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Official Doom 3 Topic. (ALL POSTS ON THE GAME HERE)

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Kon Tiki

Banned
zowned.jpg


A nice pic of how well animated the models are.

Edit: lol about the pic, 6AA 16AF High Quality, 9600xt Overclocked to 573/344.

I do not play like with 6aa lol.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Society said:
Low? lol Thats 6aa 16af, all setting to high picture. The best my card (more like the game) can do..

That shot seems to be missing detail, though. The image quality is fine (though AA does not actually work properly with Halo...so it is a bit jaggy), but the actual content of the shot doesn't look correct...

You must have some details turned down...
 

Kon Tiki

Banned
dark10x said:
That shot seems to be missing detail, though. The image quality is fine (though AA does not actually work properly with Halo...so it is a bit jaggy), but the actual content of the shot doesn't look correct...

You must have some details turned down...

Bumbmapping? Unless that does not work on my card.... All the menu settings were on high. :( I seriously hope something is missing. lol
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
It should work just fine on that card...

However, while I don't have the PC version handy, I did load up the XBOX version and that shot is missing a lot of lighting detail. The lighting looks almost completely wrong...

Probably a fault of the port, though...
 

border

Member
This is how it looks on my PC. Maybe you have shadows or specular lighting turned off? When I saw the screenshot earlier I thought that it was missing texture detail for sure, but it doesn't look like that is the problem.


halo.jpg
 

Kon Tiki

Banned
Are those ingame options? Hardware options? Hidden options?

I'd really like to play it properly. I played multiplayer like that all the time. lol :(

Edit: Seems like it is enabled. I uninstalled Halo, I just have the CE version now, so thats all I could grab atm.
 
Wooo! I played it last night until 4am! On Medium settings with 1024 res and it ran above 30fps. First off I must say I think some people are being way too hard on this game. It is brilliant. Between a handful of my friends we got pretty far into the game and we loved every fucking minute of it.

I have to say though, that those who said this game does not resemble Doom 1 or 2 are full of it. My close friend and I were avid Doom players growing up and Doom 3 follows the same formula almost flawlessly. For example, grab the armor and the walls go up around you revealing zombies, imps and gunners. Another example is you walk into a lit room only to have the lights go out followed by enemies rushing you. The game is full of the exact same conventions found in previous Doom titles. And the PDA entries are fucking brilliant. Very well acted and the medical journals are very accurate in many ways (in tone and approach). We had five to six guys in the room at all times watching the game, and it seems every three minutes or so the room lit up with girly screams. And this went on for hours and hours! The game continually surprised me with its wonderful production value and attention to detail. Plus the pacing was spot on and never frustrating or a drag. We never had to truly backtrack, and on a few occassions when we did, everything that we had experience before was completely different. The enemies, while dumb as a stump, are great fun and the game starts to test your ability later on when they throw three pinks, a few imps and some zombies at you in one room. It is classic Doom through-and-through. It's going to be hard waiting for the Xbox version, but after spending this much time with Doom I can safely say it was one of the greatest gaming experiences of my lifetime. Truly a contender of GOTY in my opinion. And that's after a good seven or eight hours with it in complete darkness, on high difficulty with the sound cranked. Brilliant design. This is what an FPS should be. It's all about atmosphere and presentation and this game excelled in just that.
 

border

Member
What Doom 3 are you playing? I don't ever recall facing against 3 pinky dogs at one time. Whenever one of those is around there's hardly any other enemies to be found. For some reason they stop using the demon dogs as enemies about halfway through the game -- I don't really understand why because they are actually one of the more challenging and vicious enemies. Instead they never let up with the imps, and those guys are a real pushover.

