PC Gamer cover story on Doom3

[Fuz]

DOOM is awesome.

The problem with DOOM3 is that you won't be able to blow away 200 Imps in a matter of seconds anymore. =( Bah.

What about Gimps? Will there be Gimps in Doom 3?

Anyway, whats wrong un-original games? Some of the best games (fun) I have played are extremely un-original. Take F1 sims, all are pretty much the same thing, just keep getting better graphics, AI, physics etc.

If they released Unreal with updated graphics, I would buy it right away. It'll give me an excuse to play it again. If Doom 3 was going to be just Quake1 with super graphics, that would be enough for me.

Does it have to be original to be fun?

Fuz

 

[Riptides]

And your proposed alternative is...?

What I see is someone who is whining and impossible to please. If you want a specific game, I propose you write one that fits your own tastes and stop demanding that someone create one for you.

Actually, i awoke this morning, saw this post, read the articles, and expressed my disappointment over a game, that while i have tried not to get into the hype of, still have looked forward to playing in the near future.

Derek noted that my comments might be more appropriate in the general forum, when they should have gone into the Gaming Forum on this site. But in my haste, i responded here.

My main thing is, when they bring to the table something so innovative graphically. Which on one hand already blows my socks off with how awesome it looks and makes this a game i want to play. Why in the hell do the pick the worst game elements to include ? And i believe others here have stated more eloquently their disappointments with how Carmack and team are already presenting this game, and the choices made in the development.

I don't wish to continue this here, as it is more themed for the Gaming Forum. So start a post (reply) there and i will discuss readily.

But calling troll and making assumptions of my character are not needed on these boards, thank you.

 

[OpenGL guy]

If Carmack would have used shadow maps instead there wouldn't be this problem and the shadows would get the full detail of the displacement mapped model.

Wouldn't shadow maps have problems with self-shadowing objects?

 

[Randell]

I find most of the weapons in every game except for counter-strike suck big time. CS has the best mix of weapons and gameplay for a multiplayer FPS IMHO. Most of the UT weapons and alt-fire modes are just gimmicks. I find that they don't add anything to the basic game play. In CS, the alt-fire just triggers sniper scopes.


But CS weapons can be used in different modes. Because of the way accuracy is modeled, the distance, rate of fire, and your body stance matter much more. You can use the AK-47 in full auto, or you can use it single shot, or burst shot, and it all depends on how you control it.

In other game engines, they'd have a alt-fire switch to go between single shot and full auto and the accuracy would be controlled by this switch. In CS, it determined simply by how much you hold or press the fire button.

Doom3 might not be much of a game, but engine wise, it is going to blow the doors off UT, and if someone ever implements Counter-Strike on top of it, the possibilities would be endless! Like Splinter Cell, the use of the realistic shadows would be a huge boon for tactic shooters.

I have to say I totally agree, but as a former CS clan leader I would wouldnt I

 

[OpenGL guy]

CS has the best mix of weapons and gameplay for a multiplayer FPS IMHO.
But CS weapons can be used in different modes. Because of the way accuracy is modeled, the distance, rate of fire, and your body stance matter much more. You can use the AK-47 in full auto, or you can use it single shot, or burst shot, and it all depends on how you control it.

I have to say I totally agree, but as a former CS clan leader I would wouldnt I

I'm a big fan of CS, but the cheating makes it very difficult to enjoy. I've been playing SoF2 lately. In Infiltration mode, it has some elements very similar to CS. Unfortunately, some of the maps are kind of unbalanced and lead to lots of grenade spamming at the beginning by whichever team has the advantage. The weapon characteristics are very similar to CS: short bursts are accurate, while long bursts are less so. I do appreciate the newer engine and having the ability to lean around corners also adds to the experience. There's also a demolition mode which every CS player would be familiar with.

One thing lacking in SoF2 multiplayer is a monetary system similar to CS's.

Now if only my CS skills mapped one-to-one for SoF2 skills

 

[Grall]

The first one that I remember with a look up/down control was Duke Nukem 3D, though there may have been others.

Dark Forces, Ultima Underworld, System Shock. They were all out before Duke3D (well, the two first were I'm sure).

And what is this whining about no alternate fire modes? In reality, weapons do not have alternate fire modes (at most you get a fire-rate switch). Doom3 will be a "reality"-based shooter. Guns like in UT that either shoots a very fast rail-like projectile or a slow ball thingy really has no place in a game like Doom, and it does not automatically create a better game either.

I'd like to see further realism too in the way of weapons. Like the fact you really CAN'T carry a chainsaw, two shotguns, a gatling gun, a rocket launcher and two energy weapons all at the same time (along with hundreds of rounds of ammo) and still be able to even remain STANDING, let alone move from the spot!

