Author Topic: Doom 3 Goes Gold (Read 11321 times)

johnjacobjingle · July 21, 2004, 09:56:51 AM

now THERE's a thought

i've been racking my brain over what else i could hang on my wall, but nothing seems right, me mum won't letmy put my guns on the wall(waiting 'til i have a job with which i can pay for an apartment with baited breathe), so computer parts might just work!

wow...why didn't i think of that before?

Slink · July 21, 2004, 12:52:23 PM

heard a story once. Apparently some guy hung an entire computer on his wall, working and everything. Not sure if he just didn't have enough cases, or if cooling was a problem. Wish i'd heard more about it, seemed kinda cool.

BobTheJanitor · July 21, 2004, 01:16:16 PM

We used to have a test sytem here at the shop built on a board. Like, a big piece of wood. Made for very easy access. It got outdated and parts started dying though. But yeah, a computer doesn't care what shape it's in as long as the necessary parts go in the right slots and it's got enough power. You could make a mobile and hang a computer from the ceiling if you want.

Niteowl · July 21, 2004, 01:19:28 PM

damnit, i can't find the picture of that.. anyone got it?!

Anarki3x6 · July 21, 2004, 01:29:01 PM

http://www.ua-corp.com/ , theres a neato site that has some cool flash/timer for doom 3

Uranium - 235 · July 21, 2004, 02:48:53 PM

Quote

We used to have a test sytem here at the shop built on a board. Like, a big piece of wood. Made for very easy access. It got outdated and parts started dying though. But yeah, a computer doesn't care what shape it's in as long as the necessary parts go in the right slots and it's got enough power. You could make a mobile and hang a computer from the ceiling if you want.

I was joking about doing that in IRC to alleviate temperature issues AND save space

Grimm · July 21, 2004, 11:05:51 PM

I got myself a new Radeon 9800 Pro, so I should be set.

Grimm is very excited about finally having a new card. =D

DR.FUZZY! · July 21, 2004, 11:59:33 PM

Doom 3 is gonna be so scary

I hope they make a coop mod, cause im not one for getting the uber crap scared out of me. Oh well, i'll just pop on some metal and go though the game guns blazing

I still wana know what the new cacodemon looks like, if the even added it (You will never hear the end of it if they didnt add the cacodemon :angry:)

Now only 12 more days -sigh- and it comes out the day before school too... guess im not getting much sleep.

Anarki3x6 · July 22, 2004, 02:49:15 AM

wow a day before school? i get an entire month to play/beat it

.. i hope it doesnt take that long tho :/

Grimm · July 22, 2004, 02:58:03 AM

Haha, with the direction games are going nowadays, it'd be a godsend to get a game that would take a month to beat. Most often now they're good for 10 hours of gameplay, which really isn't worth the money.

ANeM · July 22, 2004, 04:09:08 AM

Quote

Haha, with the direction games are going nowadays, it'd be a godsend to get a game that would take a month to beat. Most often now they're good for 10 hours of gameplay, which really isn't worth the money.

Compared to a DVD and their normal prices.. thats fairly good.
I mean, around here a new DVD is about half the price of a new Game..
So 1 New game is equal to two new DVDs, right?
Now, the movies combined are worth 3 or 4 hours of sitting on your ass doing nothing.. and will generally always be the same no matter what... unless you feel like watching them with spanish dubbing or something.
Where is the game gives you 10 hours of gameplay, more than twice that of the DVDs, which didn't even give you much in the way of interaction..
Plus, the game can change. I mean, you've got different paths, different difficulties, addons, extra maps, custom maps, multiplayer..

Well, okay, maybe the DVDs aren't worth the money either, but at least a game is more worth the money than certain other things..

A Boojum Snark · July 22, 2004, 07:05:29 AM

Well, I remember hearing that HL2 is 36-48 hours of gameplay (12 chapters, each 3-4 hours). So that should be well worth the money and something that wont be beaten too quickly, and I doubt we will be seeing speedruns of that because at the shortest a speedrun video would be like a day and a half long :p

BobTheJanitor · July 22, 2004, 09:26:33 AM

You say that, but the original half life gameplay was billed at something like 20 hours if I remember right. Now people are running it in 45 minutes...

