Disappointments in Doom 3

[jAkUp]

The sound is good, but not the best I have heard, I think Raven-Shield with eax enabled is the best.

In doom3 the gun sounds are the same everywhere you are... whether your outside, inside a small corridor, etc. its all the same. In games that use EAX (especially raven-shield) The sounds echo off walls depending where you are, if your outside and shoot it all sounds very realistic

[Kamel]

simmer down now, lol... eax will be in the next patch so you can get all of your fake nasty sounding echoing out of your system.

eax sucks IMO and sounds very unrealistic; not to mention it influences creative's monopoly even more. i like doom3's way of "sticking it to the man", but instead creative stuck it to doom3 by finding out they stole a shadowing technique and would sue them if they didn't include an eax patch. yay! that makes me just want to buy their products even more ;/

[jAkUp]

heh i dunno.. me likes eax

[Ninjaman09]

EAX sucks.

Kamel is totally right. I can already tell that by 2006 or 2007 when Unreal Engine 3.0 games are coming out we'll be seeing the same kind of crap.

"Well I just got <new Unreal Engine 3.0 game> and I'm pretty disappointed. I mean, the way the light is reflected correctly off the pimples on the lizard people's face is great and everything, but the textures were totally disappointing. I mean, when you crouch on the ground, look straight down, and zoom in 16x with the <whatever weapon/item zooms in 16x>, you can totally see the pixels. I'm really mad at Epic Games for allowing such a huge flaw through. They must have rushed the game or just been totally lazy. I mean, Far Cry looks a whole lot better and the engine is more advanced. I'm throwing away my copy of <new Unreal Engine 3.0 game>, it totally sucks. But I'm not going to stop posting the same thing over and over again in case I didn't already get my point across."

Yep, that about sums it up. You can replace "Unreal Engine 3.0 game" with "Half-Life 2" if you want and I'm pretty sure we'll have the same situation on our hands.

[jAkUp]

Hey everygame has its flaws. Its just that Doom3 we bitch and moan about its flaws more because it was was anticipated more than the second coming of Jesus. Without some critism, how will games get any better? I think a little critism can go a long way. Doom3 is an amazing game, and there are plenty of things it does right, but it just makes the things it doesnt do right a lot more obvious.

And as far as the low res textures, just look at some of the levels with more lighting you dont need to zoom in or anything. Some textures look great, some look straight from quake2. But its all minor nagging, I'm just complaining because with higher texture resolution I feel the graphics engine would easily be the best there is. That is not keeping me from having fun however. I give the game a 9/10 its just sad because it could of been a 10/10

[DaveW]

Originally Posted by jAkUp

Its really not. doom3 uses an amazingly low amount of texture memory for what it does. Becuase the High quality runs great on a 128mb card, and they are not even compressing textures!

High quality compresses the specular and bump maps. A surface in Doom 3 requires 3 times as much texture data as it would in most other games because every surface has a texture, bump and specular map. Your judging the amount of texture data just from the regular normal maps. Try disabling bump and specular maps and see how much texture data is REALLY there.

[Ninjaman09]

So? There isn't a single game out right now that doesn't have low resolution textures at some point. Hell, Far Cry's outdoor terrain textures are about as low-res as you can get (detail textures don't count as "high-res"). Just look at a mountain slope from a couple hundred yards away, if it isn't covered with tree sprites.

As you said yourself, you are disappointed because your expectations were unrealistically high. This happens every single time a highly-anticipated game is released, yet no one ever learns to stop reading every single preview article and to stop looking at every pre-release screenshot. Just don't blame the game because you ruined it for yourself. Doom 3 was delivered to us as promised, and then some.

[saturnotaku]

Originally Posted by Ninjaman09

So? There isn't a single game out right now that doesn't have low resolution textures at some point. Hell, Far Cry's outdoor terrain textures are about as low-res as you can get (detail textures don't count as "high-res"). Just look at a mountain slope from a couple hundred yards away, if it isn't covered with tree sprites.

