Official Doom 3 Thread

[Liquidator]

A friend of mine downloaded a copy of Doom 3, and I brought home the CDs to see how it would run on my computer.  I'm running an Athlon XP 1600+,  512MB PC2100 RAM, GF4 Ti/4600.  The game automatically placed the settings at 640x480 in medium detail, the game ran just fine.  I then bumped it up to 1024x768 @ medium detail, and the game still runs well.  I'm not getting 30 FPS but it's not choppy and is 100% playable.  I'm impressed with the engine, it seems to really be optimized well.

On the gameplay side though, I'm not that impressed.  This game doesn't bring anything new to the table.  The graphics are top notch, but it's still just a run and gun FPS.  I can't believe people are saying this game is scary.  It isn't.  None of the stuff popping out of walls, teleporting in behind you, etc has scared me or made me jump.  Maybe I'm jaded.  System Shock and System Shock 2 are still by far the most frightening games I have played.

As I'm not one to pirate software anymore, I deleted the game and threw out the burned CDs.  I think I will pick up an original copy once it comes down in price, hits the bargain bin, or a used copy shows up somewhere.  Carmack did a great job on this engine as usual.  Now it's just time to wait for other developers to play with it and make some truely AAA titles.

-Liquidator

[schild]

Yep, my copy is deleted as well. However I just finished Splinter Cell 2 and am about to finish Hitman 3. Both of which were worth their cost in gold as compared to Doom 3.

[geldonyetich]

There's some creepy moments in Doom 3.   Mostly "boo!" styled stuff.  However, I find System Shock 2 a bit scarier.   For one thing, the bodies in System Shock 2 don't artifically gib to bits if you shoot them one more time than is absolutely necccessarry.   Ludicrous gibbage takes the edge off a bit.   Also, the feeling of isolation and mental terror is somewhat more pronounced in SS2, methinks.

The engine is quite well done.  There's already a few mods out for it that add things such as flashlights on the pistol and removing the gibbage.   Doom 3 looks to be extreme mod-friendly, which (considering it's fabulous engine should be second only to Half-Life 2's) should be it's main saving grace when it comes to determining value.

[SirBruce]

I just my copy today.  It's not as scary as I expected yet.  It's fun, though; the graphics are gorgeous even at low rez.  Too bad I get crappy framerates on my Radeon 9800 Pro... every time some big new graphic appears it gets choppy for a few seconds.

Bruce

[MrHat]

Read this tweak off of planetDOOM:
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoom/topic.asp?fid=5733&tid=1438663

In your DOOM 3 directory, find "DoomConfig.cfg" (x:\Program Files\Doom 3\base). Open DoomConfig.cfg in Notepad.

Find the line:

seta image_cacheMegs "32"

I changed 32 to 96.

Apparently you can change it all the way up to 512 w/ dimishing returns.

Greatly enhances your FPS.[/url][/quote]

[Alluvian]

That tweak actually does not affect FPS, but should help things like Sir Bruce is talking about.  It preloads more stuff the higher it is.  FPS tests are usually run with everything preloaded already so and timed demo fps tests are unaffected.

I think I will actually pick up the game for the mods.  I changed my mind once the game started finally getting more creepy.  With some of the blood red ingame cinematics, the floating and flying corpses, the undead baby cyborg things...

The gibbage is truly stupid, but done for performance reasons I suspect so the body poofs quickly.  The scubbing bubbles self cleaning blood is annoying as well.  Any blood not in the scene natively dissapears in just a few seconds.  With all the blood sprayed around the base I really don't think the zombies would have any blood left in them anyway.

One other thing I noticed is that I think the lighting in Splinter Cell 1 and 2 is arguably better than Doom3.  Diffuse lighting seemed to affect splinter cell.  If you were in a dark room and opened a door to a brighter room, the dark room got brighter.  At least in areas in direct 'line of sight' of the other room.  I have not seen this happen in doom yet.  I have been in almost pitch black rooms and opened doors into bright rooms, and turning around, the dark room was still just as pitch black.  Moving into the dark room and letting the door close made no change in lighting.  And some of these 'bright' rooms were actually really damn bright.  One room had some moving machinery so at one point during the animation it became super bright as a machine took a bright glowy thing out of another machine.  But still that dark room had an imaginary line at the door that no light would pass except the flashlight.

