PC Gamer cover story on Doom3

[John Reynolds]

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

Not even close. My list would go System Shock, Terra Nova (not a straight shooter, but a great first person action game with squad-based action, so I'm including it), NOLF1, and Deus Ex. There's just something about combining the immersivity of the first person perspective with a decent backdrop/story that gives a quasi-narrative sense of purpose and gameplay options above and beyond a scattering of stale, regurgitated weapons with the occasional powerup.

id has overwhelmingly manifested an inability to create good games and I think they know it. They create engines and package them with something that's meant to showcase the engine's capabilities. . .and that's it. I could be wrong, but Doom 3 will be nothing but the same, tired game wrapped in a new, shiny, sugar candy shell. And we'll all ohh and ahh and the id/Carmack sycophants will vehemently attack anyone who dares criticize the gameplay crap id shovels out these days.

 

[Humus]

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.

Most likely. Shadow mapping has been used successfully for ages in offline rendering and as such is a proven technology, but then of course there are way higher precision there. But for normal gaming situations, 16bit shadow map should be enough, especially for indoor style games.

 

[Dio]

I saw a good article that argued that Halo actually causes big problems for the FPS genre. Can't remember where it was though. I'm not sure if it's correct, but it's certainly an interesting view.

The gist was that it is to the FPS what Terminator 2 was to the classic action movie - derivative as hell, but perfectly polished and delivering the peak of the genre (although, in my opinion and I think Halo shares this as well, slightly soulless). It's possible to argue that action movies have had to change substantially since T2 or just 'be worse'.

So the argument was that the FPS genre has sort of run its course for the moment and needs a few years off at least, or for people to produce something that's substantially different content-wise. From the sounds of it ID have gone in a different direction - maybe this is part of why - maybe the combination of somewhat different content plus class-leading technology will move things on.

(There's also the massive FPS problem that the modern FPS games are just too hard for anything but the most experienced players. I hadn't played an FPS since Quake 2 when I picked up Jedi Knight 2 recently, and I tell you, I had to back the difficulty level down and it took a LONG while for me to get into that.)

 

[BNA!]

Not even close. My list would go System Shock...

System Shock 2 still is a very good game. Too bad it didn't commercially well enough.

id has overwhelmingly manifested an inability to create good games and I think they know it. They create engines and package them with something that's meant to showcase the engine's capabilities. . .and that's it. I could be wrong, but Doom 3 will be nothing but the same, tired game wrapped in a new, shiny, sugar candy shell. And we'll all ohh and ahh and the id/Carmack sycophants will vehemently attack anyone who dares criticize the gameplay crap id shovels out these days.

Hmm, a bold statement.

I'm surely id's fanboy number 1 on earth but I don't feel like attacking you

I guess it always comes down to what really caters to your taste. Essentially Unreal (Tournament(2k3)) is just the same as Quake (2(3(Team)Arena)) but I still can't get warm with the Unreal engine. Since it looks gorgeous I really wish I could.

If id's games and Doom3 in particular is not your thing there's no reason to attack you for that. Calling id softare unable to create a good game is from that point of view and in that context just plain wrong.
Differnt games for different people...

I don't see any point in bashing a company for delivering what they've promised. But id software is the most overexposed gaming company on earth. Whatever they do, say, don't do / say, release, develop, plan or discuss - there's always a huge fishbowl effect.
The way I see it id software produces straight shooters with good graphics and a stable engine. That's all they promise and that's all they deliver. Of course I often wish id software would develop the next leap in gameplay instead of technology, but it's id software and they stick to what they are able of.

No one expects Warren Spector to create a leapfrogging gaming engine so no one criticizes him for utilizing a third party engine to transport his personal vision of a game. But on the other hand why does nobody expects Epic to combat Deus Ex?
Because they make straight shooter engines with a nice and good game attached.

Not that it does make any sense to go deeper with the almost religiously aspects of worshipping certain developers or the hatered they cause when suddenly prooven mortal.

 

[jb]

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.

I completely respect your opinion. But I disagree with CS having the best mix of weapons and gameplay. Maybe in true sprit it dose. But today, Nope. In most public servers you find very little if any team play at all. Beside the rampant cheating. The elements that CS introduced were very good. But their weapons were kind of blah. Good models, good balance but really not exciting unless your into real life weapons. Also that style of gameplay is not for everyone. Yes its a nice break from DM. But some times its just fun to run around blowing sh*t up Plus with CS-line clones being a dime a dozen now days I welcome the break from reality.

I also have found SOF2 Inf mode to be a blast when I want some reality. However now I miss the lean feature in other games (like CS) now that I got use to in in SOF2 (as well as JK2, NOFL2, RtCW, ect). I also thought AVP playing the alien added a new mix. Here you don't have 30 different weapons to kill some one. You are the only weapon and you were week in some cases. So here you had to learn how to play this way as well as with almost 360 degrees of freedom. That was a nice break. Red Faction. Whow. Interesting game. I think that its GeoMod had some potential. However never it really flew. However play a game on-line and then it does radically change the flow of the map which can be a good or bad thing: http://www.pc-gamers.net/jb/reviews/rf/0930_screen004.jpg

Games are suppose to be fun. The game that I thought had some really fun weapons, was a blast to play and provided some of the most fun lan games was good ol Shadow Warrior. Hey any time I get a nuke or drive a tank of some one, then its fun Whhhoooo wannta som Wang?