I'd like to see the player being forced to toss the shotguns if he wants to pick up the gatling gun. I'd also like to see a rocket launcher that really fires rockets instead of what really behaves more like helium-propelled balloons (if you've seen real RPG rounds fired you know they move FAST). I'd also like them to consider the "backwash" you get from firing them. Like if you have your back right up to a wall when pulling the trigger, you get one hell of a smack in return).

Of course, they need to model shockwaves better too, setting off high explosives in narrow corridors does create a certain discomfort...


*G*

 

[Riptides]

Arrgh!

Hello people, just because someone mentions alternate firing mode on weapons, doesn't all the sudden mean the game is not Roxor's because it's weapons aren't as Leet in UT.
Please stop making the baby Jesus cry by assuming that we all what the big phat phantasy phiring weapons of phear. jeez, can't believe i typed that

Read DemoCoders post again, he makes the best points about the weapons. Exactly what i would have wished to say if i could have drawn that parallel first.

 

[Dio]

Dark Forces, Ultima Underworld, System Shock. They were all out before Duke3D (well, the two first were I'm sure).

I thought it was Duke Nukem too... I'm sure I played that before Dark Forces. Not sure about the relative release dates though.

I'd like to see further realism too in the way of weapons. Like the fact you really CAN'T carry a chainsaw, two shotguns, a gatling gun, a rocket launcher and two energy weapons all at the same time (along with hundreds of rounds of ammo) and still be able to even remain STANDING, let alone move from the spot!

Halo has this, and it's one of the really nice touches about it, although they missed a couple of tricks (it's just 'two weapons carried max'). If I was to set up a weapons carrying system, you'd be allowed to carry two 'rifle' guns or one 'big' gun, plus two 'pistol' guns, but one or none if you are carrying a lot of ammo.

I think that would be an especially good idea for deathmatch FPS', where you can then take the choice of a big hefty weapon (e.g. flak cannon) but if you run out of ammo you're screwed, or lots of lesser-hitting weaponry...

I still laugh heartily every time I see that scene in Commando. Especially after reading Terry Pratchett's version of it in Pyramids.

Of course, they need to model shockwaves better too, setting off high explosives in narrow corridors does create a certain discomfort...

I think I remember Aliens vs Predator doing that quite nicely. I'm surprised it hasn't been picked up by other games.

 

[BNA!]

I really can't understand why people stress the non-interactive environments of Doom3 that much.
Fred Nilsson, the animator of id software, did emphasize the fact, that he's now able to drop a Doom level into MAYA to add bones and to animate it. This happens due the purpose of giving the player the feeling that anytime something could break through the wall to attack him.
But this time you won't spot a wiredly lit destructable wall from 100 yards away.

Carmack also said, that freely destructable environments are very problematic to integrate in a gaming engine focused on high quality surface rendering. Where and how should the textures line up for a broken wall?

As far as the everlasting discussion of gameplay and innovation goes:
We're still living in a evolutionary process of game development.
It's not as we've already reached every limit in the technology - not graphics wise and not in the department of game logic.

Once we'll live in a photorealistic rendering world by standard, developers will be able to focus much much more on interacive features, AI, integration of time and wheather, NPC interaction and nonlinear evolving games. It's not that hard to think something revolutionary up, but as long as gamers demand eye candy + speed + AI + a story + multi player + atmosphere + never seen before stuff while being extremely nitpicky about every misaligned texture we still will see a process of evolution.

Sorry for my limited ability to express what I mean in English.

It's just like picking Derek Smart for not producing a graphical showcase engine only because he once went with the decision to make a sim.
One day, when sims will automatically look like prerendered stuff due to friendly development environments not yet introduced, people can deman every thing from every game.
Carmacks new Doom engine looks very promising - not only for gamers, but also for mod coders, custom content creators and people who decide to pick up a licence to create their vision of a game while cutting down development time for the eye candy department.

Carmack has been proven to be able to learn. He was against rag doll physics, but v. Weaveren did just put it in and he saw his own decision was a bad call. So even id software, a company Carmack "only" owns 40% of, is a living and breathing environment of creative game creators.

Of course id's games are shoot em ups, but at least they're very very advanced ones

 

[cybamerc]

OpenGL guy:

> Wouldn't shadow maps have problems with self-shadowing objects?

Not when using a shadow buffer. Carmack actually did some research on shadow buffers and spoke highly of them in an old .plan file. However, somewhere along the way he realized that aliasing is a problem and decided to go the stencil route instead.

 

[Dio]

Carmack has been proven to be able to learn. He was against rag doll physics, but v. Weaveren did just put it in and he saw his own decision was a bad call. So even id software, a company Carmack "only" owns 40% of, is a living and breathing environment of creative game creators.