This was at high detail with all stuff turned on, and ultra does nothing to the lighting engine.

[Trippy]

That tweak actually does not affect FPS, but should help things like Sir Bruce is talking about.  It preloads more stuff the higher it is.  FPS tests are usually run with everything preloaded already so and timed demo fps tests are unaffected.

Actually the first time you run timedemo in DOOM 3 to benchmark a demo file things will stutter as it loads stuff from disc. Subsequent runs on the same demo file will be much smoother.

One other thing I noticed is that I think the lighting in Splinter Cell 1 and 2 is arguably better than Doom3.  Diffuse lighting seemed to affect splinter cell.  If you were in a dark room and opened a door to a brighter room, the dark room got brighter.  At least in areas in direct 'line of sight' of the other room.  I have not seen this happen in doom yet.

The DOOM 3 engine doesn't do real time radiosity (aka global illumination) which is the effect you are describing above. You can presumably fake it with various scripting hacks (e.g. if light in room a is on then ambient light in room b is increased by x) but like yourself I have not seen that happen yet (only just got the game).

The Half-Life 2 Source engine apparently can do real-time radiosity. It'll be interesting to see how well that works.

Another slightly annoying thing about the lightning is that not all the lights you see are truly dynamic -- e.g. there are colored flickering lights in the game but you don't see the flickering reflected on objects around the light. Since true dynamic lightning and stencil shadowing are the biggies in the new engine I would have expected them to enable that for those sorts of things.

[SirBruce]

Read this tweak off of planetDOOM:
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoom/topic.asp?fid=5733&tid=1438663

In your DOOM 3 directory, find "DoomConfig.cfg" (x:\Program Files\Doom 3\base). Open DoomConfig.cfg in Notepad.

Find the line:

seta image_cacheMegs "32"

I changed 32 to 96.

Apparently you can change it all the way up to 512 w/ dimishing returns.

Greatly enhances your FPS.[/url]

[/quote]

I've got 1GB of RAM.  I have:

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "512"
seta image_cacheMinK "524288"

but it doesn't help.  Whenever a demon first appears, either by teleport or part of some trigger sequence bursting out, or a door opening, or whatever, freeze, jerk, and then I start getting some reasonable framerates again.

Bruce

[Alluvian]

Don't know what to say, not a problem I have.  Running at 800x600 high detail.

System:
AMD2500
AsusA7N8X MB
1 gig DDR400 ram running at 333 now due to the cpu.
5900XT (128 mb Vram, same speed as the ultra) card overclocked slightly past 5900 ultra numbers.

I don't get any loading glitches or pauses.  It seems to get choppy when monsters are in my face hitting me, but with the weird hit effects it is hard to tell really.

[boley]

After a bit of mucking around with different settings, I have come to the conclusion that the auto-detect is very conservative.  My system is as follows:

AMD 2100+ (overclocked to this speed)
1 gig PC2700 ram
ATI 9700 (non-pro)

The auto detect put me at Medium settings with 480x600 resolution.  I have never actually run the game at these settings because I immediately bumped the resolution to 600x800.  Results (based on FPS reported by Fraps):
-  Grainy graphics with jaggies.
-  60-80 FPS standing still
-  50-60 FPS during action

Leaving the main settings at Medium I then bumped things up to my standard resolution of 1280x1024 (also had 2x  AA on for a bit).  This setting (minus AA) is what I used to play the game:
-  Great graphics no noticeable tearing or jaggies.
-  60 FPS standing still
-  40 to 50 FPS during most action
-  30 FPS during intense action

Then I experimented a bit just to see how things worked out at higher settings.  Using High settings and 1280x1024 I had the following results:
-  Very pretty graphics
-  40 FPS standing still
-  20 to 30 FPS during action
-  15 FPS drops were noticed during heavy action.
Messing around with AA did not seem to affect things much at these settings.  I wonder if Doom simply ignores some settings when thing start getting really slow.

And just to try and make my PC implode I tried out Ultra and bumped things to 1600x1200:
-  Still very pretty, but not greatly improved from the previous settings.
-  15 FPS standing still or moving slowly
-  5 to 7 FPS during light action
-  Slideshow during any real fighting
AA settings did not make much difference.  Of course a 50% reduction when chugging along under 10 FPS will not be that noticeable (slow slideshow versus slideshow).

