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Posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/05 07:50:26

Thought it would be worth having another thread for people to waffle on about Doom3 at great and tedious length, apart from mapping which is covered here: http://celephais.net/board/view_th... , and gameplay which is covered here: http://celephais.net/board/view_th... , and to keep GA free of spoilers and stuff.
So go ahead and drone on and on about graphics, sound, atmosphere, in-game maps, weapons, monsters, effects, story, PDA's, anecdotes, notable scenes, etc etc.
Warning: Full of spoilers obviously and probably nerdy analysis too =).

Sounds
#1 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/09/05 09:22:02
As a continuation from the posts I was reading in the GA thread, I'd like to give my own opinion on the sounds in the game.
Although I was blown away by the sound in the old e3 shakycam footage I saw a couple of years ago, the guys that redid the sound impressed me nearly as much. Generally I thought the sound was excellent.
From all the previews which discussed sound, I was expecting an ambient music tracks something like that of Quake, just slightly more reactive to events in the game. Instead, the sound was almost entirely environmental, and so was more relevant to what was actually happening around me. Only occasionally did I hear anything resembling music - and most of the time even that was just a steady bass pulse or something.
As someone mentioned in the GA thread, the whirs and clanks of doors and machinery were well implemented, and worked wonders at keeping me on edge. A couple of times, the metallic thump of some kind of piston was so intrusive that I was worried because I thought I wouldn't hear monsters appearing. Most of the time, I was concerned the machinery sound was monsters.
And yes, that armour pickup sound is eerie. Since I was always expecting imps to appear when I picked up armour, the sound often made me jump - even once I had heard it a lot of times and knew what it was :) Can't say I noticed the health pickup sound was from Q3, I just pretend Q3 doesn't exist.
I didn't have a particular problem with the weapon sounds, although I did find some of the weapons felt a bit weak (the SG was good close up, but seemed a lot worse than the original Doom shotgun at distance) - not sure if this had anything to do with the sounds.
I thought betruger's evil laugh was overused and corny. That was one element I really didn't like. Betruger was better off as some goofy genius who thinks he has a deal with Satan but then gets fucked in the ass once the portal is open (that was the impression I got from the old Doom 3 footage.) Mad scientists tend to suck outside of a comedic context.
Oh, the exposion sounds were not very meaty. Neither were the explosion effects - which I thought were pretty hideous. In fact, whilst I'm on the subject, there was this one cutscene where an explosion is supposed to be tearing down a duct from somewhere (I can't remember why this is all happening) and it just looked like a bunch of small crappy sprite exposions, no better than the Q3 explosion effect. I was also really dissapointed with the glass breaking effect. (I played on low detail, so perhaps on max detail it looks good.)
Easter Eggs...
#2 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/09/05 09:25:49
I didn't really spot any other than the following:
1. there was a magazine on the floor somewhere, which had the original doomguy screaming face graphic on it.
2. I found the id pda (wow, that was hard to spot)
3. I noticed that on one of the stone slabs found in Site 3 there was a picture of the doomguy using the soulcube against hells minions. It looked very much like the title screen graphic from the original Doom.
That's pretty much it. I suck.
Anyone find any really cool stuff?
There's One Area
#3 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.46.1] on 2004/09/05 09:55:58
I forget exactly where or how I got it but there's the original romero head sprite from doom 2.
Thought For The Day...
#4 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/05 17:25:55
Caverns1 pwnx0rz, just great. Good change of scenery, really big map, and lots of fun moments....and one, ah, ummm, "moment" where I was running around trying to tackle chaingunners with a shotgun at long range and a rocket launcher at long range....first time I've managed to get to 0 armour since starting the game. Anyway, favourite bit in that section was coming down the large lift to the cool first lava cavern, and facing 3 consecutive hell knights before realising there was an arch-vile spawning them hehehe.
The doors still sound well disturbing down here too...
Thanbler:
Agree about Betruger's laugh, worst effect so far, just cheesey. Some of the other deliberately eerie effects have been well bloody effective tho.
I noticed the DOOM artwork on the tablets. I also liked the PDA download file on "How To Perform Appropriate Sacrifices" lol.
Hmm
#5 posted by nonentity [213.208.100.240] on 2004/09/05 17:30:47
and facing 3 consecutive hell knights before realising there was an arch-vile spawning them
Indeed, except 5 :/
I'd Have Happily Faced More Of Them...
#6 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/05 17:38:17
...I like Hell Knights!
(errrr, in a non-sexual platonic sorta trying to kill each other kinda way...)
Yes,
#7 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/09/05 18:52:20
a very challenging monster. i'm glad they gave the thing explosive projectiles. makes dodging just that much more difficult, otherwise, it would have been a joke like imp fireballs.
Okay Look
#8 posted by pushplay [68.148.157.110] on 2004/09/06 00:37:31
While you may not consider descriptions of explosion effects to be 'spoliers,' the graphic design - good or bad - is clearly a major part of the experience. Please don't spoil Q3 for me until I get off my lazy ass and play it.
Imp Fireballs Are Explosive Too
#9 posted by nb [203.109.254.50] on 2004/09/06 00:47:16
Just not very powerful.
Lol @ #8
#10 posted by VoreLord [203.51.223.14] on 2004/09/06 02:56:31
I really like how in some places, like say where there is a lot of machinery sounds going on, and clunks and bangs, as well as the general eerie stuff, it keeps you constantly on edge, as every little sound you hear has you spinning around looking for that monster that is about to strike you down. Even on my 3rd time through it still manages to get me.
And while I'm on the machinery, some of that stuff is really good.
Finished.
#11 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/06 16:07:16
Quality game, really good. Brilliant atmosphere. Probably the most immersed I've been in a game. Great monsters too.
Still, some things could have been done better. Most of the base sections were pretty interchangable, and some of the best monsters were underused. Also there could have been a lot more scene setting stuff like the drones and other soldiers and shit, what little there was of that was great.
Best game ever?? Dunno....that remains to be seen... Best Playing Through Once In Single Player Game Ever?? Quite possibly...
Whichever way, it's class.
What Doom3 Ripped Off...
#12 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/06 16:12:26
The first in many rambling posts from me, I think...
Aliens - quite a lot.
Event Horizon - a lot, the blood and hell portals and shit.
The Thing - spider heads and general horror.
Total Recall - ancient Mars civilisations.
Hellraiser - Soul Cube style, Betruger monster at end.
Zerstorer - doh, the general horror stuff.
Half-Life - general feel of the game, Xen/Hell.
Arsenal
#13 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.46.1] on 2004/09/06 16:26:56
Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting really tired of shotguns/chainguns/rocket launchers etc. I thought the weapons were done well, mind you, but only 1 new weapon was a disappointment for me. The Hell Cube is cool, but I really want some new weapons, something a bit more strategic perhaps. For example, and I know this is a different genre of FPS, but I think Hexen had a great idea with their weapons. One of the Cleric's weapons was a twin-headed snake staff that either shot these side-winding magic missiles at range or at close range could suck life out of monsters. The Xen weapons from Half-Life and expansions were pretty cool too, though I generally dislike Half-Life.
Does anyone here prefer the familiarity of the weapons? I'd just like something a bit more out-of-the-box, when the engine is so advanced a little more creativity wouldn't hurt I don't think.
Arsenal
#14 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/06 16:50:02
Chainsaw - cool but I never used it.
Fists - WTF?
Flashlight - should have been able to ducttape it onto one weapon only, more realistic. Still, the darkness aspect was well done.
Pistol - ballsac.
Shotgun - useful weapon but noticably shite at long range. Didn't like the feel of it much, didn't feel like it was pounding the enemy.
Machine Gun - really liked this, looked good, sounded good (I know some ppl didn't like the sound, but it sounded just right for me), good standard weapon earlier on.
Chaingun - good enough but usually not enough ammo to be really useful. Felt okay.
Grenades - effective, but felt / sounded weak.
Plasma Gun - the other favourite weapon even if it did seem slightly paintbally... All round usefulness.
Rocket Launcher - like the CG, perfectly adequate although explosions were weak.
BFG - okay, didn't get to use it much, didn't like the dying from charging bit. Prefer Q2 BFG.
Soul Cube - cool, very effective but I liked how you would never quite know when you'd get to use it. Love the voice too..."uusse ussss".
My overall take on the weapons is twofold - Firstly I found the arsenal to be adequate rather than really inspiring. It really was a case of the same old same old, with some weapons feeling less impressive than their ancestors. Secondly, however, I did like the "sane" and "military" feel to the weapons. It made the contrast between you as a marine and the demons as fucked up denizens of Hell more noticable. So I'd have liked a bit more interesting weapons but not anything too experimental, ya know?? Something like UT's Flak Cannon or ASMD would have been sweet and a good balance between being exotic but having some sense to it.
Unreal's ASMD
#15 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/09/06 16:56:42
what aspect did you like of the asmd? the primary hitscan, secondary projectile or that wierd combo explosive?
The Weapons
#16 posted by Lunaran [69.208.167.18] on 2004/09/06 16:59:41
I was happy with the weapons overall. I agree about the shotgun being flimsy at long range. The chaingun would have been great if it were a slick metallic like the shotgun, but as it is it kind of looks like a Nerf gun.
Monsters.
#17 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/06 17:08:41
Zombies - great, do exactly what they're supposed to. I like their mumbling and the headless ones were spooky.
ZSec - great, these dudes unnerved me because I felt betrayed by them, plus interesting to fight. Like the radio chatter too.
Imps - good but overused, do what they're supposed to but I got bored off them. Model a bit angular.
Maggots - okay, kinda, well neither here nor there. A bit freaky.
Wraiths - good, found their constant teleporting unnerving, good low-level monster.
Trites / ticks - great, really pretty spooky and appropriately weak invidually but a hassle in numbers. Slow moving meant a good look at the model.
Pinkies - great but very underused, again do what they are supposed to i.e. mash up close up.
Lost Souls - good even though I kept getting twatted by them, looked pretty good, would have prefered proper skulls.
Cacodemon - good, useful airbourne enemy with cool attack effect, challenging later on.
Cherub - great, just full on weird and disturbing. I mean you end up shooting a flying baby in the head....lol.
Tentacle commando - good, especially if you remember to duck. Kinda bad ass dudes.
Chaingunner commando - okay, properly challenging monster but a little bland.
Revenant - excellent, one of my favourite monsters, looks cool, good attack, and somehow managed to seem a lot more dignified than the other monsters, they got my respect.
Mancubi - excellent and totally underused. Fat, ugly, slow and tough as fuck, loved 'em.
Arch Vile - good, would have been great but the model didn't do it for me somehow. Suitably pain in the arse to fight.
Hell Knight - hell yeah, excellent, everything it should be.
Overall a very fine collection of beasties although it's a pity you mostly seem to face imps through 90% of the game. The latter bits with loads of Hell Knights and shit were cool. Hurrah for proper monsters!!
Arsenal2
#18 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/06 17:09:56
Necros, all of it really, just an interesting weapon without being too weird.
Lun: agreed about the CG.
Atmosphere.
#19 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/06 17:23:50
Some bits I really liked.
- The whole pre-disaster intro was good. All the speech and stuff was pretty natural and got me immersed, a good start.
- Finding random scientists still working around the base was fucking weird. Like, hello, wake the fuck up, the entire base is overrun by hell and you're still dicking around with the quantral code metralyzer?? Found that pretty freaky.
- Yeah in fact the human interaction stuff was good, probably the most immersive parts, whether it's with living scientists or your traitorously zombified colleagues. A useful thing to note, that.
- Scariest moment by a long way: When you go into a small corridor and this voice whispers "Follow me..." and the bloody footsteps appear....I actually just stopped there and wondered if I really wanted to continue playing that night. Awesome!
- The eerie voices were generally great, loved the one trying to lure you into a lift shaft too....and you never found out what they were??
- The computer screens and stuff that just had a vague hellish background, they were cool. Also the bits of the base with organic shit hidden behind panels and stuff....not when it was obviously breaking through, but more subtly when there'd be a missing wall panel with some hellish shit behind, like the base was already partly in hell. The "Appropriate Sacrifice Technique" thing was cool as well.
- Music and sounds, just great. There was music but it was so subtle it could be mistaken for just ambient noises. Nevertheless, Vondur and I know the truth - the music was very much in the dark ambient genre and obviously worked great =).
- Pretty much all the random eerie shit was great, particularly the more subtle stuff. Like the UAC promotional videos and monster museum and stuff, with the voiceover dood's casual and cheery way of describing things. Some of the blatant stuff i.e. Betrugers and Sarge's deranged rambling sucked, too cheesey. All about the subtle little things adding up to unnerve you.
Reset Button In '04
#20 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.46.1] on 2004/09/06 17:26:02
The Mancubi were completely underused. They're my favorite enemy in the game, the look is inventive and just freakishly wierd, a good challenge, and when you first run into them I nearly shit myself with excitement it was so cool. I can understand the reason behind not using them though, because they're pretty big and bulky.
Worst enemy was the Wraith. Maybe with Lun's modification it would be cooler (it sounds a lot funner) but currently I think they should have left it out.
I think Trites/ticks and Cherubs are tied for my favorite new monsters, they're similar in purpose and are just really cool/wierd.
