Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bulsajo]

I liked HALO, but gawd dam! 3 words: REPETITIVE LEVEL DESIGN.

Looking forward to HALO2 and hoping they don't make the same mistake.

[Hank Scorpio]

[Demophobe]

It kills me the way people slam Doom3....I mean, you knew it was Doom, right? What did you expect?

Id never said it would be anything besides drop-dead gorgeous and scary. It was all that.

Besides, most gamers knew that this game was as much a tech demo as an actual game. It's usually the way Id works. They put gameplay on par with looks; eveyone knows this, yet the game was panned for it. In the past, they had innovation on their side; that and novelty. No one had done what they were doing before. Times have changed, and now they are exploring new avenues, but not in terms of gameplay. They tried to bring back Doom, but with cinematics instead of pixellated blobs. I think it was exactly what they said it would be, nothing more, nothing less. People who slammed the game were being fantastic and even deluded in their expectations.

The game was made as a showcase for the engine, which, like it or not, is going to be with us for a long time.

It's an exciting time for graphics....huge advances in tech. Doom3 won't be fully playable the way it was made to be until we get 512MB graphics cards.

Crytech, PAIN, Doom3, Source, X-Ray....great engines....revolutions really. This is why I game. I read loads about engines and tech...I need to see this in action, so I game. I spend more time looking and experimenting with console commands and parameters than actually playing.

This is one of the reasons Doom3 was so exciting for me. Get a system that it can stretch it's legs on, and it's really incredible.

Id have never catered to the masses....they write for geeks. For those who the game missed, that's exactly what happened. You probably weren't the target in the first place.

[mack the knife]

[Hank Scorpio]

[Demophobe]

Hank, you missed the point. And that's cool...

I have done this Doom thing to death on other, more technical forums, and it's old already. Lots of people did pay for Doom and are really pleased.

As far as engines, the Doom engine is much more advanced than Source, though both have their fortes. Is HL2 not blocky enough for you? Scripted enough? Linear enough, with the illusion of freedom? Was the AI not as bad as Doom? Yes, Source draws a good distance, has sharp textures and the havok physics (licensed, not Valve's). Doom however. also has many strong points. Gorgeous curved surfaces, and much more organic feel, specular lighting and shadows (Id's own) and the physics was created from scratch, as was the sound architecture. Take a good look at the modelling in Doom vs. HL2. (There was no Havok in Doom3)

Also keep in mind that with Id going for an open GL API is a feat in itself. Valse went with DX9, a much safer choice. Easier to code and implement with calls on pre-defined libraries and heavy reliance in MS and Windows in general. Id chose OGL, and although it has some inherent relativity to the Windows environment, it's much more dependant upon Id themselves to come up with updated libraries, .dlls, texture references and overall "stand-alone"-ness.

I have already said way more than I need to. The games and tech speak for themselves.

Enjoy what you do....

Remember, we haven't even the hardware yet to run Doom3 in all of it's glory. It still doesn't look as good as it can.

Could you post any lamer screenies to help you make your point? Dude, I have some screenies on my system that are way cool...

Comparing them on a "which is better" level is for fanboys and kids. They were so far away from each other technically, that anyone who knows something about the tech behind them stopped holding them to each other long ago already.

Gameplay? Well, it's a debate done to death, and all I will do is point back to my previous post. Doom is Doom. It's a near brand-name, and it's what they promised and we expected.

I think you need to think about fear as well...no, images alone don't scare me, and the pictures you posted are so out of context, you do an injustice to the whole argument. There was so much more going on at those moments...

Also, those are pretty strong words coming from a person who didn't even play the game. You didn't even get to the parts of the game the pictures came from! "Scary" is a relative term, so there's no sense trying to convince someone that something is scary or not, but anyone who did play through the game, anyone who understood that it was Doom they were playing, was freaked out more than a few times during the run of it. Those little "cherubs" were pretty creepy for a number of reasons, with their appearance being one of them. The sound, movement and modelling were really.....disturbing.

And the moment that that "tick" pops out from the console was gold!

[Hank Scorpio]

[Hank Scorpio]

[Demophobe]

Ok Hank...there is so much you don't know, but I haven't the inclanation to go over this all with someone who really doesn't want to know.

Suffice to say, DX is not a better API, Doom 3 didn't have buggies and boats because there was nowhere to place them, does the fact that there were no sprawling vistas in Doom make HL2 a better game, or Source a better engine? No logic there. Blah, blah....I have done this dance way too many times with people who all seem to sound the same.

If you wish, please extrapolate on why DX is a better API...that would be interesting.