Grimm · July 22, 2004, 10:22:09 AM

Although they're using every engine and map exploit known to man to finish the game in that time, so it doesn't quite count.

As for the issue with DVDs: Over the years, I've seen companies adding more content and, thus, more value to the DVDs they release. As the technologies become less expensive, they're able to find ways to fit more onto a single disk, as well as include more disks in a box. Deleted scenes, director's and cast's commentary, interviews with the cast, and the ease of multiple language control on one disk as opposed to having to find the right VHS, among many many other things, coupled with the price drop of DVD players and DVDs themselves makes for a solid purchase.

Video games, on the other had, although have been improving as well, most releases within the past few years have only improved graphics-wise. Companies realize that people want shiny eye candy, so they load games with all the shiny eye candy that they can at the sacrifice of the game play time and replayability. Also, they forego any consideration about the average customer's PC specs, requiring some expensive upgrades, and then there are times where companies go out of their way to support one company's upgrade over another, blatantly advertising that one item will not work as well with their game as the other.

Games don't have to be extremely detailed, bank-breaking interactive eye candy to be entertaining. I picked up a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, for example, and that lasted me a solid 90 hours before I beat the game and got all of the 'secret' party members. Grand Theft Auto 3 and GTA:Vice City are also great games because the focus is on the gameplay and not the graphics; Even after beating every main mission, there are all sorts of side missions to do, secret goals to be reached (collecting specific cars and taking them to the garage and gathering all 100 packages for example) that increase the replay value.

In the end, I would much rather have a game with good replay value than some interactive eye candy.

BobTheJanitor · July 22, 2004, 12:10:12 PM

Quote

Although they're using every engine and map exploit known to man to finish the game in that time, so it doesn't quite count.

Oh, I don't know. Who defines what 'counts' exactly? They get from the first spawn point in the game all the way through to defeating the final boss in 45 minutes, and they do it using only things that are coded in to the game. How does that not count?

Path · July 22, 2004, 01:37:27 PM

Quote

Oh, I don't know. Who defines what 'counts' exactly? They get from the first spawn point in the game all the way through to defeating the final boss in 45 minutes, and they do it using only things that are coded in to the game. How does that not count?

Come now, most of them use every trick in the book. I'm pretty sure that making a tripmine ladder so you can get into the skybox and 'swim' to the next level was not an intended game feature. All things considered, the people who make the speed runs don't really play the same game.

Uranium - 235 · July 22, 2004, 04:19:45 PM

Bob - map c4a1 is coded in the game console so can I use that for a speedrun then?

BobTheJanitor · July 22, 2004, 05:03:02 PM

Actually if you look into speedrunning they usually have very carefully crafted rules. Some will go with the 'finish the game by any means possible', like these HL runs. (changing the map manually obviously doesn't work with the idea of speed running through the game, but it's a cute objection anyway :p ) Some game runs will require you to do things like hit certain important goals in the game (like some quake 2 speedruns, where certain goals throughout the game are required to be considered a full speedrun, even though it is possible to get to the next level without doing them) and some people will do 100% speedruns, where they finish every goal in the game, kill every monster, such things like that.

But I still would say that the HL speedrun is a perfectly viable playing of the game. After all, the game doesn't have any stated goal outside of getting through to the end and surviving. If, say, the maps were recompiled with clipped off skybrushes, the speedruns would have to be changed in some areas, obviously. But you're looking at the game like a representation of reality. In reality you can't swim through the sky, obviously. But speedrunners see the game as a puzzle, with the way to solve it being to get through it as quick as possible. Anything included in the game that can be used to further that goal will be used. This includes map bugs, climbing laser mines, gauss jumping, bunny hopping, wallstrafing, etc. etc. Of course they set rules, otherwise there's no fun in solving the puzzle. A noclip speedrun wouldn't be very entertaining... But the way they do it requires intense practice and a lot of skill. I don't see any reason to knock their accomplishments.

(side note, this discussion is interesting, but probably deserves it's own thread... anyone want to take everything about speedrunning and slap it into a seperate thread so this one doesn't become too horribly derailed?)