DOOM 3 BFG Edition - Remastered, Armour-mounted flashlights + DOOM 1 & 2 [360/PS3/PC]

[Blazkowicz]

I ran the game on a 3dfx card (yes, I tried hard running things on it) and the shadows were there. the impact on the framerate wasn't that big, I could very roughly get 15 fps with and 20 fps without.
no pixel shaders involved, of course if you run the game that way there's no normal maps, no specular and the characters look horrendous but I was happy to have my real-time, correct shadows.

you can enable stencil shadows in quake 3, or they are there by default in Kingpin, an awesome quake 2 based shooter :

you only need some stencil in the Z hardware thing, so you can find stencil shadows in old games. the first Voodoo Graphics qualifies. btw from geforce fx onwards, nvidia had very fast Z and stencil hardware. the lame-duck geforce FX 5800 feels like it was designed for running doom 3 well and nothing else (it gets good framerates, for real)

old games just draw a pitch black silhouette on the ground with no respect for accuracy, in quake 3 this gives a weird behaviour so after the novelty you feel like switching to simple blob shadow.
doom 3 is unique in doing complex calculations each frame so that the shadows look real. only they are fatally razor sharp, which is one factor for the engine going nowhere and being something of a dead-end (but a great one at that)

 

[Richard]

My apologies, I have misunderstood the terms of stencil shadows, by the way I just suggesting whether use lower resolution for the shadows on the ps3 & fixed with MLAA of sony could be a smart solution if possible...

Stencil shadows are resolution independent as they are generated from geometry: that's why people on this thread are describing them as razor sharp. And DOOM 3 does the silhouete calculation on the CPU. To improve performance most props and characters have lower-poly meshes that are only used for this purpose: that's why shadows are blocky.

JC could, however, switch to shadow buffers. He's had them up and working in the engine at one point (before they cancelled Darkness and started on Rage). I'm positive most people would prefer that over the time he's spending on his VR goggles.

Besides, the PS3 not being able to maintain 60fps means what to me and the PC version of the BFG edition? Just stick with DOOM 3 + sikkmod + HD texture mods.

 

[AlNom]

Stencil shadows are resolution independent as they are generated from geometry: that's why people on this thread are describing them as razor sharp.

Dependent?

DOOM 3 does the silhouette calculation on the CPU

hm... I don't suppose that could be moved over to the SPE's, could it?

I do seem to recall a paper on moving the extrusion and volume calculations to the GPU, but I don't remember what the costs were.

JC could, however, switch to shadow buffers.

hm... how much work would it be to switch the shadowing solution? IIRC, the lights already know whether to cast shadows or not, and then there are specific flag switches for particular objects with regards to self-shadowing. They don't need to go back and replace the lights, right?

 

[Rodéric]

hm... how much work would it be to switch the shadowing solution? IIRC, the lights already know whether to cast shadows or not, and then there are specific flag switches for particular objects with regards to self-shadowing. They don't need to go back and replace the lights, right?

It wouldn't take that long, iD engines are rather straight to the point as far as code goes, so modifying it shouldn't be much of a problem.
That would mean more GPU memory used, but less CPU time (as skinning would go on GPU where it belong ;p) and less fillrate waste (stencil shadow volumes are quite fillrate intensive).

You would need to modify the shaders to add skinning and add shadow buffer fetchs and filtering, and modify CPU code to remove all loading of shadow volumes (some where pre computed AFAIR), skinning and silhouette detection.
(Also going shadow buffer means models could be more tessellated should anyone want to improve them.)

 

[Svensk Viking]

Did Quake 4 bring much new over Doom 3 with its updated engine? I know it was a launch game, but it supposedly had a pretty unstable framerate on the 360

 

[Grall]

The new stuff it brought was rudimentary multicore support I believe; the two games look very similar in appearance. If it had been done today it would run much more fluidly even on a paltry 360.

 

[Grall]

*Edit:
Why do posts of mine appear randomly in other threads than the one I posted it in? *shrug*

Second time this happens now!

 

[AlNom]

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/213306516793606144

Will Doom 3 bfg edition on 360 be exactly the same as the original pc version,because the original xbox had bits cut.

the data sets are identical across PC/360/PS3, but every level is getting more lights and ammo than the original had.

hm... Wonder if he's moving to deferred for this.

