So, Time to discuss all things DooM III. When Quake III was still new on our PC's, ID revealed to the
world that their next project was to be DooM III. DooM. THAT game was responsible for some very average
marks in my first year of university. Remember the guys pointing out those gory bodies impaled on the
spikes? The half eaten bodies hanging from the roof? How about that kinda pink walled room that seemed
to change colour as you walked past, or the hallway with the moving heads looking through that small window.
DooM was one helluva game over Wolfenstien. IT hooked millions of people worldwide and was responsible for
millions more being initiated into the world of computer gaming. Me included. So imagine what people
thought that day, when ID SOFTWARE announced that DooM III was going to become a reality.

After DooM II many speculated that DooM III was in the works, but was going to have a whole new fully 3D
engine. THAT theory however, was blown out of the water when the new game was called Quake. Quake II's
name was also up in the air for a while. We had reports that ID wanted to name it something else but ran
into legal problems. People speculated that someone had already taken the name "DooM III" and so ID had a
problem. With all the fuss ensuing, ID just decided to use the name Quake II, to avoid the legal wrangling.
No doubt, conspiracy theorists have been at work with all this.... or have they?

There was no such doubt with Quake III. Right from the start it was going to be a multiplayer game using a
brand new engine. Never did people entertain the fact that it might actually be DooM III. Besides, Quake III
wasn't a complete rewrite of ID's 3D engine technology at the time. Rather just a HEAVY upgrade of the
Quake II technology. And so we didn't have to wait all that long util Quake III was on our PC's.

When DooM III was first announced, I was sure we'd have it in our hot little hands waaaaaaaay before now.
Like about January this year. When I knew that wasn't to be the case, I was sure ID would have it out for
Christmas this year. Quake II was out for Christmas you know. But even THAT now seems not to be the case.
ID now says that DooM III will be out next year, first quarter. Till then.

John Carmack recently said that DooM III has actually been designed to fully realise the potential of
the technology first produced with the Geforce 256. Thats right, the 256. Never mind the Geforce 3
and 4 with their pixel and vertex shaders. Never mind the Radeon 9700 with it's volumetric mapping
and it's grand total of 110 transistors. Bump mapping is the key feature we're seeing with DooM III.
ID is including a whole bevvy of bump maps in the textures used in DooM III to give the impression of
actual relief within the textures. 3D Mark 2000/2001 had the bump mapping test. That was one test the
good ole Geforce 256 could handle. But no games have actually USED the bump maps in textures yet have
they??? So enter DooM III. Bump mapped to the max and also including those really cool high definition
textures we saw in Quake III, only more advanced this time around.

Carmack admits that the software side of things is FAR FAR behind what the current crop of video cards can
offer. Only now, when DooM III becomes available will we have finally used the full capability of the
Geforce 256. Thats how far the software lags behind the hardware. Quite a way. Does that mean we can
all run out and run DooM III on our old Geforce 256's. Well yes, The Geforce 256 WILL run DooM III. just
not all that well. It's the sheer GRUNT of the newer cards we're looking for in order to run DooM III in
all it's glory.

It's no secret that John Carmack has been working closely with ATI in order to include some of the newer
functionality of the Radeon Cards in DooM III. Mostly it seems that Carmack would find that the Radeon
cards were not doing things he expected, so ATI would need to either set him straight OR repair their
drivers. But John Carmack said several times that the Radeon Line of cards had some very exciting
capabilities, stuff that he wanted to work into DooM III. So, we're left thinking that DooM III must also
include some of the newer technologies introduced with ATI's Radeon 8500 and NVIDIA's Geforce3. But, what
we do know for certain, is that it will be YEARS before the FULL benefit of todays video cards will be
manifested in computer games. But despair not. DooM III IS an advancement in gaming technology. As these
screenshots will attest.

One thing that many people have noticed in the few screenshots we now have of DooM III is that the geometry
seems no further advanced than what we saw in Quake III. The fingers on the monster models look VERY square,
not even masked by some clever texturing, which is meant to be the power of the DooM III engine. Those pipes
we can see running along the hallways appear jointed and anything BUT round. Clothing also appears just
a little too blocky to represent a true advancement in geometrical building. However, we have constantly
been assured that the polygon count of the models in the game FAR outwiegh those used in Quake III. But Thats
getting VERY picky. Clearly the models are far better than anything we've seen to date. Character models in
games such as NOLF, Return to Castle Wolfenstien, and Medal Of Honour were Extremely good. But that was more
to do with the high quality of texturing used to skin them with. I think many people were expecting DooM III
to be something really highly advanced in this manner, which it is. But I get the impression that we may have
set our sights too high. We will still be able to make out those polygons if we really look hard at the
characters, but all in all the're still going to look much better than we've had in the past.

I mentioned above the geometric complexity inherent in the screenshots that appear on this page. While this
too does not appear to be much of an advancement over Quake III, I point your gaze to the now extremely famous
bathroom scene. Looking? Now check out those basins and the faucets they have on them. Smooth as a baby's
bottom. Don't you think? Also check them dunny's and that beasties head. Smooth as a baby's bottom. So we
can clearly see that DooM III is going to have some very good stuff in it. Attention to detail is also a HUGE
bonus here.