Overall, I feel Doom3 would have benefitted from a lot more Hellraiser and a little less Total Recall.
The chaingun was OK. It did look kind of lame, but I really got the feeling that it was some sort of helicopter chaingun that could leave an exit wound the size of one of Scampie's abs.
.
#21 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/09/06 17:39:03
and monster museum
jesus. that imp scared the shit out of me. i was thinking "cool, now i can see what they look like up close" and as i approached the imp, i got to thinking "heh, would be kind of cliché if it mov-- HOLY FUCK!"
i was too scared to approach the other monsters.
that's what doom3 is all about. d3 owns me.
The Lab
#22 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.46.1] on 2004/09/06 17:48:06
I thought the info you could download about the monsters to your PDA was a nice touch. I didn't know, for example, that the Revenant has a semi-translucent skin and organs. Neat.
Woo
#23 posted by pjw [66.188.99.234] on 2004/09/06 20:05:59
I'm gone all weekend to come back and find lots of interesting opinions floating around in here. Cool.
I was pretty much a blithering retard when I got to that set up at the bottom of the cavern elevator with the hell knights, cacodemons, + revenent. I think I killed probably 5 or 6 hell knights and 7 or 8 cacos while standing directly under the damn revenent before my brain kicked in and I thought "Damn, that's a lot of monsters and I'm about out of ammo and health" and then promptly died.
Scary moments: Yeah, there were quite a few, both of the atmospheric/chilling variety and the "booga-booga" shit flying at your face type. I agree that the bloody footprints moment was probably the best of the former. Of the latter, the one that damn near made me shit my pants was when you were inspecting some monitor display toward the end of the game with quite a bit of fairly small-print info/buttons on it, and one of those damn spiders came crawling up over the top of it about six inches from your face. Awesome.
In general, I could have used quite a bit more Cavern-y bits and a bit less Alpha/Delta labs. Also, did this game seem unusually long to anyone else? Not that I'm complaining, just surprised.
I found the Soul Cube guardian to be Really Fucking Difficult, even though I knew what to do. Certainly the hardest moment in the game for me. I think I died and restarted that bit about ten times, and was really wishing for a run-toggle. In fact, Hell in general was fairly difficult when compared with the rest of the game, before and after.
Sarge was kinda lame. Just soul-cubed him and hit him with a couple of rockets and it was done...
End Boss? Eh. It was okay. The "Oh wow he's really really big" thing has been kinda beaten to death in a bunch of games though.
Weapon And Monster Thoughts
#24 posted by pjw [66.188.99.234] on 2004/09/06 20:21:08
You could actually use your fists (and the chainsaw) to kill the Lost Souls, which was kinda cool. I used the chainsaw a lot on zombies and wraiths to conserve ammo (even though I probably didn't need to).
In fact, I don't think there's a single weapon that I didn't find to be at least useful at times. I used the pistol a lot on the spiders.
Oh, except for the grenades, which I thought sucked audibly and with gusto. They were *WAY* too elastic IMO, and I just stopped using them completely about the time one bounced off a wall 40 feet away and came right back to my feet, or bounced off the floor below and *back up into* the ventilation duct where I was crouched. Bleh.
I didn't mind the weapon familiarity, but thought the Soul Cube made a nice addition and wouldn't have minded a little more innovation either. I was probably way to conservative with the Soul Cube, and held off using it quite a bit until faced with a Revenent or Hell Knight or such.
It's really a crying shame that the Pinkies and Mancubi didn't get used more. Yeah, they need more space, so build some bigger spaces, damn it!
The sound, as I remarked elsewhere, I thought was pure awesomeness.
Like Lun, I wish some more creative use could have been made of the PDA. The whole martianbuddy.com thing + locker combos + background/atmosphere stuff really pretty much covers it. They could have done more with it.
They could have done more with the random folks you find hiding here and there too, but I supposed I should just be grateful there weren't any shitty escort/protect the suicidal scientist bits . . .
I loved the little bots. I want one. :)
More Thoughts
#25 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/09/07 03:01:05
Shambler briefly mentioned this, but it was one of my favourite parts of the game. I LOVED the security bots. The section where you are following one along in relative darkness and it as a flashlight. The two of you are fighting side by side, protecting each others backs. I was sad when the little guy stopped and went to sleep :( Even though they were only robots, it was a nice change to feeling so alone and isolated all the damn time.
As for the weapons, I totally agree with PJW about the awful grenades. If I wanted something that came back to me every time I threw it I would buy a fucking boomerang. It was almost as if there was an invisible golden retriever bringing them back to me. On top of that, actually judging the angle and distance was very tough. One of the WORST implementations of grenades I've seen (the best being the grenades in Vietcong.)
I missed that footprints moment. I remember the follow me shit, but I didn't see the footprints :( Same with the trite coming over the computer :( :( Sounds cool.
The end of the game became too easy because almost every time I came to a big monster, I had the soulcube ready to do some damage. The big monsters were really underused - I agree with most of you about that.
Having arch-viles all over the place was all well and good, but I knew what they were capable of so always wasted them first, so they never really got a good chance to spawn much stuff. Their attack in Doom 2 was much more effective (they would look at you and set you on fire. If you didn't get behind cover, you took damage after a couple of seconds.
Actually, I thought the red hallucination effects early in the game were an early sign of the archviles, I thought that would be their new replacement attack for the fire. I was actually bloody scared at the thought of meeting one. Until I met one and promtly obliterated it.
Archviles
#26 posted by nb [203.109.254.50] on 2004/09/07 07:02:49
Heh; that's not be a bad idea for a mod... They actually have an instant-hit attack ('incinerate'), but only seem use it when they can't get at you with melee or their flamewall. It can miss, as well.
Those bots were the cutest little buggers. They showed off the IK system really well, too; scuttling up and down stairs.
Just Finished...
#27 posted by pope [207.6.244.93] on 2004/09/07 23:57:54
I've been playing casually, every few days because I like to get really immersed in the game, hard to do with people in the same room talking away.
What I liked...
-- Blood on walls: floors, screens, bursting out the back of baddies when you load em with shotgun lead. I think the blatant overuse of blood in some areas was just fantastic.
-- Heartbeat sound: With the proper volume & bass, this was just a wonderful method to get the players palms sweaty.
-- Hell Knights, Mancubi, Pinky: BIG SOLID baddass mofo's that can take a beating (that Hellknight that jumps down a floor actually landed on me the first time and as a result the rocket I fired was pointblank)
-- The moment of the attack at the beginning: UNF UNF UNF!!
-- Hallucinations: Also UNF!
-- Large areas were well done, WHY NOT MOOOORE :(
Things I did not like
-- Machine Gun: I loved the gun itself, but the volume on it was alot higher than the other weapons... thus is kind of annoyed me, even tho I enjoy the gun and feel like a marine with it.
-- Spiders (Trites/Ticks whatever): Ok, these things sucked ass, for a few reasons, death animation w/ green splut... yawn. They felt like my progress was being slowed down because you just sort of sit back and wait for them all. I don't think the problem really was in the design as how they were used... and seriously...why so many spiders and no Pinkies!!
-- SoulCube: It got too easy once you get this. Even tho I employed it rarely (usually arch viles) I stuck with shotgun as much as possible right till the end... ran out of ammo several times.
-- 60 seconds in Mars Atmosphere: and the fact that they mention your SUIT has enough air... wtf.. a human can hold their breath longer without a 'suit' (which doesn't even have a helmet so that makes no sense that it would help you with air)I really wish I could of spent just a little more time enjoying the surface atmosphere , it was really well done.
These lists feel short, and there are undoubtedly more things I loved/hated...these just stood out for some reason.
SP MAPPERS MORE PINKIES... can they go up stairs? Or jump down from above... :D
so underused
#28 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/08 00:16:47
Mancubus vs Pinky: Which is the better monster?
Mancubus
Thats Like Deciding
#29 posted by pope [207.6.244.93] on 2004/09/08 00:52:42
..between both your loved children...
Blackpope:
#30 posted by Scampie [66.231.198.188] on 2004/09/08 01:21:30
I think it's assumed you put on a helmet while in the airlocks. Too bad they never showed the animation of the marine putting it on like in the 'alpha' build.
Fists
#31 posted by Vondur [81.195.20.215] on 2004/09/08 01:26:11
fists are used twice in this game with HIGH effectiveness: when you pick up that berzerk helmet. even hellknight gibs away after single punch ;)
I Loved The Machine Gun
#32 posted by HeadThump [65.141.73.218] on 2004/09/08 02:06:21
The volume of other weapons were a little low in my opinion (probably done that way so it didn't block out ambient and monster sounds).
Speaking Of Alpha Build
#33 posted by pushplay [129.128.23.141] on 2004/09/08 17:30:04
Whatever happened to that map? It was pretty decent and I wouldn't mind seeing it again at more than 0.4fps.
Hmm
#34 posted by nonentity [213.208.100.240] on 2004/09/08 20:46:23
You see bits of the alpha maps in the final release, it's actually quite interesting to see how the maps changed over the years in between
Word...
#35 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/10 14:36:38
I was pretty much a blithering retard when I got to that set up at the bottom of the cavern elevator with the hell knights, cacodemons, + revenent. I think I killed probably 5 or 6 hell knights and 7 or 8 cacos while standing directly under the damn revenent before my brain kicked in and I thought "Damn, that's a lot of monsters and I'm about out of ammo and health" and then promptly died.
LOL! I got to 3 hell knights and the same number of Cacos, and then found the Arch Vile....was cool, a great bit of gameplay in a great situation.
Of the latter, the one that damn near made me shit my pants was when you were inspecting some monitor display toward the end of the game with quite a bit of fairly small-print info/buttons on it, and one of those damn spiders came crawling up over the top of it about six inches from your face. Awesome.
I remember that, just as I was pressing one of the b0rked security camera buttons....made me quite wary of pressing the other b0rked button =).
In general, I could have used quite a bit more Cavern-y bits and a bit less Alpha/Delta labs.
Agreed, definitely. Just a bit more of the more varied sections in general.
Also, did this game seem unusually long to anyone else? Not that I'm complaining, just surprised.
Agreed, plenty long enough to me, I liked that, it ended up feeling like a regular sci-fi horror series =).
...
It's really a crying shame that the Pinkies and Mancubi didn't get used more. Yeah, they need more space, so build some bigger spaces, damn it!
Hmmm I don't think the spaces are much of an excuse - there are loads of spaces where they could have been used and indeed might have been scarier. I mean hell at the start of caverns I somehow got whacked by an Arch Vile and two Hell Knights in a pretty average size room...
...
Shambler briefly mentioned this, but it was one of my favourite parts of the game. I LOVED the security bots. The section where you are following one along in relative darkness and it as a flashlight. The two of you are fighting side by side, protecting each others backs. I was sad when the little guy stopped and went to sleep :( Even though they were only robots, it was a nice change to feeling so alone and isolated all the damn time.
Yes, pure class! Was great to be fighting along side something....and the little critters were well cool, their animations and stuff, and they way they kept coming back to find you.
The end of the game became too easy because almost every time I came to a big monster, I had the soulcube ready to do some damage.
Hmmmm, I didn't have that problem really, I really liked the gameplay at the end, with the beefier monsters. Sometimes I had the SC ready but often I'd used it to scrounge some health off something, or forget to switch to it or something...
Game Length
#36 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/10 16:06:30
Was very short imo, I beat it over the weekend. It was fun, it was great, but defintely not long enough. I'll just have to wait for the expansion I suppose.
B0rked Security Camera
#37 posted by pushplay [129.128.23.141] on 2004/09/10 18:27:18
On my second playthrough I got out the flashlight and started abusing one of the cameras. After a few hits I managed to knock it down. Later I got to the security room and when I selected the associated camera it had really moved with the model. Except the portal was a few units below the model and so was actually in the floor. VISing no long applied of course and frame rate took a hit until I changed to another camera.
Zwiffle
#38 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/10 18:59:33
very short
Have you been giving yourself a crack enema AGAIN?? WTF are you talking about, very short my arse, it's the longest FPS game I've played since, I dunno HL probably. I can't see how you could possibly make it short given how many places you have to explore....FFS the only other comments I've seen about the lengths are that it is LONG. You must be a freak - well, okay, I could have completed it in a weekend too if I'd played from like 10 - midnight both days...
Then again maybe you ARE a freak and your eyes are supernaturally adjusted to the dark as evidenced in your maps and you can see through time and space to progress ultra-rapidly or something...
Shambler
#39 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/10 22:59:31
Productive and useful, as always. No, I played it about 3-5 hours per day, not 14 hours as you suggest (at least I assume you mean 10:00 AM to 12:00 AM), starting on Friday and finishing on Sunday. PCGamer (USA version) said the same thing about it being short if I recall. Yes, I played on Veteran, and yes I explored as well. Maybe it's just because you and I have different ideals of what's long and short (that's a penis joke about you, Shambler, in case you didn't get the subtlety.)
But in any case, most games in general seem to be short to me. Its as if right when it begins to be interesting the game ends. There are some games that I think had a good length; Silent Hill 3, for example, but I won't go into that.
In short, pun intended, the game just didn't leave me satisfied and I thought there would be more game.