 

[BNA!]

]
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 ....
...If you paid attention to half the shit those fockers spout off, you'd think that we should all be playing Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Enough has been said about the IQ of FPS fans who constantly consider themselves as superior to any other known or unkown lifeform.
It always boils down to comparing apples with grape fruits.
The very funny thing is, that teenager start to think they do some sort of serious competitive sports when hacking away their whole youth in front of a Death Match game. With the establishment of a pro gaming league it has never been easier to justify computer gaming to your surrounding.
I wish I could have claimed my playtime as important training for the soon to be announced video game Olympics
Sorry, I only tried to be funny, but wicked humor doesn't transport well over language barriers into different time zones.

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.

That's why I think we're still an an evolving process.
Only if graphics have reached a certain level, all developers will have the freedom to concentrate more on the so called afterthoughts like AI and intelligent environments.

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.

Well, I've spent enough time walking and use-key-pressing through locker rooms to discover 25 health in one of 50 boxes so I really appreciate the absence of endless empty room and locked doors discovery excourses. We shall see what they've thought up to keep us entertained in Doom.

Exactly. And I wrote a very popular soapbox article about it, a while back.

I'll read it.

 

[BNA!]

Hey any time I get a nuke or drive a tank of some one, then its fun Whhhoooo wannta som Wang?

Agreed.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Most likely. Shadow mapping has been used successfully for ages in offline rendering and as such is a proven technology, but then of course there are way higher precision there. But for normal gaming situations, 16bit shadow map should be enough, especially for indoor style games.

Most of the time, shadow maps require lots of manual adjustment to resolution, bias, and the light's active angle. Several times it's only possible to render several shadow passes and composite them back together to the scene with 2D image processing. Lighting large open areas is even more difficult with shadow maps, as you cannot have a big enough resolution for the shadow map... These problems might be possible to address with clever programming though; the Gamecube shader article from Factor5 had good tricks AFAIK.

Anyway, shadow maps are very fast, even if you do some multisampling to remove pixelated edges. I'd expect them to replace stencil shadow volumes...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Not even close. My list would go System Shock, Terra Nova (not a straight shooter, but a great first person action game with squad-based action, so I'm including it), NOLF1, and Deus Ex.

Shock1/2, Deus Ex and even NOLF to some extent is beyond the concept of a shooter game. I'd radell call them First Person Action/Adventure games or something like this, but not a shooter.

One could criticize Tekken and Virtua Fighter games for not including the ability to pick up items from the beaten opponents and the lack of scripted events telling some sort of background story... But everyone accepts that those are fighting games. If you insert more elements, it'll become a different kind of game.
My point is that FPS games have been mixed with other genres in the past few years, however this does not mean that ID couldn't stick to their roots, or find their own way to improve their approach. I don't know what they have in mind, but I'd rather not judge Doom3 until I've played through it...

 

[MfA]

Most likely. Shadow mapping has been used successfully for ages in offline rendering and as such is a proven technology, but then of course there are way higher precision there.

Also the camera is not interactively controlled.

But for normal gaming situations, 16bit shadow map should be enough

Aliasing due to the precision of the individual depth values is of course only a small part of the problem. The greater unsolved problem is aliasing due to localized lack of spatial resolution.

especially for indoor style games.

If indoor qualifies as a style it is only because what was once a compromise has become so reinforced over time that everyone got used to it Personally I think it is almost always a compromise based on technological restrictions.

 

[Johnny Rotten]

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

Not even close. My list would go System Shock, Terra Nova (not a straight shooter, but a great first person action game with squad-based action, so I'm including it), NOLF1, and Deus Ex. There's just something about combining the immersivity of the first person perspective with a decent backdrop/story that gives a quasi-narrative sense of purpose and gameplay options above and beyond a scattering of stale, regurgitated weapons with the occasional powerup.

id has overwhelmingly manifested an inability to create good games and I think they know it. They create engines and package them with something that's meant to showcase the engine's capabilities. . .and that's it. I could be wrong, but Doom 3 will be nothing but the same, tired game wrapped in a new, shiny, sugar candy shell. And we'll all ohh and ahh and the id/Carmack sycophants will vehemently attack anyone who dares criticize the gameplay crap id shovels out these days.

I just cannot agree with this whatsoever. To me its like criticizing blackjack for not being poker. ids games are straightforward, unpretentious shooters set in cool environments. They are unapologetic about making games where your sole purpose is to 'blow shit up'. I dont play an id game looking for deep character development or a multi tiered story, thats not what they do. Even with Doom3's focus on the singleplayer experience I'm not expecting a Deus Ex or a System Shock, but rather a more polished, more fleshed out Quake2 (probably id's most cohesive singleplayer game as it stands).

