Official Doom 3 Thread

[schild]

First off, system specs:
P4 @ 2.8 GHz
GeforceFX 5200 Ultra
1 Gig of DDR333
Running on a Viewsonic A90f+ @ 800x600@120hz.
Surround Sound courtesy of Logitech z680s plugged into Audigy Platinum

Pros:
BEAUTIFUL
Scary as fuck
Scary as fuck
Scary as fuck
Guns are loud

Cons:
Story dies after 15 minutes (but that's Doom for ya)
It's nothing more than an engine demo
Runs slow as shit
Then, somehow, runs even slower

Let me elaborate on the cons.

Story: It starts off seeming to have this fantastic story, almost Deus Ex 1 quality - but not quite. They send you on this mission to find a scientist, you get there and all hell breaks loose. Literally. After that it becomes a scarefest extravaganza with lots of shooting, and well, shit jumping out at you.

Engine Demo: Amazingly beautiful, brings absolutely nothing new to the genre. Honestly, it feels like a really really really beefed up DX 2 engine with the load screens removed. By the way, it's amazingly beautiful at 800x600. At 640x480 it moves fast as balls, but the mesh door effect of low res on a natively high res monitor rares it's ugly head.

Runs slow: On my machine, which most would consider beefy, I barely get 30 frames at 800x600 with graphics at Medium.

Yes, I warezed the game, to see if it would run - it doesn't and is already deleted. I will be cancelling my preorder until I get a new graphics card and then will finally pick it up. If you have a machine that can run it, I think it deserves the play through just for the experience. For now, I'll go back and beat Hitman Contracts.

[schild]

Oh, and one more thing - I think the dynamic lighting is what brought my computer to a screeching halt. I mean we're talking:

1. Walking down well let dispersed lighting hallway / 30fps.
2. HOLY FUCK MONSTERS, WHERE ARE THE LIGHTS / 15fps
3. SWEET ASS WHAT WAS THAT, I GOT SHOT / 1fps while it renders the flash of light
4. Get out of hallway, lights turn back on, but are now directional from a rotoscope thingy / 5fps

They don't turn off at the low setting. I think I'm locked in because I have a directx9 card.

Edit: And again, to add about the storyline - The reason I mentioned it in the first post is with the amount of environmental flair they tossed into the game in the first 15 minutes, there was no reason to trash all that. They had a great rich foundation to build upon only to toss it away for some sound effects from the Gwar Library of Sound.

[Glamdring]

I take it that you're enjoying yourself at 800x600?  According to HOCP that's the res I'm gonna be looking at as well (medium quality) and it kind of turned me off.  Hopefully a demo will get here soon so that I can decide if I want to buy it or not.

[schild]

I never judge stuff from HOCP or anywhere elses benchmarks because it's never real world. They generally have a fresh install of Windows XP with the latest firmware and drivers for everything. I, on the other hand, have 500 gigs of completely fucked up misallocated shit clogging up every nook, crannie and wedge of my computer, spread across 3 hard drives.

[WayAbvPar]

Just as I suspected...nothing to make me rush out and drop $1200 on a screaming hot new system just to play it.

[Alluvian]

I will have to get the *ahem* demo *cough* this evening myself as well.  See how it runs then decide to buy or not buy depending on performance on my system.

A game like this really needed a demo before launch.  Same with HL2, but HL2 will surely not have a demo out till months after launch as well.  MEH.

Is the 'demo' up on binary newsgroups?  That is where I usually get my 'demos'.

[schild]

I will have to get the *ahem* demo *cough* this evening myself as well.  See how it runs then decide to buy or not buy depending on performance on my system.

A game like this really needed a demo before launch.  Same with HL2, but HL2 will surely not have a demo out till months after launch as well.  MEH.

Is the 'demo' up on binary newsgroups?  That is where I usually get my 'demos'.

Dude. Just say your pirating it. I agree, this needed a demo. And I'm one to normally just outright buy games (too many, all the time). Anyway, no, I torrented it - from the usual place.

Edit: There are about 100,000 people downloading the torrent right now (I'm not seeding this blasphemous motherfucker). But anyway, I do believe that due to the graphic requirements that about 50,000 of them (at least) would have preferred a demo to having to download 1.7 gigs of 1 frame per second MADNESS.

[Murgos]

Runs slow: On my machine, which most would consider beefy, I barely get 30 frames at 800x600 with graphics at Medium.

