Tim Willits Q&A

wow a lan match with 4 whole people! thats gotta be totally awesome

This interview was boring. The answers were no descriptive or the were "no."

I really think that people are gonna get a shock with how hard it will be to make a decept map for this game. There's gonna be a lot of shitty mods out there I bet.

So basically what gaming will be for the next 3 years is UT 2003 for multiplayer and doom3 for a week. Anyway i can't wait to have both of em. :-\

Rocket Arena + Doom 3 = ?

q2dm1 rocked. the jumpy q3a maps were a big disappointment.

I for one can't wait to see Doom3's editor. Being able to create a level and see exactly what its going to look like in game will be great.

The biggest problem for mulitplayer isn't even the low amount of players. It's the inability to join a game in progress. It's an absolute discrace that you can't join a server in progress. MP will never be as easy as it was before. They try to say "it works for games like Warcraft". Well ya, THERE NOT FPS's !!! To me this is the biggest mistake ever made my ID and the biggest dissapointment.

I just don't get it. Why do they need to focus on MP of SP nowadays? Just focus on making a GOOD GAME AS A WHOLE. Geez. Take a look at Half-life: good sp, good mp. Why? Cause Valve did not "focus" on a SP or MP game, they tried to make a GOOD GAME (damn billy, what a cool new concept..).

Just bake us Doom, goddamnit. Not some resident evil wannabe single player horror movie fps. Make it cool, gory, coop, very lan-able and noisy (tnkx trent). That's all you guys need to do.

Thank you.

Thesis du jour.

There are a lot of folks that argue that graphics get in the way of gameplay, or that they seem to make the case that the two are mutually exclusive

Normally I disagree with them. I think graphics (and sound) are important, the more realistic a game looks, the easier it is to get immersed in. That’s important to me and that’s probably why I liked Unreal so much when it came out, and I have no doubt that Doom 3 will be the most realistic, immersing game ever created when it comes out.

However, I think that games really are getting to the point where the games are starting to suffer because of the graphics. Not that the quality of the games is going down, on the contrary it’s going up, but the time and resources it takes to make these games is starting to bite developers in the butt, and it’s effecting the final product. What I’m talking about is the need for developers to break their products into single player only and multiplayer only, or like in the case of Doom 3, single player with extremely limited MP. RTCW is probably one of the last BIG games that will ship with both components, in a fully realized state. Unreal 2 canned it’s MP, I think I heard that NOLF 2 won’t have any MP. Deus Ex 2 likely won’t have MP, unless they patch it in later like with DE1. A game like DE tho, doesn’t suffer as much without MP, because of it’s role playing aspects, there’s a lot more replay value, since you can take different character building routes each time you play.

Yes, I’ll buy Doom 3 the day it comes out, but as Carmack said, while it will likely be longer than the average FPS (read 6-8 hours for everything that’s come out since Half-Life) the average hardcore gamer (read, me and probably 80% of the people who frequent this page) will finish the game in a single weekend. I know I will. I beat Elite Forces and Halo in a single sitting each. Doom 3 will be so graphically impressive that I’ll likely play though it several times. I played Unreal 2 times + once with a buddy using the co-op mod that some one made, I played Half Life 2 – 3 times… I played Doom 1 and 2 through several times… maybe 5 times each and I wouldn’t be surprised if I play Doom 3 though 5, 6, 7 times.

BUT… without robust MP support… what’s going to happen to the mod community? Id has a history of letting the mod community sell their games. When Q3 was in development, the said right upfront that the game would only ship with DM and 4 CTF maps, and that they were planning on a lot of supplemental content to come out of the modders. Okay, I applaud them for their business sense, why do the work yourself when there’s all those skilled teams out there that can put out some really high quality stuff? It won’t cost you a dime to produce, and it won’t cost your customers anything, but it WILL sell more copies of your game. But considering what id has said about the limitations of MP (and of course, until the game actually goes gold, there’s no way to really predict what condition that MP will be in – even then, they can patch it up like they did with Q2’s non-existent MP element – for now all I can do is work with the information that’s been given) there won’t be Doom 3wave CTF, or D3 Arena, or D3 Navy Seals, or D3 Fortress, or any of the dozens of other mods that have become a staple of the community. That might not be so bad, but id has said that Quake 4 will have the same limitations – limitations due to the technology, the technology used to push the graphics so far. So in this case, I’d say that yeah, the graphics are getting in the way of the gameplay. What do we turn to when we’re all getting tired of UT2003 3 years from now? That’s what I want to know.

Tim Willits: My favorite group of maps were the 6 extra deathmatch maps in Quake 1. When I came up with the idea to include extra maps into Quake 1, only for deathmatch, the guys here at first thought it would be a waste of time. I really pushed for getting them in and I'm glad I did. Those 6 maps were played more by our fans than the entire rest of the game.

Hmm… I think what he’s saying is that MP is more popular than SP.

I don’t really have a point here. Just rambling in my verbose manner. You can supply your own punchline. Discuss. :)

Tim Willits and Fredo have probably spent more time doing interviews on the past few weeks than they have spent on their whole career before.

Luckyfor me I use 3dstudio every day

the server must be overloaded.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this but i wonder who were the ones at ID(The ones who fired Steeds) that didnt want to do a Doom3 remake and how they feel about it now, with all the hype its getting?

he seemed a bit uptight in that interview..

So basically the "dark creepy atmosphere" is more like a way that not as many polygons need to be rendered as opposed to creating a game with rich environments it'll be all black with the occasional swinging light? Ghey.

Oh boy, another opportunity for people who have ignored the "it's a single player game" comments from id for the last year to bitch about how they don't like xyz about Doom III's multiplayer. Sigh.

Hi RogeR!
http://www.somethingawful.com/article.php?id=84

hey guys.. I'm trying my best to keep the webserver up... being slashdotted is not that fun :(

RogeR
pq3

God damnit, slashdotted.

12 hour days = teh suck. :(

I wand id to scare me again...
Doom scared the pants off me when I first played it..

bah! how dare he not answer the "retro levels" question with a straight answer. damn him!

There could be an article on what one of the doom designers had for breakfast on his way to working on Doom3 and I'd spooge. :(

Good job Roger!

sweetness. now i go read.

yay give me doom III!