To summarize, I was somewhat surprised to see Doom3 playable at the higher settings.  For comparison recall that Halo settles for 30 FPS by default.  On my mediocre system I was able to maintain a similar FPS (next to last data set above) while running at a respectable resolution.  

While the Doom3 itself is kind of average to actually play, there is much enjoyment to be had trying to make one’s PC stroke out.

[SirBruce]

The 4.9 Beta Drivers have helped my performance issues somewhat.

Bruce

[geldonyetich]

Couldn't determine much difference between having the cacheMegs set higher or otherwise.  Apparently with UseCache 1 it actually crashes when loading.

Good eye with the actual Catalyst drivers specifically built for optimizing Doom 3.

[personman]

It's nothing I've actually benchmarked but CoH seems snappier too.

[Alkiera]

The 4.9 Beta Drivers have helped my performance issues somewhat.

Bruce

Hrm.  I have Cat. 4.7 (with opengl dll from 4.2, per recommendation from some website or another.)..

If this is the beta for 4.9... what happened to 4.8?  Does ATI skip numbers alot?

--
Alkiera

[HRose]

Ok, now I have Doom 3. Where I can buy some courage to play it?

[Shockeye]

Ok, now I have Doom 3. Where I can buy some courage to play it?

IGE

[geldonyetich]

Ok, now I have Doom 3. Where I can buy some courage to play it?

Here you go.

The game has not been out a week and there's already 20 mods for it.  If you're looking for courage, the UAC Sentry Bot or Flashlight Pistol should have you covered.

[Trippy]

Hrm.  I have Cat. 4.7 (with opengl dll from 4.2, per recommendation from some website or another.)..

If this is the beta for 4.9... what happened to 4.8?  Does ATI skip numbers alot?
Alkiera

No they don't, at least not since they've switched to their monthly driver update program. 4.7 is the latest released version. 4.8 is in beta right now and is this month's upcoming release (the number after the "." is the month of release). Major changes are improvements to Far Cry performance. 4.9 is the September release with OpenGL performance improvements but they released a "beta" early for DOOM 3 players.

[SirBruce]

Still haven't finished the game yet, but I'm close.  However, I do have some observations/complaints about game mechanics:

1. Armor seems out of whack.  Instead of subtracting from armor and then health, it seems to subtract some portion of each every time you take damage.  But your health is always hurt far worse.  Frequently you'll find yourself at 90/125 armor but 10/100 health.  Moreover, armor is plentiful; you find it all over the place but it almost is an afterthought since keeping your health is so much more problematic in the game.

2. None of the weapons have very high ammo capacity before you have to reload.  I suppose this does make it a more tactical experience, constantly having to reload, but it becomes majorly annoying after a while.

3. Weapon damage also seems out of whack.  There's very little difference between the machine gun and the gatling gun.  The plasma rifle is only barely better, but even minor demons can soak up a few plasma bursts.  Because ammo is so scarce until the later levels, you pretty much have to constantly switch weapons, so you don't waste your big guns on zombies and the like.  And it really becomes a guessing game as to what weapon you'll need next because you don't know if the next badguy is gonna appear right in front of you or 50 feet away.

4. Grenades are very powerful, but almost impossible to use.  The throwing arc on them is something less-than-ballistic, and if you misjudge it, they bounce around all over the place.  Ideally such a weapon would be used to clean out groups of badguys around a corner or behind a barrier of some sort, but in practice the game rarely puts you in such a position where the enemies are close enough to throw the grenade yet aren't going to charge at you so it blows up in your face.  And they do no good for clearing out rooms or corridors before you enter them, because the enemies are almost always hidden behind stuff.

5. The constantly flipping back and forth with the flashlight got old real fast.  Sure, you can use the shortcut to flip back to your last weapon, but half the time that's not the one you need.  Oh, and it forgets what the weapon was after you used your PDA.  If they wanted to keep the cool feel of the flashlight, they should have just attached lights to the barrel of each weapon and save the player the headache.

Anyway, despite these annoyances, I think the game is a blast, although I think it falls short in the scariness department.  It does do a good job, though, of teaching you how to IFF quickly (telling a demon from a flying piece of debris that won't hurt you) and control your fire (shooting at anything that moves will just waste your ammo and chances are you won't do a lot of damage).  And the graphics are absolutely gorgeous.

I wonder if someone will make a Doom 3 movie?

