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Games Entertainment

Multiplayer Test For Return To Castle Wolfenstein 375

Posted by Hemos from the get-'em-all dept.
Mandelbrot-5 writes "From the Activision Wolfenstein web site: "The multiplayer test is OUT! You can find it at www.castlewolfenstein.com, www.gamespy.com, as well as a few other places. Here is a list of other mirrors in case you're among the many who are fighting to grab it: FilePlanet 3D Gamers Blue's News Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer pits players in a team-based Axis versus Allies contest for front-line domination, where multiple player classes must mobilize and work together to accomplish mission objectives. The multiplayer element of Return to Castle Wolfenstein is currently in development by Nerve Software with assistance from id Software and Gray Matter Interactive.'"
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Multiplayer Test For Return To Castle Wolfenstein

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  • Oh no not again.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Papa Legba ( 192550 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @09:54PM (#2304372)
    Well their goes another two weeks at least of my life... Dammit just as I was kicking my DiabloII addiction.
  • I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D on a 386/SX with like 4MB of RAM. I was like 10 years old at the time (I'm only 16 now...), learning how to make .BAT files, about how hardware was assigned resources, command lines, and also how to frag Nazi's in a 3D setting.

    Nothing like bringing back memories.

    I only hope the graphics won't be as crappy in retrospect.
    • Whippersnapper....

      Why, in my day, we had to play Wolfenstein with an Etch-a-sketch.
    • Oh that's nothing. I remember getting Wolf 3D to run on a monochrome IBM 286 with either 2MB or 4MB of ram (I forget the exact amount).

      Either way, what impressed me was that I could get it running on that machine. I tried most of my favorite games on that machine with little success until I got W3D running (bear in mind I was 8 at the time, now I'm 17). I hope this new iteriation lives up to the legacy of Wolfenstein 3D.
    • Yeah, I remember the Olde Days too. It was 1981, the Apple ][ was hitting the scene with alot of the early games like Ultima, GORF, Star Trek (the char version), and a zillion Space Invader Clones. And then, Castle Wolfenstein, came along and we forgot every other game...

      Pretty soon the Computer Lab was full of guys playing Wolfenstein. You could hear Schweinhunt Schweinhunt Schweinhunt and the pop pop pop sound of the SS guy chasing the player... yes... those were the Good Olde Days (tm).

      God Bless Muse Software. Achtung! Kamerade! Gimmee yer Bullet Proof Vest and yer gun! heh heh
  • Of staying up all night and skipping the shower before school. The original kept me away from social gatherings, but now there is no excuse. Hook up the catheter and bring me my cooler, I'm going in! But only if it lives up the crack cocaine level of addiction of its predecessor

  • fast mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by jon_c ( 100593 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @10:05PM (#2304392) Homepage
    http://www.pcwholesalers.net/WolfMPTEST0915.exe

    everyone post more. this is the only good one icould find.

    • MOD THIS..... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Jubedgy ( 319420 )
      u....no wait, down! I don't want my download to slow down to a crawl...

      --Jubedgy
    • thanks for the link!! I'm getting 300k/s, much better than waiting 250 minutes for FilePlanets slow download :)
    • Server: 24.13.66.9, on port 21
      User: wolf
      Pass: wolf
    • you, sir, are a god among men!
    • you might want to try using The All Seeing Eye [udpsoft.com] to find a game.

      The in-game server list seems to be broken/hammered right now.

      -Jon
    • Internet2 users, try this one. ;)

      ftp://wolf:threedee@ashpool7.dhs.org/
    • I got it here:

      http://bb.earthquakers.org/WolfMPTEST0915.exe

      Pulled 130+K.