There are occaisional throwbacks to the earlier Doom games. Doom 3 does have "monster closets" (areas where enemies just stand around waiting for a scripted event to reveal them) and it does have dark areas, but it certainly does not follow its predecessors' formula "almost flawlessly". Level design is entirely different, and enemy counts are very low. For every "Doom convention" that is observed, several are broken. Instead of facing 10 imps at once as you would in Doom 2, 10 imps will teleport in 2 at a time so you are never facing off against a bunch of guys. Check earlier posts for further elaboration and Doom 2 comparison ;)
 
border said:
What Doom 3 are you playing? I don't ever recall facing against 3 pinky dogs at one time. Whenever one of those is around there's hardly any other enemies to be found. For some reason they stop using the demon dogs as enemies about halfway through the game -- I don't really understand why because they are actually one of the more challenging and vicious enemies. Instead they never let up with the imps, and those guys are a real pushover.

There are occaisional throwbacks to the earlier Doom games. Doom 3 does have "monster closets" (areas where enemies just stand around waiting for a scripted event to reveal them) and it does have dark areas, but it certainly does not follow its predecessors' formula "almost flawlessly". Level design is entirely different, and enemy counts are very low. For every "Doom convention" that is observed, several are broken. Instead of facing 10 imps at once as you would in Doom 2, 10 imps will teleport in 2 at a time so you are never facing off against a bunch of guys. Check earlier posts for further elaboration and Doom 2 comparison ;)

I'm going on what I observed first-hand last night. And for the record I wasn't drinking. First off I vividly remember encountering three pinkys at once. It was in the area where you had the little robot buddy helping out (I believe the second time you encounter him). And after I defeated the pinkys all hell broke loose and shit just started teleporting in like mad. If I remember correctly it was towards the end of the level. I'm sorry I can't remember the specific mission but I wasn't keeping track. It was great fun.

And if you recall Doom 1 and 2 were all about those dark corridors filled with enemies you couldn't see. And occassionally you catch of glimpse of a pinky in a single shaft of light as he is hurling towards you. Doom 3 recreates those moments exactly, only with the modern production value you'd expect from an FPS. I really do think people are being overly critical of the game. I had more than a few "non-gamers" in the room last night, and after seeing Doom 3 they were actually considered buying a PC (lots of Mac owners) just for this game. It was one of the most fightening experiences I've had since Silent Hill 2. It's been a long while since I've played a single player game where the grin on my face was so big it hurt.
 

TekunoRobby

Tag of Excellence
Border, dark10x, I installed the Doom Collection yesterday on my PC with all the model/texture upgrades. I am honestly blown away, it feels like a modern FPS with all the control tweaks and upgrades. I am having such a blast, thanks for the reminder.
 
TekunoRobby said:
Border, dark10x, I installed the Doom Collection yesterday on my PC with all the model/texture upgrades. I am honestly blown away, it feels like a modern FPS with all the control tweaks and upgrades. I am having such a blast, thanks for the reminder.

I'd love to see something of that nature come to the DS. Or at least a port of Doom 64 with some similar upgrades (especially the character models).
 

chespace

It's not actually trolling if you don't admit it
i follow this thread with great interest and thought i'd just post to say i concur with evilromero on his doom 3 observations. i'm not super far in the game so far (on deadline and married) -- i think i'm at alpha labs 2 -- but i'm having a blast. i remember cutting lectures to download the doom shareware .wad the morning it was released back in december 1993. heck, i even remember when i first discovered doom on usenet a year before the game was released...back when the guys from id would troll c.s.i.p.g.action for suggestions on deathmatch.

anyway, it's been a fun 10 years of gaming leading up to doom 3. i'm pretty pleased with the anniversary.

----

http://chespace.1up.com
 

border

Member
evilromero said:
And if you recall Doom 1 and 2 were all about those dark corridors filled with enemies you couldn't see. And occassionally you catch of glimpse of a pinky in a single shaft of light as he is hurling towards you. Doom 3 recreates those moments exactly, only with the modern production value you'd expect from an FPS.
That's fine, I'm just saying that id has carried elements like that forward, but left a lot of other distinctive things completely behind.

The spirit of Doom was as much in frenetic action and ingenious level design as it was about dimly lit monsters and corridors. I can't really see it as an "almost flawless" emulation of the earlier games, because it's an entirely different animal altogether. I don't think it's a matter of being "overly critical" because obviously a person may or may not like the changes, but the changes are there nonetheless.
 