I'm not having the same experience.  I have an Athlon 2200+ with a radeon 8500 64mb card with 512 MB system ram.  On install the game defaulted to LOW.  It seemed very smooth at that resolution, I'm not running FRAPS or anything it just felt fine.  Walking aorund looking at all the lights and details I didn't notice any problems.  A note:  640x480 in Doom 3 looks better than most games in 1280x764.

I bumped my settings up to medium (not only changes the resolution but increased the texture sizes and makes other enhancements) the game still seems quite playable but there is a little more tearing if I swing the mouse around wildly.  There is supposed to be an AVI recording feature in the console to record your game play.  Maybe I'll record 30 seconds or so and post it.

[Alluvian]

It sounds like it runs about as nice as the alpha did on my old system.  man that was a wasted download.  For something like this bit torrent might work out rather well.  I usually find newsgroups are faster for me though.

Either way, I will nab it one way or another.  As far as warez, of course that is what I am talking about.  I was just having fun.  *sniffle*

[schild]

640x480 on the 19" Viewsonic just gives me too much of the screen door effect. I can, however, run it at the highest setting at that resolution. Either way, I'm gonna wait til I buy a new graphics card for EQII, HL2, and other shit before I pick it up.

[Morfiend]

No offence, but that vid card you have is a piece of crap. I would consider your machine around avarage for gaming these days but drastically subpar with a fx5200, sorry man, there is no getting around it. That card stinks.

I think I also might have to pick up the "Demo" and see how it runs on my machine.

3.2 Northwood
1gig 3200 ram
FX5700 Ultra

[schild]

ur penis is huger.

Seriously though, I run this dual monitored and can render shit in 3ds on the fly (and in Maestro). Doom 3 is just a fucking beast. My graphics card is absolutely fine for 99% of the games on the market right now.

I'll pick up a 5700 when it costs $99 in November, kthx. By then agp will be budget compared to pci express, imo.

[Otis]

On install the game defaulted to LOW ... I bumped my settings up to medium (not only changes the resolution but increased the texture sizes and makes other enhancements) the game still seems quite playable ...

You know, I experienced the same. According to the system check run by Doom 3 itself, medium settings at 800x600 was my designated sweet spot. I pushed that up to 1024x768 on high and I've probably not dropped below 25 FPS yet. The performance test may be a little too conservative with what constitutes a playable setting on some systems.

For reference, the pertinent components on my machine are: AMD 3000+ CPU, 1 GB RAM, ATI 9800 Pro /w 128MB

In the gameplay department, Doom 3 brings virtually nothing new to the table. However, coming from someone who was expecting nothing more than flashy (and boring) tech demo, I've still found the game to be somewhat enjoyable with its mix of elements from other popular shooters. So far this is the only id game I've managed to play for more than an hour.

[Glamdring]

Either way, I will nab it one way or another.  As far as warez, of course that is what I am talking about.  I was just having fun.  *sniffle*

Oh, you mean that companies provide other types of demos?  Of course I'm one of the rare breed that actually pirates with intent to purchase.  I just have no desire to purchase something only to find out that it will run in a 320x200 mode or something on my system and then discover that I'm unable to return it because it has been opened.

[MrHat]

640x480 on the 19" Viewsonic just gives me too much of the screen door effect. I can, however, run it at the highest setting at that resolution. Either way, I'm gonna wait til I buy a new graphics card for EQII, HL2, and other shit before I pick it up.

Ya, that's what I'm waiting for too, no need to buy a new GFX card when my mobo won't support AGP8x anyways.

As for Doom 3, I installed the alpha on a centrino laptop at work (CCity) and it seemed to run fine.  Will give info on how the acutal game runs on my comp at home (P4 2.53, 1GB, ti4600) when it finishes uh, downloading.

[geldonyetich]

Scary as fuck
Scary as fuck
Scary as fuck

Would you say deep, psychological scary like System Shock 2?   I wouldn't ask except I was, alas, too much the wuss to finish SS2 and it'd be a bummer if Doom 3 was equally so.   On the other hand, games like Resident Evil don't particularly bother me.  I think it was the sense of isolation and limited ammunition that got to me in SS2.    Give me a big gun and a lot of ammo and I've enough artificial courage to get me through the (also artificial) fears.

