Daily Thread of DOOM 3

AMD64 = place to be for Doom 3

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

Just played some deathmatch. Thoughts.

Needs more tactile feedback if that makes any sense. It would be nice if there was a better indication of what weapons you're picking up too. I don't know the models real well yet and they aren't all that distinctive anyway. Just the words "rocket launcher" or whatever you're picking up flashing in one of the corners of the screen would be nice.

Xian? Fix it. :)

Oh yeah. My first really annoying gripe with the game.

fov cannot be changed in multiplayer

WHAT?!?!?! Please tell me that's a server side variable or just a mistake?

So, I finished it on the medium difficulty today. I didn't find it at all scary as some of you did, it was more exciting, not even as scary as HL for some reason. SS2 was really scary, I would go to sleep imagining all kinds of crazy stuff.

Now the interesting question is why isn't doom 3 scary?

imo:

1. I've seen very similar stuff in HL and SS2. So maybe I'm just used to it by now.. but then again I played SS2 three times and it scared me every time..

2. I didn't learn as much about the people in the game. SS2 had more logs ( i think) and for some reason they were spookier.

3. The monsters didn't inspire fear. Most of the time when I saw a new monster I thought "cool" or "nice graphics" whereas the face huggers and the cyborg midwives are much more psychologically terrifying. One thing about the monsters that did sorta scare me was when they suddenly slammed against glass I was looking through.. but that's more of a shock than real fear.

4. I didn't care about my character. In HL the main character is a little more real (he has a name, a history, etc..). In SS2 your hacker has a personality that you craft through the rpg elements. However in doom3 the character is anonymous and has no personality whatsoever.

5. The nemesis. In SS2 your nemesis is always talking to you, taunting and at first, helping in the guise of being a friend. You really get to know shodan/xerxes and you understand their motivations, however inhuman they are. After playing through doom3 I can't even remember the main enemy's name. Through most of the game you don't know which of 3 possible people is the bad guy. He's a doctor and the name is german though.. He does an okay job of taunting you and such, but only gets started when you are just about done the game. So by the end you are only sort of angry at him. And not only that but you never face him or confront him. The ending is somewhat ambiguous (maybe they want a sequel?)

6. The cutscenes. They are cool and I love them but you always know they are gonna end with the camera zooming into the marine's head and you fighting a monster. So instead of promoting suspense they kill it because it takes you out of the action. If they had scripted the cutscenes into the game engine it would have worked better to scare the player.

7. The action. Maybe there was so much great action i forgot to be scared. This is a distinct possibility as SS2 had more puzzles and things that got your brian moving and thinking.. In doom3 you can basically shut off your brain and enjoyably plow through zombies and demons by the dozen. Maybe I didn't have time to be scared.

8. interactivity. I might be remembering SS2 differently than it was, but it seems to me that the world was more interactive than Doom3. There were robot guards to hack and vending machines you could really use. In doom3 you can basically kick stuff around and break out lights (which is useless since all the monsters see in the dark and you dont). There were a few cool parts where you operate cranes and the like but they were few and far between, (maybe 3 in the whole game).


Anyways I still love doom3 and it's so far the game of the year. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on why you disagree or agree with me that id failed (if they really attempted) to make Doom3 a scary game.

ATI card? White and/or Red flecks everywhere? Look, I'm not overclocking, my case is cool. Every other game runs fine. Either the game, ATI drivers, or both are doing something wrong and overheating our dang cards. Try disabling fastwrites, vpu recover, or underclocking the card.

But if nothing works or you don't want to take those steps:

DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME.

You will end up frying your card. Just call em up, complain like I did. Maybe they'll get off their butts and fix this problem. Believe me, its not a defective card or lack of cooling on my part. Something is just fuxored with how the game and drivers are interacting and it is slowing frying your card. I'm giving them a few days to respond and put up an update. But kickass looking game or not, this baby is going back if the problem isn't resolved. I'm not going to fry $300 worth of hardware for the sake of a $50 game.