TekunoRobby said:
Well I'm not experienced with the Doom 3 engine but I think I understand it enough to explain it. The flashlight's shadow calculation renderer is completely seperate than the realtime shadowing engine used in the rest of the game. The flashlight doesn't produce a real shadow that is cast over other objects but creates a reasonable facsimilie.

Essentially the flashlight renderer instructs the object(s) it's being shone on to extrude a semi-transparant polygonal mesh that acts as a shadow. It's actually wholly connected to the object and only extends a short distance away, hence why it appears strange. The renderer takes it a step foward and calculates the adequate distortions to the mesh depending on the location of the background objects and the angle you view it. It's certainly not perfect but if you don't specifically look for it (or don't have an eye for graphical techniques) it will most likely escape your notice.

While I can't sit down and discertain the benefits of this method over traditional realtime shadows but I'll go ahead and assume it's an ample enough benefit (ie: the framerate stays stable whenever the flashlight is used) to provide a less convincing result.

I hope I've been atleast somewhat helpful with my ignorant assesment.

EDIT: I'm glad my configs helped you out Shompola!


No, it really does make a shadow. The reason it doesn't look natural is because none of the light "bleeds" the way it would in real life. IE, anything that is in the shadow of the flashlight looks exactly the same as it would if no flashlight were shining at it at all.

The reason it looks bizarre compared to other shadows, is typically you only use your flashlight in the extreme dark. That's also where such a lack of "bouncy lighting" would be most obvious.
 

pestul

Member
Huge performance increase confirmed on Radeon 9800 Pro @ 1024x768 w/2xAniso. 4-5fps in timedemo and almost 10-12fps in game. :O
 

marsomega

Member
border said:
What Doom 3 are you playing? I don't ever recall facing against 3 pinky dogs at one time. Whenever one of those is around there's hardly any other enemies to be found. For some reason they stop using the demon dogs as enemies about halfway through the game -- I don't really understand why because they are actually one of the more challenging and vicious enemies. Instead they never let up with the imps, and those guys are a real pushover.

There are occaisional throwbacks to the earlier Doom games. Doom 3 does have "monster closets" (areas where enemies just stand around waiting for a scripted event to reveal them) and it does have dark areas, but it certainly does not follow its predecessors' formula "almost flawlessly". Level design is entirely different, and enemy counts are very low. For every "Doom convention" that is observed, several are broken. Instead of facing 10 imps at once as you would in Doom 2, 10 imps will teleport in 2 at a time so you are never facing off against a bunch of guys. Check earlier posts for further elaboration and Doom 2 comparison ;)

I've also encountered 3 pinky's at once. Two in the front and one from the rear. And I'm definately sure I've had at least one or two clashes with 3 or 4 enemies at once with a pinky included. Speaking of which I just remebered another place where I faced off three. One specific one was where you see its face in red in a dark corner. Only when you attack it another one gets you from the back with another running in from the door you just came from. I'm pretty sure he's definately had to take on 3 pinky's at least once.
 

chespace

It's not actually trolling if you don't admit it
I just faced three pinky's at the end of Alpha Labs section 2.

Fucking intense. I took down two with grenades. The last one with a shotgun, but not before he took a huge chunk outta me. :(

----

http://chespace.1up.com
 

marsomega

Member
chespace said:
I just faced three pinky's at the end of Alpha Labs section 2.

Fucking intense. I took down two with grenades. The last one with a shotgun, but not before he took a huge chunk outta me. :(

----

http://chespace.1up.com


LOL, I thought the enemies didn't go into the exit elevators (that ends the level and takes you to another level). Pinky proved me so wrong. Stuck his foot in, doors opened, and he shredded me up good.

Is anyone getting major slowdowns in the Delta 2 labs? Af every door I get nasty slowdown. In fact, the door doens't open, I just hear it open, then 4-5 seconds later it comes back at around 5 FPS and goes back to normal 5 seconds later. I've been playing at the same settings from the start and I've unzipped the pk files.
 