      I didn't find the game anything to get yer panties in a bunch about, though.
    • Getting 150 Kbytes per second on my DSL. Not bad considering this post is +5 and probably everyone is using it...
    • Taken from http://www.doom2000.nu/mirrors.txt

      Mirrors for RTCW test #1

      http://www.vidmaster.com/files/WolfMPTEST0915.ex e

      http://zeke.v1ru5.com/wolfmptest0915.exe

      http://www.teameuphoria.net/files/WolfMPTEST0915 .e xe

      http://www.mymtw.de/files/downloads/29/328_wolfm pt est0915.exe

      http://www.dailyrush.dk/files/demos/649/download /

      http://www.dailyfiles.dk/demos/WolfMPTEST0915.ex e

      http://wolf.redcoat.net/WolfMPTEST0915.exe

      ftp://ftp.ravingaming.com/rtcw/WolfMPTEST0915.ex e

      http://www.digitaledge.no/insomnia/files/WolfMPT ES T0915.exe (removed?)

      http://dtv157.dtv.dk/wolfmptest0915.exe

      http://91d8c8a60457ab87013f8c6b0d6f1f6e:DOWNLOAD @f tp.gamers.at/demos/WolfMPTEST0915.exe

      ftp://ftp.barrysworld.com/pub/games/othergames/d em os/WolfMPTEST0915.exe

      http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?file=69443 (registration needed)

      http://www.3dgamers.com/games/returnwolfenstein/

      http://www.bluesnews.com/files/rtcw/demos/wolfmp te st0915.shtml

      ftp://cs.vg.no/pub/misc/wolfmptest0915.exe

  • Remember the goold old days... (Score:3)

    by Ghoser777 ( 113623 ) <fahrenba@@@mac...com> on Saturday September 15, 2001 @10:07PM (#2304397) Homepage
    When my Appl IIgs didn't have a hardrive. I always had to boot off a floppy disk of some sort. Number Munchers was the closest thing I had to a violent game... I still have nightmares of troggles.

    And then there was Wolfenstein. Too bad I didn't find out about it until last year (thank you emulation.net). I could only imagine how great these graphics must have been back in the late 80s. That's when Mario brothers had great graphics (until my brother stuck a marshmello into my Nintendo on my b-day...). The game play was simple, but involving. Did anyone complain back then about bloatware games and crappy graphics? Heck no, everything was pretty well equal.

    But now we're half way between low n polygon 3D and high n polygon 3D, with stuff like FinalFantasy 7 being on the lower end, and Final Fantasy 9 on the higher end. If you played 8, you saw how crappy everybody looked; you could barely make out the characters (not to mention the crappy GF system, but that's another matter). 2D used to be good, and always getting better. When we went from good looking 2D to shoddy looking 3D, it really pissed me off. I couldn't figure out why everything looked so choppy all of a sudden (this was before I took geometry in high school).

    But the good old days will never be back... except through emulation. I hope multiplayer Wolfenstein gives us something to talk about, not just something to complain about.

    F-bacher
    • I still remember when I first recieved my first copy of Shareware Doom/Wolfenstein, I sucked horribly at both of them. But man they were cool for the day. I still remember trying to find all the Nazi's and not die. Man that was a challenge. I still remember trying to figure out how to connect to my friends computer many years later to play Quake. Man, where have the good ol days gone?
  • I remember playing the first Wolfenstein, and the second, and it was you against an entire castle, much less the bratwurst monopoly! Once you make it multiplayer, just change the name. Of course, they are probably trying to cash in on the name. Oh well, it will probably feature amazing graphics with ok gameplay, like most games have been the past 5 years or so.

  • linux test... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crazney ( 194622 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @10:10PM (#2304404) Homepage Journal
    for your informatrion, the LINUX version of the multiplayer test is currently in the THINKING ABOUT IT stage.. but the porter at ID, TTimo, has said to "hopefully expect on in a few days".. with the dedicated server to be out TONIGHT.

    here [linuxgames.com] is the source.. but i've also spoken to him in person on IRC to furthur confirm that he's been raising ideas of client ports.
    • There's a posting right under the announcment on linuxgames.com, and I quote:

      " WINE. Woo - sourceo - Sep 15 20:25:14 2001
      Woo. Under the latest version of WINE, I could run the install & test fairly comfortably, and since almost everything is in OpenGL, there weren't really any problems. Accelerated too."

      I'm gonna try it, but my hopes are not too high...
      • yep, it does.. i've been playing it for 1/2 an hour in wine.. except the sound is a bit screwed - it might be possible to fix that with --winver nt or win98..
      • Before you go and download it, remember that this only works if you dual-boot.

