"If you can run Doom 3, you can run Prey": really?

[Altered Reality]

According to someone on this board, George once said that, and I wonder if it's true.

I can run Doom 3 on my Windows 98 machine. To do that, I had to copy the files manually from the CDs to the hard disk and modify two bytes of the executable. Will this work for Prey too, will Prey avoid this problem by being natively compatible with Windows 98, or will the following be true?

1) We will have to use GameXstream to install the game, so there will be no way to bypass the installer
2) The executable will attempt to connect to GameXstream every time it is launched, and GameXstream will inevitably shut it down because "it might be cracked".

I would like an official reply from George, and please, no dodging the question with replies like "Oh come on, nobody uses Windows 98 anymore!"

[Micki!]

Altered Reality said:
no dodging the question with replies like "Oh come on, nobody uses Windows 98 anymore!"

I wouldn't say that... Because apparently you [u]do</u> have a Win98 machine...

[Wild Falkon]

Doom 3 was never meant to be compatible with Windows 98. You just got lucky.

You really should upgrade, at least to Windows 2000.

[Cerberus_e]

if you want to use win98, you can always use dualboot.

[NutWrench]

Cerberus_e said:
if you want to use win98, you can always use dualboot.

I recommend that, too. Split your disk into two partitions and clone your Windows 98 stuff onto the second one. Then, update your primary partition with Windows XP.

[Kristian Joensen]

Altered Reality, George did state that if you can run Doom 3 then you can run Prey.

You say you can run Doom 3 but that isn't true, you can only run an altered version of Doom 3. Technicaly what you have done to Doom 3 might even be illegal. George didn't say that if you can run an altered version of Doom 3 then you can run Prey.

Your case is special so you can't infer anything from what George has stated, you have got wait for na answer from either George or some oneelse from either 3D Realms or Human Head Studios.

[Mr.DJ]

I belive George was talking about hardware requirements.

So in other words, if your PC was able run Doom3 good, you should be able to get Prey to run on your machine too.

[Damien_Azreal]

Carmack said the same thing about Quake 4.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Prey and Q4 run a bit smoother than D3 did. At this point both companies are bound to think of/find new optimizations.

[hell-angel]

Micki! said:

I wouldn't say that... Because apparently you [u]do</u> have a Win98 machine...

Yeah, I would say more like:
Only a fool would use Windows 98.
But then again, only a fool would use windows, so that would make me a fool.
Damn directX. If it wasn't for that there would be more linux games and we could all switch to an OS that uses less resources and is more safe (well, for now that is. )

NutWrench said:

I recommend that, too. Split your disk into two partitions and clone your Windows 98 stuff onto the second one. Then, update your primary partition with Windows XP.

hehe, you should install them on one partition. (j/k of course. )

[Cerberus_e]

Damien_Azreal said:
And I wouldn't be surprised if Prey and Q4 run a bit smoother than D3 did. At this point both companies are bound to think of/find new optimizations.

and graphical improvements
by the way, prey doesn't run on the 2004 version of doom 3.
they run the 2001 version and continues building upon it themselves, so it can give very different results.

[FireFly]

You have proof they broke off from id in 2001?

[Kristian Joensen]

I think he has misunderstood some quote(s) from Human Head and/or 3D Realms. We do know that they got the Doom 3 source code in late 2001.

Breaking of after just receiving the source code seem a little(well really alot) weird. Especially considering that the engine was still in a pretty early stage in late 2001(AFAIK).

Don't you know Cerberus that when you license a engine you get access to constant upgrades that you can choose to implement or nor(and you can also choose wich ones you implement, it isn't all or nothing) ?

For example if you license the Unreal Engine then you get access to free upgrades until 1 year after the release of your game.

[Cerberus_e]

yes, I know that, but while they are waiting for id's updates, human head is already building on the code themselves.
George Broussard said with DNF that sometimes they use the upgrades they get from epic, sometimes they don't find them good enough. I can see the same happening with prey and any other game beveloped by any other company.
it's a safe assumption I think when I say there are differences between the doom 3 we know and love from 2004 and the doom 3 engine of prey we will know and already love from 2006+

[FireFly]

Of course, because it's modified. That doesn't mean they're not using substantial amounts of code from 2002, 2003 and 2004.

