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UnixMac · Jan 19, 2005, 05:17 PM

Any new news?

Has anyone been able to find out if it's going to be MP aware, any Altivec (don't I wish)? and will it address more than 1GB RAM so you can load entire levels into memory?

Also when can we expect at least a demo, if not the final version on Mac? Still March?

TheBadgerHunter · Jan 19, 2005, 07:42 PM

Ask on Insidemacgames.com forum. No one here is likely to know.

UnixMac · Jan 19, 2005, 11:11 PM

forgot all about them, thanks I'll try them...

sad that no one here would know though. This is the premier Mac message board.

reader50 · Jan 20, 2005, 03:52 AM

Glenda Adams has addressed some of this previously in the IMG forums, right after Doom3 Mac was announced. Doom is single-threaded, and it would require a six-month rewrite of the engine to make it MP-aware. That isn't going to happen, the game is taking long enough to port as it is. The best we might hope for is if they can separate the audio like in UT200x.

Without an engine rewrite, it can't make too much use of AltiVec either, though I'm sure they will try to code it in anywhere that it looks easy to add.

According to the Aspyr Game Agent, Doom3 is scheduled for a February release. I don't recall offhand if Glenda said anything about a demo. Porting houses have previously said that if there isn't a PC demo, there can't be a Mac demo. There is a PC Doom3 demo.

She did not address your RAM question, but the game requires 10.3.6 or higher, and 10.3.x can allocate a maximum of 2 (or 4?) GB to any one application. It won't be until 10.4 at the soonest, before we get true 64-bit memory allocation, where a single application can have more than 4 GB assigned. Hopefully, Apple won't push that off to 10.5

The specs have been decreased to a G4 or G5 at 1.5 GHz. Glenda was playing it on her PowerBook 1.5 without problems. Further, she says "There won't be anything to prevent you from trying to run it on slower G4's or 32MB video cards, but performance can go downhill pretty fast."

UnixMac · Jan 20, 2005, 10:28 AM

Originally posted by reader50:
Glenda Adams has addressed some of this previously in the IMG forums, right after Doom3 Mac was announced. Doom is single-threaded, and it would require a six-month rewrite of the engine to make it MP-aware. That isn't going to happen, the game is taking long enough to port as it is. The best we might hope for is if they can separate the audio like in UT200x.

Without an engine rewrite, it can't make too much use of AltiVec either, though I'm sure they will try to code it in anywhere that it looks easy to add.

According to the Aspyr Game Agent, Doom3 is scheduled for a February release. I don't recall offhand if Glenda said anything about a demo. Porting houses have previously said that if there isn't a PC demo, there can't be a Mac demo. There is a PC Doom3 demo.

She did not address your RAM question, but the game requires 10.3.6 or higher, and 10.3.x can allocate a maximum of 2 (or 4?) GB to any one application. It won't be until 10.4 at the soonest, before we get true 64-bit memory allocation, where a single application can have more than 4 GB assigned. Hopefully, Apple won't push that off to 10.5

The specs have been decreased to a G4 or G5 at 1.5 GHz. Glenda was playing it on her PowerBook 1.5 without problems. Further, she says "There won't be anything to prevent you from trying to run it on slower G4's or 32MB video cards, but performance can go downhill pretty fast."

Thanks, I went over there and read some of the same stuff you just posted. Another member had also replied with what she said. While I understand the business decision not to re-write the engine for MP, it is a major shame that id dropped that support in the first place, after all the Q3 engine was SMP aware and this is why Mac was able to compete with PC on frame rates in that particular case. now the Doom3 version on the top end PCs will smoke even a 2.5G5... oh well... Maybe next game.

sinebubble · Jan 24, 2005, 07:36 PM

Whatever happened to the glowing support for Doom 3 on Mac OS X by Carmack a couple of years ago? Seems like id's love for Mac OS X has shriveled. I'm surprised they are handing the conversion over to Adams instead of doing it themselves. Sheez!

I'm about 2/3's of the way through it on my PC. The game is amazingly scary. It's hard to sleep at night after playing it for an hour!

Olorin · Jan 26, 2005, 04:12 AM

I assume to get over 30fps a dual 2Ghz is going to be needed and at least a 9600?

UnixMac · Jan 26, 2005, 11:53 AM

Originally posted by sinebubble:
Whatever happened to the glowing support for Doom 3 on Mac OS X by Carmack a couple of years ago? Seems like id's love for Mac OS X has shriveled. I'm surprised they are handing the conversion over to Adams instead of doing it themselves. Sheez!

I'm about 2/3's of the way through it on my PC. The game is amazingly scary. It's hard to sleep at night after playing it for an hour!

nothing short of sad, and I blame Apple more than anyone else, as I am convinced that Apple doesn't put 100% into optimizing 3D on the Mac, and they don't make it easy for companies like id.

The Doom3 Engine is going to take advantage of NO Dual Processor G5 features... it's basically a wintel port over from a single CPU PC!!