As tempted as I am to get the "unofficial demo", I'm holding out.   I know if I played it, my motivation to blow $55 on the whole game basically goes kaput and, lets face it, if ID made a half-decent good game they deserve my money (actually this would be my brother's money since I'm still an unemployed wretch) at least as much as many other games I've bought in the past.

Not too worried about performance.  After all, I thought Deus Ex 2 was playable.

(Wish I knew where I stashed Serious Sam.  That'd give me a little something to occupy me until tommorow.   I'm tempted to install System Shock 2 again for "Conditioning."  I could make it worth my while with the new models.)

[Anonymous]

You are dirty thieves and make Carmack cry with your dishonesty and deceit.

[geldonyetich]

Not I!     I'm being a good little talking wallet.

Now it'd be a forgivable sin if you could make Romero cry, but he's no longer working for ID last I heard.

[Lanei]

AMD Dual Athlon XP 1900, 1.5 GB of RAM, Radeon 9800XT
FPS measurements using FRAPS

Game recommended: 800x600, MQ textures:  60 fps

1024x768, HQ textures:  60fps running around, 40fps in combat.

1024x768, HQ textures, 4x AA: 30 fps running around, teens in combat.

[Lanei]

Would you say deep, psychological scary like System Shock 2?

Never played System Shock 2, but the Doom 3 scary for me is the combination of atmosphere (fucking dark), creepy background music, and shit jumping out at you.  You KNOW something is going to jump out at you, and its still upsetting.

This is a less enjoyable kind of scary than a game like 'Undying' though, where not everything that is disturbing is out to rip your face off.

My first complaint about Doom 3 gameplay, aside from the 'its the same as Doom' factor, is that stuff can spawn in behind you, walking in from an area you have already cleared.  What the fuck is up with that?  Backed into a corner with a 90 degree field of view, and something is suddenly hitting me from behind?  Crap.  Cheapass crap bullshit.

If ammo=courage for you, don't get too trigger happy.  I've had to administer a zombie beatdown with the flashlight once already, though I was able to stock up on ammo shortly after.

[Alluvian]

God I hate bit torrents from the 'usual place'.  Funny how I can get a bit torrent from firerush.com at 200+ k/s consistently, but from the 'usual place' I am lucky to get 10 k/s.  Doom 3 had something like 3000 users and 30+ seeds and the fucker was only coming in at 2k/s.  So, something like 600 hours to complete.

Already 371/7531 on the good old binary group.

What bit torrent client do you use?  I have been using bit tornado, as it is supposed to be one of the faster ones.

I would like the 'usual site' to work fast because I love getting MST3k episodes, but at the transfer rates I get from their torrents it takes DAYS to download one episode.

[boley]

What bit torrent client do you use? I have been using bit tornado, as it is supposed to be one of the faster ones.

Using BitTornado (Shadow's experimental client) and currently getting about 70-80 kB/s.  Source is a site who's name involves the death of a star.  Total time for the "unoffical demo" will be about 9 hours.

If you are using the same client, does the light ever turn green?  If not, you need to mess with your ports.  If so, then I am out of suggestions and will slink back into my cave.

[geldonyetich]

Bittorrent never worked that well for me when I tried to use it to download game demos (that actually were game demos).   Seems to be the technology itself just isn't that well conceived.

[Big Gulp]

Bittorrent never worked that well for me when I tried to use it to download game demos (that actually were game demos).   Seems to be the technology itself just isn't that well conceived.

I never liked BitTorrent 'til I tried it in Shareaza.  All the other clients used to cap my DL speed at my UL speed.  Not so with Shareaza; I ofter get around 200K/sec depending on what torrent I'm on.  Episodes of Dead Like Me and Penn & Teller Bullshit seem to just fly down the pipe, other torrents not so much, but I definitely get better results with that client than any other I've ever tried.

[Slayerik]

Ok if schild had that many good things to say it about this game is gonna be pretty fuckin cool. I mean, we all know how bad he wanted to come on here and totally bash it...don't we? Anyways, the 5200 is maybe a touch below par for todays standards, so I'm sure my overclocked P4,9800 pro 256, and 1 GB dual channel 3200 RAM will run this like a champ.

[Glamdring]

I hope you guys are using Peer Guardian when you use your BT client.  I left it running while at work today and blocked several connection attempts from Activision.

Anyway, I played the, ahem.. 'demo'... and decided, even though I can really only play in 800x600, that the game is definately worth a purchase.  I'm really amazed at just how stunning the faces looked even at these low details and can't begin to imagine just how great they must look in HQ 1600x1200.