AirBrian

Member
OK, I know it's already been said, but:

When you walk into the bathroom and look into the mirror and it flashes to a picture of you in Hell...man that scared the shit out of me. Then you walk out of the bathroom and there's some creature RIGHT AT THE DOOR!!!

I love this game.

BTW, I bought 512 MB of RAM today and I really noticed a difference. I went from low @ 640x480 to low @ 800x600 and even medium @ 640x480 was pretty smooth. Not bad for $65 -- now I just gotta upgrade the crappy MX440. Hopefully there are some good sales tomorrow. :D

AMD 3200+
1 GB RAM
MX 440
 
I think you guys are forgetting that we are all probably playing on different difficulty levels. I'm on a recruit game right now and I just entered Sector 3 of the Alphalabs and I didn't encounter a single pinky near the end of Sector 2. I remember encountering a lot of spiders, imps, and those two-headed things. And a lot of shotgun/AR zombies. Didn't see a pinky in that whole Sector though I don't think. I guess a lot of what you see must be affected by the difficulty you decided to try.

Anyone know if you can somehow use a gamepad for this game instead of mouse/keyboard? Obviously I've gotten this far (haven't died once yet) but I have a pad that resembles a dual-shock that I'd love to try for Doom 3. Only thing is I've looked all over the menus and can't find an option for change it. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough or in the right place??
 

SlickWilly223

Time ta STEP IT UP
I just got my x800 in. I'm playing the game on 1024x768 at High Detail, it plays great. Well I know I'm going to sound like a pansy, but I had to just quit the game. It's 2:14 to the AM right now, I have my headset on full volume, pitch black in this room, and I have all my doors closed (just like ID suggested ;)), and now I'm scared shitless.



Spoilers, sort of.





Here I am, with 10 health. I was scared as it was from all the spiders crawling out of fucking 2 inch crawl spaces, but then all of a sudden as I'm walking down the hall way I hear "Follow me...". I walk toward the voices, and the screen turns blood red and you hear a loud whisper saying "THE TOOK MY BABY". Now I'm damn shaken, because that was just freaky. I push along, backtrack to an area that I thought was completely cleared by me, and then an imp just flys out of nowhere and blind sides me, and kills me. Scared the shit out of me, I almost had a heartattack.

I know it doesn't sound too scary on paper, but jesus.
 

shpankey

not an idiot
evilromero said:
Wooo! I played it last night until 4am! On Medium settings with 1024 res and it ran above 30fps. First off I must say I think some people are being way too hard on this game. It is brilliant. Between a handful of my friends we got pretty far into the game and we loved every fucking minute of it.

I have to say though, that those who said this game does not resemble Doom 1 or 2 are full of it. My close friend and I were avid Doom players growing up and Doom 3 follows the same formula almost flawlessly. For example, grab the armor and the walls go up around you revealing zombies, imps and gunners. Another example is you walk into a lit room only to have the lights go out followed by enemies rushing you. The game is full of the exact same conventions found in previous Doom titles. And the PDA entries are fucking brilliant. Very well acted and the medical journals are very accurate in many ways (in tone and approach). We had five to six guys in the room at all times watching the game, and it seems every three minutes or so the room lit up with girly screams. And this went on for hours and hours! The game continually surprised me with its wonderful production value and attention to detail. Plus the pacing was spot on and never frustrating or a drag. We never had to truly backtrack, and on a few occassions when we did, everything that we had experience before was completely different. The enemies, while dumb as a stump, are great fun and the game starts to test your ability later on when they throw three pinks, a few imps and some zombies at you in one room. It is classic Doom through-and-through. It's going to be hard waiting for the Xbox version, but after spending this much time with Doom I can safely say it was one of the greatest gaming experiences of my lifetime. Truly a contender of GOTY in my opinion. And that's after a good seven or eight hours with it in complete darkness, on high difficulty with the sound cranked. Brilliant design. This is what an FPS should be. It's all about atmosphere and presentation and this game excelled in just that.

