Gamespy has another article called DOOM 3: Behind the Horror, covering Doom III’s new features. Doom III promises to loosen up first-person gaming from its often amusement-park ride feel. By that I mean that sometimes you feel like you’re in a cart on a track, where you can’t investigate this door because it takes you off the plot, or that light can’t be shot because you need to see the level and the shadows cast from it are pre-rendered. Doom III promises to remove most of those... [More]

ShackNews is reporting that John Carmack has updated his .plan file recently in Carmack On New Cards, Rendering − the actual .plan file is here − Carmack’s 2002/06/28 .plan.

If the other .plan link is broken, then you can get an archived copy here − Carmack’s 2002/06/28 .plan

His latest two updates concern the Matrox Parhelia. The first update pretty much trashes the card, calling it “really disappointing for the first 256 bit DDR card” and that the “[a]nti aliasing features are nice, but it... [More]”

Beyond3D has some extremely detailed questions with John Carmack in John Carmack on DOOM3 rendering. Of interest is the mention that “[t]he game characters are between 2000 and 6000 polygons”, which makes sense, given the massive number of rendering passes in Doom 3. Since all shading and lighting is done in real-time, the number of polygons becomes a lot more important.

Other engines, like the Unreal engine, boast much higher character-polygon counts, but they use only limited dynamic lighting.... [More]

This guy is from another place altogether…

John Carmack Interview on Voodoo Extreme

The big news from E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is the first official showing of Doom III. The video they are showing there is available for download includes in-game/engine footage and interviews with members of id, along with a history of Doom. The in-game footage is amazing and pretty photo-realistic. The models breathe, roar and move in unbelievable detail.

The first scene is a monster pawing around a dead zombie in a bathroom. It drools, the zombie is batted around realistically, a... [More]

Doom III will depart from standard id games in another important way. There are plans for a plot. The game engine’s amazing sound and video capabilities (see Doom Technology) allows the artists and designers to create a terrifying atmosphere and focus on the environment’s role in the game, rather than using many monsters (Doom) or other players (Quake III) to create fear. GameSpy has a full article, DOOM III: The Very First Look, with more details.

Watching the video (see Doom III E3 videos),... [More]

Doom III is going to be ground-breaking in many different ways. First of all, it doesn’t seem that it will attempt to replicate the super-fast gameplay style of the original Doom. In There’s no ignoring Doom III on MSNBC, John Carmack says “If you … have everybody running around at 100 miles an hour, you would lose the immersion.” It will be “about the fear, the scary, extraordinary, unknown environment and not knowing what can happen.”

There are many departures for id from their standard... [More]

Don’t think the choice of an NVidia card is cut-and-dried yet. Sure, the latest Radeon offerings from ATI are slightly slower than the Nvidia cards, but what about the visual quality? Speaking of visual quality, an old hand at making slow, nice-looking graphics has a new technology, called Parhelia. The Matrox site has pages of information, with screenshots and vidoes galore. They hope to lose the “slow” reputation with this one.

Ars Technica has an article, Aiming High at Matrox with some... [More]

The latest in a long line of great Q3-engine games arrived in stores almost 2 months ago. If you’re looking for a good game to get you ready for Attack of the Clones, which debuts on May 16th, this is it. Reviews have been very favorable, with only some of the more bizarre and pointless puzzles drawing criticism. The GameSpot U.K.‘s review:

“However, Jedi Outcast soon transforms from a typical first-person shooter to an exceptional Star Wars action game that contains some of the best combat... [More]”

id Software Partners With Activision on DOOM III™ at Yahoo Finance News officially announces DOOM III, the latest and greatest game from id Software. The game will be shown at E3 (Electronics Entertainment Expo), but probably to a limited audience. Still, we can hope that a video emerges soon after.

“DOOM III will change what people expect to see and experience in a PC game,“ said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software. “We couldn’t be more psyched about DOOM III, and are thrilled to debut the... [More]”