there must take place a regime change. scampie must transfer ownership immediately.

we'll be greeted as liberators 

And would be supposed to replace Scampie ?? You ? 

Well, I'd run the interim government long enough to establish safety and democracy and freedom and liberty and baseball and apple pie. 

Lunaran is a George W Bush clone ! Help ! 

He spelled interim correctly. 

I thought Carmack originally didn't want to do Doom 3? I thought the reason Paul Steed was given the boot was that he had stirred up most of the staff into pressuring the bosses for the next project after Q3 to be Doom 3.

Is this wrong? 

Ive heard back and forth on the matter... I recall before Doom3, Carmack was speaking of some project called Trinity, which sounded more ambitious, in his vague terminology, then Doom3. Technology wise at least (not too hard to be more ambitious then Doom3 on the gameplay front).

Yeah actually, the more I think of it... About half of the company wanted to do Doom3, and the other half didnt (this basically being Kevin Cloud and Adrian Carmack, as opposed to John Carmack), and supposedly Steed was pro-Doom3, and got caught in the crossfire... Though Id say his previous behaviour, notably in .plan files, played a role in his firing, not just spite for another shareholder.

But I honestly cant recall, aside from Steed, who did want to do another Doom and who didnt... Im leaning more towards Carmack not wanting to do another Doom, but Im not sure.

Wow, this contribution was useless! =D 

before Doom3, Carmack was speaking of some project called Trinity

Trinity = Quake 3 tech research. Here's a quote I ripped from Blue's that was originally in the July, 1997 issue of Boot Magazine:

Id's Mike Abrash recently gave us a peak into id's 3D-only future and post-Quake graphics engine, Trinity. "Trinity is not just a hardware-only engine, its baseline system is a Pentium Pro 200+ with MMX, 32MB, and an accelerator capable of at least 50 megapixels and 300K triangles per second with alpha blending and Z-buffering. Imagine seeing through an open landscape from one server to the next, and seeing the action on adjacent servers in detail in real time and you'll have an idea of where things are heading in the near future."

Interesting look back at what they were thinking of doing, and how in same ways we've taken a step backward (e.g. Doom 3 servers hosting a max of 4 players). 

What happened was documented very clearly in Carmack's .plan file:

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/finger.pl?id=1&time=20000601040557

The important bits if you're lazy as hell:

As many people have heard discussed, there was quite a desire to remake DOOM as our next project after Q3. Discussing it brought an almost palpable thrill to most of the employees, but Adrian had a strong enough dislike for the idea that it was shot down over and over again.

...

I discussed it with some of the other guys, and we decided that it was important enough to drag the company through an unpleasant fight over it. An ultimatum was issued to Kevin and Adrian(who control >50% of the company): We are working on DOOM for the next project unless you fire us.

...

Kevin and Adrian fired Paul Steed in retaliation, over my opposition. Paul has certainly done things in the past that could be grounds for dismissal, but this was retaliatory for him being among the "conspirators".

:eng101: 

If for some reason you don't read PlanetDoom...

http://www.bluesnews.com/screenshots/games/misc/20050423/

"Kiltron (of Futrix Studios) keeps bringing the gaming community gorgeous works of art, as seen in these newly released Quake 2 screenshots on the Doom 3 engine. To clarify guesses or assumptions as to whether or not this is the original content, it is not. Kiltron and his team have re-worked everything from scratch for the Doom 3 engine." 

I see he's gotten over his hissy-fit about how much doom3 editing makes him want to cry. I see also he's been adding that he has a job at a studio now to make his doom3 stuff seem more legitimate than anyone else's.

Perhaps he should work on something vaguely original. 

the hissy fit heard around the world 

This would be the Futrix Studios he made himself, whose website currently forwards to a domain host page saying "This Account Has Been Suspended - Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible." and which presumably consists of him sitting on his own in a shed crying bitter tears while he hates himself for modding for the Doom 3 engine even though id have cruelly denied him an engine license.

PS I played ROE again and decided I actually quite liked it after all. I still think Vulgars looks stupid though. 

Bahaha :) That makes it even worse.

Oh, while we're on the subject, I now work for AMALGAMATED LUNARANCOM MEGAINDUSTRIES UNLIMITED DOT NET. Please update all your bookmarks because I'm more important than them now. 

That title is a little stretched out. What about --

Gathering of One Developer, or Good for short? 

Southpark D3

http://www.phait-accompli.com/crap/sp_d3.gif 

Seems you can jack up the specularity and stuff...

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=49067&page=1&pp=15

There are some mouseover comparisons linked there, and links for download. 

Ugh.

Seems you can jack up the specularity and stuff...

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why is that a good thing? 

SPECUTACULAR!

Also this just came in: Parallax mapping, yay or nay? 

 

Man, the whole time I was playing doom3 I kept saying to myself "This game would be perfect if it were just shinier." My prayers have been answered. 

Do people think that when games go for more realisitc graphics - they actually look more awkward and unrealistic... Kinda there's not so much room for imagination or something. I don't really know why!

It's like an artist conveying a lively image with a few dark, outwards simplistic but really experienced and impression-filled skillfull brush strokes versus just a computer-generated plastic-looking and -feeling scene.

Like it's a bit related to this: everything's out of proportion and crazy and strange and blocky in quake but it doesn't bother anyone because it just feels right... (Well, in the hand of the right creators.) If you start introducing more realistic, say, entities or weapon models there, it looks bad. With quake, you're firstly just giving a feeling, not exact photographs of the world.

Of course there's the horde of blind deaf dumb fucks who run after the latest greatest thing that just looks new... Or am I just an old guy set into what I thought was cool when I was still young and unsuspecting? :) 

art critiques aside, still think per-pixel specular is better than per-vertex. 

Between cartoons and live action the brain crosses a threshold where it stops filling in the gaps with imagination because it feels it's looking at reality. Problem with graphics and film special FX nowadays is that we get enough realism to cross that threshold without getting enough realism to completely sell it. Therefore any little missing thing just innately feels really wrong - we mentally do less forgiving and more demanding. 

I finally found time to boost my PC RAM, to install Doom III, and to made my first tries this 4 last days...
What an "immersive" game !! I read on Func_ that many guys said Doom III didn't made a revolution in gameplay (they wer right..), but what a change for the ambiance: It's really impressive !! These dark corridors, all the sounds around the player, these lights switching off many times, and the monsters, wow, it's really frigthening... bbrrrr... I played the game for 2 hours yesterday night (it's better to say really early this morning) and after that, I had serious problems to be able to sleep !! This is the best "thriller-game" ever.. For sure I'm not disappointed ;)
As I liked the first Doom series (in 90's), I like this last one...
Thanks to ID for this pure moment of adrenaline..