Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - Doom 3 : August the 3rd 2004

- Tilted Gaming (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-gaming/)

- - Doom 3 : August the 3rd 2004 (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-gaming/60261-doom-3-august-3rd-2004-a.html)

Reznor pulled out?!?!?! WTF?!?!?!?! :mad:

Fry's is selling pre-orders for $47.99 with free shipping!

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4035782

Quote:

Originally posted by SecretMethod70
Reznor pulled out?!?!?! WTF?!?!?!?! :mad:

Long ago - in fact, he was never officially signed. He did the sound for the E3 2001 demo as a favor to the id guys. Chris Vrenna is doing the music/sound for Doom 3.

Quote:

Originally posted by mrquackers
Long ago - in fact, he was never officially signed. He did the sound for the E3 2001 demo as a favor to the id guys. Chris Vrenna is doing the music/sound for Doom 3.

Aw goddamnit! That was like, reason #2 I was looking forward to this release. I listened to the demo of the intro music on the website and it really sounded like Tool.

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Deflok
...in their media section they have a clip of intro music to the game. The first thing I thought when I heard it was, "SHIT! That's Tool!!!" then I remembered the rumour about Tool and Reznor teaming up for music, that rumour just got confirmed!

Quote:

Originally posted by nothingx
Aw goddamnit! That was like, reason #2 I was looking forward to this release. I listened to the demo of the intro music on the website and it really sounded like Tool.

Looks like they didn't team up but yeah, it's freakin' Tool baby!

Okay, so I may have been wrong about what it's gonna take to run Doom3 at it's highest mode. From no source closer than the mouth of id itself, Robert Duffy, one of the programmers at id, from his .plan file:

Quote:

July.26.2004
------------

I've seen quite a few posts in the forums about "Ultra" quality and why we don't set this by default out of the box. I thought I would clarify a few of the reasons and also take the time to mention some of the hardware and software we found incredibly useful during the development of DOOM 3.

To put things in perspective, most production levels in DOOM 3 contain more media assets than all of Quake 3: Arena. When we started working on the memory foot print, our goal was a 256MB system. In most cases loading up an area of the game on a 256MB system works fine, the problems arise when you start to transition from one area to the next ( successive map loads ). Memory fragmentation starts to really work against us and it ultimately made it just not feasible for a reasonable play experience to support 256MB.

Two basic options make up the quality levels, sound diversity and image fidelity.

Sound diversity is effectively how many sounds we support per sound shader for a given "sound". There may be for instance, 7 different "bullet striking the wall" sounds for a given bullet. In low quality, we only use one sound for this vs randomly choosing between one of the seven available. When we started on memory optimization, most levels used between 80 and 100 megabytes of sound data. We made the choice to move to .OGG for quite a few sounds which effectively removed the problem for us.

Image fidelity is dependent on what quality level we load the textures at.

In Ultra quality, we load each texture; diffuse, specular, normal map at full resolution with no compression. In a typical DOOM 3 level, this can hover around a whopping 500MB of texture data. This will run on current hardware but obviously we cannot fit 500MB of texture data onto a 256MB card and the amount of texture data referenced in a give scene per frame ( 60 times a second ) can easily be 50MB+. This can cause some choppiness as a lot of memory bandwidth is being consumed. It does however look fantastic :-) and it is certainly playable on high end systems but due to the hitching that can occur we chose to require a 512MB Video card before setting this automatically.

High quality uses compression ( DXT1,3,5 ) for specular and diffuse and no compression for normal maps. This looks very very close to Ultra quality but the compression does cause some loss. This is the quality that for instance the PC Gamer review was played in.

Medium quality uses compression for specular, diffuse, and normal maps. This still looks really really good but compressing the normal maps can produce a few artifacts especially on hard angled or round edges. This level gets us comfortably onto 128MB video cards.

Low quality does everything medium quality does but it also downsizes textures over 512x512 and we downsize specular maps to 64x64 in this mode as well. This fits us onto a 64MB video card.

