Doom Three

It’s been 4 days since Doom 3 officially came out. I’m more than half way through the game, somewhere in the Delta levels. I’d just like to say right now that while I saw the game on suprnova on Sunday (days before it was out), I did NOT download it. August 4th I went out and bought it fair and square. Was it worth it? Hell yes. I highly suggest you do the same. How else are you going to play online? huh?

The lighting alone in the game is amazing. Whens the last video game you can remember SHOOTING AT SHADOWS? That’s right, my hair stands up on end when I play Doom 3. The interactive terminals in game are even impressive. I somewhat wish the coloring on the monsters was more alone the lines of Doom/Doom 2. You can recognize them, but when a monster was pink, and its brown, that’s messed up. Obviously, it looks a lot better this way, but still :-P

I haven’t really jumped into the multiplayer yet as I’m trying to concentrate on finishing the game first. I did hop on the other day to see what it was like. So far, it doesn’t look to great. So, will see what the modding community can do.

I was a little pissed when I found out there aren’t any Linux binaries yet. Nothing on the cd about Linux at all. Kinda shitty move by id after hyping it up. While windows ‘went gold’ where the fuck is Linux? Bronze? So, before I could get a chance to try it under wine/winex/cedega I found a bunch of forum posts, and most importantly this lovely article that explained everything. For me, I just needed to add the patch to my current cedega cvs, copy over my Doom 3 directory from Windows and replace the Doom3.exe. The installer should work just fine too (not the installshield).

I had some minor glitches under Linux. First, it wouldn’t boot. Make sure you change your cedega config to have more than 32mb of agp memory or it will bomb on startup about opengl. Also, I was experiencing freeze ups after about 2 minutes in game. I think this has something to do with my video memory/card still because when I turned it down to 640×480 and all the effects off I haven’t had a crash. As a side note it is JUST as playable and good looking as windows at 1024×768 and all effects… I’ll be playing it as such when I figure out the config issues.

I’m very impressed that cedega is able to run Doom 3 with only one patch. Long over due, but right on track for Half-Life 2. With that statement I’ve greatly contradicted one of my earlier postings, only a week or three later. Cedega should do a good job of keeping me out of Windows while I wait for the Linux binaries. Until then, see you in hell.

Update: It appears there are various graphics glitches under wine with Doom 3. I think I’ll play in Windows/wait for the Linux binaries.