        I don't dual-boot, and it died looking for OpenGL. I tried installing OpenGL drivers and that failed miserably. Not that I was really expecting an OpenGL installation to work...

        Last time they released a Linux test first. I'm disappointed...
    • For Linux, I have: Quake 1,2,3, Soldier of Fortune, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Terminus, Myth 2, Heavy Gear 2, and numerous Quake expansion packs and add-on's such as Team Fortress for Quake.

      My linux system works so good now I am considering wiping that worthless waste of disk space and crappy games into the bit bucket forever. Last time I booted Windoze, it couldn't handle my usb mouse and so I plugged in the ps2 mouse. This changed my IRQ's and caused my ethernet card to go down. It took me over four hours of rebooting to get everything straightened out and after that hassle I haven't screwed with it since.

      Surf over to EB Games [ebgames.com] and do a search for linux they have a whole page of brand new full Loki titles for $9.95.

      Windows is frelling worthless. Never again!

    • Cool!! I look forward to the Linux Port (and to being able to try out the game). I will NOT be using a windoze machine to test it.. even tho windoze boxes do seem to make pretty good game consoles.
      • Cool!! I look forward to the Linux Port (and to being able to try out the game). I will NOT be using a windoze machine to test it..

        I couldn't if I wanted to, I don't have a Windows box. I wonder how many belong to the Linux-only club now? Maybe not too many games so far. I notice a lot more can dual boot but refuse to though.

  • Good Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ken@WearableTech ( 107340 )
    After 3 hours at 5k/s I went to http://www.wolfensteinx.com/dl.php?file=2 [wolfensteinx.com] and got 150k/s
  • Whoops! There goes Team Fortress II! Nice try, anyway, guys...

  • Slashdotted? (Score:3, Funny)

    by desideria ( 140436 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @10:20PM (#2304429)

    I keep getting the following apache error:

    Halt!

    Haus pass!

  • I've installed... No servers yet? I've got a Linux box colo'd at an ISP, if there was a dedicated Linux server available... Damn, I wanna play!

  • Well... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by James Foster ( 226728 )
    I just came out of a game of it and I'm disappointed. I guess its a test so a lot of the criticism is just because of that... but its VERY laggy. I had a ping of about 150 and it was verging on unplayable.
    It just doesn't feel good. It feels like a Quake 3 World War 2 mod with lots of latency added. Not an entirely new game. The flamethrower was impressive but not mindblowing. The rocket launcher and grenades are completely useless due to the lag (might be different for pings around 50... but 150 isn't all that high).
    Quake 3 was much better at handling lag, so since this is a multiplayer test hopefully any lag issues will be straightened out.
    For now, the DOD mod for Half-Life is a MUCH better WW2 fix. Wolfenstein's single player looks VERY impressive but the multiplayer test is quite disappointing. I suppose thats why they stress it's a TEST.

  • Hmm... (Score:1, Troll)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 )
    now we just have to wait for the Osama Bin Ladin skin to come out for the Nazi soldiers.
    • Was this supposed to be funny? I find it in extremely bad taste.

      • laughter is a way of helping ourselves cope with a situation that would otherwise drive us mad with grief and anger. that is not to say that we should not grieve, or be angry. but it is to say that laughter is an integral part of the healing process.

        i'm sorry if you feel the joke was in poor taste. i did think twice before posting it. but thank god we live in a country that allows us to respectfully disagree.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @11:18PM (#2304533)
      Unfortunately, most people wouldn't recognize the skin as just bin Ladin. Instead, they would think it was a regular Arab, and that will just exacerbate the problem of ignorant Americans thinking all Arabs and Muslims are terrorists.

      You really need to think hardware before you say such things.

      • Exactly. All of the jingos committing these crimes against American Muslims have never personally known a Muslim. Ignorance is a bad thing, and if any of these guys were actually introduced to your typical Muslim... they would realize that shooting threatening Muslims is nothing more than anti-semetic idiocy. I am glad that the FBI is tracking those jingos down and applying the harsh hate crimes laws against them.

        I am just worried that people are going to start noticing that each of these terrorists was male. I mean, what is it about males that makes them tend to do these terrorist acts? Will men all over the USA be attacked by jingo females? Will men's bathrooms and YMCAs be shot at? Well, it would make just about as much sense as attacking Muslims.