ALL the screenshots show detail wherever you look. Gone are the days of computer screens with text so blurry
that you can only wonder at what might be scrolling past your eyes. Gone are the days of blurry drab
instrument panels. IN are instrument panels and output screens with such detail and colour that you'd be
forgiven for breathing in wonder when you first set eyes upon them. You will notice that walls and floors
all have a high degree of detail included in them. That means that when you look at the floor, you'll actually
see clearly defined tiles, grids, grating or whatever it is you happen to be standing on. You can be assured
that DooM III will include a level of detail not possible in previous games.

Other effects to look at and take note of. Look at shot #5. The one with the angry looking soldier
behind the scientist in the white labcoat. Look carefully at the reflection in soldiers goggles. What you're
seeing there is the ACTUAL picture being reflected in those goggles. WOW! Up till this point, when we saw a
reflection in something the reflected picture we saw in the shiny surface was a standard reflection image.
that means that whenever you saw a reflection in glass or something, you saw the SAME image. NOT what was in
your immediate environment being reflected in the glass. Like I remember a time in Return To Castle Wolfenstien
when I was INSIDE this huge garage type area. When I looked into the glass surrounding some offices I saw some
PINE TREE reflections. Curious, considering there were NO pine trees in sight! The game developers had in fact
just used the pine tree reflection image for the glass in the garage. So we can see that DooM III is going to
have some very cool effects in store for our viewing pleasure.

People always seem to be interested in what the water is going to look like in various games. At the recent
Quakecon competition, this very question was asked of John Carmack. A few cool effects have been created
for water and fluids, but nothing really spectacular. It just wasn't something that ID focussed on. So
don't be expecting anything like morrowind's exceptional water FX. ID's fluid effects never were anything
to rave about anyhow. Probably the BEST water I've seem would have to be that seen in Serious Sam, first
and second encounters.

Weapons? We do know that all the favourites will be present. Namely Shotty, rocket laucher, grenade
laucher with different types of grenades, some type of machine gun either gattling or fixed but many bet
upon the spinning gattling type as in the original doom, some type of energy/plasma gun as in the original
DooM. Plus some alien type weapons to keep things interesting. PLUS we're also told that the days of the
spinning in space weapons may be over, as ID are wanting to make the game more realistic by placing weapons
in specific places such as storerooms and of course on fallen bodies. Also, ID were wanting to come up with
a logical placement of health and powerups instead of just having them conveniently spread all over the levels
like someone went through before you and dropped them all over the place. MMM something new for ID then.
At the Quakecon competition, Todd Hollinshead told the crowds that several other weapons were being
considered, It was a matter of deciding which ones to put into the game. ONE of these weapons was the much
loved RAIL GUN. Todd said that they still didn't know if the rail gun was going to make the game. Several
weapons they had, simply made you too powerful for varying reasons, such as killing multiple baddies at once
and that kind of thing. The whole Idea of how such weapons function may make them too weak / powerful for
the way the game finally gets designed. Here's praying for the rail gun to make it!!

Speaking of dead bodies as one does when talking about DooM games, John Carmack had also let slip that the
guys have come up with way quoole death animations. He wasn't letting much slip, except that we're going
to like what we see. OK, I can live with that.

DOOM III. So sketchy are the details at the moment that many things are still speculation. Keep in mind
that the screenshots you see here are from mid-development builds of the game and won't necessarily
represent what we're going to see in the final retail build of the game. John Carmack also said at
Quakecon, that ID was focussed on producing something that we'd never seen before. New concepts and
fresh ideas are to be the flavour of the day. It remains to be seen exactly WHAT ID has up their sleeve.
The First Person genre has had a LOT of attention since it's creation (generally credited to ID). Exactly
HOW ID software plans to inject new ideas into the FPS genre we really will just have to wait.

What will you need to run DooM III??? Man! How many times has this question been asked? Well it seems
now that if you really want to run DooM III with kick ass frameratres, you're going to need one of the
current video cards just beginning to come out now. That means Radeon R9700pro, or, whatever NVIDIA ends
up calling their next generation gaphics card, currently referred to as the NV30. THAT SHOULD give you
EXCELLENT framerates for DooM III. A Geforce 4 will give you acceptable framerates with all the friut on
high. A Radeon r8500 or Geforce 3 should give you playable framerates with all fruit on high, but that
I'm not so sure about. You may need to turn a few things off in order to boost the framerate up past a
jerky level. Anything below a Geforce 3 vanilla or R8500 will mean you'll be lowering the game details
and effects to get playable framerates. BE ADVISED though that these are only my predictions. But
judging by how graphics cards perform now with current games, I think that when the next step is taken
these requirements will be about right.

Processor wise, I'd say you'd need to be looking at 2ghz plus to get any kind of performance out of the
game. Slower processors will be ok. But again you'll be looking to start reducing settings to get the
game playable. I really wouldn't want to go below 1.5ghz with any video card. AT LEAST 512 megs of
memory. Even todays games seem to play MUCH better with 512 megs of memory over 256mb. I'd say 256
will be the minimum requirement to run the game, as that is now the basic PC standard. Once again
these are just my own humble opinions and ARE NOT based on any information that ID software has given.
All we KNOW is that ID stated that they were aiming for a vanilla Geforce 3 to run DooM III at 30FPS
with all detail on full. But that was last year at this time. Weather that still holds is anybodies
guess.

What IS for certain is that DooM III will be a revolution in PC gaming. Perhaps not the revolution
we all hoped for but lets face it. When does a computer game ever measure up to our wild imaginations.
Plan those upgrades, as it's going to be a crime to play DooM III in anything less than FULL GLORY.
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