John's very good at that. IIRC he made a similar decision in Quake when it came to the Z-buffer - him and Mike Abrash worked for months on algorithms to try to avoid using it, then one day he said 'Much as I hate it we should try it'.

I'm not sure 'learning' is quite the right word though. He's a superb researcher - he postulates there _should_ be a better solution and goes looking for it - but if the solution he doesn't like works better than the one he does, he'll go with the one that works rather than the one that's conceptually pleasing. It's a good attitude.

 

[DemoCoder]

The big problem with shadows maps IMHO is aliasing and precision problems. In most of the demos I have seen using it, there are visible artifacts, "popping", stair-stepped shadows, etc. Maybe higher res formats will solve it.

 

[cybamerc]

You can also reduce the by applying a blur filter to the shadow map... also cheap way to get soft edges.

 

[DemoCoder]

With regards to CS cheating, I imagine a powerful server could solve this problem once and for all. Simply put, the server should not be broadcasting the coordinates of players to the client if they aren't visible to the client. That's the real security hole.

The server (with enough horsepower) should figure out the exact visibility of players for each and every player (within limitations, since the server also had to deal with slower links and sending the position slightly before the player would be visible)


The server is the ultimate arbiter of world state, and the only truly secure bit of code running. I hope future developers of FPS multiplayer games keep this in mind. Carmack's Doom3 peer-to-peer architecture worries me.

It's a recipe for non-scalability, taking us back to the days where MAYBE a 4 player Doom game worked over IDOOM or Kali, and also introducing the ability for even more cheating. How could Carmack make such a mistake, after Quake client/server worked so well with such large games? (and Valve proved it could scale further with HLTV)

 

[Sharkfood]

I played the original Doom and loved it. Doom II came out and I blasted through this with glee. Heck, I was just as entertained when Doom64 came out for the N64 as this added a slightly new twist to the old premise.

I'd imagine Doom3 will be a fun romp. I dont see id Software making anything ground breaking or earth shaking from a *gameplay* standpoint, but the boys surely know how to make a game that is fun from start to finish... and doing so while pushing the envelope with graphics technology.

id Software games rarely cause people to write poetry concerning their content, but they surely are satisfying and worth the price for pure, simple entertainment. 3rd party developers are the ones focusing solely on content quality.

That being said, I am less interested in Doom3 than what will spring from it's licensed engine sales. A new Wheel of Time, or System Shock or some Raven game based on the Doom3 engine will likely make more shockwaves from a content standpoint. That's the whole deal with id software and their engine/game combinations hitting the market.

 

[MfA]

The task of producing elegant shadowing methods lies squarely in the hardware manufacturers court, software developers can do nothing but ad-hoc hacks with what they are given ... shadowing is the new anti-aliasing, but just like with anti-aliasing everything has to be done with baby steps :/ In the meantime we will just have to "suffer" with what the Carmacks of this world can give us.

 

[Randell]

I'm a big fan of CS, but the cheating makes it very difficult to enjoy. I've been playing SoF2 lately. In Infiltration mode, it has some elements very similar to CS. Unfortunately, some of the maps are kind of unbalanced and lead to lots of grenade spamming at the beginning by whichever team has the advantage. The weapon characteristics are very similar to CS: short bursts are accurate, while long bursts are less so. I do appreciate the newer engine and having the ability to lean around corners also adds to the experience. There's also a demolition mode which every CS player would be familiar with.

One thing lacking in SoF2 multiplayer is a monetary system similar to CS's.

Now if only my CS skills mapped one-to-one for SoF2 skills

The cheating is one reason why I'm a former leader, the other was lack of time and managing a bunch of teenagers at my age ;

I really enjoyed the SoF2 MP demo, out of all the CS gameplay clones, it was the one I enjoyed best for gameplay/weapons rather than just graphical enhancement.

For the best part of this year I've been RPG'er through DAoC and NWN and the occasionally the CS blast shows my skills sorely lacking now.

 

[BNA!]

I'm not sure 'learning' is quite the right word though. He's a superb researcher - he postulates there _should_ be a better solution and goes looking for it - but if the solution he doesn't like works better than the one he does, he'll go with the one that works rather than the one that's conceptually pleasing. It's a good attitude.

What you've said.

There are many more developers out there with the attitude to rock your world with countless never seen before features.
Over the last few years only very few actually made it.
Deus Ex springs to my mind, but well, that's it as far as I can remeber.

Half Life was very original because scripted events didn't kick you out of the game to a FMV sequence, so you did stay immersed into the flow of the game. Other than that I didn't find it very groundbreaking.

But I'm easy to please, so I didn't waste my time with a checklist of how many groundbreaks per second the game could achieve. I just enjoyed the heck out of it.

As far as Carmack is concerned:
There are many more game developers with interesting visions out there, but one can always count on id software to deliver. Not only in time and graphics, but also in the gameplay department - but admittedly you have to like what they do.