 

[Emmerik]

My biggest complaint with the doom3 article, is the lack of a co-op mode. way to many games are coming out based human vs. human multi play which is fine but hey, there are a lot of cheaters/annoying players that only play to piss off people. and i'm sick of it.

the biggest thing i liked about halo was the co-op mode, it was great to have a friend along for a good single player game. and this would make perfect sense for doom3. they've talked about minimal multiplayer, 4 player DM is what i read. but what about 4 player co-op? that would would fit in nicely with the story and provide a better multiplayer game than whats out there. every fps online seems to turn into a "kill anything that moves to have most kills" game and while thats fun i was looking forward to moving around in doom3 with 2 or 3 friends who are actually on my team, no worries about campers/cheaters/spammers/stacked teams

but hey, it's just an opinion

 

[Dio]

Enough has been said about the IQ of FPS fans who constantly consider themselves as superior to any other known or unkown lifeform.

That's not just FPS. Just go and look at Warcraft III forums. Whatever anyone might think about the limited intelligence of the average Beyond3D poster... man, at least we can all use English.

Is basic spelling really that hard?

 

[Grall]

One thing I have not seen anywhere is, WILL the Doom3 engine support dynamically deformable geometry or not?

I'm not asking if the game itself will (because it's obvious from the info we have now that it will not), but if the engine can handle it or not. Has this been confirmed/denied anywhere?

The common BSP-based engines of today do not handle this, but with more powerful CPUs etc, should not an engine with fully destructible geometry be possible? I'd just love to be able to shoot a rocket down a Doom3-engine-game corridor and have all the pipes in the ceiling etc come crashing down. Heh heh!

*G*

 

[BoddoZerg]

That's not just FPS. Just go and look at Warcraft III forums. Whatever anyone might think about the limited intelligence of the average Beyond3D poster... man, at least we can all use English.

Is basic spelling really that hard?

OMG WTF NOOB STFU U = FAGOT CHOBO CHEESE HAX. ROFLMAO I TEH GOSU LEET PATCH WOOT. HUNTRESS = SUX WTF WYRM COOL > LUST WYV OMG WTF? DH RUSH HUK, PP OK?

 

[TheMightyPuck]

what johnny rotten said i loved quake3 because of its sheer simplicity and the fact that it rewarded skill. (and it looked great). deus ex was a great game but i got a bit bored of its complexity after a while. nolf was awesome because it was fun and had a sense of humor. my v5 has limited my enjoyment of later fps but when i get a ti4200 or a radeon9000pro (80 bucks) or 8500 i'll be able to check out the new ones.

 

[Althornin]

OMG WTF NOOB STFU U = FAGOT CHOBO CHEESE HAX. ROFLMAO I TEH GOSU LEET PATCH WOOT. HUNTRESS = SUX WTF WYRM COOL > LUST WYV OMG WTF? DH RUSH HUK, PP OK?

KEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKE. DIE USA.

 

[Tagrineth]

id software will always have a place in history for the first four DOOM games DOOM, DOOM2, Final DOOM (kinda 2 games in one) and DOOM64 All of 'em kick ass IMO.

I found the original Quake to be severely BORING, personally... too few enemies, even less weapon variety than DOOM... blargh... the only memorable level I played was Ziggurat Vertigo (and I played all the way through episodes 1, 2, and 4...). And the music was horribly bland.

Quake2 was decent, I played through the entire N64 version... but again, there weren't really THAT many different enemies. Thankfully there were more variable weapons, and the level design was a little better, making it worth playing... but it still wasn't that great.

DOOM3 sounds to me to be a kind of fusion of DOOM environments (severely moody) and objects (weapons, scenery) with Quake gameplay style (fewer enemies at a time, no use button). Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing?

I was hoping, of course, that DOOM3 would be a good old massive frag fest like the old DOOM's were (especially Final DOOM/Plutonia... jeeze...)... but considering that I didn't particularly hate Quake2, things might be better this time.

ONLY TIME WILL TELL!™

 

[V3]

Virtua Fighter games for not including the ability to pick up items from the beaten opponents

You might want to take that back, In VF4 there are plenty of items, that you can get and wear, if you beat an opponent.

Aliasing due to the precision of the individual depth values is of course only a small part of the problem. The greater unsolved problem is aliasing due to localized lack of spatial resolution.

Is that problem really so bad ? Would it be a good trade off, for using higher amount of polygon in the model ?

 

[DemoCoder]

With regards to CS cheating and teamwork, it depends on the server you play on. I only play on a few CS servers that are run by clans that ban cheaters at the drop of a hat and are heavily into voice-comm teamwork.

I exclusively play on servers where there is heavy use of voice-comm and teamwork and stay away from servers with random players.


The other game I play recently is Battlefield 1942, but still, I find myself going back to counter-strike. UT and Quake simply aren't fun for me. There are plenty of Q3 cheats BTW. The reason you don't see them used as often is simply because of the popularity of CS. CS is just way more popular and there are way way more people playing than either UT or Q3.