[Kristian Joensen]

Cerberus, can you provide a quote of George to prove that ?

[Cerberus_e]

no, but I just remember that

[FireFly]

He took it from the FAQ which references a quote made by Charlie around the 2001 timeframe (before they broke off). This is why the FAQ needs to be updated.

Edit: I mean Brandon not Charlie.

[Cerberus_e]

yes, but why would it be changed?
I can see most developers using some upgrades, some not... depends on how useful they are

[FireFly]

If you're talking about DNF then 3DR have said that they broke off from Epic, ripped out most of the old tech and rewrote it from scratch, so the updates would have had no significance anyway.

If you mean generally, then sure, but it varies from developer to developer and HH could have integrated most of the updates from id. For example, they seem to be using Doom's interface system, and that emerged quite late in development. It's the same thing with the pixel shader stuff, which we know they've integrated.

[Tim Gerritsen]

Yes we got the Doom source back in 2001, but we never broke away in the way I take your meaning. We did code merges all along the way so that our changes were compatible with the base code. Our current code base is using the most recent patch to Doom3 (1.3 if I'm not mistaken).

We'd be downright foolish to have completely ignored Id's improvements all along the way, even with our own changes to the code base. Not at least incorporating the final version (i.e. the 1.0 version) of any engine is a fool's task since you'd have to complete the engine from whereever you split off.

Sure we forked, but we merged again when new builds became available. That's the most sensible approach for any game development- to at least use the 'final' version of an engine and then build your changes upon that.


I can't speak to compatibility with any version of the game on a non-supported OS. Win 98 will NOT be supported (though 2000 will).

Don't ask about Vista yet since my head is still spinning from the announcement they made yesterday about 7 separate versions. Ugh.

[Damien_Azreal]

7 versions?! I guess I missed something.

[Orochi Avlis]

Damien_Azreal said:
7 versions?! I guess I missed something.

It's to suit the different needs of different customers.

[hell-angel]

Kristian Joensen said:
For example if you license the Unreal Engine then you get access to free upgrades until 1 year after the release of your game.

hehe, if that is the case then Epic must really hate 3DR right about now.


(J/k of course. )

[Cerberus_e]

Tim Gerritsen said:
Yes we got the Doom source back in 2001, but we never broke away in the way I take your meaning. We did code merges all along the way so that our changes were compatible with the base code. Our current code base is using the most recent patch to Doom3 (1.3 if I'm not mistaken).

We'd be downright foolish to have completely ignored Id's improvements all along the way, even with our own changes to the code base. Not at least incorporating the final version (i.e. the 1.0 version) of any engine is a fool's task since you'd have to complete the engine from whereever you split off.

Sure we forked, but we merged again when new builds became available. That's the most sensible approach for any game development- to at least use the 'final' version of an engine and then build your changes upon that.


I can't speak to compatibility with any version of the game on a non-supported OS. Win 98 will NOT be supported (though 2000 will).

Don't ask about Vista yet since my head is still spinning from the announcement they made yesterday about 7 separate versions. Ugh.

so all rumors about prey being on a heavily modified version of doom 3 are just urban legends?

[FireFly]

No, they're fact, as stated in the PC Gamer article. Just because they've kept incorporating updates from id doesn't mean they haven't gone their own way. For example they've adapted the pixel shader system to work on everything, including characters.

[Cerberus_e]

well, that proves my statements than doom 3 and prey can run very different

[hell-angel]

Cerberus_e said:
well, that proves my statements than doom 3 and prey can run very different

Indeed, that pixel shader difference is really going to make an impact, a lot more has to be calculated. Luckily my comp has no problems with that.