His emphasize on technology might create some creative vacuums, but at least it ensures an artfully crafted gaming engine with, IMHO, still the best feeling for the player controls. No hovering around but in your face action.

Besides that I'm looking very much forward to what other developers will squeze out of the Doom3 engine. I'd give an arm and a leg for System Shock 3.

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

I really can't understand why people stress the non-interactive environments of Doom3 that much.

Its because they wish the game were more like some other lacking games. Some whining gamers, especially FPS gamers are complete and righteous bastards. Period. They are finicky as hell and most are just on the screaming bandwagon for the hell of it. Go hang out at any FPS site and for the first few hours you were there, you'd think the average IQ of the posters was the number of sides on a postcard.

The result? They will spout off at the mouth, bitch up and down the alley like whiny girlie men. They either (a) go out and buy the fucking game anyway (b) go and pirate and ISO.

But, with all the incessant bitching, moaning, bad behaviour and not to mention, finicky loyalties, these bastards are the #1 reason why FPS games are still being made. If you paid attention to half the shit those fockers spout off, you'd think that we should all be playing Roller Coaster Tycoon.

The fact is that when it comes to game development, there is a very thin line between fun and technology. There are tons of features one could jam into a technological game and it wouldn't end up being fun. At all. And this is a double-edges sword. Anyone remember Red Faction? Well, it was a retail disaster on the PC (the console platform will sell games, regardless of how much they suck - so it did OK on the PS2 and then came a sequel) regardless of all the jumping up and down about that Geo-Mod gimmick. Thats all it was. A gimmick. But it was cool nonetheless.

Carmack also said, that freely destructable environments are very problematic to integrate in a gaming engine focused on high quality surface rendering.

And its quite true.

WHY do we need destructible and/or 100% maniulatable environments in DoomIII? We focking well don't. As I read in the article, JC nixed the idea of opening draws. Why? Well, because it doesn't add anything to the game. The time it takes to do that model, write the code etc, they could be figuring out how to get around working towards finishing other areas in the game that are worthy of the time spent. And considering the technological aspects of the environment itself, we're talking about a whole new ballgame to even consider doing it.

It's just like picking Derek Smart for not producing a graphical showcase engine only because he once went with the decision to make a sim.

Exactly. And I wrote a very popular soapbox article about it, a while back. My games have AI that most developers only dream about. And the reason for that is because (a) that is my primary background (b) I started on that particularly steep learning curve many, many years ago, when everyone was (and are still) focusing on cool graphical shit. Today, I don't have to do as much AI work as I used to because I've reached the point where its good enough to do what it needs to do - so, more emphasis is now being placed on graphics (as seen in the upcoming BCG product).

This is the same across the industry. It is only in the past couple of months that developers have started putting emphasis on (a) freeform games (b) advanced gameplay (c) advanced AI. Why? Because graphics can only take you so far and without gameplay, your game is just another tool to benchpress your graphics card.

Carmack has been proven to be able to learn. He was against rag doll physics, but v. Weaveren did just put it in and he saw his own decision was a bad call. So even id software, a company Carmack "only" owns 40% of, is a living and breathing environment of creative game creators.

Indeed. Here is what he said, verbatim from the article :

I'm not a proponent of rag-doll physics, but [programmer] Jan Paul van Waveren went ahead and did it, and its good, and its a crowd pleaser. Clearly its a gimmick, but its popular...and that's an example of me making a bad call.

 

[BoddoZerg]

Yeah, I don't see the point of all this emphasis on "innovation" in 3d shooters.

Name the greatest FPS games ever made. Likely, your list will go like:

DOOM, Half-Life, Halo

Out of those, were any really innovative? DOOM was the same thing as earlier id games Catacombs and Wolfenstein 3d; it just had a better feel of the controls, weapons, and enemies, as well as vastly improved graphics. Half-Life was DOOM with better AI and ingame cutscenes. Halo has a nice vehicle system, but it still boils down to "get from point A to point B, blast 200 aliens in the meantime".

All three of these have very small numbers of weapons, and only Half-Life actually has secondary fire modes on its guns. Can you open drawers in a Half-Life or a Halo? Nope.

Anyways, even in highly innovative games, the innovative part is often dispensable. So you can open drawers in Max Payne - would the game be any worse if you couldn't? Not one bit. Red Faction had a widely hyped geo-destructability engine. Did that save it from being an absolute crapfest of an unplayable game? Nope.

Innovation is highly overrated; many of the most fun games are the same thing all over again, whether they are Serious Sam or Super Smash Bros..

And yeah, going back to play DOOM, the monster count is nowhere near as high as Serious Sam would have you believe. There's another potential plus for DOOM3's gameplay.