Doom III Preview

Doom is a tough act to follow. The landmark 1993 action game turned a generation of gamers and game developers onto the possibilities of the first-person shooter and spawned a lengthy series of official expansions and countless imitations by third parties. Doom's popularity allowed it to spread even beyond the PC. It appeared on the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 consoles and will hit the 240x160 color LCD of the Game Boy Advance handheld later this year. But none of the spin-off games and map packs have replicated the excitement of the original three episodes. It's up to id Software to give the series new life. Last year, id revealed that it would create a new Doom game, and recently we've see how the sprite-based graphics of the original are making the transition into a 3D world that pushes the envelope for atmospheric game graphics. The game hasn't been officially titled, but to avoid confusion with the original game, we'll call it "Doom III" for the time being. It should be noted that this preview doesn't contain any new information per se, but it a convenient collection of all the information that's been released by id Software and John Carmack to date.

Get used to seeing real-time shadows running alongside your enemies.

Work specifically for Doom III didn't start until about six months after id shipped Quake III: Arena. The team explored other game ideas first, looking for fresh ground for its next project to move beyond the world of Quake that had served as the company's focus for half a decade. After little more than a year, the game is still very much in its infancy, and most of what we know so far about the game comes from 469881John Carmack's discussions of the game's underlying technology. What id has done best over the years is to design games that make the most of state-of-the-art graphics and turn this potential for visual realism into intense, visceral gameplay. Doom III should be no different. The graphics are unbelievable, combining realistic lighting with highly detailed characters and environments. While it's easy to fixate on a few tempting bits of eye candy, John Carmack, the programmer responsible for the graphics of several generations id games, says it's really not about effects. Doom III's impressive real-time lighting and shadows, for example, are not just a technical tour de force, but also an element that will help create a distinct atmosphere in the game.

Deeply shadowed faces add character and cinematic atmosphere.

The two demo sequences we've seen of the game have shown how id is translating the essence of the original Doom game into the new graphics engine. Doom, always reminiscent of Aliens with its mix of sci-fi and horror, is a space marine game in which there's no shortage of humanoid zombies and other nasty monsters to shoot. Already, the preview sequences have shown how several familiar faces will appear in the new game, including a pink demon, an imp, and a human zombie with a whip arm--any of which look capable of dealing you a gruesome end in a dark lonely corridor. One dramatic scene we saw took place in a white-tiled bathroom. A pink demon strode up to a bloated cadaver in the center of the room and tore a bloody chunk out of its stomach, revealing its entrails and spreading a pool of blood across the floor. The sequence was cinematic in quality, smoothly and believably animated. But it's tough to say what the engine will look like from a standard first-person view. The original Doom was characterized by hordes of monsters on the screen at once, and this may not be feasible with this complex graphics engine. Having many 3D enemies on the screen at once is much more taxing for PC hardware than moving animated 2D sprites around.