  • Warning! (Score:4, Informative)

    by James Foster ( 226728 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @10:40PM (#2304468)
    Gamespot have the WRONG version of the Wolfenstein test. Their version is an older version so you should download it from either Fileplanet [fileplanet.com], Bluesnews [bluesnews.com] or 3D Gamers [3dgamers.com].

  • NEED MORE MIRRORS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rackemup ( 160230 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @10:47PM (#2304474) Homepage
    Comeon folks.. anyone else have a mirror up... The folks at Activision apparently thought 5 mirrors was enough. Boy were they wrong. even Fileplanet has a 200+ minute wait. I'm getting about 30k from pcwholesalers.net .. guess that'll do

  • MIRROR OC12 FAST :) (Score:4, Informative)

    by ender- ( 42944 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @11:01PM (#2304497) Homepage Journal
    Here is a mirror with 100Mbit connection.

    http://www.spack.nu/wolf/WolfMPTEST0915.exe [spack.nu]


    I wish my server the best...


    ender

  • I got a p200 and a g4 400...Uhhh, let's see...mac port should be my first question.

    is there a mac port?

    Moose.

    I think I broke my...ooooo shiney object!!!

    • There's buzz about the OS X version. Apparently, it's done, just waiting to be set free, according to Graeme Devine:


      " Mac stuff.
      I've been playing the WolfMP test natively under Mac OS X. I've also got the OS X installer for WolfMP all wrapped up and standing by. "


      Came from here:
      http://www.webdog.org/plans/279/
  • I have read about a Linux Client/Server, anyone know when? Didn't ID port it's previous games to Unix flavors FIRST? I hope this isn't a new habit.. (porting to windows first).
  • where the linux version? I loved that game and infact i had a machine setup just to play it until a few months ago. That game is one of the reasons i love to play with computers! it it what started a new genre (for the most part), and i will never forget that game. I would love to play it again but i dont have a windows machine and this is one thing i would go out and spend money on for a linux version. most games i just dont bother to play because they arent worth it, but i want this one! ya hear me loki?

    sorry, i've had a few too many mcewan's scotch ales tonite.. mmmmmm beer...

  • blatant dod rip off (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it sucks... I played for about 30 minutes, the weapons are just like DoD but the phsyics are the same as q3 dm

    the UI is rather nice(menus and whatnot), but they have a long way to go on this to remove that total ass wreakage
  • There is a lot of potential here, but this game is jumpy, even with my DSL and low ping times. Of course they went for the "Lots of Dimly Lit Rooms" map - it's hard to tell freind from foe, unless you're right on top of them. I'm sure there is some setting that will put little icons of the team floating above the avatars, but the game was so jumpy, I lost interest.
    • The jumpiness may just be inadequate hardware on your part. I'm running it on a 384Kbps up/down DSL line, with a 1.44GHz AMD proc, GeForce 2 Ultra, and 512MB DDR RAM and (not surprisingly) the game is smooth as silk. I love it.
  • It won't even start on my PC, crashes out, looks like it's trying to find a 3dfx(!!!) card. Any fixes? I'm on XP which may be part of the problem, but I can run q3a....

  • System Requirements (Score:3, Insightful)

    by doorbot.com ( 184378 ) on Saturday September 15, 2001 @11:35PM (#2304578) Journal
    From the read me:


    * Windows® 98/ME/2000/NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 3) OS
    * 100% Windows 98/ME/2000/NT 4.0 compatible system (including all 32bit drivers)
    * Intel Pentium® II 500Mhz processor or better
    * 128 MB RAM
    * 16 MB video card
    * Microsoft® Direct X® 8.0a (not included)
    * 70 MB free hard disk space for game files
    * 100 MB free hard disk space for swap files
    * 100% fully OpenGL® compliant 3-D video card
    * For internet play, 100% Windows 95/98/ME/2000/NT 4.0 compatible 56.6k modem or better internet connection. 56.6k modem play is not recommended for games with more than 8 players total; broadband players should be able to handle up to 32 depending on their connection with the server on which they're playing.