And yes, my eyes ARE adjusted to the dark.
Well...3-5 Hours A Day For 3 Days
#40 posted by WyldeSnake [69.133.74.4] on 2004/09/11 00:58:23
Is anywhere from 9-15 hours...That sounds about right for D3. Any rate, that's the longest SP story-driven FPS I've played in a while either. I think I got about 12 hours in it.
Something that I think we're over-looking is that the story and environment, and overall 'hook' of the game, was good enough to keep us playing until the end. I know there have been other SP FPS offerings that lasted longer, but to be honest, I couldn't have been arsed to sit through the last half. Something about the 15th Egyptian locale I've been through, I just got sick of it and lost interest.
It's Not How Long It Is, It's How You Play It
#41 posted by VoreLord [144.137.186.2] on 2004/09/11 02:33:23
Well I thought it was pretty long, well at least not to short, but hey, I wouldn't have minded if it was longer. At least it was longer than Unreal Poo, I mean Unreal 2, that was about 6 hours, and rancid crap from start to finnish. (I only finnished UPoo for the sake of completion)
MEH.
#42 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/11 07:19:02
ZWiffle, you are bonkers. Please, the next time you play something that has demo-recording ability (Doom3 / Quake custom map, for example), could you record a demo of yourself doing so - I'd be interested to see how you manage to play so fast. I'm guessing it's being very skilled, but even so just progressing through new levels surely takes time.
Wildsnoke, I agree with the last point, definitely kept me hooked the whole way - which was how I was feeling it was both LONG but still interesting.
Shambler
#43 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/11 09:35:23
I will do that with Quake 4, which is supposed to come out pretty soon from what I hear. PCGamer has 10 page preview next issue, so that should be cool.
Small Thing
#44 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/09/12 08:14:16
WTF happened to the night vision goggles? Doom 3 is practically the darkest game I've ever played and all we got was a poxy torch.
And Finally...
#45 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/12 15:06:27
...just wanna say, if it wasn't obvious already, I thought DOOM3 was great. Really immersive, really gave the feel of being in an isolated and now-rather-fucked-up outpost, good gfx, decent gameplay, great monsters, just a good feel overall.
It's been quite exciting playing it now, when all the hype and stuff is still around =).
w3rd.
A Response To Nonentity And Maj From D3 DM And Item Layout Thread
#46 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/13 16:45:10
(I originally intended to post this in the D3 DM thread, but thought this was off-topic to that discussion, so I posted it here instead.)
Maj: What about Quake 2 did I forget?
Nonentity: I didn't mean that my personal preference of gameplay should be the end-all decision of what to make; I merely wanted to make it clear that SP should be a larger part of the D3 mapping community than DM because of the focus of D3. By all means, make as many DM maps as you want, or exclusively DM as far as I care.
But, the focus of D3 was SP and as far as I'm concerned I will play nothing but SP, simply because it's the intention behind the design and the effort of the design was concentrated almost in this area exclusively. To waste (guestimating) 90% of the effort of id for generic DM seems ... Well, to put in different terms: To utilize 90% of id's material and design seems far more practical.
Zwiffle
#47 posted by Maj [217.205.117.52] on 2004/09/14 08:29:21
That Q2 was intended for single player too, with the multiplayer pretty much an afterthought. So extrapolating your comment, all those Q2 maps are "useless".
Well
#48 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/14 08:34:33
No, not really. Q2 was intended for Single Player, but not nearly as much as Doom3 was. Q2SP was just an attempt to make-up the poor Quake single player that many fans griped about. In Q2, I'd guesstimate about 65-70% was made for SP, possibly less. Quake was obviously built with a balanced, fast DM in mind, with some cool monsters thrown in to make it SP. Q2, well, it also has a balanced DM in mind, but with a little more thought added to the SP.
Zwiflle
#49 posted by nitin [138.217.0.118] on 2004/09/14 08:35:43
I was pretty sure q1 was built sp first and then MP.
Nitin
#50 posted by Maj [217.205.117.52] on 2004/09/14 08:38:55
I'm pretty sure it's the reverse. qtest shipped with dm1-3 in almost final states what... 7 months before retail?
Actually
#51 posted by . [68.77.197.145] on 2004/09/14 09:41:25
I read in an interview w/ someone at id that Quake 1 was who-could-make-the-best-DM-map, then strung along with an improvised story.
Hmm
#52 posted by nonentity [80.177.201.18] on 2004/09/14 10:05:37
I'm not sure you can claim a game that didn't even ship with DM maps was more DM focussed than D3.
(The Q2DMx maps came in a later patch)
Q2 R0cked
#53 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/14 16:01:05
Both SP and DM.
Nonentity
#54 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/14 16:08:41
I never claimed that Q2 was more DM focused than SP focused.
Stuff
#55 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/09/14 16:37:17
Regarding Q2, I agree with Shambler. The DM might have seemed slow to some, but I enjoyed it a lot. Haven't managed to get anyone to play Doom 3 MP at work, although I haven't actually asked since I've been playing coop Vietcong almost every day for the past four months or so :)
It's a real shame that there is no coop in Doom 3. It's id's first SP game without coop since Wolf3d, and that didn't even have networking. A lot of companies seem to overlook coop because they are intent on creating a scripted, linear and effects heavy SP experience that would normally break as soon as there are multiple players running around. It is actually quite surprising how many people want coop mode though. Halo is an example of a game where players tended to play it solo, then drag mates round to play coop, although I know a few people who have only bothered to finish it in coop.
Why the hell only the XBox version of Doom 3 will have coop, I don't know. Perhaps just due to time contraints and id just wanting to get the game done.
#56 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/14 16:41:05
I believe D3 didn't have coop because of the strain on the connections. DM is doable, but at small numbers. Having coop maps with demons and zombies as well as players AND physics would destroy anything but a fiber-optic T-75 line.
I could be mistaken, but that's what I believe the problem is.
Than
#57 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/14 16:41:51
You're doing an awful lot of "As Shambler said" and "I agree with Shambler" recently.
Are you okay?? Maybe book a doctor's appointment or something...
Erm
#58 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/09/14 17:35:15
I'm just trying to build your confidence enough to let me suck your cock.
Well, I just happen to agree with you on a lot of stuff. I didn't enjoy Doom 3 as much as you seemed to though. I started hankering for the end about halfway through Delta labs.
If You Want...
#59 posted by pope [207.6.226.148] on 2004/09/14 17:51:05
...to sucks his cock you better get your tongue out of his ass. As you surely cannot do both at the same time.
The Netcode
#60 posted by nb [203.109.254.50] on 2004/09/14 21:50:28
Is really weird, and decidedly suboptimal. How and why exactly, I don't know yet. The SDK should shed some light on things.
Wow
#61 posted by Blitz [24.218.86.166] on 2004/09/21 05:56:59
I've just played the first two levels and I am very very impressed. I'm running high detail 1024x768 with 2x AA on my Radeon 9800 PRO w/ latest drivers and it has played very smoothly.
Things that stand out:
I didn't think that the textures would create the illusion of depth and geometry so well -- they do.
Models are top notch -- I was very impressed with the expressions and facial movements.
Great sound FX/sdtrk so far. I was impressed with the game's ability to sound futuristic, but not totally foreign.
Great fights so far, but I was a little annoyed when I got gang raped by two zombies on either side of a doorway, causing me to lose 70 health. I didn't have any visual or sonic clues that he was there until it was too late. Threw me off a bit.
Excellent sense of place. We all know the outpost base has been done to death, but I still found it to be incredibly immersive. The one thing that bothered me was the Half Life style health refuelers on the wall. They work, look, and sound exactly the same. Bleh.
Lighting is very convincing in action, and on the architecture, but sometimes not so much when you're talking to another Marine or personnel person. The lighting felt a bit off during these times.
I love love love the textures. They are outstanding in every respect. I was especially impressed by the texturing in the buffer areas between the Mars terrain about 20 minutes into it. Great.
*Spolier* Finally, when you first get to the guy you are supposed to bring back to the Marine base, and all Hell (literally) breaks loose, the fear is very palpable. I can't wait to play more.
Hmm
#62 posted by nonentity [217.41.19.241] on 2004/09/21 07:01:09
zwiffle, at what point did I say you were claiming that that Q2 was more DM focused than SP focused
I was merely responding to;
Q2 was intended for Single Player, but not nearly as much as Doom3 was.
In Q2, I'd guesstimate about 65-70% was made for SP, possibly less.
Which is blatandly wrong since D3 ships with DM maps, Q2 didn't.
Hmm
#63 posted by nonentity [217.41.19.241] on 2004/09/21 07:27:20
Why the hell only the XBox version of Doom 3 will have coop, I don't know
It's because the XBox port is being done by a different company, who decided they wanted to add co-op.
And on a slightly related note, I've only ever played Halo SP in co-op, it's not that great on your own, but as with any game, it's so much more fun playing with a friend. And the joy of console co-op is that all you need is another controller, not another PC.
Multiplayer
#64 posted by nb [203.109.254.50] on 2004/09/21 12:10:50
Which is blatandly wrong since D3 ships with DM maps, Q2 didn't.
Q2 shipped with the capability to run >4 player servers over the internet (and all the SP maps had DM layouts, a few of which were actually playable). If id had any interest in D3 having serious multiplayer, they'd have rewritten the netcode.
I'll second that Halo co-op motion. Especially on Legendary; the AI makes for some damn good fights (there was an article about it on Gamasutra awhile back, iirc).
#65 posted by Scampie [216.220.241.97] on 2004/09/21 13:24:07
You know, I hear lots of people complaining about 'the netcode' but never mention any specifics on how they'd improve it, or any such reasons why it's the netcode itself is why the game can be laggy. Knowing Carmack, he optimizes code like a fiend, and IMO, I'd just say he's created an engine that was a bit too far ahead of it's time to handle good DM. All that 'stuff' that makes D3 is also what slows it. Dynamic lights, per pixel hit detection, ragdolls, weapon fire traced individually. The game was designed for singleplayer in mind, despite the fact there is deathmatch and people just want to beat it to death without any thought to the reason why or how. Now fuck off and go map everyone.
#66 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.59.96] on 2004/09/21 13:28:13
#52 posted by nonentity [80.177.201.18] on 2004/09/14 10:05:37
I'm not sure you can claim a game that didn't even ship with DM maps was more DM focussed than D3.
#54 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.84.168] on 2004/09/14 16:08:41
I never claimed that Q2 was more DM focused than SP focused.
#62 posted by nonentity [217.41.19.241] on 2004/09/21 07:01:09
zwiffle, at what point did I say you were claiming that that Q2 was more DM focused than SP focused
Hmm
#67 posted by nonentity [217.41.19.241] on 2004/09/21 16:57:56
Yeah, that's me saying that D3 was more DM focused than Q2. Not that Q2 was more DM focused than SP focused.
#68 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.59.96] on 2004/09/21 17:03:24
Ahh, I see your point. My mistake. But, regardless, I still think Q2 was more DM focused than D3 ever was, and ultimately I still think that Doom3 maps should be focused for SP.
Secrets
#69 posted by Lunaran [69.41.96.11] on 2004/09/21 23:46:48
I miss actually having a message and a triumphant little sound play when you find a secret.
There was a really cool one in the comm facility, right after Mars City.
SPOILER
In the dark there's a cable to cross a pit (the one with the crane the guy doesn't want you to touch), and at the end a door with a touchscreen that says "storage unlocked via marine security station." When you get into that station later, sort of tucked away at the bottom of the guy's screen (away from the bigger and more obvious buttons) is a little extra window for unlocking other doors, including this room and the other equipment case. Rock.
/SPOILER
Makes me wonder what other kinds of cool secretness can be had by us designers. They took away our cool bleeding secret doors/shootable light fixtures it seems though. :(
My Fave Secret
#70 posted by pushplay [68.148.157.110] on 2004/09/23 00:58:42
It's all spoiler.
Consider yourself warned.
Under one of the desks around delta-something-ish there's a security button. Hitting it opens a secret panel behind you full of goodies. I thought it was a nice touch because it meshed in well with the theme. All too often secrets don't make sense in their environment.
Ummm Yeah Push...
#71 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/09/23 04:40:09
There's only about 85,000 "secrets" like that in the game...
#72 posted by lightR [195.208.123.213] on 2004/09/28 09:29:53
I miss actually having a message and a triumphant little sound play when you find a secret.
yeah Lun
Odd
#73 posted by . [68.77.197.145] on 2004/10/02 13:57:05
I unpacked the demo's .PK4 and modified the weapon HUD's and flashlight beams to red, and put it all back in (all using WinZip which I've read is legit to do).. the 461 MB original pak now became 520 MB and upon launch it says corrupt pak.
So
#74 posted by Lunaran [69.41.96.11] on 2004/10/04 14:19:48
don't do that.
Just put the modified files in the right folders in /base/ and they'll override stuff in the pak.
Does D3 Feel 'Long' Enough?
#75 posted by Scragbait [69.159.47.253] on 2004/10/06 20:30:08
Was it a light snack or an all-you-can-eat? Did it feel like value for the money or are you hoping for enough user maps to fill those hungry spaces? The original DooM felt substantial back when I played.
