Don't worry, there will be new games starting up all the time. It worked well for DWANGO and it works for Blizzard.

Start a internet match with 8 people who cant rejoin, and noboy else can join. By the end of the game there might be 3 people left.

If people cant join half way through, there will be no game by the time it finishes.

What if I time out, or just want to see some othewr servers for a sec. Whats the point? YOU CANT JOIN ANY OF THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE IN PROGRESS

This will piss everyone off.

ITS GONNA SHOW UP IN QUAKE4
I will probably be playing Quake3 a week after buying Quake4

I agree, cheating in RA3, seems to be happening a lot.
Gotta love those people who where averageing 20% rails and then overnight they shot up to 60+ percent. What a load of bull. Not to mention getting killed in less than 2 secs by their lightning guns...

trust me, people cheat using this bot called OGC and it's hard to detect... it is kinda ruining the community. and, I am one of those guys who is good at the game. This bot allows all kinds of ways for the cheater to 'improve' his game, while remaining undetectable (except when they use the auto aiming features with the lightning gun) It is so hard to spot someone who is cheating that even matches on rocketarena.org are dubious, at best. Anyway, id needs to do something about this problem, cuz it's ruing their game... which, by the way, people will be playing for the next year, at least, until Quake 4 comes out. Plus, quake 3 engine licensing still makes id a lot of money, so the least they could do is prolong the community, and aid mod developers in their efforts by releasing a final point release. Rocket Arena still has a big community. It is played at almost every LAN. Perhaps even CRT might get off his ass and wipe out the bugs in RA3, if id were to actually release the proposed PR. End of rant.

Wretch

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Test

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Id Software said a few weeks ago that they would add full PunkBuster support in the next point Release. This is sure to be at a loss to them in terms of profit but they are doing it because people are still playing the game.

while I haven't played Rocket Arena in a while, those guys are so freakishly good, you'd think they were cheating, but I don't think there's very many (cheaters).

-Ronin{TUS}
"I work for Keyser Soze."

How come no one mentioned it at Quakecon (from what I've read)?

with cheating now becoming even more rampant, this game (and it's mods), especially Rocket Arena 3, needs some kind of cheat prevention at the game code level.

Has anyone heard any news as far as to when Id might release such a thing, if ever...? X|X|

Wretch

Interesting discussion. That id's games are not tech demos might be divulged from what the several members of the id team have said in interviews the last weeks, and which, if read carefully, give non games developers such as me a unique insight in how id makes its games.

John Carmack does not code his engines in a vacuum. He has meetings with the rest of the id team, and he listens to what the designers would like to see the engine capable of in terms of gameplay. This process (also called feature requests by Carmack in an interview on DOOM III) helps defining what the engine will do.

Also, when DOOM came out, there was no discussion on engines, tech demo's and the like; I distinctly remember firing up the shareware levels and - having just finished Wolffie - was blown away. It was fun, compelling and downright cool. And that was it. Quake heralded a now familiar path; every step id makes is a jump in technology, and it has given us numerous hours of unique gameplay experiences.

I recall that Carmack even at one time specifically said that it would be a wrong approach to just build engines, you have to build a game in order for the engine to be nurtured etc. or words to that effect.

Aside from Carmack's genius, there's also the rest of the team. id's games always work straight out of the box, are very polished, every detail is taken care of, they have the highest levels of quality. The art for the games, while perhaps a bit cliché sometimes, also is nicely done, you don't see a cruddy texture in an id game, or a bad texture alignment. id's games are pure craftsmanship.

Yeah, all of Id's games were fun to play. I had a great time going through Wolf3d, Doom, Doom2, Quake1, Quake2, sure their stories are nonexistent at worst and average at best, but they make up for it in the sheer atmosphere and gameplay. I still believe that Doom2 is one of the most difficult FPS out there, and you cant beat some of the cool McGee levels that were made for Quake1. Both single and multiplayer wise (Remember Dm4 or E1m1 anyone? ) Id games were never tech demos, they were fun in single player and the best in multiplayer. Thats all there is to it.

I disagree with your opinion, people liked Doom not just for its visuals, but because simply, it was fun to play.

nt, see above
This comment was edited on Aug 28, 05:00.

no, of course is doom3 not a tech demo, well not officially in any case.
But, for people following the history of ID since Wolfenstein (you may even include Commander Keen here), one should know that ID only one big strength: it's coding wunderkind Carmack, hence technology is its strenght.