I complete agree 100%. GOTY hands down so far IMO... just a fucking MASTERPIECE! It literally pisses me off that some of you are trying to downplay this game. I am so like... "what the mother fucking WHAT?!" This is one of the greatest games I have ever played and is pure fucking genius.

Also, I'm not afraid to admitt (pun) this game has been scaring the shit out of me. I mean, sometimes really fucking getting to me... disturbing me heh. I am using headphones late at night all by myself and it's just, well, it's the scariest game I have ever played... just fucking wow. ::shivers:: I keep having to take breaks and get back to reality to calm myself down lol.

P.S. I have also ran into 3 pinky's (several times in fact).

To anyone who is trying to downplay this game... stop trying to just be "different" by purposely not liking something everyone else is loving. You are not special because of that... this is one of the greatest games ever. Just enjoy it, games of this quality don't come around very often.
 

Oni Jazar

Member
To anyone who is trying to downplay this game... stop trying to just be "different" by purposely not liking something everyone else is loving. You are not special because of that... this is one of the greatest games ever. Just enjoy it, games of this quality don't come around very often.

It has nothing to do with trying to be special or different trust me. What upsets me is that iD went through all this trouble with insainly detailed graphics, lighting effects, voice acting and presentation only to give you monsters jumping out of closets again and again and again (ad nauseum). If any other game out there would use such cheap tactics it would've gotten ripped to shreads.
 
I just got to the Alpha Labs Sector 1 I think...I've been to the Alpha Labs before, but this part is different. Going to go hop in the shower, and then try out the multiplayer.
 

Eric-GCA

Banned
Beat the game last night, I really enjoyed it, while there was some stuff I'd wish they'd done more of, and other stuff I'd hope they'd do better in the future with expansions, it definately met my expectations as a good fun game.

Of course, it made me anticipate Half Life 2 more.
 

Mrbob

Member
What difficulty are you playing on? I'm on marine difficulty and I've had many encounters with multiple enemies. Sometimes up to 7 at once.

The worst battle was when I saw an armor upgrade in a closet. It was way too obvious and way too easy to get to it. I went down a couple long corridors. I thought about classic Doom games when you grabbed an easy item and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. Heh, the same thing happened here! I grabbed the armor, then the panel behind me went up, I was trapped in. The screen starts shaking and turning red for like 10 straight seconds. The panel opens up again and all of a sudden a damn imp is right there. I get out three more morph in and a pinky comes down the hall. I shoot the pinky and three undead marines pop up on me, as the imps are still to the side of me. I take out two of the imps and another pinky popped up to the side. It was freaking mayhem. I took them all out but it took out a good chunk of my armor and health!

I'm having so much fun with this game. I'm in the enpro facility right now, and finally have got a glimpse of the heat haze effects ID talked about on the DX9 cards. It looks really, really cool. Once I beat the game I want to play through it again like I did after I beat previous doom games: In Nightmare difficulty with the weapon cheat enabled that gives you unlimited ammo.

Finally, there is one bit of this game I find funny. This whole Mars base is getting torn apart, and yet all the elevators seem to function perfectly.
 

shuri

Banned
Mrbob said:
Once I beat the game I want to play through it again like I did after I beat previous doom games: In Nightmare difficulty with the weapon cheat enabled that gives you unlimited ammo.

Lies. Cheats were disabled in nightmare mode. It's always been like that
 

Mrbob

Member
Hmmm, maybe I have a bad memory? It may have been a step below Nightmare then. I wonder if I used a mod though? 'Cause I vividly remember playing in Nightmare with unlimited ammo cheat.
 

border

Member
Unlimited ammo is not going to be any help in Nightmare mode. The enemies still take the same amount of damage to kill, but since the game doesn't allow your health to get above 25 for any extended period of time then the real problem is going to be the fact that you die after 1-2 hits.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
border said:
Unlimited ammo is not going to be any help in Nightmare mode. The enemies still take the same amount of damage to kill, but since the game doesn't allow your health to get above 25 for any extended period of time then the real problem is going to be the fact that you die after 1-2 hits.