D3
#76 posted by ProdigyXL [24.247.207.25] on 2004/10/06 20:57:23
Felt long, almost too long. If it were even just another 2 or so levels longer it would of been way too much for.
Yeah
#77 posted by Mr Fribbles [202.161.117.131] on 2004/10/06 22:31:15
It was surprisingly long for a modern FPS. If the gameplay, story etc was interesting and varied enough, that may have been a good thing.
However, it wasn't, so towards the end I was just charging through without really enjoying it too much, and just trying to finish it. D3 felt overly long given the repetive nature of the environments and gameplay.
I Think
#78 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.70.215] on 2004/10/06 22:59:47
this topic has been covered somewhat, so I'll restate what I said: Beat it in a weekend. Too short.
Shambler, flame me all you want.
Zwiffle,
#79 posted by HeadThump [65.140.58.89] on 2004/10/07 02:21:44
You at the very least get an 'A' for consistency.
Zwiffle.
#80 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/10/07 04:46:08
You also get an "F-" for making sense.
The thing is, that Zwiff found it short is neither here nor there. You can't look at the length in isolation, only in comparison to other games.
And, compared to other recent FPS/3PS games, Doom3 was long. Possibly compared to a lot of older ones too.
For me, it was both long enough but I'd have happily had it longer because, well, bloody hell I was enjoying it =).
I would, however, liked a bit more variety (more Hell / Caverns or other stuff, and Pinkies and Mancubi), and a bit less random labs full of Imps. I.e. I wouldn't have wanted it to be longer by containing more of the latter.
Definitely a full meal though.
Length, Or As They Say In The UK, "Lenth"
#81 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2004/10/07 17:48:40
Doom3 didn't even approach Deus Ex for length. Deus Ex I'd argue is a 'full meal.' Doom 3 was like a ham sandwich or something.
Deus Ex 2? I'd use the word 'snifter.'
...
#82 posted by necros [142.150.5.252] on 2004/10/08 11:29:05
what is it with this bs with people wanting shorter and shorter games... wtf is wrong with all of you?
O_O
developers consider 20hours of gameplay acceptable? pish posh!
Absolutely Agree,
#83 posted by HeadThump [65.140.58.138] on 2004/10/08 12:09:32
Dont let them get away with giving you an Expansion Pack worth of play at full price.
Comments From A Non-Doom 3 Player
#84 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.230.101] on 2004/10/08 14:42:45
developers consider 20hours of gameplay acceptable? pish posh!
The point, of course, is not game length. (I believe we've discussed this before.) Rather, the point is that a game might be short from the start sequence until the end sequence, but the gameplay is rich enough that you can easily replay it many, many times. Thus, when a game is 8-10 hours from start to finish, the game actually would have 32-40 hours of gameplay.
Unfortunately, SP FPS games usually do not have gameplay rich enough to support playing the entire game four times. Some of this is due to plain, redundant gameplay; and some of it is due to boring, linear level design.
Exception:
#85 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.230.101] on 2004/10/08 14:47:59
I think an exception would be RPGs and adventure games. Part of the point of RPGs is to explore the world and build a character, and thus an 8-10 hour RPG would not have much exploration or character building; unless it was hugely non-linear and you were able to restart the game on a harder skill setting while keeping your existing character, but that's a different matter altogether.
And for adventure games, well, those are based a lot on solving puzzles, which is not conducive to replayability. Thus, adventure games need to be longer to facilitate a rewarding experience.
In Response To RPG
#86 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.56.234] on 2004/10/08 15:07:49
I agree with you somewhat, RPG. The point isn't whether it was long enough, but whether we were satisfied at the end of the game.
My answer is that I was not satisfied at the end of the game. The levels were fairly linear, many standard "monster pop up ambush" tricks tended to get old but kept me on my toes, and the story was somewhat involving.
Don't get me wrong, I think the game is high quality and entertaining. It's nothing truly unique or special, but the gameplay itself was fun. And I understand that they can't make the game incredibly long for a number of reasons, some being the amount of detail and effort required in each map, size of the disk space, etc.
I just think that if there was more game, if there were additional levels for maybe another 5 or 6 hours the game would have given me a satisfied feeling, because, although I thought the game was fun, there just wasn't enough to really dig into overall.
But perhaps if they didn't over use imps, the variety of combat would have given me a satisfied feeling too.
..?
#87 posted by necros [66.185.84.80] on 2004/10/08 17:50:08
um, HELL no. i don't want to replay games. i want to play them once, and have good memories of it.
ie: i want something of decent length (>30hours) that will keep me interested all the way through.
why would you want to replay an SP game unless there were major route choices to be made? (ie: making one choice would alter 1/4 or more of the game)
i really don't understand that. seems to me, making a game that has a high replayabily value really means that the developer can be lazier and yet still have the same theoretical game duration.
I Guess There's A Lot More Personal Preference There
#88 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.230.101] on 2004/10/08 18:38:16
But as long as developers think that quantity is better than quality, you're never going to feel satisfied when you stop playing.
P.S. to necros: "why would you want to replay an SP game unless there were major route choices to be made?" Because it was fun, and would continue to be fun when you replayed it. Because it was still challenging. Because you could still improve. Etc.
...
#89 posted by necros [66.185.84.80] on 2004/10/08 19:36:56
while i understand what you are saying, i just can't imagine playing a game over again... like playing d3 over again would be silly to me (never even occured to play the game again) because i know where most of the monsters are and won't get scared anymore. this is even more true with heavily story dependant games.
except something like systemshock2 or morrowind where you can pick a different type of character and the whole experience changes. that's diffferent.
Or Dues Ex,
#90 posted by HeadThump [65.140.59.149] on 2004/10/08 19:44:47
where you can replay it as a pacifist or an assassin. Now, that's variety.
Hexen
#91 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.56.234] on 2004/10/08 22:29:40
3 Characters, different play styles. Good, fun, challenging gameplay, each time you play it. That is a quality game that left me satisfied the first time through, and even more so the other two times. I wish I could've gotten the expansion pack to install and work. Oh well. One of my fav. games.
Doom 3 this is not, but still, Doom 3 is a fun game.
D3 Felt...
#92 posted by pope [207.216.236.96] on 2004/10/09 01:33:17
short to me. I finished it rather quickly doing 2-3 maps a night, the ending was almost a surprise to me as I didn't expect it quite yet. I figured there would of been some more progression until the finale. I felt satisfied like an overeater who realized that he doesn't quite need dessert with his dinner.
for the record I'm STILL playing Farcry, which is definitely a longer game than D3 was, I'll finish it yet!! It has dessert. :P
Dues ex, yeah that was hella long. I was full well before the halfway point I think.
All You Guys Who THINK Doom3 Is Short...
#93 posted by Shambler [82.38.194.13] on 2004/10/09 04:03:58
...you must be really, really dissatisfied with pretty much every FPS released in the last few years. Perhaps that's why no-one is mentioning any, because they were so short to you that you didn't even notice playing them.
As I've said before, the point is COMPARATIVE. Doom3 is comparatively a long game by today's standards and certainly a respectable length by FPS standards throughout history.
Far Cry
#94 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/10/09 11:39:31
I thought Far Cry was fairly long - it probably took me longer to finish than Doom 3 anyway. However, although I was wondering if I was near the end of Far cry some 4 or 5 missions before it actually arrived, I didn't feel annoyed that there was more, because what was there seemed to be fairly varied and I enjoyed the overall experience more (even though the monster designs did suck a bit.)
Doom, on the other hand, left me hoping the end was near whilst playing through early sections of Delta labs. I think that if id had introduced more monster types earlier on, it wouldn't have started to feel stale so quickly.
I definitely won't bother replaying Doom 3 it... unless maybe I get a huge beefmeister of a pc that can run it with all graphics options turned on, at high res, 4x anti aliasing etc. That would only be to look at the graphics though :)
Length
#95 posted by pushplay [68.148.157.110] on 2004/10/11 15:04:26
I think at issue here is how much free time you have. Now that I have a job and new hobbies I don't have as much free time as I used to. PoP and Eternal Darkness could both be beaten in a weekend but they're the games I've had the most fun in for a long time. I'm sick of filler.
I want a 15 hour orgasm, not a 40 hour reach-around.
...
#96 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/10/11 15:23:18
i'd rather have a 40 hour orgasm, thank you...
Necros:
#97 posted by metlslime [64.124.188.211] on 2004/10/11 18:11:47
good luck with that
All I Meant
#98 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/10/11 18:15:34
was that i don't see why the only options should be 15 hours of goodness or 40 hours of crap. why is 40 hours of goodness not a viable choice?
instead of asking developers to make less stuff with more quality, can't we ask for more stuff with more quality? we do pay enough money for they games anyway, right?
They = Their
#99 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/10/11 18:15:59
.
Lol, Necros
#100 posted by HeadThump [65.140.58.190] on 2004/10/11 19:28:08
I'm the king of homonymic dyslexia
you are in good company
15 V 40
#101 posted by pushplay [68.148.157.110] on 2004/10/11 19:28:16
Content creation means money. Mappers, designers, texture artists, sound designers, actors, modelers, writers, testers; all these people need to come together for high-quality content and they all need to be paid. And the longer a game takes the more you need managers and secretaries and support etc etc. Unless you can guarantee the kind of sales that even EA has never seen: no. No you don't pay enough for 40 hours of good action game content. You do however pay enough for 40 hours of find: 500 gold stars, 200 blue pendants, 130 lost elves, 20 magic wands, 7 special coins, and 1 donkey with diarrhea.
Yes Yes... Obvious Stuff.
#102 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/10/11 19:53:18
so jack up the price then. i'd pay 15 or 20cdn more for something of "long" gameplay length.
games are getting cheaper now, i'm guessing from the decreased length of games.
back in 1995, it was about 70 or 80$ cdn for a brand new game.
Now, i pick up games for around 60. D3 was 65$ when i got it about two weeks after it was released.
heck, Myst4 was 50$ CDN and that had a hell of a lot more content (2 dvds worth) if you think of general design time. (including engine dev, because it's so different from typical slideshow games).
i'd pay 80$ again for a 40-50 hour long game of the same quality as d3 was.
I'm Sure You Would
#103 posted by pushplay [68.148.157.110] on 2004/10/11 20:25:41
I would too. But then parents go into a game store and look at game A which costs 40 and game B which costs 80. Also, game A says "realistic 3d" on the box and has brighter colours. Which does that parent pick? For that matter, which does the moron EB clerk recommend? People who know their shit are a minority market.
Well
#104 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.56.234] on 2004/10/11 22:49:05
I'm not sure about Canada, but D3 was pretty pricey in the states. From what I see, most games here are around $40 - $50. Doom3 was about $65, Dawn Of War around $35-40 I believe.
Jesus...
#105 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/10/11 23:13:14
that's actually quite a bit. is it possible the price dropped that much in two weeks? O_O
$65?
#106 posted by . [68.78.218.159] on 2004/10/12 02:00:18
Not worth it. $45 perhaps.. most games are $50, maybe $55.
Games Price
#107 posted by bingo [205.193.50.10] on 2004/10/12 14:44:57
necros: just a possibiliy: in '95 the cnd$ was what? .60-.70$ compared to the US$. Right now it's at around .80$
as well, if you've checked the news in the last while, games prices are on their way up
http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/29/co...
Bleh
#108 posted by speeds [81.211.120.180] on 2004/10/12 19:52:40
beated d3. end boss sucked
Lenght
#109 posted by Speeds [81.211.120.180] on 2004/10/12 20:16:01
d3 was rather long. Mind u, thats from a point of a man who can only spare few hours in the evening on games.
But overall, I dont like long games, I lose interest quickly. D3 is first shooter I bothered to finish since rtcw.
agree, popa: the ending was almost a surprise to me as I didn't expect it quite yet.
Doom3 $$$
#110 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2004/10/12 23:23:25
I bought it on release day for this much:
http://wwww.lunaran.com/pics/doom3...
Whoever said games are getting cheaper ... is this in Canada? Games are doing nothing but getting more expensive here. When I showed my dad Doom3 when he came home the day I bought it, he looked at the pricetag with a scowl and "The hell ever happened to $39.95?"
...
#111 posted by necros [66.185.84.208] on 2004/10/12 23:31:38
-_-
apparently it's just Canada...
i forgot to take into account the falling USD. sorry dudes.
if that's taken into account, +20$ = 100$ which isn't really justifiable. :P
#112 posted by Speeds [ [213.158.13.78] on 2004/10/13 13:12:39
Read a bit of rants here and there (d3w)
so my thoughts (on the game and the issues)...
First of all (Frib and alike) do yourself a favour and DONT RELOAD each time u get hit!
I took it as a rule to try to survive even with 10% health, cause you know there is always health pack ahead. Improves game experience A LOT. Save often, reload when you are dead.
Played hard skill (veteran) - seemed normal/easy.
Abundance of ammo/health. I had to leave clips and medikits. Unneeded armor (FFS!)
Thus broken reward/challenge pair - you just do NOT need those goods. No satisfaction in finding more cells/bullets when you carry maximum already. Picking up a jacket, just to have some imps spawned... bleh
And once u get cube, healthpacks are obsolete
Spawns behind didnt annoy me but yes, they got boring. I noticed/heard spawning in most cases.