    Geeze, I'm still gaming on a Celeron 400 with Voodoo 3 3000. It's great for Unreal Tournament at 800 x 600, but I think RtCW is going to kill my system.

    Will this be the next "big game" that will force users (er, gamers) to upgrade in order to bathe in it's FPS glory?
    • An update for those interested...

      I'm still gaming on a Celeron 400 with Voodoo 3 3000.

      I setup a multiplayer game and ran around trying out the weapons and so on, and everything was fine and dandy. I do have 320 Megs of RAM so that keeps swapping to a minimum.

      Anyways, I think we all know that the manufacturer minimum systems are always too high. But for those still considering trying RtCW, it ran fine on my system...

      The final animated (movie) sequence when you quit looks really nice, I just hope some servers with some nice bandwith pop up soon... I'm itching to try a 32 player game.

      Also, as a soldier you can select other weapons, after selecting your class you can scroll the weapon list in the bottom of that "window" to get to cool things like the minigun or the flamethrower (which looks nice and pretty).
    • Will this be the next "big game" that will force users (er, gamers) to upgrade

      No, leave that for Doom3 and Quake4 (both based on the new Doom engine). That is promising to make ALL current systems look death-defyingly shittly. And yes, that does include the Geforce3 owners of this world, but quite possibly not the next generation Radeon (that you can't buy yet).

      What RTCW is going to do is make me feel less stupid for buying a 1GHz Athlon a couple of weeks back. I mean, 150fps in Q3, do I need it? No. Am I going to need it for RTCW? Quite possibly.

      Right, I'm off home, guess what I started downloading before I came to work?

      Dave :)
    • 30 player multiplayer was fine at 640 x 480 playing on a pretty fast server (I'm on DSL here). I didn't bother to up the resolution, since everything was fine and I was having fun. So, it looks like my trusty Voodoo 3 manages to eek out another week of existence.

      It was definitely more fun than some of the other FPS games I've played online, and I'll probably end up purchasing the final version. Playing with newbies/1337 TKers never really gives you the full experience of an online FPS though...
    • But also from the readme:

      Players should also understand that the system requirements for this Multiplayer TEST are higher and different than what we anticipate for the retail version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

      and:

      The use of a flamethrower can impact the performance of the game at this time. If more than 2 players per team use the flamethrower at the same time, players may experience various performance issues.

    • The test runs fine on my PIII 500 w/ 8 MB Savage4 card that came with the computer. Just turn off all the graphics options and set it to 640x480, it will run fine. It's quite playable, and it looks better with all the options off than some other games.
  • Got mine off FilePlanet ~400KB/sec, so just test each one.

    Too bad it keeps LOCKING UP on my computer, and I am unable to play. *Sigh* I guess I could always study...
  • Since a lot of people haven't figured out that you shouldn't shoot your own team mates, :-/ I wish that when a team mate killed you _they_ went to limbo and you respawned right away. Or just let you respawn without any wait time.

    As it is, the single player game should be awesome.

  • Some Info (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As for a Linux version, the dedicated server should be released soon, but the client is yet to be done. I would guess there might not be a Linux test, but the final version is to have a Linux client.

    If it seems really laggy, it's because very few dedicated servers have been set up. Although your ping may be low, the server computer is probably in listen mode, so the performance drops as the person plays. Within a few days, there should be a nice crop of dedicated servers.
  • I was cruising around and wandered into a Gateway country today. There was one of them demo rooms with the TV connected to a P3 930MHz with a GeForce2 Ultra. So there was the 3D Mark 2k1 icon on the screen so I bust it open and run the demo. I was floored by the graphics just in that demo. The first part of the demo with the statue in the rain I thought was nice looking, until I saw the forest scene with the trees and water. On the television you were hard pressed to tell that 1) it was computer generated and 2)it was being done in realtime. Then came the Matrix movie towards the end. That was just a badass fucking demo. When I first played Q3A I thought the graphics were nice until I got a GF2MX and realized the graphics were actually a little awe inspiring. UT was the same way. I'm fixing my game box so I'm not going to bother getting RCW yet but I'm anxious to play it. When the new Doom comes out I can only hope it is as much of an improvement as Q3A was over Q1. If you want a bit of eye candy for Windows the new 3DMark demo is actually really sweet looking. I think it's 3D demos are alot better than nVidia's. Too bad I can't make those trees my screen saver.
    • Thats nothing. The Geforce 3s run that tree/forest/water scene (which is prerendered in that demo) realtime with more detail at a higher resolution. We raided the nvidia office at E3 just to be able to see it. talk about an experience. oh man, that and the pixel shader benchmark were incredible.

