Will Peer To Peer Kill Doom 3 and Quake 4 Multi-Player?

Peer to peer means - no mid-game join, everyone has to be on at the sametime, play at the sametime, if you disconnect - forget it, you can't back in - it's going to kill clan matches (if anyone disconnects), jumping on and off servers for DM, etc. Imagine disconnecting and trying to get back into a game, or wanting to spectate a possible cheater - won't happen with peer to peer.

And yes, it will be peer to peer.

Proof:

"GameSpy: John also mentioned the basic way people would connect to games -- you'll have to go in all together as opposed to jumping on and off servers. Is that something that could change over time?

Tim Willits: That is actually more difficult to change. Due to the math and the physics and the way the calculations of the underlying code work, that would be the most conducive way of doing it.

However, that also opens up a lot of great possibilities for good front ends, where people can connect, chat, do voting, and then launch. If you look at Warcraft and Command & Conquer, these are popular multiplayer games that have that same launch system. People can obviously quit out at any time, but they won't be able to connect in. We'll have to be a little creative with our front end launchers and our servers ... but all that stuff will be worked out.

GameSpy: And all this applies to Quake 4 as well?

Tim Willits: Yes"

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/august02/quakecon2002/id/

why won't you be able to spectate? I don't see that anywhere. Also how often do you disconnect really? and if a whole bunch of people disconnect then just restart the round and everyone is back in. Yes people will have to adapt but it isn't the apocolypse.

It is kind of like the apocalypse. Certainly one of the end signs.

My concerns are that the huge irc community-with all the quake server finders and such -

The basic way the more competetive circles run- the way things are done now is someone posts and ip for a server and people join -then pick teams and the game begins- if someone drops-then someone else joins and they continue- and also just scanning servers with the all seeing eye or kali or arena scout and just joining a game in progress on a pub server where theres 10 on 10 ctf going on- you just can't get rid of those multiplayer aspects without losing some of your key audience and support.

The issue is 1- we better be able to play with more than 4 people and we better be able to get shoutcast/gtv/refs &  spectators and teamates -when if they happen to drop for any reason they should be able to get back on.

Even Mplayer had those features- seemeplayme.com and gamespy all do- why would Id or Raven make that kind of mistake by limiting the multiplayer function to peer to peer and when you drop thats it you have to wait for the round to be over or whatever?

My hope is that the multiplayer features will be better then now and not go backwards in time- talk about isolation from truly being able to have freedom to move in and out of games would suck way too much.

We have kept Quake III going for all these years now in pubs and in serious competition where the spectators are finally being able to watch and listen to your favorite game and hear it shoutcasted, just like real sports.

At the least they should make 1 single player version and 1 multiplayer version. Hope for the best and if they let us down screw em', they don't need our money anyway.

there is no way to make the Doom 3 engine server client, It has to be p2p.

It is possibleto modify the Engine for normal MP Gaming. The best example for it is the unannounced MMORPG that Nerve Software current develope for ID.

i dont care what they have to do, quake AND doom should have a solid multiplayer.  its what made the game so popular to begin with.  the quake 3 demo was massively played because of its multiplayer capabilities. they forget that games like wc3 are rts and have much less dropouts than fps and even if wc3 has more, the gameplay is totally different.  making 4 player compatible multiplayer would be a very unwise decision because it would destroy any type of match gameplay. maybe for co-op it would work but not for ctf or tdm.

well there it is, in raven's own words.   Quake will be Dead.  Thanks raven, appreciate it.  Go #### up another game series while youre at it, maybe get in on blizzard and #### up wc4