Doom 3 observations
- Thread starter zurich
- Start date
randycat99
Veteran
Why thank you! 
marconelly!
Veteran
I second that - as sad as it is, that post was true to a word, Randy.
randycat99
Veteran
I felt real guilty for unloading all of that in a Doom III topic.
cybamerc said:
True. But only because of the vague term "unified lighting". Up until now games has used vertex lighting, light maps and used projected shadows and all kinds of other hacks to get a decent lighting effect.
What is new in Doom III is that all lights are per pixel lights and all lights cast a shadow. And yes models are low poly, but the difference between screenshots and the game in motion is night and day (btw, I can only get the alpha to play demo1, can't play the game
). Cheers
Gubbi
Yes but the shadow just looks strange. I find Doom 3 looks better when the shadow are off. But the shadow adds to gameplay, I think you would be at disadvantage at having it off. But I really wish they fix the shadow. And then increase tesselation of everything by like 50 times, it will all be good
Another thing, is volumetric effect, they still don't look natural.
Ohh also when I read the impression of the Doom 3 showing, they say you can shoot the light to turn it off, anyone know how to get that working in this Alpha ?
Zurich: What map is the first set of screenshots taken from? I don't recall having seen that particular cutscene.
Yes, the Doom 3 models are fairly low-poly. The largest give-away to this would be to look at the top of the enemies' heads: They often come to a point. It kind of bothers me, but you generally don't notice it when they're trying to kill you.
I agree with the point brought up about the shadows: The main two problems with them are that they A) don't blend well, making them stand out too much and B) ignore the height of the object they're being cast on. The latter problem leads to them laying flat across objects they should be bending around or even stopping at. I really, really hope they fix that by the time the game is launched.
Developers of console games have always been able to toss more polys at their character models than PC game devs. There are several factors here, though.
One is resolution: They know that everyone who is playing (for example) Resident Evil 0 will be playing it at 640x480. Think about it: If Carmack knew that everyone would be playing Doom 3 at 640x480, that means he wouldn't have to worry about how it performed at higher resolutions and could, thus, add more polys to his models.
Another thing is texture detail. Besides the fact that the textures themselves are also beind drawn at a lower res, they're often much less detailed than most PC games. Take a look at the texture detail in games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, where you can see creases in the NPC's faces and stubble on their chins, to say Devil May Cry. The Dante model boasts a good deal more polygons, but is largely undetailed. This is why, a lot of time, when you see a port of a console game, the textures are horribly blurry and generally not very nice to look at. They're really like that - but on a TV, you can't tell.
And, the last thing in the case of RE0 (as was mentioned earlier) is that it uses Pre-rendered backgrounds, meaning that the system doesn't have to render jack, in terms of poly counts. Leaving Capcom free to add polys elsewhere.
Silent Hill 2 achieved an incredible amount of detail while also retaining high poly counts for all the character models. The way they achieved this was because of the very limited field of vision: Between the shadows and the oppressive fog, there was hardly ever very much on the screen at one time.
Yes, the Doom 3 models are fairly low-poly. The largest give-away to this would be to look at the top of the enemies' heads: They often come to a point. It kind of bothers me, but you generally don't notice it when they're trying to kill you.
I agree with the point brought up about the shadows: The main two problems with them are that they A) don't blend well, making them stand out too much and B) ignore the height of the object they're being cast on. The latter problem leads to them laying flat across objects they should be bending around or even stopping at. I really, really hope they fix that by the time the game is launched.
Developers of console games have always been able to toss more polys at their character models than PC game devs. There are several factors here, though.
One is resolution: They know that everyone who is playing (for example) Resident Evil 0 will be playing it at 640x480. Think about it: If Carmack knew that everyone would be playing Doom 3 at 640x480, that means he wouldn't have to worry about how it performed at higher resolutions and could, thus, add more polys to his models.
Another thing is texture detail. Besides the fact that the textures themselves are also beind drawn at a lower res, they're often much less detailed than most PC games. Take a look at the texture detail in games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, where you can see creases in the NPC's faces and stubble on their chins, to say Devil May Cry. The Dante model boasts a good deal more polygons, but is largely undetailed. This is why, a lot of time, when you see a port of a console game, the textures are horribly blurry and generally not very nice to look at. They're really like that - but on a TV, you can't tell.
And, the last thing in the case of RE0 (as was mentioned earlier) is that it uses Pre-rendered backgrounds, meaning that the system doesn't have to render jack, in terms of poly counts. Leaving Capcom free to add polys elsewhere.
Silent Hill 2 achieved an incredible amount of detail while also retaining high poly counts for all the character models. The way they achieved this was because of the very limited field of vision: Between the shadows and the oppressive fog, there was hardly ever very much on the screen at one time.
nuraptor,
map e3/intro
It crashes _alot_ and takes an eon to load, but its decently cool.
The fog in SH2 is volumetric, so while it may cloud some detail, its also taking a chunk out of the fill rate. As for the rooms, I don't think the shadows cover up any geometry really, I think the load times everytime you go through a door do most of that
map e3/intro
It crashes _alot_ and takes an eon to load, but its decently cool.
The fog in SH2 is volumetric, so while it may cloud some detail, its also taking a chunk out of the fill rate. As for the rooms, I don't think the shadows cover up any geometry really, I think the load times everytime you go through a door do most of that
Ooooh... I honestly thought the Intro was just the spinning id logo. I left it there for roughly 2 minutes and didn't see it do anything.
The comments I made about SH2 were, I believe, initially stated by the developers of the game. While the fog / darkness where definitely atmospheric, they also allowed them to add much more detail to each area.
Cheers,
Nup
The comments I made about SH2 were, I believe, initially stated by the developers of the game. While the fog / darkness where definitely atmospheric, they also allowed them to add much more detail to each area.
Cheers,
Nup
zurich said:nuraptor,
map e3/intro
It crashes _alot_ and takes an eon to load, but its decently cool.
The fog in SH2 is volumetric, so while it may cloud some detail, its also taking a chunk out of the fill rate. As for the rooms, I don't think the shadows cover up any geometry really, I think the load times everytime you go through a door do most of that
just type exec runact.cfg before you run it. The game touches all files and this loads it into RAM. You'll need plenty of RAM btw. ½GB is a minimum.
Cheers
Gubbi