[Rasix]

Well, I've played an hour or so of it....

While it is a tad freaky at times, this game really doesn't hold a candle to Max Payne 2.  I'm incredibly underwhelmed.

Maybe it gets better later on.

[Big Gulp]

I hope you guys are using Peer Guardian when you use your BT client.

Hate Peer Guardian with a passion.  The best one I've seen is ProtoWall along with the blocklist manager.  It uses much less system resources because it works on the driver level, and the blocklist manager pulls from a much larger pool of known IP ranges.

[Glamdring]

I hope you guys are using Peer Guardian when you use your BT client.

Hate Peer Guardian with a passion.  The best one I've seen is ProtoWall along with the blocklist manager.  It uses much less system resources because it works on the driver level, and the blocklist manager pulls from a much larger pool of known IP ranges.

Thanks, I'll check that one out.

[boley]

After about 45 minutes in game here are my impressions.

Graphics:  Between Good and Meh
-  Playing on Medium settings with resolution manually bumped up to 800x600.  FPS is acceptable.
-   Some things look nice, especially cut scenes and faces.
-  Some things look bad, mostly due to jaggies and graininess.
-  Overall it’s hard to tell because things are incredibly fucking dark.
-  I generally prefer style to sheer polygons; I think this influences my lackluster reaction.

Gameplay:  Average
-  You can push boxes around.  Yay.
-  Shooting at dark blobs in black shadows is not fun.
-  Things die in entertaining ways (at least from the shotgun).

Scariness:  No
-  Critters jumping out at predictable times yelling "Rawr" is not scary.
-  All the darkness is not scary either, it is annoying.
-  The Cradle level from Thief: Deadly Shadows is infinitely spookier.

Story:  It is Doom.  What did you expect?

Extras:
-  The PDA stuff is neat for about a minute, and then I realized it’s just a fancy take on the quest journal.  Kudos for the extra effort I suppose.
-  As I mentioned, the cut scenes and intro are well done.

Summary:  I played the game for less than an hour; I am now sleepy and going to bed early.

[Alluvian]

What bit torrent client do you use? I have been using bit tornado, as it is supposed to be one of the faster ones.

Using BitTornado (Shadow's experimental client) and currently getting about 70-80 kB/s.  Source is a site who's name involves the death of a star.  Total time for the "unoffical demo" will be about 9 hours.

If you are using the same client, does the light ever turn green?  If not, you need to mess with your ports.  If so, then I am out of suggestions and will slink back into my cave.

Yup, that is what I called the normal place.  Could be a port issue, but as I said earlier I gave up on that and got it off the newsgroups in about an hour for 1.7 gigs.


Played it for a few hours, intentionally going REALLLLLLL slow because I know the beginning of these games is usually the best and often the only thing worth playing.  I personally thought the faces, or rather the heads look awful.  Everyone looks undead before they even become zombies.  If they gave me the gun earlier I would have blown everyone to bits.

The gameplay is very meh.  The only thing new here is the fact that you can hold the flashlight or hold a gun, not both.  So you can see or shoot, your choice.  Needless to say this gets fucking annoying fast as you are often just shooting blind hoping to hit something.  At least the imp makes his own light when charging up the fireballs.  It is the zombie soldiers that can be a pain, using cover while in a pitch black room.  They seem to see me just freaking fine.  Also, why do zombie soldiers move like jackie chan while the other zombies move like I do on a bad arthritis day?

Overall I would say I like the game, because this is pretty much what I expected.  It is a tech demo.  It has more story than any past doom or quake game in the little datapad things, and that is pretty nifty, but nothing like unraveling the mysteries in System shock 1 or 2, where you actually LEARNED things about the plot that sometimes scared the crap out of you.  I know I sometimes found reading the SS1 and 2 datapads some of the scariest stuff in the game.

I am very dissapointed in the lack of a useful physics system.  Sure it is there, but it is pretty pointless.  Very few objects are designated as movable, and most of the neat looking stuff is just scripted sequences ala halflife1.  Halflife 2 looks to actually use the physics in the game.  Max Payne 2 and Far Cry also had much more apparent physics with more movable objects.  They physics doom3 does have are questionable at best as well.  Soda can on desktop.  Pistol firing at can.  I shoot it in the middle, it hops about an inch up in the air and moves back a little.  I shoot it at the top, same effect.  Shoot it in the middle again and this time it goes flying across the room like it has been fired out of a cannon.  Bad physics.