One thing of note on the normal map compression is that generally speaking if you DXT a normal map you get really crappy results. NVIDIA hardware supports palettized compression which yields good compression and normal maps retain hard and round edges really well. Unfortunately this compression does a poor job in other cases and you end up getting splotchy areas. ATI does not support the palettized compression so we needed a better solution. ATI had done some research on various methods of normal map compression and we ended swapping the red and alpha ( which is zero in the case of a normal map ) channels. This effectively allows the compression to do a much better job and is just one extra instruction in the fragment program to move the alpha channel into the red channel. The bottom line on what happens on each card is as follows.

All modern NVIDIA and all ATI hardware use the compressed normal maps in Medium and Low qualities with the swizzled components.
NV10/20 hardware ( GF4MX and GF3 ) uses palettized normal maps in Medium and Low qualities.

Another question I have had multiple emails about, yes the game is capped at 60fps for normal game play. For render demos, like what was used for the HARD OCP stuff, we run those at full tilt which is why you will see > 60fps.

For the curious, here is a list of software/hardware we found useful during the development of DOOM 3.

Incredibuild by Xoreax.
Visual Assist by Whole Tomato Software
Alienbrain by Avid ( formerly NXN )
Visual Studio by Microsoft

DOOM 3 was developed mostly on Dell and/or Alienware computers. Falcon also sent us a kick ass system that has been Tim's primary play system through most of the project.

The art team used a wide variety of tools ( they probably use other stuff too but this is what comes to mind )

Maya
Lightwave
ZBrush
3D Max
Photoshop

We saw a few bumps in the road during the project, we had a multiple ( simultaneous ) drive failure in our primary development server which effectively trashed the raid system and was not recoverable. This resulted in building a two IDE drive raid system on a Saturday morning so the team could keep working. So all of DOOM 3 development was housed in an old dev system with a $79 RAID card driving two 100GB drives for about a week. The end result of this was we went ahead and built two identical RAID 1/0 systems ( about a half a terabyte each ). This has been the configuration for the last 18 months or so.

We made the move to Alienbrain about two thirds into the project. It was a big change for everyone as no one but the programmers were used to having to "check something out" to work on it. Overall this was a big win for the project as it centralized everything into one application from an asset/code standpoint. Alienbrain like any major software system has a few gotchas but has performed very well and sustained our RAID running entirely out of drive space multiple times.

I hope everyone enjoys the game.

For those who want it, a link

the latest pc gamer already said that if you have at least a 2.0 ghz and geforce 4 mx, it should run the game fairly decent without too many hiccups or other stuff.
i cant' wait for this game! only a few more days!

MUAHAHAHAHA. Ladies and gents, I bring you pics of the first review for Doom 3. Courtesy of bittorrent and PC Gamer Magazine. Proceeds from one page to the next. My suggestion is that you save these pictures and zoom in. Warning Spoilers ahead! Not 56k friendly!

http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/img1.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/img2.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/img3.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/img4.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/img5.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/img6.jpg

94 fuckin' percent. Not bad for something that has "slightly lower expectations than the second coming of Jesus" according to Wired Magazine.

You know what? I have yet another review. Think I'll post it.
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/doomreview-1.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/doomreview-2.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/doomreview-3.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/doomreview-4.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/doomreview-5.jpg
http://appstate.edu/~bm48531/doomreview-6.jpg

Well, 96%! A little better. I imagine IGN's review of this game will say much the same, as well as EGM's. Let's face it folks, this is the showstopper, the game that begins a new generation of greatness. According to that PC Gamer review, a PC with a fuckin' 3GHz P4/GF6800 ran it well at 1024*768 with all the shit turned up. DAAAAMN.

All I can say after that is, you're all very damn welcome.

People have been getting in trouble everywhere for posting the PC Gamer review, be careful dude!