(stereo speakers/cans).
Yes, there is almost always a chance to avoid attacks (hi Lun). Ofcourse I strafe and hold 'run' button in combat. And when you cant avoid (imp jumping from opened door or a whip guy) - its not much damage, just dont let him do it again. The only real pisser is ofcourse Chaingun-guy (I dont like hit-scan grunts overall, but the weaker ones go down easily). And baby-moaths just suck.
D3 Ravenant is easier than original Doom`s and Q`s Vore; Hellknight is much easier than Sahmb (both to dodge and to kill).
I recall, in q1sp feedback most people hated when they couldnt beat a map w/o dying.
Now some cant stand taking any damage at all... WTF?
I agree that 'owl neck syndrome' and ugly 'red celophane' in your face are bad.
But I didnt let that happen very often so Im not annoyed like some ppl are.
Bosses, exept the Hell`s one, were too easy and fast to kill. Hell`s took some effort and I liked it.
What else? Too dark, rather predictable... I hoped it would be more scary and would have more things to interract with.
Too much detailing leads to sensory overload ;|
Overall its good game, will replay it prolly. ;)
Hm?
#113 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2004/10/13 16:33:22
Now some cant stand taking any damage at all... WTF?
Boy, there's no fooling you, is there?
Hells Boss
#114 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/10/13 16:48:36
was a piece of piss. I thought sarge was the hardest since it was such a cheap set up. really pissed me off.
Agree
#115 posted by HeadThump [65.140.59.122] on 2004/10/13 18:37:47
First of all (Frib and alike) do yourself a favour and DONT RELOAD each time u get hit!
I took it as a rule to try to survive even with 10% health, cause you know there is always health pack ahead. Improves game experience A LOT. Save often, reload when you are dead.
I learned that after the first few hours of fighting. You will take damage and unless you step on your own shoes, you will reach some more health before the next big set up.
My biggest gripe was the predictabilaty of some monster set ups; I'm curious to see how Lunaran improves upon this in his upcoming maps which half the reason the game is still on my laptop, even though my system is a real slog.
Hmm
#116 posted by speeds [213.158.13.58] on 2004/10/13 21:16:40
something is not right there:
imps dont die from point-blank shotgun shot while in pre-scripted sequence mode. try it
and another problem: fireball smoke obscures the view. add it to the overall darkness - and u cant see AT ALL
than: sarge goes down from cube + less than one cg belt (~8 seconds of a battle). I was like "and thats all?"
I even reloaded to try killing him w/o cube - still easy, he only had the time to fire his bfg twice.
Hell boss was easy to dodge but it took time to shoot down the 'seekers'. Liked it more
Sarge
#117 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2004/10/16 11:55:09
The reason I hated sarge was that the pillars which you needed to take cover behind were a trap. I had the soul cube ready and used it on him, but I still didn't find it that easy. I'm shit I guess.
I played on veteran... dunno if there is any difference.
Err
#118 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.230.101] on 2005/02/04 15:16:34
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that a game touted for its awesome lighting effects is so darkly lit?
It's Like Raiiiiaaaaaaiiiin....
#119 posted by metlslime [66.135.131.134] on 2005/02/04 15:22:26
on your wedding day...
Metl
#120 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.43.29] on 2005/02/04 19:42:25
rofl
My Impressions
#121 posted by Kinn [81.152.112.93] on 2005/03/13 09:37:36
I recently got a new computer, so I was finally able to play Doom 3 properly.
I just finished it today, so I figured I may as well post my impressions (if anyone still cares).
I much prefered the later half of the game, once you started seeing some variation in the environments. The quality of artistry seen in the level design seemed to be kicked up a notch here too. To be honest, I was kinda getting a bit bored of the same base style, level after level. Once I got to Hell, the game really picked up and started getting interesting for me. The caverns/temple stuff rocked too.
I liked the weapons. Despite the ridiculous spread, I think I used the shotgun 70% of the time. In the later levels I started experimenting with some of the other guns more :P Most of the bigger fights in the caverns stages were done with a plasma gun/Soul Cube combo.
Strangely enough I hardly used the chaingun, except in Hell, when dealing with the Hellknights.
Yeah, the Soul Cube was an odd one. It made the game pretty bloody easy in places. Whenever an Archvile teleported in, I Soul Cubed it. Whenever a Hellknight strode into the melee, I Soul Cubed it. Maybe I should have played on a higher difficulty level. After getting the Soul Cube, it was a rare occurence that I didn't have it charged when the next big monster stomped into the fray.
Monsters pretty much all rocked. The only ones that annoyed me really were the lost souls, cherubs, and the chaingun/tentacle commandos. Actually, the tentacle guys weren't too bad, I just accepted that I was gonna take a little damage from them, and just charged straight at them with the shotgun. The chaingun guys generally ended up eating rocket.
None of the bosses gave me any trouble. Sarge went down like a sack of poo after getting Soul Cubed. In fact, I had the most trouble with the HellKnight's introduction. Squaring off against two of them in a fairly small area the first time you meet them was a bit of a WTF moment for me o_O
Meeting the Vagary(s) again was a pleasant surprise. They ended up tasting BFG though.
The Guardian was probably my favourite boss. He had something very Balrog-esque about him :)
The Cyberdemon (and the build-up to him) was truly spectacular. Went down pretty bloody easy with the Soul Cube though (and yes, I know that's the only way to kill him :P)
So essentially, I loved the monsters and the weapons; and my biggest gripe is that Hell was such a tiny section of the game. There would be some great mapping potential there if the Hell texture set wasn't so limited. Let's hope some talented texture artists take up the mantle and give us "Doom3 Gothic" ^_~
Yes
#122 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.46.94] on 2005/03/13 10:52:33
I agree with most of that.
Too much base, too easy in many places.
Yes, Please!
#123 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.254.248] on 2005/03/13 13:03:52
Let's hope some talented texture artists take up the mantle and give us "Doom3 Gothic" ^_~
With a hint of the Dark Moor from Enclave.
Making Of D3
#124 posted by Tef Johs [83.109.200.14] on 2005/03/20 13:52:15
I bought the "Making of Doom3" by Stephen Kent (I think is his name) and id software from amazon.com recently.
All I can say is: Fantastic book. Awesomely put together, lots of huge, high-res pictures, storyboards, concept art, trivia, history and commentary from the id guys all over the place, on each and every page.
If you have the slightest interest in game design/level design focusing on Doom3 (or generally for that matter) I will recommend this book, although it's of course more leaned towards pure entertainment than education. A piece of artwork all on its own.
Kinn:
#125 posted by Scampie [24.180.188.166] on 2005/03/20 20:56:25
Actually, the tentacle guys weren't too bad, I just accepted that I was gonna take a little damage from them, and just charged straight at them with the shotgun.
YOU HAVE A DUCK KEY, USE IT MOTHERFUCKER.
:)
A Bit Of A Rehash On The Sound In D3...
#126 posted by necros [142.150.107.201] on 2005/03/21 10:24:13
i'm not sure if it's just me or not, but i found almost ALL the sounds in D3 seem to be very choked and devoid of a lot of midrange sound, so that all that's left is some bass and a lot of highs.
there is a lot of 'hissing' in this game. doors, items, most monsters... not much differentiation... i find that annoying now. :P
any opinions?
Opinion On Sound
#127 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.254.248] on 2005/03/21 13:54:31
Games are still relatively young and sound is hardly something that has been on the foreground of gamer's or developer's minds. Also if you consider that less than 10 years ago games were using 22khz .wav files and each level only had 3 to 8 ambient sounds--well, it's no wonder sounds in games are still pretty basic and rely on sensationalistic methods of appealing to the player (e.g. heavy bass). Moreover, I suspect that most developers still haven't begun to consider it as one of the better ways of communicating with the player (anyone remember Carmack swooning over how many ways they graphically communicated feedback to the player in Q3?)
Sound
#128 posted by bambuz [80.221.25.15] on 2005/03/21 17:06:15
I remember Carmack mentioning a few years back though that sound is the only "dimension" games can be reasonably close to reality nowadays - graphics and controls are so basic still.
Someone mentioned the Trent Reznor-made d3 sounds that weren't put into the game in the end. If you guys didn't know, there was this pak/zip lying somewhere in the internet, I forget where and what was the licence for their use.
Fyi
#129 posted by Mr Fribbles [202.161.117.131] on 2005/03/21 18:01:33
'Reznor' pack sounded like arse too. Don't bother.
Sounds Are
#130 posted by pope [216.232.209.40] on 2005/03/21 18:30:01
pretty much given the shaft in most games as for quality/filesize. Especially when you bring in the console factor, I had an audio teacher explain to me the PSX games he worked on they were given only approx 1mb of space for all the games sound. If anyone in gamedev here can deny or confirm this that'd be swell.
.
#131 posted by necros [69.193.222.114] on 2005/03/21 19:00:38
well, it's not so much that they are low quality or lacking in character, just that they sound odd and far off.
also, some of the wimpier hiss-ish explosions sound like they have mp3 compression on them... ¬_¬ but since they are in ogg format, i can only guess that that was intentional...
Necros...
#132 posted by distrans [211.28.236.243] on 2005/03/22 05:05:52
...don't know about compression, but according to Sound Forge some of those .oggs have been clipped senseless.
Pope
#133 posted by cyBeAr [213.66.231.112] on 2005/03/22 10:35:29
<speculation>might be true for sound effects per level/load</speculation>
#134 posted by cant map [195.208.123.213] on 2005/03/23 06:34:24
to compensate for average pc speakers that lacking his and lows and have messy mids
Alrighty...
#135 posted by distrans [131.172.4.44] on 2005/03/30 23:09:45
...I finally got around to playing Doom3 over Easter break (yes, I've been playing with the sounds for a lot longer).
General Impressions
Nothing's new under the sun, but I did in several instances have "This is very Zer" or "This is very Insomnia" etc, moments. The obvious one was entering Hell and thinking "This is very Spawn".
Id went for immersive horror and by damn they achieved it. I pooped my pants twice, and my heart rate jumped on numerous occasions.
Good Things
1. The absence of both Beta and Gamma Labs (though I'm sure they'll pop up in either mission packs or addon levels - wherein they will hopefully be constructed using corridoors that are wide enough for two people to pass in and where offices aren't all the size of small broom closets).
2. As already mentioned, the soundscape is excellent.
3. Hell (though far to short, except for the excrutiatingly tedious combat with the guardian) was awesome.
4. The transition from new tech to older tech (square corners, no chrome, larger clunkier versions of the same things) in the older section of the complex was very well executed.
5. Starting the generator.
6. Incorporating concepts from the endings of Doom & Doom2 into this ending was a nice touch.
Favourites
Scheme - the first pump section. Approaching steam punk. Yum!
Demon - Mancubis
Monster Model - end boss obviously
Non-monster Model - the RV
Weapon - Shotty
Moment - realising you are standing between its legs. Actually the entry sequence to that bit is a hoot. Our man just nonchalantly steps aside as quarter ton blocks of stone tumble inward. I guess he's pretty cocky by this stage :)
Monster Motion - the Hell Knights kick you when they get close. r4Wk!
Kill - nailing an Imp mid jump and seeing it rotate and flop on it's back before disintergrating.
Crap Things
1. As already mentioned (so I won't drone on), most of the early gameplay. One moment that stands out was being lured into a short dead end duct to grab a weapon, ammo and health only to have three Imps take it in turns to stand at the open end of the duct and hurl plasma balls at me. Just fucking stupid! The gameplay did improve once the designers started giving the player room to move.
2. None of the weapons have stopping power. I get scratched by a Cherub and can't see for three days yet some Imps walk through the first rocket as if nothing has happened.
3. Speaking of the rocket launcher. It's a fucking rocket launcher. A direct hit packs the same explosive punch whether it occurs twenty metres away or forty metres away. Unless you're playing Doom3 wherein RL damage is apparently distance relative. I just stopped using it after a while.
Anyhoo, I'm now tempted to go back and see what happens if I don't call the marines in. This decision was built up to be of some importance, so I assume there's a whole different set of consequences.
Then I'll go map :P
Marines
#136 posted by Tef Johs [80.212.38.153] on 2005/04/02 11:27:49
There are no consequences of choosing either to call in or not calling in the "fleet"...
AFAIK...
Of course, since you now know that Swann is the good guy and Sarge is the bad guy, you apparently made the wrong choice the first time around (but so did I) :P
RL
#137 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/02 15:06:36
Unless you're playing Doom3 wherein RL damage is apparently distance relative.
Having been through the Doom source and guts a fair deal I can say you completely imagined this.
Ya...
#138 posted by distrans [131.172.4.44] on 2005/04/03 20:30:14
Tef, pity there's no variation. Seemed like an obvious point to split the plot development.
Lun, hehee... I did say "apparently". Maybe I'm just a worse long shot than I thought. Regardless, except for the shotty at close range... the weps seemed to lack stopping power.
Hm...
#139 posted by necros [142.150.106.148] on 2005/04/04 10:27:40
i wish the cyberdemon was defeatable via normal weapons...
is there a way to h4x0r that?
Yeah
#140 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/04 11:16:41
It's pretty easy, too. Open his .def file and set "finalBoss" to 0 - that makes him vulnerable again.