From Wolfenstein to Quake3 (I can't comment on doom3 since it's not out). ID Software NEVER shined in the single player aspect of any game. Saying Doom1 had a great story is a disgrace to any book author and praising it's gameplay a shame for many games which came out at that time, trying much harder to be innovative. But what made doom1 a success was of course it's never seen before 2.5D engine. People wanted to experience those graphics on their own home PC and were delighted to show the kickass visuals to their friends. Nothing more... I even dare to say that I absolutely was not scared at any time while playing through doom1. I did not want to be scared with doom, I only wanted to enjoy the graphics and punch aliens in their face like Will Smith did it in ID4.
The really good doom1 engine based games came later like the wonderfully designed Hexen1 with its hub system.

I'm not going to recall the history about quake1 and 2 because it's exactly the same as with doom (except the multiplayer part which is a different story). People were not interested in wonderful leveldesigns or earthshattering gameplay, no they just wanted to experience the new id engine as fast as possible without needing to wait 1-2 years until raven, ritual or rogue release their games using the quake1/2/3 engine. That's the reason why those games sold all extremely well but also the reason why id engine based games sell alltogether very well: they are based on a id engine and also offer great gameplay at the same time (graphics alone would not make a success out of those later released games).

Therefore did ID actually only release tech demos (except q3a) which later became even more succesfull when MOD makers added gameplay to ID's games...

History has repeated itself many times at ID, but as it seems, doom3 could be a first for ID. Finally they really seem to care for the story, but this still needs to be proven...

BTW, I believe Quake1 and 2 had the most boring, uninspiring and linear key-searching singleplayer to date. Of course I played through both games because of the visuals and I must really say, I never had any better multiplayer experience then with those both games.

flame me right away, I don't care
vacs out

This comment was edited on Aug 28, 05:04.

They used a hybrid code that combined some of both engine code from Q1 & Q2 to create H/L and did some huge improvements to the grapihics quality

that half-life guide is mistaken. Many people believed that HL is based on the q2 engine because it has the same looking console and skybox as in quake2. But it's not true. Valve only owns a full licence of the game q1, not just the engine. That's why valve could include deathmatch classic, a hl remake of the q1 mp levels.

Of course Valve got influenced by ID (who not), but that doesn't mean that Gabe and his team did an awesome job building the hl engine in the same direction as id was enhancing its q1 to later become q2 (not really enhancing, rather new coding but you get the point).

Very surprisingly valve is in my opinion the only company ever which managed to code a superior engine than Carmack at the same time as id coding god released its q2 engine. Superior because of feature not included in q2 like the skeletal animation system (which id finally managed to build in doom3), directx support, decals, good looking smoking and particle effects (explosions and lasers) as also the only FPS netcode which enables 56K users to play smooth on the internet

I dont get it....I dont get it at all. Why do people insist on blurting all this garbage out? How can Doom3 be a tech demo?? I mean why would anyone want to BUY a tech demo?? Why would someone spend 3 years developing a tech demo, then give it a storyline written bye a known Sci-Fi writer, adding music and inventive level design, and making it really scary? So they could licence the engine??!! Im expecting Half-life goodness out of this game and a game it is no matter what anyone else says.

Doom3 a tech demo, kind of odd to spend all that money on artists, dish out money to Matt Costello to write a story for the game, and spend who knows how much to get Trent Reznor to do the sound.

Face it id Software is not a enginee company you have just heard a bit much fanboy hype.

Sorry tAE, but your wrong. Half Life came out a full year after Q2 and the q2 engine was licensed to Valve by id They used a hybrid code that combined some of both engine code from Q1 & Q2 to create H/L and did some huge improvements to the grapihics quality. You can actually read some of the news supplied by Bluesnews at this link
http://www.bluesnews.com/guide/halflife.htm

Half-Life is based on the Q1 code, with a lot of additions (like texture lighting). Some of those additions were inspired by what Carmack was doing with Q2, but are implemented completely differently.

Take the texture lighting - it was a much better implementation in H-L than in Q2, as it was configurable. You could change the color and intensity of a texture light source using the .rad file (I wrote a .rad file editor to make it easier).

But there was NO Q2 code used in Half-Life. Everything added was a product of Valve's work.

-tAE-

As usual, we'll have to wait for the Rituals and Ravens out there to deliver a great game, and push the engine to its limits.

The key thing I've read in all the id interviews is that the game is a demo for the technology. Which is not a bad thing. Since Q2 the paradigm has been that id develops the foundation, and licensees develop the games. But building traditional multiplayer will be tough. They'll have to drop peer-to-peer to do it, and build a client/server networking system, so it might be rare. But it should be do-able if all they're interested in is the renderer.

Personally, I think id doesn't want to compete with the Unreal Tournaments and whatnot that will be out there. They have a history of attempting to side-step the competition.

But peer-to-peer is the way to go if you're primarily interested in building a single player system. And id has never claimed D3 would be anything else.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

-tAE-