I played around with the editor a bit last night and made a small map. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to get the editor to launch properly.

So, for those of you still having problems, I advise doing the following:

1) Launch Doom 3 normally.
2) Switch to window mode ( alt + enter )
3) Bring down the console (ctrl + alt + ~ )
4) Type "editor"

That should effectively open the editor with your desktop resolution set properly and without the weird mouse anomolies. When you open up Doom 3 again it should be in windowed mode. Just alt+enter to switch it back to full screen.

I'm not finding the game frightening at the moment. The atmosphere is very tense, I jump now and then. However I am much more anxious than frightened.

SS2 was scary.
Silent Hill was scary.
Thief 3 Shalebridge Cradle map was scary.

Whats my problem? I think it's because player movement is extremely fast. That's all I can think of because the game itself contains everything required to be frightening.

Whatever you do..... do not look in the mirror...

Fanboys need not apply:
Ok so I've heard how great it looks (even at 640x480), and how "scary" it is, but is it FUN?

(1) Have they introduced any kind of gameplay outside of running and shooting?

(2) Can you blow stuff up? Drive vehicles? Interact with other characters? Interact with objects?

(3) Are there different paths you can follow?

(4) Do the monsters always react the same way (Ex: when you walk into a room the lights always go off, and the same monster always crawls down the exact same wall).

(5) The scene from the 1st official movie where we see an enemy pick up a chainsaw and the hero grabs a grenade and rolls it to the monster's feet , is that stuff all predetermined?

Ok, who wants to take bets on when they're going to remove the cd-check? ...and who wants to organize the riot if they don't do it in a timely manner?

The sound for the plasma gun rocks.

That is all.

You guys that haven't pre-ordered and/or are considering picking up the game today: it's worth it. Oh yes, it's worth your $54.99+tax.

I haven't been this excited about obtaining, playing, and discussing a game in several years.

So, I decided to throw my old GF2 MX back into my machine to see how the game played on it, and it really surprised me. Of course, I have to turn everything off, but the game looks decent stilll, and the speed is totally playable.

It really puts the artwork and level design into perspective with other games that have come out recently. This game is head and shoulders above anything I've ever seen in that department. I'm stunned...again.

increase your doom3 performance!!!


http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoom/topic.asp?fid=5733&tid=1438663

So after a few hours my impressions are "System Shock 2 meets Half-Life meets DOOM meets Terror."

I love the flashlight mechanic. It forces the player to choose between security and darkness, or light and no security. That's part of the game.

The game runs extremely well for me. I don't understand people's complaints. Here are my settings and subjective performance thoughts:

1024 * 768, High detail, all advanced effects ON: The framerate is mostly high, with a few stutters near the beginning, where there are a lot of highly detailed machines running, light sources, and NPCs walking around. I can tell my 128MB card isn't quite enough, as before opening most doors, there's a brief pause as textures are being swapped out. Once I'm in a room, it's smooth, but the hitches are annoying. Looks amazing.

1024 * 768, Medium detail, all advanced effects ON: The framerate is about 10-15FPS higher at all times than on High. No stutters. No pauses after opening doors. I honestly can't tell the difference between Medium and High, so I'm leaving it on Medium. Odds are, 95/100 people wouldn't be able to tell what setting it's on by playing. Playing on High with a 128MB card seems to induce a few issues, and there's no reason (other than ePenis bragging and insecurity) to play on High with a 128MB card. Excellent performance, actually better than Far Cry with better visuals to boot.

AMD Athlon XP 2700, 333MHz FSB
1GB Dual-Channel PC2700 DDR memory
ATI 9800 Pro 128MB

hoy hoy, got doom, playing doom. amd300064bit 9800pro 1gig ram 160gig raid strippe running the game @ 1024 everything high vsync on 60-30 fps never under and it feel so smooth so im happy but i dont have self shadow? when i played the cough "alpha" cough i had self shadow and i could see my self when getting close to a windows.

