Doom III is perhaps the most anticipated next generation title to be released. Some may question the wisdom of id Software's commitment to release what can only be described as the first real chance to take gaming development to the next level. This will be the engine that powers many of the new games that players have been waiting for, and these new games will finally be able to really push the hardware to the limits.

John Carmack has written and designed the engine technology that powers these games. John Carmack is often described as one of the best game engine designers that has ever been involved in the business. He is well respected in the industry and his .plan file is almost required reading. He continues to support the open source movement and insists that his code be released to ignite continued developments within the gaming development community. Today he delivered the keynote address at Quakecon 2002, but before we talk about some of the things he discussed, we'll first mention the presentation given by id Software. The company's entire Doom III team gave us a preview of what we can expect to see in Doom III. In addition, they also spent a great deal of time talking to us about the technology behind what we saw in the Doom III Theater demo.

We also were able to spend some time talking with Tim Willits, the Doom III project manager. Although, due to a prior commitment, he was only able to spend a very short time with us today answering our many questions, he promised to try to make time tomorrow to answer additional questions.

If you have never been to Quakecon, and you are a developer or someone who just has a question and wants the chance to talk to the developers behind the software, normally access to these folks isn't a problem. You can find the id developers all over the Quakecon event, and normally it is just as simple as walking up to them and starting a conversation. This unique flavor isn't lost on the attendees at Quakecon. At times things seem hurried or even a little unorganized, and the fact is that Quakecon has outgrown it's current location. When you get more people than you expect at this kind of event, you are bound to have problems. Attendance figures for Quakecon 2002 have not yet been released, but current estimates put the number at over 3800, perhaps closer to 4000.