Bruce

[Big Gulp]

Ok, now I have Doom 3. Where I can buy some courage to play it?

These friendly people can help you out with that

[Sable Blaze]

If I ever can get my hands on a 6800GT...but I have willpower...I...can...wait...

Anyway, everyone's observations are interesting. Especially the hardware ones...must...nevermind.

The armor thing sounds a bit odd, but whatever. One copes.

Limited ammunition seems a trend. From DOOM (lots) to Quake (not so much) to Half Life (revolvers? How 1970!). Once again, one copes. At least the damned things don't wear out after 15 shots.

Weapon damage in DOOM always was goofy. A doublegun that hit like a rocket launcher. A sniper shotgun. The plasma gun whose output was dependent on your CPU power (neat in a way, though). The notorious BFG with the mystery secondary energy effects. Plasma bolts always were only 2x as compared to bullets, though. It was all about the rate of fire...

The whole ambush thing is just classic DOOM (and Quake). The later DOOM games (Final DOOM in particular) relied on the "20-revenants-to- your-face" trap way too much. You saved a lot and learned what to expect where. The zen DOOM experience, I guess. I still enjoy jDOOM coop games, especially the absolutely brutal Plutonia Experiment. Much easier with two, as opposed to going it alone (coop mode in the PC version?).

I always was and will continue to be a big DOOM fan. The atmosphere, the history of the game, the tempo of destruction, the cheesiness...it's all good. Looking forward to this version as much as any. Now if I could just find that 6800GT...

[Big Gulp]

to Half Life (revolvers? How 1970!).

A .44 Magnum is not a laughing matter, my friend.  It may not look as sleek and sexy as some tinny little 9MM, but it'll kill an engine block in one shot, baby.

Besides which, you go out to the range and you'll see a hell of a lot of people firing .44s, .38s, whatever.  There's a reason the revolver's been around as long as it has; it's a great design.

[geldonyetich]

I always was and will continue to be a big DOOM fan. The atmosphere, the history of the game, the tempo of destruction, the cheesiness...it's all good.

What?! Oh crap!  

We forgot to obsess over if Doom 3 carries on "The Doom tradition" i.e. Thief 3 vrs Thief I, II.

[HRose]

1. Armor seems out of whack.  Instead of subtracting from armor and then health, it seems to subtract some portion of each every time you take damage.  But your health is always hurt far worse.  Frequently you'll find yourself at 90/125 armor but 10/100 health.  Moreover, armor is plentiful; you find it all over the place but it almost is an afterthought since keeping your health is so much more problematic in the game.

True, I've noticed.

But this isn't really a Doom game. Doom was about the levels, it was about tons of enemies in both labyrinths and open spaces. The levels had no realistic purpose aside the gameplay.

This Doom instead is a mix of various games. There's System Shock, there's Half-Life, there's Silent Hill etc.. Doom just inspires this game.

I consider it quite awesome as a game, despite it's not my genre. But it cannot even be considered a shooter. Not a good shooter, at least. This is a survival-horror, extremely well done, with contaminations from other genres. It's a special game with a lot of appeal.

There are little parts quite "meh". For example the disintegration effect on the bodies. I have a torch in my hand, I hit a guy and it disintegrates.. ? That's really lame for a game with so much detail to feel believable and immersive. Same for the interaction. Only two three objects responding to the physic or to a weapon. They didn't even added different sounds for the various materials. I definitely think that the interaction is the worst aspect of this game.

[Sable Blaze]

I think interaction is still a weak spot in many games. MMRPG environments being so static are just another example of this.

It's still DOOM. The backstory aspect, at least. It seems gameplay is very different now. I think the decision for a hyper-detailed environment would pretty much nix the demon-wave attacks of the first games (although, Serious Sam brings that back in spades with a pretty good graphics engine).

The revolver in Half-Life was a Colt Python, so that makes it a .357. Regardless, .44, .357, or .454, none will leave more than a shiny spot on an engine block. The point was it was a very ammunition restricted weapon, as opposed to your plasma rifle and 600 cells of demon-roasting goodness on tap whenever you tripped the revenent trap (well, the second time you tripped it, since the first time would usually have you reloading the game).

I guess I'll have to get the game. Expect a report on how badly it runs on a 3000XP with an aging (but faithful!) Ti4400 card.

