact is that, from the storyline eprspective at least, you're just one gear tooth. As opposed to the whole tank.

2: less winding, claustrophobic, dark corridors with random demons about the place, more open skies, tanks, trans-orbital fighter-bomber scramjets, biomechanical gladiators and nail guns. Plus vehicular combat and you being a member of a squad.

3: QUAKE!!! not DOOM!!!

seriously, regardless of how much we can glean from a screenshot, the most anybody is ever going to surmise from a Quake IV screenshot is that it looks so much like Doom 3 that it's effectively going to be the same game. We can't know what its really going to be like up until the point of actually playing it. So enough with this "it's going to be exactly the same" bullshit, please? I'll grant you, it will be very similar, but we're not looking at a clone here.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: harvest17 on 30 May 2005, 17:17: The look of a game is inextricably linked to its style. Maybe the vehicle combat, squad actions and open skies will provide a different gameplay feel to Doom 3. But...

Have you seen the trailer (http://media.pc.ign.com/media/016/016856/vids_1.html) for Quake 4? It Looks fundamentally the same as Doom 3. Same rusty corridors. Same exposed piping. Same "lurking monster attacks hapless extra" device. So it's got some AT-STs and other military hardware, and you have buddies. Big whoop. They're nothing I couldn't have expected to see in Doom 3 (in fact, the absence of a co-op mode in that game was fucking criminal). Oh wait! We have disturbing live surgery scenes as well! That's nothing like anything in Doom!

I'm sarking Id there, Switchblade, not you :). I think my point is: Quake 4's a new game; couldn't they have made it look like a new game?

To bash the maths once again, Id + Dark Industrial = God I'm bored.

I'm sure you'll love the game. I'm just not buying that Quake 4 and Doom 3 are completely different games. Id are just bloody lazy, and I've lost respect for them because of it.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 31 May 2005, 10:17: Quote from: harvest17
I'm sure you'll love the game. I'm just not buying that Quake 4 and Doom 3 are completely different games. Id are just bloody lazy, and I've lost respect for them because of it.

Im not suggesting that they're completely different. What I'm trying to do is get people out of the loop of thinking that the similarity is going to detract from the quality of the game.

oh, and "Lazy"?

Dude, just give me a rough estimate at how long it takes to develop a modern game engine, from the ground up, to a high enough quality to compete properly, hmm?

here, I'll save you the time: YEARS.

who knows, maybe they'll put together a completely new engine for Quake V but iD have just spent a long time putting together the DOOM 3 engine, I rather imagine they'd like the chance to play around with it or a bit, first. I know I would.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: harvest17 on 01 Jun 2005, 00:54: I agree that making a game similar to the one you did the year before doesn't, on paper, necessarily make it a bad game. It will be up to each ex-Doom3-er to overcome any lingering mental fatigue they have experienced. If someone hasn't played Doom 3 at all, I sure that, for them, Quake 4 will be the best thing since sliced bread.

I stand by my "bloody lazy" comment, although I meant it differently to how you saw it. I don't doubt that the Doom 3 engine took years of hard work to come up with. Id's problem is, once they have their extremely powerful and shiny engine, they think that's all they have to do. All credit to them for launching the next generation of very high quality 3D engines, but a cool engine alone does not a successful, or even satisfying, game make.

When I say Id is bloody lazy, it is because they had a huge chance to reinvent the FPS genre (hell, they basically invented it in the first place). They they missed it, and missed it badly, because they couldn't be arsed. They slapped together a few hackneyed plot points and game devices and that was it.

I could rant about missed opportunities all day, but I'd rather use my breath playing a decent Id game, like Doom 1 (if I could get it for a Mac, that is :(). If your company goes to all the trouble of writing a new engine, at least try to come up with some fresh gameplay, some new ideas. Not doing so is simple laziness and, ultimately, hubris.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Druid on 01 Jun 2005, 03:42: Quote from: Switchblade
"Oh, this game uses the engine from a game I didn't like, therefore I won't like this game".

what kind of a stupid-ass line of reasoning is that?

It's the indie line of reasoning. "Derivative is derivative and it's going to suck."

People expect too much out of FPSs I suspect. I play games for mindless fun instead of as an escape from a boring life.