Anyways, I certainly didn't think ammunition was ever a problem for Doom 3. >_>

Neat overview/review of the Doom 3 source code: http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php

Specifically about the renderer:
http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/renderer.php

 

[N_B]

:\ Mounted flaslight, more lights, are they trying to take out the scares

 

[pjbliverpool]

Anyways, I certainly didn't think ammunition was ever a problem for Doom 3. >_>http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/renderer.php

On consoles or PC? I'd imagine playing with a gamepad would require a lot more ammo.

 

[AlNom]

On consoles or PC?

Both...

I'd imagine playing with a gamepad would require a lot more ammo.

Why? If you normally play shooters on console, do you suddenly just start sucking in a corridor shooter? :s

You know they'd just do auto-aim anyways. >_>

 

[Richard]

Dependent?

Yeah. heh, I wanted to say how you can't toggle between different resolutions for better shadow quality as one can with shadow buffers.

hm... I don't suppose that could be moved over to the SPE's, could it?

I do seem to recall a paper on moving the extrusion and volume calculations to the GPU, but I don't remember what the costs were.

Quake 4 had skinning on the GPU for certain parts of the world, btw. IIRC, it was mostly hardware support. In that timeframe you could offload some parts but to have a robust solution you need geometry shaders.

hm... how much work would it be to switch the shadowing solution? IIRC, the lights already know whether to cast shadows or not, and then there are specific flag switches for particular objects with regards to self-shadowing. They don't need to go back and replace the lights, right?

Actually, very little work as JC had shadow buffers working on DOOM 3 before. In fact, prior to the 1.3 patch you still had a lot of deprecated SB CVArs in the game. Take a look at some of them (including HDR) here. If you tried out some of these CVARs the game would complain about a bunch of shadow buffer fragment programs being missing, back then I tried writing a simple hello, world shadow buffer shader but I had no idea what the engine was passing to them (that and my own personal retardation). In fact, from our own forum! EDIT: ha! and you transcribed the whole thing! =) We're getting old.

Even if that wasn't so, as it shipped, the game already makes use of projected textures to simulate complex soft shadows or light falloff. They only support 2D projection but it would be quite trivial to add 3D projection with a cube-map and simply brute-force render everything since the environments are relatively small.

Btw, thanks for that link! I've been meaning to mess around with the source code but I really don't have the time to figure how the whole thing is built on.

Did Quake 4 bring much new over Doom 3 with its updated engine? I know it was a launch game, but it supposedly had a pretty unstable framerate on the 360

Not a whole lot in the back-end, mostly toolchain. It did support ambient light contributions (constant factor, which looked rather bad), high-level shaders rather than D3's ASM and hardware skinning.

(Also going shadow buffer means models could be more tessellated should anyone want to improve them.)

I'd be happy if they'd just use the drawn mesh instead of the lower-poly shadow hulls.

 

[Richard]

Ah... nice, I'm re-reading that thread from 2004 and reminiscing about the NV30, rabid fans everywhere and (interesting) Carmack keynotes.

 

[Cyan]

The best Doom1 soundtrack was on the 3DO console. Forget the MIDI sound card nonsense.

You remind me of my brothers :smile: when first listened to the MIDI files I had on my PC many years ago. I know that MIDI is associated with cheesy and tizzy music.

MIDI is very exposed in the sense that a MIDI file is not music by itself. It's just a file telling what instruments to use, what those instruments have to do, their volume, pan, and a hundreds of other things. And it only weighs a few Kylobytes.

By exposed I mean that you can download the last Lady Gaga MIDI file and find that it sounds a bit flat and lifeless in your OS.

Without reverb, chorus, etc, and using a bad synth, then there is not much you can do. Your sound using MIDI is as good as your synthesizer is.

I am oversimplifying things, but an MP3/CD Audio would be a MIDI recorded in a professional studio.

Also Karaoke is a MIDI file --midis can include the lyrics of a song, and even an instrument can imitate the notes of a singer's voice, and each note is related to a syllable.

Most computers use Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, which is better than nothing and certainly better than most soundcard synths from more than a decade ago. But it's mono and have been created to run on slow computers.

I can certainly understand how it's difficult to get to know MIDI tremendous potential. But it's such a versatile resource....

In fact, music produced these days is made using MIDI as a resource.

You can change everything, and I mean everything, on the fly. Instruments (you could play the Indiana Jones song for instance, modifying wind instruments to transform them into guitars, pianos, etc etc), effects, tempo....with control wheels and knobs.

Create a drum line, a bass line, and so on.

The video you posted sounds like MIDI to me, although the guitar seems to be humanized --the drums are certainly synthesized music, also the reverb effect is obvious.

