Doom 3

[Retlaw83]

Anyone else play this yet?

From a technical standpoint, what can be done with the engine and what they do with the engine is utterly insanely advanced.

As for the weapons, its the standard FPS fare, but considering that the original Doom has determined the standard weapon set for most future FPS games its forgivable. My only complaint in that department was that they should have stuck with the pump-action shotgun, even going so far as giving it the same sound effects. The original Doom shotgun has to be my favorite weapon in the history of games. No other weapon has ever felt that "right".

As an experience... I think the game is terrifying. The engine has been so tuned to be scary that even overhearing normal conversations from your co-workers at the beginning of the game can sometimes be creepy. The sound engineering is, in my opinion, the best in any game ever created - the visuals, which are not supbar by any means, would just be a series of terrific looking renders without it.

The downside to all this is that it takes a real hog to run well. I have a 1.7ghz P4 with 512mb of RAM and 128mb graphics card, and after following tips in a tweak guide I get about 20 fps in 800x600. The framerate is pretty smooth, though, so I don't care.

What does anyone else who has played it think?

[ExtremeDrinker]

When did it come out? I might have to buy it.

Does it come with any cool things on the disc like copies of Doom I, Doom II?

[Retlaw83]

It came out a couple weeks ago. Its 3 CDs that dump over 2 gigs worth of info on your computer. The one cool thing it comes with is the editor for the engine, so fans don't have to make their own editors like they had to do with the original Doom.

It doesn't come with the original Dooms, but you can get suped-up versions of the original Doom's engine off the internet because id released the source code. ZDoom is the best in my opinion.

It requires the original .wad files from either Doom or Doom 2, though. You can either pick up a copy of Ultimate Doom from Wal-Mart for $10 that comes with a Windows 9.x launcher for the game, or you can just snag the file "doom.wad" off of Kazaa or something. It should be around 12mb for the first one's wad and 14mb for the second one's wad.

[Kashluk]

A friend of mine d-loaded it a day or two ago, I think. He said it sucked. That you were only crawling through these pitch black dark hallways with a flashlight hacking, slashing and blasting some demons and shit.

His opinion was, that it wasn't scary, it was annoying - pure and simple.

[Blargh]

'Twas amusing enough for a short while, yet it quickly became tedious in my opinion. An echo perhaps, but I definitely prefer System Shock 1. Aside from the disappointment of Doom 3, I look forward to what can be done with the engine, i.e System Shock mods and so on.

[avenger69ie]

It is scarey. its also too fucking dark... PLUS the biggest drawback is not being able to hold a flashlight and fire a gun at the same time. For such an advanced engine to be seen in complete darkness is a sin in itself.

It plays very similarly to system shock 2 with emails, audio and voice downloaded from PDA's ... sound familiar?

having said all that, it is quite addictive because its scarey. I've also heard theres a mod called duct tape which Duct tapes a flashlight to all of your guns.. havent tried it yet though

[Retlaw83]

That duct tape thing sounds like its worth looking into. Whacking a pink demon with a flashlight is not my idea of an effective deterrent.

The game gets quite a bit lighter on some later levels; however, this game tries to retell the original three episodes of Doom, and fumbling around in darkness while things try to eat you is true to that theme.

[Retlaw83]

The duct tape mod is here: http://ducttape.glenmurphy.com/

It adds a small flashlight to the shotgun and machine gun. I guess the theory is if you're using the minigun on up you can see what you're trying to hit.

[SuperH]

I love it. It's tense, and delivers all the jump out of your seat and teeth gritting thrills that I love from the first one. I beat it on easy now I'm hitting veteran, and oh boy is it something.

My new comp I partially put together just to play this... I'm keeping the res at whatever the default it gives me is, 640 x 480 or 800 x 600, but I'll tell you I don't even need any larger because they've done a great great job of making even low res look amazing. Plus I get constant at least 60 fps no matter what's onscreen.

Truth be told, I like it as much if not more than the originals, although it could be the fact that I'm still riding the high.

I don't mind the flashlight problem either, it definately adds to the game, like the part where you've gotta follow those glowing imp specimens and you're being attacked from all over in pitch darkness. That was hard on easy, when I get there on hard I'm probably gonna piss myself.

And, a bit of a gameplay question - those stretch armed guys, is there any trick anyone's found to be able to kill one without getting slapped? Just gotta kill them before they can get close or is there some way to dodge? Standard strafing does nothing

[Janus Matchell]

I finally got my computer to run Doom 3 after defraging my comp and cleaning games I no longer play off of it. My GOD it was awesome and as scary as hell I think I jumped more than a few times when I got ambushed by that Imp and then a little bit later when I forgot to use the flashlight on to look around anyways I was scart shitless and am still trying to stuggle through while I play it so far it has been what I always wanted for a Doom game and am hoping that They might do it on earth. It has been cool so far so lets help its good to the last drop.

[Silver]

From a technical standpoint, what can be done with the engine and what they do with the engine is utterly insanely advanced.

It still is the Quake 3 engine, pretty damn old.

[Kashluk]

Uh, I think they created a completely new one for Doom3, no?

[Guest]

Yeah, they did.

[Janus Matchell]

They had been working on new system for Doom 3 ever since the release of quake 3. Also wasn't trent rezner from NIN supposed to be doing music for Doom 3?

[Guest]

mebbe so

[SuperH]

It IS the Quake engine at the core, actually. But it's obviously been pretty completely rebuilt. Why fix what isn't broken you know?

Trent Reznor was supposed to do the sound effects, but he left about 2 years ago because of "Creative Differences". Whatever that means.

[Retlaw83]

They got the drummer for NIN to fill in for him.

If anyone is interested, the sound effects in the leaked alpha last year contained the Reznor sound effects. Somebody took them all out and made a mod to add the sound effects to the official release Doom 3.

I would have never guessed that the Doom 3 engine was built on the Quake one. There might be some Quake at the core; however, its like making the point that Windows 98 has a DOS kernel at its center.

[King of Creation]

It IS the Quake engine at the core, actually.

Not even that really.

They started out using a modified Quake 3 engine, but over the course of development, they realized that they had changed and added so many things, rewrote code, wrote new code, etc, that they just scrapped what was left of the Quake 3 engine, and built a completely new one.

So, in effect, it is the Doom 3 engine.

[Retlaw83]

The only similarities between the engines I was able to find was that they both use pak files. In the case of Doom 3, the extension is .pk4

[Retlaw83]

If anyone is interested, I made a modified version of the duct tape mod that attaches a regular flashlight beam to the weapons instead of the pen light-type default. If you're interested, you can IM or e-mail me and I'll send it to you.

Also, if you make a text file called "AutoExec.cfg" and place it in your Doom3/base directory, it will automatically execute any CVARs in it on startup. If you add the line "set r_lightScale 2" to AutoExec.cfg it lights up the levels enough for you to see them without ruinng the atmosphere. At least, that's what it does on my computer. The "2" is a multiplier, so if its too bright you can increment with values like "1.5".