What happened to Episodes?
 

Well I noticed this a while back, what happened to Episodeds? That was one of my fav factors of dos games. Wolf 3d had 6!, doom had 4, and Duke 3d had 4!

3D games became shorter. Doom 3 had something like 30+ levels in it, a modern day 3D shooter is lucky to get 15. Too be honest I can't be upset about it. I only like the first chapters of most 3D shooters, then I get boored with the repetitivity of things.
Besides the game element of playing in different environments is still there. Soldier of Fortune for instance takes place all around the world. But these are usually only one or two levels not enough to call it a "Chapter".

wat u mean doom 3 *had* 30 lvls, it hasnt even come out yet ( 50,50)

The biggest 3D shooter ever were Dark Forces 2... As i remember at least. It was really huge

Doom 3 has 13 levels last I heard. It's barely a game at all and that is intentional. Doom 3 has not been made to make a profit. Not that it's charity their doing it for but they hope to make a lot of money out of the liscence selling for the Doom3 engine, and with reason. The Doom3 engine looks better then the Half Life 2 one. The physics are different I think but the looks are better.

The only bad thing is that it will require a monster PC to be able to run :)

Yeah but somehow I think it will be worth it. It looks jawdroppingly good and seems to have a wonderfully ominous atmosphere.

Looking at the pictures of Doom 3 i can't help it but think at what point the computer graphics were 20 years ago... and at what point they will be in 20 years from now.... Propably you will not be able to tell the difference between real life and graphics :)

heh, will computers as we know it today still exist in 20 years?

perhaps computer and screen will mold together into a tiny box prjecting 3d images.
Games will probably be downloaded, or if you are still able to buy games, you will be using small plugs (date will be contained inside the plug) and you just have to insert it into the small computer-box (it will ofcoarse have a package... so you can't loose it)

may sound strange now but if you remember that it wasn't such a long time ago that computers were still huge boxes and an even shorter time ago that computers were only able to contain a few textfiles.

Ofcoarse Doom 3 will be a techdemo (like most 3dshooters these days) but it'll be sweet... but it will have a replay-value of bubblewrap (its fun, but once you've popped the last bubble... its over)

This will not happen in the next twenty years but our desktop computer will be integrated into our home and we will have a PDA type computer with (video)phone and foldable keyboard with us when we go out. The screen will be about 4-7" and it will be no thicker as one centimeter. We will have full internet acces where ever we go and it will be a huge bandwidth. We will be able to shop at the supermarket when we are commuting and the shopping will bedelivered in the evening when we get home.

So much for my chrystal ball. I think it broke now.