I just tested it and it works, but there's a problem. They never sorted out a normal monster death for him since he only dies cinematically. He ragdoll-dies when you kill him, which looks really weightless and fake, and his AF doesn't even look like it's finished. There's no death sound that plays either, and his body simply vanishes after it comes to rest.
All of that's fixable too, of course.
So Ressurection Of Evil Then
#141 posted by czg [81.191.27.124] on 2005/04/09 08:55:33
I've played it. I've loved it.
What do you think, little man?
#142 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.38.168] on 2005/04/09 09:02:45
I think I love you, czg. I think I love you.
Didn't Like It
#143 posted by Shallow [82.133.115.119] on 2005/04/09 09:30:26
Too short. Vulgars look rubbish - like an Alien(TM) sprayed white with a joke-shop skull mask for a head. New/old-style lost souls have featureless grey surfaces with little apparent normalmap detail. Grabber a poor cousin to the gravity gun. Terrible script. Emails from scientists who have doctorates are littered with spelling errors. Very few PDAs have audio logs, no ingame videos I can recall, very few collectable ones which are all a bit half-assed compared to the ones in the original game. No chainsaw! Not enough variation from the original in the environments. Utterly flaccid final boss and ending. Wholesale copying of chunks of levels from the original game. Lead character looks plain wierd, main supporting character is a ginger[1]
On the plus side, the first artifact power is great (but the other two, while potent, are dull), slowing time and walking up to a stupid Vulgar with a double-barrelled shotgun is satisfying.
To be honest, it lacked polish and felt like playing a fairly good mod rather than an Official Licensed Product.
It comes on one single CD. One CD. That should give you an idea of how much content you're getting. Unless the CTF is absolutely the bestest CTF ever made for any game ever, I feel a bit ripped off...
[1] Sorry, I used to read Viz and I couldn't help it :)
Right
#144 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.254.248] on 2005/04/09 10:02:31
Vulgars look rubbish - like an Alien(TM) sprayed white with a joke-shop skull mask for a head.
I'm not sure that is any different from the existing Doom 3 monsters.
RoE Was Awesome
#145 posted by Kinn [81.152.225.111] on 2005/04/09 10:58:48
In short I loved it. Here's a quick review:
New weapons - totally awesome, in fact now I don't think I could face playing the original Doom3 without my trusty Grabber and DBS. Both these weapons were spectacularly well done, and the Grabber especially added a whole new dimension to the combat.
The Artifact was cool - but I feel the same way about it as I do the Soul Cube - it justs feels a bit cheap and "cheaty". I'd rather do all my combat in the traditional way, like a real man - but this is a criticism that can be levelled at the original doom3 too.
New monsters - well, they looked awesome as always (they're still Kenneth Scott models, y'know) Vulgars were surprisingly hard to take down due to their skinny build - they had to basically be humping my leg before I could feed them the buckshot satisfactorily (although the DBS went some way towards alleviating that problem). I liked the way they teleported in with a blueish effect - that gave you a good warning.
The Bruisers were absolute bastards though, and I always ended up Artifacting their arses before I could really get an idea of what they could do.
Forgotten (Lost Souls) would have been pissy and annoying (like the original versions) were it not for the Grabber - that almost made fighting the little buggers fun! Same goes for the cherubs - the most annoying monsters in the game can now be dealt with in a rather amusing fashion. Shallow - I've no idea what you're on about with the Forgotten's skin - maybe you're playing it on a low detail setting or something - they looked great to me, much better than the original tortured female face design anyway.
Bosses - The Hunters were all extraordinarily well done and awesome to fight. The Betruger boss was not so fun, but I guess being the final boss he's supposed to be a bit of git.
Level design was spankingly good, exceeding the quality of the original game in many places - the various sewer and outdoor sections were particularly fun (and the envirosuit rocked bigtime). I felt the weakest levels (or rather the least fun) were the final two - Delta and Hell. The uber-fucked Delta level was just dark and annoying to play (like in the original game :P), whilst Hell was just bland, and offered nothing new over the glimpse of it we saw in the original. Oh, well at least the game up to that point was golden.
I really liked that there was less of an emphasis on cheap scares and monster closets in this XP. There were still some cheap moments (after all it can't stray too far from Doom 3 can it?) but overall, I found the gameplay to be fun rather than overly tense.
Cutscenes/Story/Presentation/Blah - the cutscenes were really nice, and I think I prefer this Doomguy to the original one, he just looks grittier. The animation/mocap in the cinematics was exceptional and the intro to the game was amazing. PDAs seemed just as abundant as the original, but they seemed to be mainly used for storage locker codes and security clearance, not loads of story stuff (which makes sense, as the story was pretty much told in Doom3).
Overall, I think this is a more-than-worthy follow up to Doom 3, correcting most of the gameplay criticisms I had with the original, adding some indespensible weapons to the arsenal, and making some devilishly good additions to the bestiary.
I Agree With Kinn Except On
#146 posted by czg [81.191.27.124] on 2005/04/09 13:17:37
The hunters/final boss:
Hunter #1 was kinda stupid, like playing pong.
Hunter #2 was awesome! Fuck yeah!
Hunter #3 kind sucked because I had no idea how to make him go into charge mode. I left that fight with 6 health!
Final boss was pure rockage. The way bosses used to be made. Attack patterns, attack modes, voulnerable periods, pull-trick-to-not-die periods. He totally rocked. The actual ending was suck tho.
I agree that delta labs was teh s4wk.
I do not agree that hell was teh s4wk. (Although, the 9 BoH's + 500 Mancubii arena was kinda hard if you didn't have a full stock of souls when you went in.)
#147 posted by Vigil [85.76.1.41] on 2005/04/09 13:52:50
Kinn, are you being sarcastic? Honestly, are you?
That's not a review, that's... that's marketing.
Yeah, Kinn
#148 posted by HeadThump [65.140.58.187] on 2005/04/10 22:38:52
I almost had my credit card out ready to order the expansion after reading your review! ;)
not loads of story stuff (which makes sense, as the story was pretty much told in Doom3).
You can ALWAYS expand a story to encompass new material, unless your name is Chris Carter.
Tonight, On The X-Files
#149 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/10 22:51:02
Mulder and Scully investigate a PICK ONE:
man-eating aberration of nature
alien abduction
government cover-up
mulder's sister Samantha who we swear is the real Samantha in this episode and not more alien clone bullshit this time I mean really
What I Really Enjoyed Best
#150 posted by pope [154.5.27.236] on 2005/04/10 22:54:50
were some moments where they instead of giving you a cheap scare tactic, they would use a monster (usually a crawling vulgar) to lure your attention away... leaving time for another to get close to you without notice, or even just a zombie... if you're not paying attention WHACK... and on nightmare thats life you can't afford to lose most of the time. One more memorable time was watching a vulgar climb up a diagonal pipe to the left of a hallway, so you kind of keep your attention on the left hand side, then another jumps out from the right, it was good because both are directly in front of you, but it still manages to catch the player off guard... i really salute these kinds of things instead of the tired old, grab item teleport monster in.
BTW,
#151 posted by HeadThump [65.140.58.187] on 2005/04/10 23:40:23
Any mappers on the credits whose names we may recognize?
Doom 3 Trivia
#152 posted by . [68.255.59.201] on 2005/04/18 13:35:53
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt041864...
* The game contains several references to the original Doom games. For example, one of the magazines lying about has a "surprised" face on it - that of the Doom Marine from the first two Doom games. Also, the "player face" on the arcade machine is that of the Doom Marine.
* Within approximately 1 day of release, there was already a game modification (or 'mod') which added a light to the pistol. In the game itself, players must swap between a flashlight, or a gun.
<SPOILER>
* The name of the doctor responsible for the disaster is Dr. Malcolm Betruger. "Betrug" is the German word for fraud or deceit, which is exactly what the doctor does.
</SPOILER>
* In the original Doom, the player lost all their equipment (except for a pistol and 50 bullets) at the beginning of every new episode (for a total of two times). Although no reason was given for this effective "restart" in every chapter, the concept was carried over into Doom 3, and the player loses all their equipment (twice), on the journey to and from Hell. There are also several other holdovers from the original doom, such as a boss fight that consisted of two Barons of Hell, toxic sludge, and more.
* In one of the mails found/discovered in the PDAs lying around the base, there's a "futuristic" version of an IP address. If you "subtract" a few digits from it so it becomes a "normal" present-day IP address and perform a "reverse DNS" you'll get: "idsoftware.com", the domain/site of the creators/developers of the game.
* The PDA audio logs closely resemble the format, tone, and pacing of the audiotape Ash listens to in _Evil Dead II (1987)_
* Development team averaged about 24 people.
* Originally was not intended to be made. John Carmack, unimpressed with the current plan for the company's next game, told his co-owners that unless Doom 3 was id software's next project, he would quit.
* While most of the levels exist highly ruined, the developers first built every level as if nobody had ever walked in them. Going through each level with special developer-only 'weapons', level designers would then dismantle the levels in order to create a highly damaged effect.
* Originally, the Soul Cube was going to be split into four sections, forcing the player to defeat each section's "Guardian". Designers felt that this would make the Cube seem weak, and opted instead to keep the Cube whole.
* If you kill Larry Kaczynski and take his PDA, you will find an email from a "John Okonkwo" that turns out to be the well known "Nigeria Scam", which is apparently still assaulting inboxes well into the 22nd Century.
Phait:
#153 posted by metlslime [67.174.233.14] on 2005/04/18 20:24:52
don't cut and paste when a simple URL will do.
Other Designers
#154 posted by scar3crow [151.141.32.111] on 2005/04/19 07:16:58
I saw Brandon James in the credits... now iirc, isnt he KillMe from Zerstorer and Quake2, and then left id during the dev of Q3A ?
Yeah
#155 posted by Kinn [81.178.51.25] on 2005/04/19 09:25:23
Interestingly, Darin McNeil also worked on RoE (another Zerstorer alumni ~_^).
Nerve seems to consist mostly of people from Rogue (who made Am. McGee's Alice, and the second missionpacks for both Q1 and Q2).
#156 posted by scar3crow [151.141.47.138] on 2005/04/19 11:16:56
ah, yeah, i didnt recall the names of other Zer members. i only remember KillMe for manson2.bsp which i love.
Nerve seems to specialise in taking id projects and doing it better... though i cant vouch on the q2 expansions... but didnt Nerve develop RTCW's multiplayer ?
Emphasis His
#157 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/20 08:58:40
While most of the levels exist highly ruined, the developers first built every level as if nobody had ever walked in them. Going through each level with special developer-only 'weapons', level designers would then dismantle the levels in order to create a highly damaged effect.
First of all, most of the base was still in pristine condition aside from the ubiquitous blood and the bits that the massive throbbing tentacles tore open, but this is trumped up beyond recognition*. Making a room look disheveled with g_dragentity and putting in leaking pipes with editParticles is neat, but I'd hardly describe them as weapons.
* TRUBAR?
WEAPONS OF MAP PRODUCTION
#158 posted by metlslime [209.213.199.133] on 2005/04/20 12:20:50
After A Thorough Inspection Of #terrafusion,
#159 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.254.145] on 2005/04/20 12:25:17
I found there to be no WMPs. The presence of mappers was misleading.
The Answer Is Clear
#160 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/20 15:31:58
#terrafusion is obviously lacking in any kind of valuable intelligence :)
#161 posted by metlslime [209.213.199.133] on 2005/04/20 16:12:09
#terrafusion presents a clear and present threat to mapping, even without WMPs.
#162 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/20 19:37:54
there must take place a regime change. scampie must transfer ownership immediately.
we'll be greeted as liberators
Lun
#163 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2005/04/21 07:55:52
And would be supposed to replace Scampie ?? You ?
#164 posted by Lunaran [69.41.96.11] on 2005/04/21 08:17:38
Well, I'd run the interim government long enough to establish safety and democracy and freedom and liberty and baseball and apple pie.
Arrghhh
#165 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2005/04/21 08:20:45
Lunaran is a George W Bush clone ! Help !
No
#166 posted by scar3crow [151.141.46.130] on 2005/04/21 08:38:34
He spelled interim correctly.
Eh?
#167 posted by than [62.189.9.161] on 2005/04/21 11:49:35
I thought Carmack originally didn't want to do Doom 3? I thought the reason Paul Steed was given the boot was that he had stirred up most of the staff into pressuring the bosses for the next project after Q3 to be Doom 3.
Is this wrong?
#168 posted by scar3crow [151.141.47.137] on 2005/04/21 11:55:54
Ive heard back and forth on the matter... I recall before Doom3, Carmack was speaking of some project called Trinity, which sounded more ambitious, in his vague terminology, then Doom3. Technology wise at least (not too hard to be more ambitious then Doom3 on the gameplay front).
Yeah actually, the more I think of it... About half of the company wanted to do Doom3, and the other half didnt (this basically being Kevin Cloud and Adrian Carmack, as opposed to John Carmack), and supposedly Steed was pro-Doom3, and got caught in the crossfire... Though Id say his previous behaviour, notably in .plan files, played a role in his firing, not just spite for another shareholder.
But I honestly cant recall, aside from Steed, who did want to do another Doom and who didnt... Im leaning more towards Carmack not wanting to do another Doom, but Im not sure.