EDIT: Not trying to go around with you at all, we just don't see eye to eye for various reasons and I will leave it at that....done with this wholly subjective debate.

....have a nice day.

[Hank Scorpio]

[itaewonguy]

[Demophobe]

You points about the Doom3 engine are pointless. Look at all the games that came out of the Q3 engine. Lots of distance rendering. The engines that Id make are capable, it's only their game types that aren't....their games are not set in outdoor environments. This however, is not a limitation of the engine.

As far as DX, the only reason it is so expansive is because of MS and Windows. That's it. All of your other points are moot beside this fact. Yes, it's the way it is, but as with your previous argument about the Doom 3 engine, it's got nothing to do with quality or which one is essentially better. All you are doing is arguing that DX is better by nature of it's maturity and popularity.

Again, I believe this to be misguided thought. You don't speak of quality, per say, but about popularity or ease of coding (streamlined, if you will) as a sign of how good an API may be.

If MS were using an OGL graphics code base, we wouldn't need extentions, and the OGL API would be as bloated (100MB vs. 2MB!) and refined as DX (more specifically and correctly, D3D, as DX incoporates a lot more than graphics...my bad in the beginning for this mis-reference). For me, this says nothing about what we are talking about. DX is more widely used than OpenGL for games these days, but OpenGL has the monopoly in the world of professional 3d graphics or high-end rendering. This says a lot.

Direct3D has a different way of getting new features than OpenGL. With OpenGL, hardware vendors make new features, they create extensions to expose those features, and later, when those features become standard, they get integrated into a core version of OpenGL. Hopefully by then the API is a good one.

With Direct3D, Microsoft exposes new features in each version of DirectX, sometimes driven by vendor requests, sometimes driven by its own ulterior motives. This means that the API is usually behind the hardware, with occasional brief spurts of being ahead. With OpenGL, the API always matches the hardware.


I am not a fan of either API, nor a fan of either game more than the other. I really percieve myself on some "side" here, when in fact, I am not.

Both APIs have their good and bad points, but I do tend to favor OGL, by nature of it's ease (low learning curve), portability, and it's not a monopoly move by MS. Yes, lately it's been in a mess due to the vendors extension confusion (NV_vertex_array_range & NV_fence vs ATI_vertex_array_object, NV_vertex_program vs ATI_vertex_shader, etc...) but I still favor it overall.

There are a bunch of differences in the DirectX and OpenGL APIs. This chart is based off the book,OpenGL Game Programming, and a few of these may now be incorrect as new DirectX versions are released.

_____________ OpenGL/ DirectX
Vertex Blending: N/A / Yes
Multiple Operating Systems: Yes /No
Extension Mechanism: Yes/ Yes
Development: Multiple member Board/ Microsoft
Thorough Specification: Yes /No
Two-sided lighting: Yes No
Volume Textures: Yes /No
Hardware independent Z-buffers: Yes/ No
Accumulation buffers: Yes /No
Full-screen Antialiasing: Yes /Yes
Motion Blur: Yes/ Yes
Depth of field: Yes /Yes
Stereo Rendering: Yes/ No
Point-size/line-width attributes: Yes /No
Picking: Yes/ No
Parametric curves and surfaces: Yes /No
Cache geometry: Display Lists /Vertex Buffers
System emulation: Hardware not present /Let app determine
Interface: Procedure calls/ COM
Updates: Yearly/ Yearly
Source Code: Sample /SDK Implementation

Fairly even, with a slight nod going to OGL. As if the MS issues aren't enough to make one worry.

[Hank Scorpio]

[Demophobe]

Again, your argument is based on "popular is better".

People want users to have an easy out of the box experience, so they code for Windows, seeing as most people use it. It says nothing about quality.

Popularity does not mean quality! Ease does not mean better!

OGL is way easier to code for than D3D, by the way.

Call of Duty, for one. And one is all it takes here.

From 2002 (back to Doom3 gameplay for a moment):

In PC Gamer's 10 page preview of Doom 3 (December 2002 issue), Id's John Carmack indicated that the game play of Doom 3 will be very much like the original Doom, as the new game will be more of a "reimagiation" of the early 1990's classic, rather than a game with an entirely new story and setting. Many of the original levels will be recreated, as will many of the original monsters and weapons. Of course the environments will be true 3D, have much more detail, look even scarier and have vastly deeper sound immersion. Thus it may seem that Doom 3, as a game may not be that interesting, as the original run and gun game play of Doom is, well, 10 years old.

So, what was your complaint again?

Really, I'm not going to argue something I have no argument in. I like both APIs, but feel that OGL is more useful. That and quantity doesn't mean quality. Over and out.

[Hank Scorpio]