From a couple hundred yards away compared to the two feet in front of my face in Doom 3 (when you can see them at all).

As you said yourself, you are disappointed because your expectations were unrealistically high. This happens every single time a highly-anticipated game is released, yet no one ever learns to stop reading every single preview article and to stop looking at every pre-release screenshot. Just don't blame the game because you ruined it for yourself. Doom 3 was delivered to us as promised, and then some.

As Vash on this forum will tell you, I had essentially cut myself off from all things Doom 3 for the last several months. I went in with a fresh mind for it, eagerly awaiting something that could engage me like the original game in the series.

Keep in mind, the people who are saying Doom 3 sucks are in the minority. A lot of us here think quite the opposite. It's very good, but not great. It's not what I would call a watershed moment that will signal the rebirth of gaming on the PC (which has faltered over the last couple years).

Is Doom 3 worth owning and playing? No question about it. Does it have some revolutionary features? You betcha. Should you buy into all the hype? Heck no because you will be disappointed.

[npras42]

I have to say to the guys that say that the sound in D3 is absolutely amazing you're way off. Yes, its very atmospheric and it uses surround sound quite well, but its not amazing.

For starters, the samples are very low quality. Just listen to the main theme. Its horrible. I don't mean the tune, I mean the actual quality. Compare the one in the game to the one released before the game was released.

Secondly, EAX is not great I know, but at least it tries to do something. As someone stated, a gun shot in a wide room sounds exactly the same as one shot in a tiny corridor. There's no Doppler effects. The footsteps don't alter depending on what surface he is walking (which doesn't change much I know)...

There are games that are leagues ahead of D3 in the sound department technically already. Whether it be its surround processing, its accuracy or its quality. Need For Speed Underground is higher quality. FarCry and UT2K4 are more accurate.

Sound in games like this should be about realism. D3 does a good job of making you think someone is behind you all the time. However, it doesn't make you feel like you are really firing a gun at someone. It doesn't really make you feel like you are being hurt. It doesn't really make you feel like you are in the environment you are in. It doesn't make you feel like the monsters are being destroyed.

Having said that, I can't think of any game that really does, which to me says a lot about the graphics junkie mentality of the games industry. Its got better but obviously not good enough.

Games with better sound than D3 (technically), that I can think of just looking through my collection of PC Games (not even counting PS2 and XBox offerings):

Colin McRae 04
FarCry
Halo
NFS: Underground
Raven Shield
Splinter Cell: PT
UT 2K4

[Kamel]

wow, the whole sound thing has really pushed all of your buttons apparently; i shouldn't have mentioned it, because now you use it as a scape goat to completely miss the point of my original post.

i don't give 2 ****s about the quality of the sound as compaired to the point i was trying to make;

if a french hooker was sucking your dick, you'd tell her what she's doin wrong... just enjoy it

THAT's the point i was making, NOT the sound being better than any other game (i think it sounds ****ing excellent and that's all i care about)

[Fatman]

Reading all these comments makes me wanna drop my 2 stinking cents... Flashlight was no doubt a design decision. Was a good decision? That one is still up in the air IMO. To control the pace of the game they could have used other elements, like batteries. Other than that, Doom3 is a solid game. Sure, it's not the most original FPS to hit the shevles, but id set out to create a horror sci-fi game, and they did just that. It's very understandable that its not to everyones liking, but I'm sure the commuynity will fill in where id has left off and make the game a better product. Nuff said.

[OldOfEvil]

However, it doesn't make you feel like you are really firing a gun at someone. It doesn't really make you feel like you are being hurt. It doesn't really make you feel like you are in the environment you are in. It doesn't make you feel like the monsters are being destroyed.

Maybe you need to play with he volume up?


I'm damn impressed with the sounds. Sure their are some weak sound but overall its very nice. I especially like the "Music" - the combination of machinery whirring and humming along with other ambient sounds and samples..

I've also never been more pleased with my Klipsch 2.1.. having the room rumble with demon rumbling is sweet.