Wow, this contribution was useless! =D
No
#169 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.254.145] on 2005/04/21 12:27:12
before Doom3, Carmack was speaking of some project called Trinity
Trinity = Quake 3 tech research. Here's a quote I ripped from Blue's that was originally in the July, 1997 issue of Boot Magazine:
Id's Mike Abrash recently gave us a peak into id's 3D-only future and post-Quake graphics engine, Trinity. "Trinity is not just a hardware-only engine, its baseline system is a Pentium Pro 200+ with MMX, 32MB, and an accelerator capable of at least 50 megapixels and 300K triangles per second with alpha blending and Z-buffering. Imagine seeing through an open landscape from one server to the next, and seeing the action on adjacent servers in detail in real time and you'll have an idea of where things are heading in the near future."
Interesting look back at what they were thinking of doing, and how in same ways we've taken a step backward (e.g. Doom 3 servers hosting a max of 4 players).
Doom3
#170 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/21 12:58:44
What happened was documented very clearly in Carmack's .plan file:
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/f...
The important bits if you're lazy as hell:
As many people have heard discussed, there was quite a desire to remake DOOM as our next project after Q3. Discussing it brought an almost palpable thrill to most of the employees, but Adrian had a strong enough dislike for the idea that it was shot down over and over again.
...
I discussed it with some of the other guys, and we decided that it was important enough to drag the company through an unpleasant fight over it. An ultimatum was issued to Kevin and Adrian(who control >50% of the company): We are working on DOOM for the next project unless you fire us.
...
Kevin and Adrian fired Paul Steed in retaliation, over my opposition. Paul has certainly done things in the past that could be grounds for dismissal, but this was retaliatory for him being among the "conspirators".
:eng101:
Q2 On D3
#171 posted by . [68.251.200.250] on 2005/04/24 01:24:31
If for some reason you don't read PlanetDoom...
http://www.bluesnews.com/screensho...
"Kiltron (of Futrix Studios) keeps bringing the gaming community gorgeous works of art, as seen in these newly released Quake 2 screenshots on the Doom 3 engine. To clarify guesses or assumptions as to whether or not this is the original content, it is not. Kiltron and his team have re-worked everything from scratch for the Doom 3 engine."
Gorgeous Works Of Art ... Uh Huh
#172 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/24 10:28:48
I see he's gotten over his hissy-fit about how much doom3 editing makes him want to cry. I see also he's been adding that he has a job at a studio now to make his doom3 stuff seem more legitimate than anyone else's.
Perhaps he should work on something vaguely original.
He He
#173 posted by HeadThump [65.140.59.112] on 2005/04/24 11:14:32
the hissy fit heard around the world
Feh
#174 posted by Shallow [82.133.115.119] on 2005/04/24 14:51:14
This would be the Futrix Studios he made himself, whose website currently forwards to a domain host page saying "This Account Has Been Suspended - Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible." and which presumably consists of him sitting on his own in a shed crying bitter tears while he hates himself for modding for the Doom 3 engine even though id have cruelly denied him an engine license.
PS I played ROE again and decided I actually quite liked it after all. I still think Vulgars looks stupid though.
Futrix Is Just Him?
#175 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/04/24 16:06:46
Bahaha :) That makes it even worse.
Oh, while we're on the subject, I now work for AMALGAMATED LUNARANCOM MEGAINDUSTRIES UNLIMITED DOT NET. Please update all your bookmarks because I'm more important than them now.
Lunaran
#176 posted by HeadThump [65.140.58.214] on 2005/04/24 18:01:11
That title is a little stretched out. What about --
Gathering of One Developer, or Good for short?
Arrrrr
#177 posted by . [68.251.200.250] on 2005/04/24 19:28:00
Southpark D3
http://www.phait-accompli.com/crap...
D3 Graphics Improvement Util
#178 posted by . [68.251.200.250] on 2005/05/01 10:58:23
Seems you can jack up the specularity and stuff...
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/sh...
There are some mouseover comparisons linked there, and links for download.
RE: D3 Graphics Improvement Util
#179 posted by Kinn [81.152.112.94] on 2005/05/01 11:27:24
Ugh.
Seems you can jack up the specularity and stuff...
Maybe I'm missing something here, but why is that a good thing?
Its Good Because It Makes Things More
#180 posted by Friction [193.229.89.201] on 2005/05/01 12:38:40
SPECUTACULAR!
Also this just came in: Parallax mapping, yay or nay?
Nay
#181 posted by czg [81.191.27.124] on 2005/05/01 12:45:11
Oh, Perfect
#182 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/05/01 12:46:31
Man, the whole time I was playing doom3 I kept saying to myself "This game would be perfect if it were just shinier." My prayers have been answered.
Chasing Perfection
#183 posted by bambuz [130.233.220.23] on 2005/05/02 09:07:45
Do people think that when games go for more realisitc graphics - they actually look more awkward and unrealistic... Kinda there's not so much room for imagination or something. I don't really know why!
It's like an artist conveying a lively image with a few dark, outwards simplistic but really experienced and impression-filled skillfull brush strokes versus just a computer-generated plastic-looking and -feeling scene.
Like it's a bit related to this: everything's out of proportion and crazy and strange and blocky in quake but it doesn't bother anyone because it just feels right... (Well, in the hand of the right creators.) If you start introducing more realistic, say, entities or weapon models there, it looks bad. With quake, you're firstly just giving a feeling, not exact photographs of the world.
Of course there's the horde of blind deaf dumb fucks who run after the latest greatest thing that just looks new... Or am I just an old guy set into what I thought was cool when I was still young and unsuspecting? :)
Note:
#184 posted by metlslime [67.169.36.88] on 2005/05/02 11:12:11
art critiques aside, still think per-pixel specular is better than per-vertex.
No, You're Right
#185 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/05/02 21:32:23
Between cartoons and live action the brain crosses a threshold where it stops filling in the gaps with imagination because it feels it's looking at reality. Problem with graphics and film special FX nowadays is that we get enough realism to cross that threshold without getting enough realism to completely sell it. Therefore any little missing thing just innately feels really wrong - we mentally do less forgiving and more demanding.
Doom III Lately Played
#186 posted by JPL [212.96.74.29] on 2005/05/08 00:46:56
I finally found time to boost my PC RAM, to install Doom III, and to made my first tries this 4 last days...
What an "immersive" game !! I read on Func_ that many guys said Doom III didn't made a revolution in gameplay (they wer right..), but what a change for the ambiance: It's really impressive !! These dark corridors, all the sounds around the player, these lights switching off many times, and the monsters, wow, it's really frigthening... bbrrrr... I played the game for 2 hours yesterday night (it's better to say really early this morning) and after that, I had serious problems to be able to sleep !! This is the best "thriller-game" ever.. For sure I'm not disappointed ;)
As I liked the first Doom series (in 90's), I like this last one...
Thanks to ID for this pure moment of adrenaline..
#187 posted by cant map [195.208.123.213] on 2005/05/11 06:58:12
quite a rant on doom3 (Analysis, not just a review or impression)
http://www.projectperko.com/wiki.p...
#188 posted by czg [81.191.27.124] on 2005/05/11 09:13:10
He's a whiny cunt noone's ever heard of with an opinion noone cares about. EDGY!
Wow
#189 posted by mwh [137.222.10.57] on 2005/05/11 10:27:14
He certainly uses 100 words where one would do. Or maybe none.
Craig Perko
#190 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/05/11 15:54:31
This man is awesome and I love him.
if you build something the audience should care about, you threaten first.
Lighting was probably their strongest weapon, and they just dropped it.
The sounds? They were horrible.
The only thing it had going for it was graphics.
Usually, in a game like this, long range combat should be against things which cause attrition.
Some of his rambling clearly indicates he never played Doom (satan?) or tried to play the game properly (chainsaw?) but I find every one of his points completely accurate.
I am going to find his email address and tell him how much I love his brain patterns.
What
#191 posted by Friction [213.243.160.111] on 2005/05/12 03:39:11
The sounds? They were horrible.
Apart from weapon sounds which should have been better, Doom3 has the goddamn best sounds ever. The ambients are great!
Hmmm.
#192 posted by metlslime [24.5.42.20] on 2005/05/12 03:43:26
I remember being dissapointed in the sounds. It's not that the sounds were bad, it's just that they were exactly what you'd expect -- in other words, not interesting.
I Am Sort Of In Agreement (with Friction)
#193 posted by Blitz [24.218.169.151] on 2005/05/12 05:35:53
The spider sound still creeps me the fuck out. More than any other monster sound in any game; I hate hearing it.
I never got my hands on the alpha so I can't really compare, but yeah, the sounds are really good overall, except that the shotgun sounds like an old man sneezing, which is really unsatisifying when you're plowing through Mars, gunning shit down.
Bleh
#194 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/05/12 07:10:15
The ambients are great!
Sure. I grew so irritated by that constant basso droning "Bwooooaarmmmm .... bworrrrrrrrrrrrm ... " that hearing it in custom maps makes me cringe.
#195 posted by Zwiffle [69.210.50.113] on 2005/05/12 07:28:36
The sound which creeped me out the most was the baby laugh. Everything else WAS expected, but not disappointing. I didn't want to be stuck on a hell-infested mars base and hear Duke say "I ain't afraid o' no DOOOOM."
What
#196 posted by Friction [213.243.160.111] on 2005/05/13 00:46:06
Sure. I grew so irritated by that constant basso droning "Bwooooaarmmmm .... bworrrrrrrrrrrrm ... " that hearing it in custom maps makes me cringe.
I have this feeling ID didn't even use all the ambients the pk4 files have. Browse some, there's a lot absolutely awesome sounds, very unique.
There Are
#197 posted by Lunaran [68.51.209.251] on 2005/05/13 21:28:37
But all I ever heard was bwooooaarmmmm bworrrrrrrrrrrrm ...
THUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
#198 posted by Scampie [63.236.226.222] on 2005/05/14 15:46:47
clinky-SLAM
Doom In Doom 3
#199 posted by . [68.255.58.45] on 2005/06/01 14:43:58
http://www.battleteam.net/tech/fis...
Play Doom in Doom 3 as if you're in an arcade. id should've done this with the shareware version as an easter egg!
I got this link from the 3D Realms forums, and here is something a member remarked:
Iirc, this works by basically hooking into the game engine (doom in this case) and dumping all the data that would get rendered from a screen into a texture. The basic thing that's allowed with 1.3 and it's SDK is that you can now render to a texture, which allows you to do alot of stuff on the fly, and you could combine that with the gui system to do even more... Except it is pretty impressive, considering you could basically plug a custom version of MAME into Doom 3 and create an entire arcade center as part of a map. It's not really limited in what you can do, only in your imagination to use it. It's that sortof feature. It's a pretty friggin big deal.
Phait
#200 posted by Kinn [81.178.51.25] on 2005/06/02 02:05:29
That is several kinds of awesome, including types of awesome that I didn't even know had been discovered yet. Now if someone were to make a fully functional Quake arcade machine in Doom3, I would probably explode - in many different senses of the word.
Roe
#201 posted by gone [195.208.123.213] on 2005/06/23 03:07:14
Finally got myself RoE - its very good.
More interesting to play than the original
and more detailed, better looking maps. More variety too. Certanly dont find myself thinking 'bleh, not another alpha/beta-labs plz'
On the downside it runs slower. The outdoors in particular.
And the monster placement is for the most part kind of unimaginative.
And ofcourse I play with g_kicktime 0
Switchable Powerup idea is nice, but having slowtime, amplifier and invul at the same time - that is excessive. SSG rocks, love it
Interesting Read
#202 posted by cyBeAr [80.217.112.63] on 2005/06/25 08:05:36
I recommend reading the document draft on interactive surfaces linked from the "doom in doom3" page phait linked to.
Yep
#203 posted by than [80.68.41.81] on 2005/06/26 14:58:30
makes one wonder why id didn't do it themselves. It would have been awesome to play Doom in doom 3. Even if it was just the shareware version, it would have been cool
It's Like Sin City!
#204 posted by . [68.251.200.164] on 2005/07/03 21:31:47
Preview: http://xpac666.free.fr/doom3world/...
Thread: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/v...
Download: http://www.xpac-27.com/article.php...
Phait ??
#205 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2005/07/03 23:24:37
Black and White game ??? Like the movie ? Really ?
It's Doom 3
#206 posted by . [68.251.200.164] on 2005/07/03 23:25:44
Just w/ a high contrast b&w look.
Phait
#207 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2005/07/03 23:58:25
I'd really like to see a b/w game... ;P ... and not an Atari game of 80ies !!
Well There Is...
#208 posted by . [68.251.200.164] on 2005/07/04 00:03:05
a noir-themed mod for Max Payne 2 that's black and white.
Phait
#209 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2005/07/04 00:12:09
I didn't know that... I remember you see all in black and white in Doom when you pick the invicibility artefact, and I found it very cool... Is there a similar mod for Quake ?
Mobile Phones
#210 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.254.133] on 2005/07/04 07:19:53
A few comments:
If I had had a cell phone with me when my car broke down I wouldn't have had to walk a mile to the nearest group of houses and I wouldn't have had three people refuse to let me use their phones.