[SirBruce]

There are little parts quite "meh". For example the disintegration effect on the bodies. I have a torch in my hand, I hit a guy and it disintegrates.. ? That's really lame for a game with so much detail to feel believable and immersive. Same for the interaction. Only two three objects responding to the physic or to a weapon. They didn't even added different sounds for the various materials. I definitely think that the interaction is the worst aspect of this game.

I agree with you here.  Also, not all corpses are real corpses... body parts, and some almost whole bodies, don't gib at all, because they aren't treated like a corpse.  Also, the gib effect is always the same, which is lame.  You're right about many of the surfaces as well; nothing like hitting a pile of goo and hearing the metal "twang" of the wall it's textured over.

Many of the small items you can move around, but you can't destroy them.  However, like the big crates and chairs, they seem to have no weight or momentum, so you just bump they and they go float-flopping around.  You can crunch coke cans, and blow up barrels, and some windows do shatter, but that's about it.  I also get annoyed when some safety glass is breakable, but most of it isn't... except, of course, for monsters in scripted sequences, who can break through safety glass my rocket launcher can only leave a smudge on.

The bosses should have been tweaked to take more punishment and dish out less.  Too often survivng a boss encounter takes more luck than anything else.  I had to look up on the web how to defeat the Guardian; the in-game hint tells you the general idea which I was following, but there wasn't enough feedback in the game to let me know I was actually doing damage to it rather than wasting my shots doing the wrong thing.

Bruce

[SirBruce]

Thank God, someone added duct tape!

http://ducttape.glenmurphy.com/

Bruce

[Murgos]

Sounds like either lazy development, they didn't feel like implementing all the little extras that people like, or they are a victim of developing for the X-Box, if your using all your processor power and memory on graphics and the basic textures theres very little room for things like bullet holes and swapping models and sound effects around when you shoot things.  Probably a mixture of both aspects really.

[SirBruce]

Finished it.  Cyberdemon was a letdown; the Guardian was far tougher.

Delta Labs were the best maps of the bunch.  Really amazing stuff.

Bruce

[schild]

Finished it.

I bet beating it doesn't feel as good as getting the ranking "Ninja Extraordinaire" on a Hitman: Contracts mission.

[stray]

Slightly off topic, but I found this pretty amusing:

"What if Doom 3 were open sourced?"

http://entertainment.newsforge.com/entertainment/04/08/02/1228248.shtml?tid=22&tid=132

What is hindering ID from taking this giant leap for the computer industry, if not for all of mankind?

Shouldn't open source be ID Software's next move if it still wants to be "The" gaming industry innovator?

[HaemishM]

Open... bwa.. ha... open... source... Doom

...

BWAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Yes, we'll just go ahead and open source our CASH FUCKING COW GAME ENGINE THAT WE WANT TO LICENSE OUT FOR MILLIONS A POP.

Goddamn, some people on the Internet reinvent stupid on a daily basis.

Edit: Oh shit, it gets better.

When Doom 3 is the engine behind games, and its development takes on the speed and perfection of open source...

...

When a game can be built with the Doom 3 engine, does it make any sense going the proprietary path? The gaming industry would be converted to open source in two seconds. Open source's unique ability to establish open standards would make itself present. Goodbye DirectX!

WHAT FUCKING PLANET ARE YOU LIVING ON?

[Neph]

Finished it.  Cyberdemon was a letdown; the Guardian was far tougher.

Delta Labs were the best maps of the bunch.  Really amazing stuff.

Bruce

IMO, Hell was the best level in the whole game and should have been longer. They needed to cut out some of the lab maps and add more hell maps.

I still haven't beat it, but man it does get pretty intense later on, though a bit too easy. I really enjoy when they try to throw  3-4 or more monsters at you, than it begins to feel like doom.

[Alluvian]

Yeah, more jumping puzzles.  No thank you.  Hell was like a mini Xen.   Pretty awful IMO.  Why was there nothing scary or new in hell?  The game itself up to that point had far more creepy things than were in hell.  There was nothing scary or creepy about hell.  It was pretty, but unimaginative.  Painkiller had a better hell (awful game, good graphics).

[eldaec]

I wasn't very keen on the concept to begin with. Think this 'review' sealed it for me...

http://www.machall.com/index.php?strip_id=290

(link originally found on PA)

Normal human beings have some degree of night vision. Games (and films for that matter) that don't respect that fact always piss me off.

Think I'll pass.