Anyone knows how to turn on self shadow or can refer me a good site for tweakin the config.} thanks!

playing that game makes me feel like im back home with the good old iD.

Nobody is talking about stuff like this in the game:
(from GameSpy, Sept. 2003)

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/doom-3/6198p2.html


We also got to see how the new engine will be used for a bit of puzzle-solving, in what Willits referred to as "the crane game." In this area, we needed to pick up some barrels to vent a nearby room, using a hand-operated crane system similar to the vending machines at your local Denny's where you'd try to grab stuffed animals. We've seen puzzles like this in similar games, but it feels different this time around -- the crane swings back and forth on its chain, and feels more like a challenging mini-game than just pulling a number of levers.


Did this kind of stuff get pulled from the final game? This is the kind of interactivity I am hoping for.

Here is another common gamers thoughts on D3...

Performance: It ran nicely on my machine, I simply dont care anymore about framerates or tweaking. Does the game run at least 90% of the time w/o turning into a powerpoint presentation with nice graphics? It runs very nicely based on my criteria

Gameplay: The first half of the game is basically doom guy walking backwards waiting for a panel to flip up and have an enemy pop out or spawn. This was so bad Capt Obvious would give up his costume and retire. A lot of the enemies arent hard they just have cheap ways of hitting you. The spiders and babies are the most annoying things ever, that really killed the mood when the facehuggers headcrabs spiders just kept coming and coming, the shotgun didnt seem very effective when you had a bunch surrounding you.

Whats with the flashlight situtation, you mean in the future the military doesnt have some kind of flashlight built into the helmet or uniform. Doom guy can walk around outside the surface of Mars but doesnt have the technology to have a light built into his helmet or some night vision goggles( but gims the lights the lights! fuck the lights shoot em out, oh wait I cant shoot most of them out shit!)

Finding keys PDAs to unlock doors got old fast. I think FPS are going to have to get past this 'find key open door' shit and think of something, and no dont ask me what that is actually think Metroid Prime

At this point after running around the base which has the same shade of grey, dealing with annoying gameplay, I just wanted to finish and see the rest of the game already.

After I got to Hell for the first time the game picked up and was more enjoyable, it became scarier because it wasnt as predictible with monsters. From here till the end the game was worth the purchase...

The enviroment is very stale, why cant I flush a toilet or play with a soda machine. Its about making things interactive and trying to make things semi-realistic here. I cant even shoot glass or the bathroom mirrors. I'm spoiled by the interactivity of HL and MGS2 I guess...

Story: I know I am going to be bbq'd for this but instead of feeling like I played a remake of Doom; I was playing a remake of Half Life(yes i know the original plot of doom). The first area with all the stuff going on... I could swear I heard "Welcome to the Black Mesa..." via the chick on the PA system.

The sidestuff with PDAs and etc was nice. I was expecting stuff to be fleshed out, I mean this is a single player game and it was all about story blah blah blah, but a lot of things arent explained...

Audio: Very nice, definitely raised the bar here.

Multiplayer: Who gives a shit, wheres Q4?

Misc: The ingame GUI system is awesome as hell, and I'm having fun with the editing stuff so far...hehehe. Last guy fight was sweet...

Overall I came into the game with lower expectations based on past track history with id and their single player experience, so I certainly wasnt disappointed. If I want to be scared I'll leave it to SH2/3 which did a better job and the main character was smart enough to put a flashlight in their pocket...

Doom 3 spoiler light post-completion minireview

Fantastic game. Absolutely superb. One of the best single player fps games I've played in years, and beyond that, an absolutely worthy reimagining of the original Doom. Many of the references (overt or subtle) made me smile, and more importantly, the feel of the game is just there.

As a last word about the game, after completing it, I wanted to go back and play through it AGAIN. I cannot think of a higher compliment for a single player game. On top of that, the crawling sense of disgust is still with me now, a day after I finished it. It gets under your skin. That stuff near the midgame... *shudder*

The game starts off fairly slow. You get into the game, get used to the controls and the environment, gawk at the graphics a bit, and start working your way through the UAC complex.