      If you ever get the chance definatly run 3dMark2k1 on a gf3. its amazing.

  • It's essentially very like a UT "assault" map, with an allied force storming up a beach into an axis fortress. There are three alied objectives.

    Teamplay is like teamfortress classic - both sides can have ammo-dudes and medic-dudes (and there's no ammo or health packs in the map at all).

    Defenders (axis) can use fixed (infinite-ammo) machine guns and can summon airstrikes. Allies have to blast their way past barbed wire, concrete walls and lots of angry Germans :)

    Graphics are nice, shows its Quake3arena engine roots a lot. Player graphics are good, but it's hard to tell the two sides apart in the heat of battle (deliberately, I'm sure).

    Ammo is very limited, and damage-model is more like counterstrike than Q3/UT (i.e. a couple of hits to kill). I can't tell if there is area-specific damage (headshots etc.).

    I got pings of around 150 on my DSL connection, but laggier (and less consistent) performance than Q3 or UT with the same ping - I guess that's why they're doing a network-only test :)

    Really the only thing I didn't like much was the respawning thing - that appears to be done in waves - if you take a mortal wound (i.e. get shot a lot) you have to wait 15 secs or so for a friendly medic, who can bring you back. If you miss that, you have to hang out 15-40 seconds for the next "wave" of reenforcements, at which time you respawn. That's a pretty good and logical idea (it's frustrating enough to discourage you from quake-style ramboism, but not as final as counterstrike's way of things) but it seems you have to "accept" your current settings (character-class and main weapon) while in that "limbo" state - I got messed up in the menus there a couple of times and missed the next wave, and so had to sit it out until the next wave (which didn't seem so logical).

    So, to summarise, looks pretty interesting for a mere test version. Naturally, there's some bugs to fix and some polishing to do for a real game, but it certainly looks promising.

    One word of warning to those of you with slower connections - I'm not sure how worthwhile this is for you to download, unless you feel very motivated to help the developers - there isn't that much life in the single map, so you might get bored. Still, if the DSL performance is sticky, I'd imagine the modem performance is really sticky, and I'm sure the developers will want lots of innocent modem subjects for their twisted networking experiments.

    • You don't have to wait for a medic and then wait for the timer to run out. Just hit your jump key and you'll pop into limbo right away. Most of the time it will only be a 10-15 second total timeout period. You can also change your class when in limbo. If you are in a follow person mode hit 'm' (it says right on the screen what to do!). Then pick what you want. Usually as Allies I start as an engineer and high tail it to one of the blast walls. Set my detonator then if I die I come back as a soldier and go guard the bomb till it pops. If I hear a lot of people dieing while in limbo I flip over to medic and pop in as one of that. Its actually very easy, just read the screen.

  • RtCW's potential goodness? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by asteinberg ( 521580 ) <ari@steinberg.stanford@edu> on Sunday September 16, 2001 @01:47AM (#2304848) Homepage
    Before proceeding I need to point out that I haven't downloaded this test yet, nor have I really read a whole lot about the game. For those that have downloaded the test, I'd also encourage you to keep in mind that this is a TEST and not a finished product. Now having said that I'd like to be hypocritical and criticize where I fear RtCW and some other shooters of its kind are headed (please feel free to disagree - I'd be interested to hear how others feel about this).

    Personally, I don't see a lot of potential for games like RtCW, and for that matter much of the future lineup of id-endorsed games (which now includes Quake IV as well as Doom 3) and a large part of the FPS genre as a whole (I'm singling out the id games mainly because they have a lot of publicity and they are the first to come to mind). I think these games might not be taking the genre in the right direction. Clearly there is a lot of interest in team-focused multiplayer shooters, like Counterstrike and Team Fortress, and I definitely see a lot of room for growth there, but I want to focus on pure first person shooters - the direct offspring of Doom and Quake. (Of course, RtCW has team-based multiplayer, but AFAIK it's pretty much just team DM rather than more heavy-duty TF type stuff - correct me if I'm wrong, in which case I'm sorry but I think my comments will still apply to other games..)

