Doom 3 BFG Approved For GPL/Open-Source

[Kristian Joensen]

FYI: Prey 2 is using a heavily modified id Tech 4 engine or rather was up until it was put on hold.

[motorsep]

Then why wasn't it licensed like the engines before it? It was so drooled over that everybody went Source/UT3.

Before I reply I want to add that Wolfenstein 2009 was made using heavily modified idTech 4. The game was actually great, but press made it look like it was a bad game. Prey 2 began its life as idTech 4 game, but afaik they will be using idTech 5, or so rumor has it.

Back to the question. iTech 4 is pretty complex. Its networking model is faulty for lower end bandwidth connection, however, we just tested deathmatch 1x1 on German server with pings ~160 and ~130. There was slight delay when damage is applied, however, for recreational gameplay it's totally fine (next week we'll test coop and that will answer many questions about idTech 4 networking performance in 2012). Hardware requirements were harsh by 2004 standards. The engine was (and is, in some respect) ahead of its time. UE4 is bringing in 2013 (or whenever released) sort of unified lighting with soft shadows and real-time GI, but last time I checked it was running on PC that virtually no one owns. So for most gamers it will be lightmaps with few real-time lights, just like in UE3 (there are a lot of other improvements of course, but I am comparing lighting). Unreal Engine offered artists friendly tools, least to say. Have you tried DoomRadiant? I think there is no way to switch projections in DoomRadiant (unlike GTKRadiant / DarkRadiant) - it's top view + Z-window and it's beyond me who came up with such a bad UI design. There was only Maya plugin to export models. So you had to had LightWave + Maya to get content into your game, while UnrealEngine supported Maya + Max and required no mess with manually editing game filed to specify proper materials/sounds/etc. Apparently support from Epic was better than support from ID. Having middleware that adds features to the engine and doing better job than idTech 4 in some cases helped too. To top it all off, UE3 ran on consoles, idTech 4 required third party developers to develop ports (and Xbox only at the time).

So here you have awesome ahead-of-its-time engine, with poor support, poor tools, high hardware requirements and bad networking (high speed broadband was not widely available back then) and no in-house console port; and you have also good looking engine, not whole a lot innovations, but with good support, console ports (including PS3, which was not supported for a long time by idTech 4, if ever), awesome tools, very robust networking, very scalable allowing it to run on older hardware. In other words, you can get job done faster, in artist friendly manner, get help when needed (after all, engine licensing is a huge part of Epic's business and they have dedicated people for support), release your game on PC + consoles, etc. So no matter how fan you are of new tech and idSoftware, when it came to earning money it was a no-brainer choice - go Epic.

So it's not that engine was bad or Doom 3 was bad (Doom 3 was an awesome game, and as some one mentioned it, it was highly praised by the press when it was fist shown), it was about business model. That's the reason idTech 4 was not licensed by as many developers as UnrealEngine was. Note that lack of Linux/Mac support never stopping Epic. Go figure. Perhaps most gamers do have dual boot after all

IMO Rage is an outstanding game. I didn't even care for non-interactivity (can't shoot lights, can't shoot cans, etc.; all idSoftware games were the same way before Doom 3). Rage is beautiful, atmospheric, drawing in. It has it's cons, the biggest of which totally flawed ending (it would be good if DLC or expansion was released soon after).

The issue with press is that people who should stay away from reviewing FPS games, do that anyway because they have no choice. Or they hate those games so much and they have an opportunity to work overtime to spit on those games, which they use at maximum. So if I don't like 2D 8bit looking games, and I have to review them, I would most likely express personal opinion about it and a game like that will get 1/10 score. However, that's not how professional has to do it. It has to be objective review taking into consideration "what would average FPS player / 2D 8bit-lover player feel and think about this game". Talking about Rage, virtually all negative-to-the-core review made as personal vendetta on idSoftware as if the reviewer wanted good old FPS and got broad modern atmospheric FPS instead (if it would have gameplay as Quake, for example, then it would count as repetitive shooter for trigger happy old timers; that's just how it goes nowadays, or so it seems; none of the jornos seem to be happy).