I don't think ID is being lazy; they are just updating their back catalog. Doom and Quake reached cultural franchise status a long time ago, and they are doing fan service by updating them and releasing them to run on newer hardware. They can't add new features or innovate without morphing the two games into something totally different from the predecessors.

Are the new Quake and Doom going to be genre redefining games? No, they are locked into the molds of the franchise. Could ID release something new and innovative using their franchises? Yes, but it would have to be in a totally different genre, a la a Quake RTS. Could ID release something new and innovative using the D3 engine? Yes, but it's not going to be in the Quake or Doom line.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 01 Jun 2005, 05:43: Fair point on iD apparently losing the innovation torch - I think Valve's got it now.

one has to wonder if they're doing it out of laziness, business or because that's what the they honestly WANTED to do... a lot of people think that Doom 3, among other things, is exactly the game that iD originally had in mind when they made the first DOOM.

could be that they've always had a very definite goal in mind, and now they've got there... in whichcase they're mostly likely milling around the office with "what now2 expressions...
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: harvest17 on 01 Jun 2005, 19:52: Quote from: Druid
they are doing fan service by updating them and releasing them to run on newer hardware.

Yeah, but at the same time isn't it a slap in the face for the fans, giving them gameplay that's been old since Quake 2?
Quote from: Druid
They can't add new features or innovate without morphing the two games into something totally different from the predecessors. Are the new Quake and Doom going to be genre redefining games? No, they are locked into the molds of the franchise.

This boils down to "We can't innovate on this game because then it won't be a real FPS." Id is full of very, very smart people. I say they can innovate anything they want if they make the effort. Hell, I could come up with ways to improve the usual "press this button, then walk 1000 miles and press this other button" theme, given an afternoon.
Quote from: Switchblade
Doom 3...is exactly the game that iD originally had in mind when they made the first DOOM

Thank God that's not how Doom 1 came out.
Quote from: Switchblade
could be that they've always had a very definite goal in mind, and now they've got there...

Shame they got there after 17,000 other games got there first :( (play-wise, that is).

It would do Id good to make something like an RTS or whatever. Making FPSs all the time stunts your growth :)
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: nihilist on 02 Jun 2005, 06:53: iD is pretty much an engine development company, not a game development company. They shouldn't have bothered with Doom 3, and just churned out iD engine v4.0. Kinda like the whole Unreal Engine. :)
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: happybirthdaygelatin on 02 Jun 2005, 10:07: I was pretty stoked to see that it will be comming out for the xbox 360. While no where that original I like the Strogg/space marine aspect. 'Course I liked the Lovecraftian aspects of the first Quake slightly more.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 02 Jun 2005, 14:14: Quote
Shame they got there after 17,000 other games got there first (play-wise, that is).

Never seen anybody else do the "see or shoot but not both at the same time" thing, or the thing where using a computer is done by aiming at it, whereupon your crosshair becomes the cursor. Neither of those were things I'd ever seen before.

Other than that, "run through corridor, shoot stuff, find button, open door, shoot more stuff, run through door, shoot yet more stuff" has been a staple of the genre since it's conception -and guess who conceived of it? that's right, it was iD Software. I'd say they're entitled to stick to a few of the conventions of a genre that they created, surely? Off the top of my head, I can think of only two FPS games that didn't follow the template laid down with DOOM and Castle Wolfenstein - namely Half-Life (being somewhat more strongly story-driven than normal) and Deus Ex (being nonlinear).

It's a matter of some confusion to me that people are deriding Doom 3 for having mediocre and cliched gameplay. iD did what they wanted the first time, everyone copied them for ten years, and then when they do it again but with better graphics, hardware and a stronger engine, people rip the piss out of them for being uncreative and following suit when almost every FPS game for the last ten years has been copying THEM? It hardly seems fair. They laid the foundation, I say people should let them build the house as well, even if everybody else and their dogs have been using their blueprints.

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Thank God that's not how Doom 1 came out.