    For most new games of any kind to succeed, they need some kind of hook - a reason to make me stop playing whatever game I'm currently playing and move on to the next of its kind. Graphics have of course been a big one in the past, as have innovative story-telling techniques as found in Half-Life (which I have problems with as well but I won't get into those). Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament had their focus on deathmatch at its purest, while Max Payne (though not first person I would categorize it with these games) has a terrific story. However, I fear that games like RtCW, Doom 3, and Quake IV are going to rely entirely on the success of their prequels, without offering anything new to the genre. As I see it, there is no reason to buy a traditional FPS for deathmatch anymore - the Quake series and Unreal Tournament were the pinnacle of deathmatch, with graphics far beyond the level needed (in making Quake 3 Carmack emphasized that deathmatch games have more of an emphasis on speed and less on magnificent visuals). I see no areas left to improve, short of moving on to other styles of play. That leaves a compelling single player experience as the main reason to buy a new traditional FPS, and I fear that these new games might end up being the same shoot-anything-that-moves and I-don't-give-a-shit storyline found in the early games of the genre. Though I loved Wolfenstein and Doom, playing the same game again with prettier graphics would not be very fun.

    I think the best way for the genre to move forward would be to leave pure deathmatch to Q3A/UT. Multiplayer games will have to offer a unique style of gameplay, most likely along the lines of Team Fortress in order to succeed, while singleplayer shooters should consider themselves to be interactive action movies. I can imagine in the future developers releasing new single player shoooters two to three times a year, with minimal engine enhancements and shorter (under 10 hours of gameplay) but more interesting storylines, costing more in the range of $10-20 than $40-50. Gamers can buy the game, play through it in a few weeks, enjoy the story and the action, and move on to the next one. While Max Payne is the first step in this direction, I fear that RtCW, Doom 3, and Quake IV will be a few steps backward. Hopefully id, Raven, and all the other great FPS developers will prove me wrong.
    • Well I really wasn't too excited about this - "just another FPS" - but the one level in the multiplayer test is extremely well done. While certainly not enough to please the ardent history fan, the game does a very good job of capturing a WW2 style normandy-style infantry beach storming. The weapons are modeled in a way appropriate to the period (i.e. the guns overheat, the sniper rifle has a huge recoil) and the terrain is such that it forces real tactics (i.e. if you just run up to the door, you'll get mowed down by the enemy's machine-gun emplacements).

  • You Can Play As The Nazis? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GeekLife.com ( 84577 ) on Sunday September 16, 2001 @02:02AM (#2304874) Homepage
    That worries me a little. Anyone else have views on this?
  • Just to let everybody know, there is a bug reporting forum available online here [forumplanet.com], just in case you come across a few of those pesky critters.

    Copy and paste: http://www.forumplanet.com/wolfenstein/forum.asp?f id=3596
  • Ironically, it doesn't work under XP for the lack of OpenGL support. Microsoft doesn't include much if any gl support in the 'WDM' drivers and it is supposedly up to vendors to provide anything.

    oh well..
  • Another mirror [cmu.edu] at http://fnord.dws.acs.cmu.edu/rtcw/

    I guess I have to add something to make the lameness filter happy. First time I've ever hit it. How annoying.

  • Could anyone who downloaded the EXE from an official site please post an SHA1 or MD5 hash of it? I am downloaded from one of the very much appreciated high speed mirrors, however I am prone to paranoia and would like to know that it's 100% original. Thank you.

    • The MD5 hash of the file I downloaded (which installed the game just fine and, to my knowledge, did not come with any viruses attached) is:

      d003dc5902c1f489a6446fa17f52005c

      Enjoy! This game really rocks.

  • I'm downloading it from ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/wolf/linux/ [idsoftware.com].

    Happy downloading. I can't post a mirror right now, but I'm sure someone will soon :).

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