After you've had a bit of time to get used to everything, Bad Things start to happen. For the next several hours, the game is filled with black, black places, and a crawling sense of shock and horror as you move from one disturbing encounter to the next.

The intensity of the encounters ramps up slowly, id gives you plenty of time to get used to the enemies and your armaments before they start hitting you harder. Once you get past the first areas in the game though, they start getting more intense, more difficult, and faster paced. As your selection of weaponry grows, so too do the number of creatures you've been introduced to, and they start hitting you harder and harder. The feel of the game changes here, from an 'oh god, is there something in this corner' to an 'oh god, what's going to hit me next' feeling. For most of the early game, you'll be clutching your flashlight in a cold sweaty palm, praying the next creature to leap out won't consume your flesh.

Once your reach about midway through the game, it gets *really* disturbing. Awesomely disturbing. You'll be looking at stuff going what the fuck is that man, what the fuck is that, and you don't want to look too long, because it starts to make your skin crawl. The intensity picks up another notch here, and they start throwing everything and the kitchen sink at you. Fortunately, by this point, you should be pretty comfortable with all of your weapons, and you'll know how to deal with the enemies, even when they're thrown at you en masse (yes, fear not, the early encounters with one or two enemies give way to much rougher groups later)

The late game is awesome - your purpose is clear, you've been filled in on the (really nifty!) bits of story, and you know what you need to do. You've got the tools to do it, and the asses to kick. At this point, most of the shock and horror has finally worn off, and it starts to feel like an intense action game, as you plow your way through the hordes with brute force.

The final encounter totally kicks ass.

I really, really felt like I was exploring the UAC complex on Mars, as hell literally broke loose. The environments were so well done, and the illusion was created so convincingly, it really had a lot of impact.

Doom 3 took me about 13 hours to complete on Marine difficulty. A few points on this. First, I know I missed a LOT of cool secrets, and probably random little bits of story and other neat things. I'll be making a more thorough sweep this time. Second, the difficulty was too low for me - understand, the enemies were still QUITE challenging, they just didn't do enough damage, and there was lots of health around.

On Nightmare, your health bleeds down to 25 (!). That should pretty much take care of it being too easy for me >:D

Technical

I ran it on a 3.2C, gig of ram, Radeon 9800 Pro AND a GF4 4600. The 9800 Pro handled 1280x1024 medium detail the whole way through the game with no problems. The 4600 is comfortable at 8x6 medium detail. I anticipate whatever beefy video card I get next will make the game sing. Those of you with weaker computers, do not despair - the quality of the visuals in this game even at low res, low detail are fantastic.

Audio

I too noticed the 'weaker' weapon sounds. I tried my desktop stereo setup and a set of Sennheiser headphones to experiment with this. After awhile I got used to them, but I have this feeling that unless you're playing D3 in 5.1, you may be missing out. I'd like to hear from people running true 5.1 setups and using 5.1 headphones - how does the game sound?

The enemy sounds were fantastic. They all sounded unique, disturbing, impressive, and well done. The audio throughout the game was equally great, tons of excellent sound effects for all parts and places in the game. Some were outright disgusting, which is also great :D

I really liked the 'music' they had in the game. Some of the skin crawling horror bits in the game had excellent short bits of music attached, and some of the kickass action sequences did as well.

so far i've made it past the monorail, and into delta labs 2 but i havent seen that "bathroom escene" or you konw the part where the pink demon coms crashing thru the wall?
did they not include this or is it further down?
i though i would have seen it by now

Can someone tell me if there's a definitive list out there for the names of the monsters?

So far I know the zombies/zombie soldiers and the fire imps. What the fuck are those giant huge slug dog creatures with the weird biomech hind legs?

Hey guys right now I'm in hell how much farther do I have to go? I'm curious. game is pretty long.. I'm liking it :) this is the best fps I've played ever. definetly.