Id Software have conducted a hardware test, here are the results:
http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

And a summary from Gamespot.com

Quote:

Minimum System: According to id, the minimum requirements to run Doom 3 are:

DX 9.0-compatible 3D card w/ 64MB RAM
MS Windows 2000/XP
Pentium 4 1.5GHz or Athlon XP 1500+
384MB RAM
8x CD-ROM
2.2GB of HD space
Broadband (for multiplayer)

Supported 3D graphics chipsets:
ATI: Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
Nvidia: GeForce3, GeForce4 MX, GeForce4 Titanium, GeForce FX, GeForce6

Ultimate System: HardOCP also outlined its dream system, which consists of:

BFGTech GeForce 6800 Ultra OC (goes on sale in mid-August)
AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64 FX-53 w/ 1MB L2 cache
ABIT AV8 motherboard
2GB of Corsair XMS RAM

System Video Quality Settings: In addition to explaining the game's four quality settings--low, medium, high, and ultra--the guide provides reference screenshots contrasting the low, medium, and high settings as well as the high and ultra settings.

Resolution: HardOCP's analysis of resolution settings came to a surprising conclusion: Doom 3 does not require antialiasing. Instead, the guide suggests simply increasing the resolution settings. HardOCP suggests a "sweet spot" of 1024x768 resolution set to high quality.

Nvidia Versus ATI Image Quality: Following a controversial benchmark test that said Doom 3 performed best on an Nvidia GeForce 6800GT, the site again compares GPUs from the two leading manufacturers. The results? HardOCP found that "the ATI Radeon X800XT-PE has slightly more aliasing than the Nvidia GeForce 6800Ultra OC," but also noticed some "odd texture patterns exhibited by the GeForceFX 5900Ultra." Overall, though, the guide found that "there are no major differences in image quality between NVIDIA and ATI video cards when playing DOOM 3 at the same settings."

Value Video Card Image Quality: For gamers with not-so-deep pockets, HardOCP tested lower-end GPUs, with surprising results. "By default, all of the advanced quality settings such as shadows, specular lighting, and bump mapping are enabled," it said. "As long as your video card meets the system requirement of a GeForce4 MX-440 64MB, all of these effects will be available to you."

Enthusiast Video Card Image Quality: The site also displayed several spectacular-looking screenshots from the game running on the highest-end BFGTech GeForce 6800 Ultra OC and ATI Radeon X800XT-PE cards.

General and Specific System Performance Analysis: The guide outlines the general system performance, tested on a minimum-spec system provided by id Software. The testers also analyzed the performance of dozens of other GPU-specific systems, ranging from the BFGTech GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128MB to a Vision Tek Radeon 9800XT 256MB.

Oh, and the game is already in New Zealand and goes on sale here on the 3rd, looks like I may be one of the first people in the world to play Doom 3!

I bought PC Gamer off the newstands just for that review :)

Am I the only person on this planet not looking forward or even getting a bit excited about this game? Maybe its because my PC cant run it :), maybe because of the hype, who knows.

Quote:

Originally posted by Rdr4evr
Am I the only person on this planet not looking forward or even getting a bit excited about this game?

Yeah man, you might want to see a Psychiatrist about that. ;)

Man if there were ever an argument to "go AMD" this was it: From HardOcp:

Quote:

AMD came out ahead in DOOM 3 performance with the strongest CPU in our tests, the Athlon 64 FX-53 processor. The Athlon 64 series of CPU is undoubtedly a powerhouse when it comes to overall gaming. Thankfully though, DOOM 3 is terribly forgiving to those of you that do not use the latest CPUs. DOOM 3 runs just fine on an Intel 1.5GHz Pentium 4 or an AMD Athlon XP 1800+. I came away from our testing at the id Software offices thinking that id has done a great job optimizing for both Intel and AMD platforms, and that DOOM 3 would run great on either platform readily and without issue. With that said, in our high end system testing, you can see where DOOM 3 and its image quality are allowed to scale upward with stronger CPUs from both Intel and AMD. Another standout was the ABIT IC7 system (i875) at 3GHz. The IC7 showed us that our previous thoughts about the aging i875 are indeed correct. The i875 may be a little long in the tooth as silicon goes, but when measured on performance there is little reason to replace the technology if you already own it. While the world of CPUs is changing a bit in terms of "better=faster," at this point in time when gaming is considered, more MHz are still welcomed. In the case of DOOM 3 though, the latest high-dollar CPUs are hardly a necessity as Athlon XPs and Northwood core Pentium 4s still bring more than enough of the needed power to the table.