[Cerberus_e]

hell-angel said:

Indeed, that pixel shader difference is really going to make an impact, a lot more has to be calculated. Luckily my comp has no problems with that.

my Geforce FX 5200 has, but I'll upgrade somewhere in november probably to a 6600 GT, but the fact it's a 128 mb ram card scares me )

[Tim Gerritsen]

Cerberus_e said:


so all rumors about prey being on a heavily modified version of doom 3 are just urban legends?

No, not at all. I think you misunderstand what a merge is and what modifying an engine means. When we did Rune, we kept incorporating the changes to the Unreal engine as we went. When we started the game, they were on the original engine, and we forked off on our own development. However, as their engine went through several iterations and eventually became the Unreal Tournament engine, we kept doing merges to incorporate bug fixes and changes to the base engine. We did our final merge just weeks before shipping Rune, but the final game still incorporated 60% new code when we shipped.

There are low level engine fixes and new features that were incorporated into Doom3, so we merged and incorporated them. Where necessary, we had to alter our code to fit the new engine changes, but our modifications remain on their own- just compatible with the base level engine. A lot of our changes are additions to the base engine, or alterations of how something works so it remains 'on top of' their code. If we changed something low level, and we feel our implementation is better, we keep our implementation. That's part of the merge process. Sometimes some low level change in their engine will change the behavior of how something we implemented works, so we have to fix our code to work with the new change, or modify the low level code to accomodate our change.

So it is true that we did a bunch of modifications to Doom3 AND we are merging to incorporate the latest Doom3 improvements. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive things.

[Micki!]

Tim Gerritsen said:

No, not at all. I think you misunderstand what a merge is and what modifying an engine means. When we did Rune, we kept incorporating the changes to the Unreal engine as we went. When we started the game, they were on the original engine, and we forked off on our own development. However, as their engine went through several iterations and eventually became the Unreal Tournament engine, we kept doing merges to incorporate bug fixes and changes to the base engine. We did our final merge just weeks before shipping Rune, but the final game still incorporated 60% new code when we shipped.

There are low level engine fixes and new features that were incorporated into Doom3, so we merged and incorporated them. Where necessary, we had to alter our code to fit the new engine changes, but our modifications remain on their own- just compatible with the base level engine. A lot of our changes are additions to the base engine, or alterations of how something works so it remains 'on top of' their code. If we changed something low level, and we feel our implementation is better, we keep our implementation. That's part of the merge process. Sometimes some low level change in their engine will change the behavior of how something we implemented works, so we have to fix our code to work with the new change, or modify the low level code to accomodate our change.

So it is true that we did a bunch of modifications to Doom3 AND we are merging to incorporate the latest Doom3 improvements. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive things.

So nothing has been replaced in the engine, only modified..? Or did i get anything wrong here..?

[Sayantan]

Tim Gerritsen said:
So it is true that we did a bunch of modifications to Doom3 AND we are merging to incorporate the latest Doom3 improvements. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive things.

I can be sure that you people "did" do modifications that deserves to be said well .... modifications, after seeing all the Prey media stuff.

And I also think that the 1.3 patch doesn't add anything "exclusive" which will make D3 engine licencees chuckle a lot. I assume those are for some minor low-level bugfixing only.

Am I right?

[Micki!]

Sayantan said:

And I also think that the 1.3 patch doesn't add anything "exclusive" which will make D3 engine licencees chuckle a lot. I assume those are for some minor low-level bugfixing only.

Am I right?

Maybe there are constant new updates which doesn't come with the patch's... That would be exclusive then...

[Kristian Joensen]

Yes exactly, there are continuous updates to the engine. Then ones in a while they bring the updates they have accumlated together and release them to the public as a patch.

[hell-angel]

Micki! said:

Maybe there are constant new updates which doesn't come with the patch's... That would be exclusive then...

I think so as well, I very mutch doubt that they will update existing doom 3 games with features the game does not use. patches are usually only bug fixes. Occasionally they incorperate new maps, small upgrades (optimizations and such) and maybe even new models.
But if for example portal tech was developed for the doom engine (I know it is created by HH but it is just for the example) then they will most likely not release that for the current doom 3 game as a patch but will release it as an engine upgrade to other developers of games.