I have sometimes had people fooled into thinking that they were hearing actual live recordings instead of sheer synthesized sound.

I have been creating a soundfont myself -I recorded how it sounds- :smile:


..... and I published it this weekend. It's a 2GB General MIDI soundfont with 128 melodic presets and 21 drum kits.

It can be downloaded here:

Musica 7 2GB Soundfont - Part 1 (170 mb)

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2m6a4jaz76daqs5

Musica 7 2GB Soundfont - Part 2 (170 mb)

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9x8r21cfecg3y56

Musica 7 2GB Soundfont - Part 3 (170 mb)

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?iial82y9gqrjmzn

Musica 7 2GB Soundfont - Part 4 (136 mb)

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?v6lnaysno8k027i

The individual files have to be decompressed with WinRAR ( http://www.rarlab.com/ ) or similar to merge them.

The downloaded file itself is compressed with SFPACK ( http://www.personalcopy.com/sfpack.htm ), from 1,85GB to 654MB. You need SFPACK to uncompress it.

Blazkowicz; just a quick note, for old Doom games they could use almost any Soundfont irregardless of the size if they follow the approach of the BassMIDI driver, which only loads the instruments that the music needs, so they don't have to load the whole soundfont in RAM for every song, just the instruments that the song needs within the soundfont.

Also, now that I think of it, they don't have to use the whole General MIDI 128 melodic presets, just the ones used for the music.

For instance, in my Doom 1 folder, there is the midi of the song swaaye posted, and the melodic presets/instruments are: Electric Bass (finger), Electric Muted Guitar, Overdriven Guitar, Distortion Guitar and Standard drum kit.

Now that I think of it, I also have Doom and Doom 2 on the Xbox 360... Someday I will test them to see how they sound, out of curiosity. They sounded pretty much like the original to me, if I remember correctly from the last time I played.

 

[swaaye]

lol I really wasn't looking for a MIDI lecture. I have spent a lot of time with games and MIDI possibilities. Found some neat soundfonts. But to be honest these days I tend to prefer FM synthesis or the interesting MT32 linear algorithmic synthesis.

I like the Doom 3DO soundtrack because there are clearly some human musicians in there and it sounds awesome at times. It's also the only redeeming quality of that port.

 

[Reiko]

Id Software Talks Doom 3: BFG Edition on PS3 http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39148654&postcount=1
Quote:
PSB: How about the first two games – was anything tweaked there for PS3?

EW: They are pretty much straight ports, but I will say that they run really fast at 60 frames per second, even with four-player split screen play going on. If you’ve got a big TV that’s really going to stand out. The guys basically wrote it from scratch to get it working on PS3.

Quote:
PSB: So there’s the addition of the mounted flashlight to the game. Has anything else been modified for PS3?

EW: We’re making textural improvements to the characters and demons. We’ve completely rewritten the network code so that multiplayer is a better experience. In addition there’s also the Lost Mission Pack, containing seven new levels. They pick up from a certain part of the story line in the main game – without giving too much away, it’ll all make sense when you play it. You’re a different guy in a different part of the base but it’s the same world.

Quote:
PSB: How do you balance staying true to the original game with making improvements?

EW: Your first inclination is to make big sweeping changes because it’s something that you’ve looked at for a long time, so it doesn’t feel fresh anymore. We’ve really focused on keeping the core experience there. From talking to people on the show floor, a lot of them weren’t too happy with the idea of the flashlight as something separate. So integrating the flashlight into your main weapon seemed like a no-brainer, yet even then we still had people say they wanted to play the original way.

Another piece of feedback we had was that the game was too dark, so we’ve lit it some more here and there and tried to lead the player’s eye a little more. So there’ll be two modes – the original, unchanged version of Doom 3 and the updated one.


http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/06/22/id-software-talks-doom-3-bfg-edition-on-ps3/

 

[RenegadeRocks]

I heard there's some form of co-op in there too.

Good that they have kept the option of playing the original d3 way.

 

[kagemaru]

they run really fast at 60 frames per second, even with four-player split screen play going on.

That's mighty impressive.

So there’ll be two modes – the original, unchanged version of Doom 3 and the updated one.

Awesome, exactly what I wanted to see. So sold on this release.

 

[AlNom]

That's mighty impressive.

They're just 2D games.

 

[kagemaru]

They're just 2D games.

Damn it, I didn't read the question properly and thought he was talking about Doom 3.