I finally got it, just a few hours in and I am having a blast.
Good job id!

where's the link to "theoretically" install doom3 on windows 98? anyone tried it yet?

thanks to pyide (and me, sorta), you can change your difficulty on the fly, for people like us who started out on marine and are finding it, honestly, a little too easy.

anyway, quoth pyide:

it's g_skill
0 is easy
1 is med
2 is hard
3 should be nightmare, but there is also a g_nightmare cvar

i switched from 1 to 2. once i saved after the change, all saves/loads have built on that one have kept that difficulty so it does work. the game is a lot better this way too :P

ok my first time actually stuck. I just got off the monorail, need the keycode for the airlock thing, also for the ammunitions lock would be nice too :( where am I suppose to find these? I've cleared out everything and listened to all my stuff but did not hear anything about codes.

where's the link to "theoretically" install doom3 on windows 98? anyone tried it yet?

heh, these audio logs are great...

I distinctly heard... whispering.

I have another observation ......I decided to go ahead and have a look on my geforce 4 and the torch lighting with the settings turnned down are still fucking amazing.The whole feel is painterly .....Carmacks engine is fluid, cloud and the artists are aloud to paint..... its organic and fucking amazing even on these settings. I cant wait to see this one year from now and the licenced games to follow.
This engine is a MAJOR jump ....this is the start of game/movies.

Can we get an official TWEAKS AND TIPS for DOOM ]I[ thread going plz?

kthnxbye

does anyone use EDSF rather than ASWD? i was thinking esdf would be better because there are more letters around it to bind your weapons to...

Worst playable DOOM 3 rig?

I got DOOM 3 last night, and had lots of fun!
Brought it into work today to show some of the guys. I got it working on this machine here that wouldn't run the PoP Demo or the UT2K4 demo:
P4 2.4Ghz
1GB ram
Intel 82865G Graphics Controler
It is some dell business system.
10 - 25 FPS averaging about 20

Ok I just finished.

Wow, just... wow.

<3 iD.

I will post a nice lengthy post after I eat some food.

I have seen alot of threads with comments on pissy treble sound...........Um I have an audigy1 without the very latest drivers and it sounds really cool with lots of bass.

so reguarding that "give doom95" command that doesn't work, here's what i've noticed:

a lot of people are talking about a secret room.
"give doom95" gives you a new inventory item -- a keycard for stock room 11

where is stock room 11? i have a feeling the command just gives you a key to access the room where there is probably a doom 95 machine.

we must figure this out... (has anyone figured it out yet)

FUCKING AWESOME DOOM (2?) HOMAGE

Oh man, walking down that bitch black hallway with the little red lights, it didn't register... then coming upon the dead marine and the walls dropping out and the armor (which I promptly backed the fuck away from having a spaz attack so I missed it) and then the hordes of zombies and imps.. oh man, that was so cool. I remember that moment from Doom on the SNES, but I dont remember if it was in PC Doom. Man, that was the coolest moment of the game so far. "Here's an arsenal, now here's a swam of demons to use it on."

I had to exit just to post about how cool that was.

damn. Just made it to the end part (you know what i'm talking about).

holy mother of pearl...unfucking believable!!!!

I probably wont' be able to sleep tonight...fuck.

LoL who can guess what's wrong with this picture:

http://deviantone.com/doom3/amazonduh.gif

Actual screenshot from when I just visited Amazon... only censored for rules respect...

What exactly does that image_cachesize cvar do? It's 20 at default (I think)... how high could I set it if I have a gig of ram? Any info helps :)

Im in Australia, and we have doom3 here on AUGUST3, when i thought it was coming out after USA. Bonus i guess. But one problem, my pc is archaic and will not run it, so im waiting eagerly for the xbox version. Does anyone know when it is scheduled for release? At our local Harvey Norman they had doom3 on display and i played for 15 minutes, and despite being in a lightly lit department store, with public noise droning out the effects, i still got a scary shock when the marine who opens the initial gun case when you get pistol, is affected but lying prone on his console. i went up for a close look at his graphical qualities when he suddenly sat up and proceded attacking me.