Mobile phones can be cheaper for calling long distance than land phones.
As mentioned, mobile phones can be handy if you're moving to a dorm or otherwise can't have or don't want a land phone.
How The Hell Did That End Up In The Doom 3 Thread?
#211 posted by R.P.G. [24.136.254.133] on 2005/07/04 07:20:42
I haven't even started drinking yet.
LOL
#212 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2005/07/04 07:26:22
...no comment... ;)
Da Best
#213 posted by doom lover [24.55.48.65] on 2005/07/19 16:21:23
ya im da best i beat it 27 times in nightmare
Hmm
#214 posted by nonentity [217.41.19.241] on 2005/07/19 17:35:46
That 'vivisection' (sic) made my brain hurt
ROE
#215 posted by Shambler [82.38.192.54] on 2005/12/27 10:46:05
Played this recently. Pretty quick blast compared to D3 which was long.
I liked it. More D3, which is good, but with added new stuff most of which was good and useful. New imps were amazingly annoying and overused. New TV screen monsters were kinda cool and very powerful. Grabber was pretty fun, funny to grab the skulls and pwn them. DBS was awesome and everything the DBS should be. Artefact was sweet, particularly the slow down time thing, great fun using that and seeing the monsters in slow-mo.
The one thing I want to post about, though, is the last Base level before you go to hell yadda yadda. The one set in the old section of D3 where things are well fucked and kinda fading in and out of hellishness. This was great, really well done, had me totally on edge and the most unnerved I'd been playing since D3 itself. After the freakout atmosphere of this level, Hell was, again, very mundane.
Definitely something to consider there, how an ordinary base level can shit your fuck up if combined with those well used effects.
Just Played The Demo (completed The Full Game Ages Ago)
#216 posted by than [219.62.0.8] on 2005/12/31 00:24:55
makes me wonder why I bothered to see it through until the end. The demo was so dull, and I found myself going crazy at the stupid monster closets all over again.
The marines are unbelievably unfun to fight too, as are the imps.
of course, the graphics and sounds are great, so maybe that's why I bothered to finish it before... that and you see more interesting monsters later on in the game (although some of them are rather underused, like the manacubus and hell knight).
Still fancy playing ROE, since everyone says it's better, but for now I am after Quake 4, since I found the demo to be much more impressive.
Now That I Have A New PC And Can Play Newer Games
#217 posted by Jago [85.76.178.187] on 2006/04/15 13:51:35
DOOM 3 ROCKS.
Jago
#218 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2006/04/17 00:48:40
Welcome in "real" life ;P
Doom 3: Resurrection Of Evil
#219 posted by Alec [24.154.52.219] on 2006/04/27 05:35:27
#220 posted by gone [213.170.89.98] on 2006/05/02 11:57:17
imps are cool to fight (too much smoke tho - hard to see)
I play some d3 now and then, when I got nothing else to do. Just love the atmosphere and visuals.
Roe is cool. rediculously easy with invul+quad artifact tho. should have left just slowmo/quad
#221 posted by necros [70.31.50.57] on 2006/05/02 14:52:49
one of the first things i did when i learnt how to mod stuff was to change both the imp fireball trail and explosion, as well as the hellknight explosion and revenant rocket trail.
honestly, it's stupid that you can't see jackshit if more than one imp is fighting you... same went for the hellknight explosion.
#222 posted by gone [213.170.89.98] on 2006/05/04 02:52:14
g_kicktime 0 is a must too
Is There
#223 posted by megaman [84.63.37.32] on 2006/05/04 04:43:36
any way to get around the owlneck syndrom? and the "everything gets red on hit" syndrom?
Speeds
#224 posted by necros [70.31.50.57] on 2006/05/04 09:13:35
just gave you the answer to your first question...
personally, i like a bit of owlneck, so i tend to leave g_kicktime on about 0.5, and change g_kickamplitude to something like 0.0001 or something
Played D3 And Roe
#225 posted by PuLSaR [80.80.111.240] on 2006/05/04 14:09:05
ROE was better than D3. More physics, better design imo (the first 5 levels of temple) and some new fun baddies. Bosses were good too.
And the return to Delta Labs from original D3 was great. Truely great atmospere.
#226 posted by Spirit [80.171.7.232] on 2010/12/24 12:52:15
I am still playing but the hell levels already ruined the game for me. The immersion and atmosphere were completely destroyed but this super lame serioussam-painkiller-ish room-monsters-room-monsters-room 2D style of gameplay without making any sense. Everything before had just fantastic pretent-realism and now we are in hell, woohoo, let's make gameplay like 1996. It absolutely does not fit the rest of the game.
I think the game would be much better if there was no "hell" but just some ancient evil in the ruins below the base. Some of the hell stuff is so overly cheesy and lame (Hohohohohahaha! Uusuusee ussss! Sooon you will be deeeaad marine! Hohohoahahaha!)...
The game now feels like chore. I just had the fight against that tank guy (ridiculously easy...) with that awful horde-wave gameplay in the rooms before. Fuck this, way too ruin a genius horror action shooter with cheap, unimaginative sucking shit.
Ha
#227 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2010/12/24 14:22:12
That's sort of how I felt about the entirety of Doom 3 Spirit :) I just viewed Hell as a necessary escape from the claustrophobic metal rat maze, it didn't change any game-play imo, just theme.
Question Of Taste
#228 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2010/12/24 17:36:34
I really loved the Hell part. It was the most immersive part of the game IMHO...
#229 posted by gb [89.27.240.240] on 2010/12/24 20:39:11
I love doom3.
#230 posted by mh [109.79.14.156] on 2010/12/24 20:49:27
I have to say that I love Doom3 too. You've just got to relax your expectations a little, remember that 1993/94 wasn't actually *that* great, and go with the flow. If you're not there for the party you won't enjoy it.
RoE I'm in 2 minds about. I never really played very far with it, as the Grabber spoiled it for me. Here was a total unashamed physics gimmick that it seemed like you *had* to use for *everything*. Big yawn.
#231 posted by Spirit [80.171.98.128] on 2010/12/26 18:47:28
Very anti-climatic ending. Did I even kill Sarge at some point? Ending ending sucks. The temple looked so cool like Alien. Why oh why all the stupid hell stuff...
Definitely a good game, I disliked the hell things and cheesyness at times. Up until the first hell it was great, then it sucked for a while, became quite good again, became great and sucked here and there.
You definitely need hardware capable running it well. I did not like it a bit when I had a old graphics card that only let me play in low resolution and effects. It needs the graphics, otherwise atmosphere is second class.
#232 posted by [Kona] [121.73.104.148] on 2010/12/27 01:31:09
I thought Hell looked great. I only wished the rest of the game was more like Hell, instead of metal rat maze.
Or at least 1/3 metal maze, 1/3 return to phobos so a mix of indoor/outdoor moon terrain, then 1/3 hell/deimos.
roe is definitely worth playing, if just for the double shotgun. the grabber was a nice gimmick, but slowed gameplay down too much as your fucking around trying to grab projectiles mid air.
RoE
#233 posted by nitin [124.149.83.198] on 2010/12/27 02:51:18
is better IMHO. I liked both though.
Doom3 Coop Online
#234 posted by megalodonNL [85.146.84.169] on 2010/12/28 22:31:35
I don't have D3 installed anymore, but, aside from playing through SP, I played Doom3 Coop Online and that was quite fun. Except the horrible lag with moving vehicles (that lift map, aargh!!!).
I played on a public server from clan EWZ. It was almost always empty when I peeked at my server browser, but once I started playing, people always joined me quite quickly. This was earlier this year, 2010, so perhaps the server is still up.
I also played this LMS Coop mod that was fun for a while: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1S...
Kinda like Left4Dead for D3. A nice feature was the availability of the Double Barrel, as you can see in the video. I kinda disliked the lack of that in standard D3 and I didn't like the SG sound either. I didn't like most of the D3 weapon sounds.
Mapping wise, I loved to walk around in the Hell levels. Just put no-target on and enjoy. Great atmosphere, modeling and overall it didn't have that fake, 'plastic' look to it opposed to the office levels of the game.
And I can totally understand that people out there find D3 boring and stupid. It is indeed very, very old dull gameplay, but I expected that. As a matter of fact: I don't even want a complex type of gameplay or story. If I want a real story, I go read a book. Sometimes you just wanna fire your DoubleBarrel.
However, a little bit more sophistication in several aspects of the game wouldn't have hurt. For that matter, I came to respect HL 1 even more, because I can clearly see how ID tried to do with D3 what Valve did in HL1 to some extent. And even in 2005 D3 didn't even come close to the HL1 SP experience with all it's inventiveness and insane AI (those soldiers and assassins!). Then again, without Quake, no HL I guess...
OK, done typing.
#235 posted by Spirit [80.171.85.186] on 2011/01/03 20:22:06
Skimming through http://celephais.net/board/view_th... czg's DON'T GIVE THE QUAKE GUY A PERSONALITY! immediately made me think of Doom 3. Seeing that black hair grim looking marine as my avatar was a distraction. Each time it felt like "not me" which was bad for immersion.
I forgot to mention how much I liked the PDA and general attention to environmental (not force-feeding in cutscenes) story telling. The e-mails and audiologs contributed a huge part of the atmosphere. Very well made.
They Don't Compare
#236 posted by megaman [178.1.142.32] on 2011/01/03 23:42:22
to the System Shock ones though, because there they're an essential part of the plot/storytelling.
#237 posted by ZealousQuakeFan [81.141.94.81] on 2011/01/04 01:30:04
Yeah I thought the PDAs might have been okay but they were seriously overdone. Doom is not system shock. A slower, more complex game would suit the log trawling, but not Doom. It was just tedious
Yes
#238 posted by necros [99.227.131.204] on 2011/01/04 02:03:28
but doom3 isn't doom either. doom3 was a slower, albeit not more complex, game.
Meh
#239 posted by Kinn [86.156.75.45] on 2011/01/04 02:30:37
the audio logs and emails were ok for plot and ambience, but to force the player to trawl through them to acquire locker access codes was kinda annoying imo. It meant that as soon as the player got a new PDA he had to listen to/read it immediately or he might miss a locker. That made them annoying; I'd prefer to look through them at my leisure.
#240 posted by ZealousQuakeFan [81.141.94.81] on 2011/01/04 03:20:31
Yeah it probably would have made it okay if they were strictly optional. I might have approved of the atmosphere then.
I generally think more games should go for making story details optional. It's a good way to reward those who enjoy exploration, and allows people who usually don't give a shit (like me) to ignore it and not miss actual gameplay elements.
I Dunno
#241 posted by megaman [178.1.142.32] on 2011/01/04 13:52:39
DOom 3 just never had an interesting plot to begin with. That's why the Logs feel so stale and empty and tedious to listen to (because then there's some info in them). I think they're not easily skipped in System Shock, too, but they're just essential, so they feel more like a reward to listen to: "The next piece of the story". In Doom 3 they're just atmosphere fillers, it seems. But maybe I'm just remembering this wrong.
No You Don't
#242 posted by SleepwalkR [85.178.63.68] on 2011/01/04 14:47:43
The logs in Doom3 were tedious to listen to and I skipped most of them even though they contained some information about secrets and stuff.
#243 posted by ZealousQuakeFan [81.141.94.81] on 2011/01/04 15:24:11
I put all of the locker codes into a config file and ran it when I came to one so I could just read it out of the console and unlock it :p
#244 posted by Spirit [82.113.121.195] on 2011/01/04 16:28:21
The logs are a crucial of the story. Maybe you Wanted a brainless run shot game.
System shock is a whole different game but is the story really so much better than a classic "investigate weird things going on in a base on mars"?
Spirit, Exactly
#245 posted by SleepwalkR [85.178.63.68] on 2011/01/04 17:00:29
That is what I expect from Doom. But if there had to be a story, it would be okay, too if it wasn't completely braindead and boring as fuck. If it is the same story all over again (idiots open gates, baddies come through, invasion, you're the sole survivor, kick baddies' collective asses, go over to their domain, kick boss ass, done), then thanks, but I'll pass.
Logs
#246 posted by nitin [124.168.90.205] on 2011/01/05 01:25:43
I didnt mind them, they added to the atmospehre.
But I didnt listen to each one, and you didnt have to anyway, unless you wanted all secrets. Listening to a few here and there was fine.
#247 posted by ZealousQuakeFan [81.141.94.81] on 2011/01/05 01:41:57
In System Shock you had inventory to manage, things to hack, research notes to read, skills to mull over,and less monsters to shoot. With stuff to do outside combat putting an audio log on and listening doesn't take away from the atmosphere.
Doom 3 has way way more combat and when you're not fighting you're just wandering around waiting for the next monster to spawn in. Audio logs at this point just serve to break the sound scape and atmosphere. The game doesn't have enough slow moments for you to been plodding around AND listening to stuff at the same time...
Sleepspirit
#248 posted by negke [88.70.74.226] on 2011/01/05 10:54:35
To be fair, D3 is a remake, so why would they make the story radically different from the original game. And the thing is, back when Doom and SS were releases, there weren't that many games with such a story - at least not as refnied as in SS (I know mentioning Doom and Story in one sentence seems weird).

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