Doom 3 BFG Approved For GPL/Open-Source

[Irritant]

Ehhm, there is no point in arguing why Doom 3 wasn't popular, since it WAS popular. The game sold over 3.5 Million copies, the most of any id game up to that point.

Exactly.

I'm astounded at the amount of total ignorance displayed on this thread regarding id Software. Some of you kiddies would do well to do a little research before opening your fat mouths and making total asses out of yourselves.

[bug77]

I can: Prey, Quake 4. ET: QW, Brink.

And for the record, I do actually like Doom 3. A lot. And we are not alone.

Of the four titles you listed, two are (partly) id titles, which only proves me right.
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.

[Hamish Wilson]

Doom3 engine? I can't name a single title that used its engine.

I can: Prey, Quake 4. ET: QW, Brink.

And for the record, I do actually like Doom 3. A lot. And we are not alone.

[bug77]

Up to Doom 3 the engine was licenced, so it was basically a game to show what the engine is capable of. Don't you think that Quake 4 was better?

I never bothered with anything from id after Doom3. I think I tried a demo of ET:QW and thought wtf?
Also, Doom3 might have sold a lot of copies, after all there were a bit more PCs out there in in 2004 when it was released than they were back in 1993. I never fall for that marketing trick. And I suspect many copies were sold purely because of its predecessors. But the thing is, it was the first title that didn't make an impact at an industry level. Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake2, Quake3 engines were used by many other games and heavily modified. Doom3 engine? I can't name a single title that used its engine.

[Kano]

Up to Doom 3 the engine was licenced, so it was basically a game to show what the engine is capable of. Don't you think that Quake 4 was better?

[Kristian Joensen]

Ehhm, there is no point in arguing why Doom 3 wasn't popular, since it WAS popular. The game sold over 3.5 Million copies, the most of any id game up to that point.

As far as this source code release goes it will include a bit of id Tech 5 code.

[bug77]

... Doom 3 had only minimal MP, that's why it was not that popular...

Neah, it was not popular because it departed from its roots. All that shadow with a monster suddenly growling was repeated ad nauseum. Also, because the engine was very demanding for its time, you rarely saw 5 monsters on screen at any given time. To top it off, I could kill at least some monsters faster with the flashlight (forgot to switch weapons in a hurry, you couldn't both see and shoot in Doom3) than using the shotgun. It was really, really poor as a game, but a nice tech demo with its lighting model.

[Kano]

Well you can play Quake 3 now as Quake Live. Of couse the MP part is what makes you play a game for several days/months even years and not SP. Doom 3 had only minimal MP, that's why it was not that popular. Quake 4 however had a really nice campain, not so dark as Doom 3, also a bit simpler. Really a pity that the Quake 4 source is not available to build 64 bit binaries. 32 bit binaries really suck, especially when you use pulseaudio for hdmi - with Q4 the sound stops after a while (that does not happen with D3 however). Doom 3 BFG native would be cool as well, compared to the original game it is translated now, for non-english speakers this is a real plus. I don't think that the gfx look really better, just more "blurred". Another nice game with doom 3 engine was Prey. All you had to do was to search the way (or use a walkthru) - you did not need to watch much out that you don't die, you always respawned. Basically you could play D3 BFG with wine as well, just like Rage - speed would not be much different to native, but of course wine is a 32 bit binary - all negative things apply to that Also fglrx + Rage was no stable combination, even 12-9 beta crashes soon. I finished Rage with a nvidia 8800 gts 512 via wine.

[bug77]

the truth is dat idsoftware is no more than a mere shadow of itself since doom 3. and about j.carmack... lol the might has fallen a long time ago.

ciaoo

Actually, I think Doom3 is where they lost it. Personally, I also skipped on Quake3, but that's because I don't like MP only games. But I know many enjoyed Q3, so I hold it as the last influential title from id.
Curiously, while Doom3 is the first id title that didn't impress, it also marked the beginning of developers stopping to license game engines from id; source and unreal engine have been much more successful ever since. There were hundreds of games developed on top of quake2/quake3 engines, but only a handful using later incarnations. Maybe id had more success in the mobile space, I haven't been paying attention.

[curaga]

If Linux wants to succeed as a gaming platform, or a desktop OS, or even a tablet OS, it needs to stop relying on big mega companies with ulterior motives to actually do it for them. Google is not making Linux a success on phones or tablets; it's making its largely proprietary OS-with-a-Linux-kernel a success. Valve is not trying to save Linux, it's trying to save Steam. Ubuntu isn't pushing Linux as a desktop success, it's pushing Linux as The Astronaut's personal toybox. If Linux is going to succeed, the people working on it need to actually make a damn user experience that competes with modern proprietary offerings rather than Win98/XP, it needs to make a software ecosystem that is user-oriented rather than (or better yet, "as well as") developer-oriented, and it needs to market a unified developer platform rather than a toolbox to build a bazillion customized ever-so-slightly-incompatible platforms.

I disagree.

First of all, linux is not one person/corporation/whatever with unified goals.

Second, having companies advance free software because of ulterior motives is simply great. Things working as intended. If a company wants to scratch their itch, how is that any worse than a single person? Because they want to profit from it, hm?

So a company wants to save their outdated business model by improving linux. Why in the world should we, other linux users, give a damn why they're doing it? We get a better kernel, better drivers, better integration out of it. New software perhaps, in addition to improvements to existing sw.

It doesn't matter why they do it. It matters that they do it. It could be easter bunny telling a CEO on shrooms somewhere to do it, it just doesn't matter.