The underlined part is really what hurts most. The rest is just concillatory.

http://www.ironnerd.com/temp/

hrmmm looks like some already have it! hehe

hey guys, just thought id send ya some love with some official doom 3 screenshot via prerelease...

Heres the thread... http://boards.ign.com/Doom_3/b5646/63929546/p1

AND HERES THE SCREENIES! WEWT! http://photobucket.com/albums/v373/supervillainx/

Note too guys, those are all on the lowest settings.

Quote:

Originally posted by Rawrr
http://www.ironnerd.com/temp/

hrmmm looks like some already have it! hehe

doh! ya beat me to it!

New Video Dudes:
http://www.filerush.com/download.php...nloadfinal.mov

I play this game on Monday, and am gonna jizz for weeks.

DOOM 3 early release?! Shots inside

I saw this on Fatwallet. Some guy who claims to work at best buy said that their manager got the Go Ahead from Activision to release the game early.

He posted these links to images.

http://home.comcast.net/~finalnight/d1.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~finalnight/d2.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~finalnight/d3.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~finalnight/d4.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~finalnight/d5.JPG

Fatwallet has removed the post I think because they have been in trouble with best buy before for posting their ads early. Is it real?! whos checking best buy tomorrow!!

and o yeah i remember someone else on the thread saying that they called their manager friend at best buy and said that its true.

he posted also on anandtech
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...&enterthread=y

holy shet, here also
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.ph...ic=197042&st=0

err... mod move or delete this please

Looks like BestBuy broke street day, there'll be hell to pay!

A funny flash film made with the help of Fanta regarding the "OMG! Doom 3 IS T3H OUTZORZ!" buzz...
http://www.fanta.dk/news.asp?nid=1CF...7-AB147CAB97A4

Man, this is a retailing debacle if I've ever seen one. Breaking street date, who the fuck does Best Buy think it is?

EDIT: Photobucket sux.

Why is it that all the screenshots are never anti-aliased. And re: Reznor - WTF?!

omg i can't wait!!!! =P

Quote:

Originally posted by nwlinkvxd
Why is it that all the screenshots are never anti-aliased.

Well, the HardOCP article discusses the issue of AA very closely, and notes that, in most areas of the game, AA is unnecessary, as it brings little enhancement of visual effects to the game. Most surfaces are rendered so damn well that AA is useless, or since a good portion of the game (at least what they played) is in the dark, or around dark areas.
From hardOCP:

Quote:

I'm sure you noticed the lack of antialiasing, or AA, in many of our gameplay tests. In our testing, AA was only enabled after receiving solid framerates at 1600x1200. We don’t have an issue with AA, it's just that it's a much less relevant factor in the DOOM 3 experience when compared with other games. DOOM 3’s environments are mostly indoors and are often darkly lit. Such settings have a tendency to conceal many of the aliased edges that have a lot of contrast with the background. DOOM 3 really gives you a sense of running at a higher resolution than it really is. 640x480 resolution just doesn't look the way you would expect it to when compared with past gaming experiences. We've talked to engineers and DOOM 3 playtesters and both have made the same observation.

Our experience playing DOOM 3 kept getting better as the resolution increased. We found that in almost every case where we disabled AA, we could move up one setting in resolution. For instance, we found 1024x768 with no antialiasing to be a better experience than 800x600 with 2X antialiasing. Your experience may vary, but AA wasn't much of a factor in our DOOM 3 experience. Once you break the 1024x768 resolution barrier, you'll likely never be distracted by an aliased edge unless you're actually looking for one.