The scares have pretty much dissapated.  The first scare where everything first goes wrong was incredibly well done IMO.  Very very very cool and really surprised me.  I knew hell was going to break out, but not quite the way I expected.  Better than the halflife 1 ohshit scare at the beginning IMO.  Since then there is just the jump out 'boo' sort of scares.  And the scare that you will probably have to reload because you wasted a ton of ammo in that stupid pitch black room.  To relieve that scare I quicksave almost every fight.  I HATE running out of ammo in a game.  I already know the ammo cheat incase I need it.

I will give it another day before deleting or deciding to buy.  I suspect it will be the former because the game seems to be getting worse not better the more I play.

Oh, one thing I want to praise them on is a GREAT use of the computers and keypads.  Great to just walk up and click around the screens with the 'mouse'.  Best implimentation of this sort of thing I have seen yet in a game.  Learning that in the security room you can open up those lockers (like a prior pda told you) to get the first machine guns is neat.  I love the little animated interfaces.  I hope to see this feature become the norm in fps games.  But I find it pretty sad when fiddling with the ingame computers is more fun than actually playing the game and shooting the monsters.

Hell, I think I would prefer an adventure game with this engine.  Could be VERY interactive and pretty damn fun.

[Alkiera]

Hell, I think I would prefer an adventure game with this engine. Could be VERY interactive and pretty damn fun.

In other FPS news, CryTek released the SDK for modding their game yesterday.  The map editor was pre-existing, but the SDK apparently allows for changing the rules more, or something.  They use Lua for scripting support, and most of the 'game' code is written in it, so you don't need Visual Studio or anything, like Quake did as of Q2/Q3, and I believe Halflife did as well.

Frankly, I love the ability to see approximately forever in Far Cry.  And with a sniper rifle, you can shoot pretty dang far, too.

Back to the actual topic...
I'm curious how CPU-dependant it is.  I have a 1.4 Ghz Athlon(non-XP) 512 megs of DDR SDRAM and a 9600 Pro with 128 megs of DDR ram on it.

So my video card is well above minimum, and my CPU is under minimum.  Far Cry is beautiful at medium settings, 1024x768... and smooth as glass.
Only Doom 3 stuff I've read are for the minimum machine, and godlike hardware.

--
Alkiera

[Fabricated]

Friends who work at best buy rock. Got a legit copy.

My Rig:
3Ghz P4 / Intel D875PBZ Mobo
1GB PC3200 DDRAM
Radeon 9800XT 256MB
Audigy 2

I pull 35FPS or so at worse, 40-50 most of the time, and 60 if nothing's around.

[Fabricated]

Finally got to play for a while.

Doom 3, play in one act::

Marine: My god, it's full of stars!
Monsters: *pop out of strange hidden compartments* BOO LOLE
Marine: Eh. *BLAM*

*Repeat endlessly*

~Fin~

[SurfD]

Not sure how it plays in the other difficulty modes, but I decided to start my run through on the easiest mode (rookie i think it is).  Never fear of running out of ammo.  I just primarily switch between the shotgun and the machine gun, with occasional swaps to the pistol (for the regular run of the mill zombies).  

Shotgun will kill pretty much all the critters i have encountered so far with one shot.  Just run up into its face, shoot it once, watch it die (again).

Hand grenades are fun for those bastard zombie marines who like to hide half way across a room and shoot at you from cover.

Must say, it is, as Schild said, SCARY AS FUCK, but only for the first two or three acts.  Then it just degenerates into things popping out of hidden pannels.  I mean fuck, it is VERY predictable when things will pop out of pannels too (usually happens when there is a conveniently placed super medkit or full armor powerup in a room).

I think the one thing that does signifigantly contribute to the scarry as fuck  feeling is the music.  Very well done for driving up the tension in the right places.

As to how well it runs for me:
P4 1.5, 512 meg ram, All-In-Wonder 9800Pro 128 (Motherboard unfortunately only supports 4x AGP) and i can run it passably well in 640x480 on Low with Shadows turned off.  It still gets some slowdown (especially in firefights with a lot of muzzle flashes and imps lobbing fireballs at me) but other then that, quite acceptabl.  And it still looks really good.  
May tray cranking it up to Medium with shadows off and see if it still plays as well.