[Hamish Wilson]

Well without a mod Doom 3 was completely too dark, you had to switch all the time from weapon to flashlight. Behind every door is usally a monster that jumps at you so thats annoying. ducttape mod fixed that for 2 weapons commonly used, there are other mods with a similar effect. I don't think that anyone really liked the permanent switch.

I did, actually.

[bug77]

Some people did not enjoy the gameplay, but everybody drooled over the engine.

Then why wasn't it licensed like the engines before it? It was so drooled over that everybody went Source/UT3.
Anyway, whether Doom3 was the first flop form id (which I think it was) or not, the difference is purely academic. The sad thing is today, when you say id, you say tech demo.
Back in Wolfenstein or Doom days, there was practically no hype around a game's launch. But if a game was brilliant, you'd hear about it from your friends. Today, it's just hit and run: pay for press coverage before launch, try to sell as many copies before people realize what's what (hence why crackable DRM makes sense for publishers) and then get away with as few fixes as possible. It's just sad.

[Kano]

Well without a mod Doom 3 was completely too dark, you had to switch all the time from weapon to flashlight. Behind every door is usally a monster that jumps at you so thats annoying. ducttape mod fixed that for 2 weapons commonly used, there are other mods with a similar effect. I don't think that anyone really liked the permanent switch.

When you compare it to Quake 4 you will notice that Doom 3 did not have a selection for 16:9/16:10 resolutions, you had to use commandline options to activate those. Also Quake 4 was not so dark, i think it was a much better game for the same engine.

For console gamers the game was modified to be really easy, never saw a game with so much ammo in there as in the bfg edition. When you look at Rage, which was optimizied for consoles as well, then you saw definitely that Rage had too few points where you could find ammo. You had to collect things and then buy it. Also there have been too few autosavepoints - console users could not press f5 to save. A game with lots of ammo is just more fun - for Rage on higher difficulties you had to play BashTV to get lots of money for a while to buy enough ammo for the amount of enemies. Rage is really no bad game, but more ammo would not hurt.

[pingufunkybeat]

Every tech site, maybe. Few of my friends could bear till the end, most (including myself) gave up before reaching hell.

Some people did not enjoy the gameplay, but everybody drooled over the engine. The most common criticism of Doom3 is that it was a tech demo -- impressive engine, but poor gameplay.

For my part, I loved the game. I was expecting an id shooter, I got an id shooter, with monster closets and all that. The atmosphere was incredible.

[Irritant]

ID games were great when they were young, but lately, they have been.... well, quite lacking - Rage anyone?

Did you actually play Rage?

I've played every id Software game since Wolf 3D, and I can tell you right now, Rage delivered. It was id's best reviewed game since Doom I for the most part. Visually, no game compared to it. The biggest problem today's cynical gamers have is, they misunderstand what an id game is. It's an excuse to shoot things. Every id game is, and has been an excuse to shoot things.

[Irritant]

Besides the lighting model, I can't remember anything groundbreaking about the title.

The engine defined a completely new generation of video game graphics. It was one of the most anticipated and hyped game releases of it's time. I don't know how old you were, or what you remember, but I have a stack of game magazines from 2003 that say that you are flat out wrong.

[bug77]

What do you mean?

EVERYBODY drooled over it. It broke all sorts of new grounds, even if it had some downsides.

Every tech site, maybe. Few of my friends could bear till the end, most (including myself) gave up before reaching hell. And I know of exactly zero LAN parties where this title was played. Besides the lighting model, I can't remember anything groundbreaking about the title.
If so many people drooled over Doom3, Doom3:RoE would have sold about the same. It didn't. I'm guessing it tanked rather hard because its sales figures are not easy to find; Wikipedia just mentions that it was "not as well received as Doom 3". I know it sold, but it sold solely on the popularity of its predecessors and hyped up reviews. I'm sure of the 3.5 million copies sold, at least 1 million gamers enjoyed their game. But it was still not up to par.

[pingufunkybeat]

I didn't say no one liked Doom3 (hell, many people liked Sims), just that it was the first title from id that didn't wow! and the first engine from id no one drooled over.

What do you mean?

EVERYBODY drooled over it. It broke all sorts of new grounds, even if it had some downsides.