Say what? you have to think in terms of context, here. DOOM 1, for its time, was a collosal game simply because nobody had done anything at all like it - even Wolfenstein was just a primitive shadow of DOOM. All it had single-layer levels with uniform lighting. DOOM introduced multi-storey, interactive levels, massive choice of weaponry and enemies, all kinds of stuff. By modern standards, it looks and IS primitive (the game engine made it impossible to place an accessible surface above another accessible surface, for example). If they'd managed to release even a low-res version of DOOM 3 back in 1991, with even only a tenth of the technical accomplishment, power and complexity of the modern engine, then it would still have been ten years ahead of all the other games out there. DOOM 1 is only given its high status because of its innovative and influential position in game history, whereas DOOM 3 is sneered at simply because it brings very little innovation and influence to one of the most popular breeds of computer game ever, where there is, by now, increasingly limited scope for improvement and inovation.

All this "Doom 3 did nothing new therfore it suck" crap is elitist bullshit, frankly, perpetuated and warped by cynical internet kids who were expecting iD to pull the second coming out of their arses because their older brothers told them just how much DOOM did to change the face of computer gaming. If somebody without iD's status or history had released DOOM 3, it would have been ticked as a "must own, very good" game by nearly everybody, who would then play it while waiting for iD to craft the holy grail - which, when released, would fall short of people's inflated expectiations.... you get the point. People have been fed on thirteen years of "iD software is teh rock! they produce the bestest and most original games EVAR!!!1!" so when the reality emerges that they are, in fact, merely very competent, rather than being the quasi-deities people were led to imagine, everybody felt let down.

having said that:

Quote from: nihilist
iD is pretty much an engine development company, not a game development company. They shouldn't have bothered with Doom 3, and just churned out iD engine v4.0. Kinda like the whole Unreal Engine. :)

Gonna have to agree there - iD make good engines, but I think they should have completely passed the game-making torch over to Raven a few years back (just after producing Quake 3)

Not because I think that they shouldn't have made DOOM 3, or because I think they make bad games, you understand, but because I think they would have saved themselves a lot of slander and flak if they'd retired from the actual game-making scene and focussed purely on engine writing, which is where their greatest strength lies. DOOM 1 really was little more than a vehicle for the technology, even if people laud it as being a fantastic game in its own right.

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Hell, I could come up with ways to improve the usual "press this button, then walk 1000 miles and press this other button" theme, given an afternoon.

Go on, then...
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Druid on 05 Jun 2005, 11:58: Quote from: harvest17
Yeah, but at the same time isn't it a slap in the face for the fans, giving them gameplay that's been old since Quake 2?

The entire FPS genre has been old for years. The premise of each game is a player is on a map that is populated with things to kill and keys to find. Shouldn't people have stopped making games in this genre about five years ago since the basic formula hasn't changed only the graphics?

They're fans they aren't going to care that much, or at least those who realize it's not going to be some sort of religious experience. This is from some one who has bought pretty much everything with the Command & Conquer logo on it despite it being basically the same game for years.

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This boils down to "We can't innovate on this game because then it won't be a real FPS." Id is full of very, very smart people. I say they can innovate anything they want if they make the effort.

Everything has pretty much become an FPS. Morrowwind was basically a FPS with a lack of killing, so that's not what I was getting at at all.

That's the problem. They weren't making something new they are/were making the next installment in the Doom and Quake series. There is a formula that they have to take into account.

Of course coding talent could be mistaken for actual creativity. When engineers are creative you get a 1000 year light bulb which looks like every other light bulb except that it doesn't burn out as quick.

If they were to make a new games I'm sure they would come up with something new, but those aren't new games. They are the next installment in a franchise.

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Quote from: Switchblade
Doom 3...is exactly the game that iD originally had in mind when they made the first DOOM

Thank God that's not how Doom 1 came out.

Doom 3 is just a remake of the classic Doom. I think people are forgeting how basic the original Doom was.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: Switchblade on 05 Jun 2005, 15:41: Quote
Doom 3 is just a remake of the classic Doom. I think people are forgeting how basic the original Doom was.

Well said.

the entire point behind DOOM 3 was that it was supposed to be a retelling of the story of DOOM 1, just with better graphics and a few new environmental tricks that they couldn't accomplish before (breakable terrain, transparent objects, dynamic lighting, the whole shebang). It wasn't supposed to be original at all.

And people complained when it wasn't. Nurrr.
Title: QUAKE IV
Post by: harvest17 on 07 Jun 2005, 20:47: Quote from: Switchblade
It wasn't supposed to be original at all.

If this is true, then everything is very much clearer to me.

With a little luck they'll use their current base to do really cool things in the near future.