Hope that answered your question. The real issue here is that 1) there not a machine that can really play this game at "Ultra Quality" settings, and 2) there's not really a noticeable difference when you do have it turned on. Not unless you've got that almost non-existant Tumwater-based system, what with 2 PCI-X16 slots for VGA, running 2 3.6+ Intel Xeons, and 2 fucking Geforce 6800 Ultra PEs OC'ed. And that requires some serious, serious cash. And some really good (read: water-based, or Prometia-based) cooling. Can't forget the RAM either, if you're gonna run Doom 3 at what's called "Ultra Quality" with some serious AA, then you probably need some DDR2-500 or DDR2-667. I don't even think those modules are available either. You might also want a RAID setup with a pair of 74 GB Raptors. In other words, AA at a high-ass resolution, where you're trying to run the game at their best framerates (consistent 60 FPS), then it's gonna be just about impossible (unless you have about $3,000 to flush :)).

Not really adding to the discussion, this picture just made me giggle when I saw it.

http://www.users.qwest.net/~amerrill/nirv_doom3.jpg

Haha, that's rich. I like how Best Buy had the grapes to break steet date. That makes that company look 1) incredibly egotistical and throwing their weight around just trying to look bigger by making a company who everyone respects look stupid by shitting all over their street date and saying "we can damn well put this game on the shelves waaaay before anyone else and generate shittons of sales" or 2) really stupid. I hope Activision goes apeshit on BB for this atrocity. Not that I would complain about getting to play Doom 3 a full weekend before the rest of the world gets their first stab at it, right Mr. Deflok ;)?

Just installing it now bltz.

Was it worth waiting 8 years? Fuck. Yes.

There's sooo much depth! Just the beginning when you're on noobie duty you can listen to people's conversations or just walk on by. And when all hell starts to break loose (after you take a quick walk on the amazingly rendered Martian surface) the voices and communications are incredible. I could tell you all how great the graphics are but you already know that.

I'll just say that on my rig:
Pentium 4 2.4Ghz
1GB DDR @ 333Mhz
GeForce FX 5900 128MB Ultra
SoundBlaster Audigy

My framerate is constantly at around 40, it's only dipped twice when there have been several Imps on screen at once shoots balls of fire at me.

This game is absolutely incredible, I love it!

(and yep guys there are a few Original DOOM homages, lot of familiar level design and even a coin-op game with the Original Doom-Guy face...)

BTW DOOM 3 CO-OP on PC!!!!
http://www.harvsnews.com/doom3mods/

Looks like a new mod, will have to wait and see (the vids have some minor spoilers).

Man, this game rocks, def leaps and bounds past what we are used to playing. After this it makes all other games feel 2D.!

It's hard as hell, too. I put it on normal mode and there are AI zombies with guns hunting your ass down.. and they're good shots.

I ended up dying before I made it back to where I was supposed to go. It is VERY dark, though.. almost too dark. It's hard to shoot stuff you can't see :\

I'll try the gamma adjustment that was given in the other Doom 3 thread.

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Deflok
Looks like BestBuy broke street day, there'll be hell to pay!

A funny flash film made with the help of Fanta regarding the "OMG! Doom 3 IS T3H OUTZORZ!" buzz...
http://www.fanta.dk/news.asp?nid=1CF...7-AB147CAB97A4

Actually, Id said that the release date is Aug 3, but if retailers want to release it earlier, it's up to them.

They don't care if it's released a few days earlier.

Quote:

Originally posted by Stompy
It's hard as hell, too. I put it on normal mode and there are AI zombies with guns hunting your ass down.. and they're good shots.

I ended up dying before I made it back to where I was supposed to go. It is VERY dark, though.. almost too dark. It's hard to shoot stuff you can't see :\

I'll try the gamma adjustment that was given in the other Doom 3 thread.

I'm playing it now, after acquring it through, shall we say, other means, and it's some good shit. Hard, too. Don't turn up the gamma though, Stompy! You'll ruin the "OMG it's so dark" atmosphere.

Is it supposed to be that dark to the point where you can't really see what you're shooting?

It just seems that switching to the flashlight to see what's comin after you and quickly back to your gun is kinda tedious. It's understandable though, as it gives it a nice terrifying element. The thing is, it's only zombies right now, so you can kinda flip back and forth without much trouble. I don't think later levels will be as forgiving, however, when you have some beast that's 10x your size pouncing on you in pitch black. You'd be dead before you know it!