...which makes the game more exciting.

I am playing D3 on a step below Nightmare right now (since NM is obviously not available from the beginning) and it is a lot more enjoyable than the middle difficulty (which I tested briefly and found to be VERY easy).

I just wish the game had been designed around the Halo-like checkpoint system...
 

Mrbob

Member
Well, I really like to go to town with a weapon like the Plasma Rifle. I could make good use of unlimited ammo.
 

Raxel

Member
This game REALLY reminds me of Event Horizon and System Shock. I'm loving it though, I'm at delta labs sector 2b and it's getting better and better.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Society said:
It does have checkpoints. Not as many as Halo, but it does.

It is designed for the quicksave, though. There is more to a checkpoint system than simply offering checkpoints. Halo's actual game design was based around those points...and it made a big difference. Each checkpoint basically marked the beginning of a specific scenario.
 

border

Member
dark10x said:
...which makes the game more exciting.
Or just frustrating and grating. The game is full of so many scripted events where you more or less have to take a hit....and so many dark hallways where you aren't going to see anything. 1 hit kills are a bit much. I played the first level in Nightmare and it was just more of a quicksave-festival than anything else. 2 bullets from a pistol will murder you, as will a shotgun blast at mid-range. I have no idea how they expect anyone to make it through the boss battles.

The interesting thing is that in Nightmare you are given the SoulCube from the start, and it is the only way that you can raise your health above 25. Once it gets past that mark, the game starts deducting 5 HP every second, until you are back down to 25. So if you get up to 100HP, you have maybe a minute or two of decreasing health where you won't really be subject to one-hit kills. The possibilities here are interesting, because in theory what you should be doing is charging up health with the SoulCube, then rush-rush-rushing to kill 5 more guys with your enhanced health.....so you can use the Cube to ramp up your health again. So essentially you have a system that forces you to very quickly and very precisely hunt down tons of monsters, and keeps you constantly searching for more combat.

Unfortunately the game probably doesn't have enough monsters and has too many long stretches of monster-free key/switch-hunting where your health is just going to dwindle back down to nothing. The dynamics of Nightmare are interesting to be sure, but trying to impose them over Doom 3 might not really work. If they were serious they would have gone back and included many more monster spawn-points or just had them near-constantly respawning.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
I guess Nightmare really isn't all that hot...

The sweet spot is clearly the second highest difficulty. It is difficult, but certainly not impossible...

Unlike crap such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, where you must save and load CONSTANTLY, I rarely find myself reloading my saves (that is, I don't die all that often...yet it is still quite challenging to stay alive).
 

border

Member
Well, don't take my word for it =) I'll probably try another level or two in Nightmare just to see if it develops any further.

I would much prefer it though if they took out this "25HP Maximum" stuff and just gave you enemies that were more difficult to take down.
 

DCX

DCX
Raxel said:
This game REALLY reminds me of Event Horizon and System Shock. I'm loving it though, I'm at delta labs sector 2b and it's getting better and better.
Tons of props for mentioning Event Horizon becuase that's the feel i get..almost spot on including some of the theme/story.


I'm loving the game becuase i can appreciate the simple games and complex games just the same. It's like watching a popcorn flick and hating the fact it isn't realistic, to dumb, to many one liners etc. I like my popcorn movies and i love my pyschological thrillers one and the same.

DCX
 
Gattsu25 said:
It's also supposed to introduce some nasty artifacting:

with
danzg7-Humus.jpg

original
danzg7-Original.jpg

"you can play around with the specular term in the line

PARAM specExp = { 16, 0, 0, 0 };

try 12 or 8 instead of 16"



you are suppose to change the number to 12 or 8 instead of 16! I used 12, no more artifacting for me ^_^
 

pestul

Member
Be warned.. I've found that WinRAR can mess up the .pak files. I tried multiplayer and it said my cd key was in use as well as having a media pak missing. I copied pak000.pk4 from cd2 back into the base directory and it worked fine again. :p

Maybe it's just my version of winrar..
 
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