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| News Comments > Carmack on DOOM 3 & Q3A OpenSource |
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| 60. |
Re: overrated |
Aug 4, 2004, 16:38 |
WetEngine |
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The way they did the flashlight is FUN. It definitely would've been worse if you could tape the flashlight to your gun or mount it to a helmet.
Hey, if the implementation is fun, I'm glad to hear it. Like I said, I haven't had the chance to actually try it out for myself yet...
But isn't the whole point of realistic graphics, physics, sound etc. to help you to forget that you are playing a computer game? The goal is always immersion. There was of course nothing "simulated" about the original Doom, but the interface was so transparent and the level design so carefully matched to the limitations of the engine that I was pulled into the experience rather than kicked out of it by having to fiddle around with the interface.
You can't just dismiss people's experiences so easily. (And why is it so impossible to remain civil?) I think lots of folks come to these things expecting immmersion, to be able to forget they are sitting in front of keyboard, and slightly resent design elements that kick them out of Mars every few minutes.
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| News Comments > Carmack on DOOM 3 & Q3A OpenSource |
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| 54. |
Re: overrated |
Aug 4, 2004, 15:54 |
WetEngine |
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And yes it would be nice to have a flashlight on a gun, but guess what? It's a hell of a lot scarier not to have one, because you can either A: Be protected but not see B: See but be unprotected; I am pretty sure they thought of it and left them as seperate items for the fear/game factor.
This is how it works, huh? I'm in Poland and haven't played the game yet, but this flashlight thing might be really disappointing and irritating in a game that apparently cloaks everything in darkness the whole time. Seems like a cheap design decision, there to make the game more frightening and everything, but it will probably work against the immersion for me and remind me I'm just playing a game.
I don't think having the flashlight on all the time would've made Doom any less effective: The Silent Hill characters just put their angled flashlights in their pockets, and the games were no less creepy for it, in fact watching the monsters come into your little circle of light is pretty freaky. (Aren't most military flashlights angled? And no night vision on Mars either I guess.)
I mean, when I was a kid hunting farm rats in the dark at night with my pellet gun, I just taped the damn flashlight to the barrel. Worked fine. (No duck tape on Mars?) So when I won't have a flashlight/weapon combo in the game, I worry that it's just going to annoy me, one of those "ah, c'MON" things you get in games when certain design elements just seem really awkward, artificial, and absurd.
I'm reserving judgement of course, but this does sound like a drag. Maybe it's possible that someone will come out with some kind of mod someday to fix it? I don't know the possibilities there...
This comment was edited on Aug 4, 16:04. |
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| News Comments > DOOM 3 Q&As |
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| 55. |
Re: Why so long? |
Jul 23, 2004, 10:08 |
WetEngine |
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ATI's and nVidia's marketing campaigns are effectively fragmenting the game market into two pc-consoles: one with ATI cards, the other with nVidia cards. And who suffers? The gamers who just plonked $x00 on a gfx card and gets shit performance in one game and great performance in another.
This IS an ugly development really. I'd always cherished the illusion that game developers were on our side (gamers); now it seems as though they are just becoming part of a graphics card industry that is gaming us.. suckering us into putting out the cash (and with the newestlatest this is significant cash) for expensive new cards with all these distorted benchmarks, developer bias, jargon-cloud hype of truly irrelevant performance/quality distinctions that nobodys ever really going to notice when they're playing, and "the way it's meant to be played" marketing campaigns.
It always been too easy to push new hardware to a gamer--just make him feel inadequate because his machine can only do 87 whatever, while the OTHER one can do 89. We tend to have an acute "his is bigger than mine" neurosis, and the card-makers really know how to take advantage of this. It's a drag that now the game developers seem to be helping them out and it's a drag that we fall for it every time. (To his credit, JC at least seems to be a bit embarrassed about it--I really appreciated his caveat in front of that Doom3 benchmarking thing that came out the other day.)
It's not that I mind buying new computer stuff really--I like it as much as anyone--I just hate that stink of dishonesty that's starting to hover around the whole thing. I'd like to be able to confidently buy something new without feeling like I might be falling for someone's spec distortions and dishonest marketing tricks.
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| News Comments > Carmack Working Ahead |
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| 29. |
Re: Engines |
Jul 20, 2004, 20:32 |
WetEngine |
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I of course realize that we don't yet have total visual realism down to the atomic level...I guess what I was trying to say was that I wonder what more and more visual realism past this point is really going to add to the experience of FPS games (I was talking about these specifically). I don't have any opinion about this, just thinking out loud as it were, but is thirty different kinds of colored light playing across the shimmering surfaces of the translucent wings of the 2000k-model dancing fairy you are shotgunning in the rain while its soft shadow exactly follows the contours of a bump-mapped stone wall going to make the FPS game you're playing any more fun really? (Although blasting chunks out of the fairy might be kind of a kick.) At the end of the day, even in Doom 3, you're moving around shooting things, picking stuff up, shooting more stuff. Then shooting. Some more. That's what we love about FPS games, and the fundamental gameplay hasn't changed much since the first Doom (nor would we want it to). Now we're doing it in the shadows with lights swinging around and stuff, which is really cool of course, but what is more and more of such visual stuff really going to add to FPS games specifically?
Immersion I guess, but playing the old Doom lately, after not looking at it for years, I've been amazed by how much fun and how immersive it still is, in all its 320 x 200 glory. There's such a perfect simplicity in it. There's nothing to think about, and there is so much to kill, so I just...zone in to some lizard-brained reflex-universe of DOOM. It's a lot more pure fun (for me) than something like Far Cry is, even with the rippling water and everything.
Ah well, so it has to come down to immersion I guess; the gurgling demons coming out of the shadows during our inexorable slog to to the holodeck. It's funny though, I think I felt more "immersed" the first time I played Doom on a 486 in the dark than I have in all the games that have followed (although I have to say that Silent Hill 2 and 3 creeped me out pretty effectively--largely due to the lighting). Maybe Doom 3 is going to change that, but maybe we will always be looking for something to help us recover that feeling we had the first time we saw something on our screens that amazed us (and this gets harder and harder to find)--so I guess bring on the colored light and volumetric smoke and pixel-shader mirrors. I like going to Fry's anyway.
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| News Comments > Carmack Working Ahead |
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| 19. |
Engines |
Jul 20, 2004, 17:27 |
WetEngine |
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Every time I hear about one of JC's new engines I get nostalgic: I still recall the breath-taking wonder of finally being able to look up and down in Quake. And remember way back when people were talking about the mythical "Trinity" engine? (That was the name, right?) Something about fractal details...and all kinds of rumored wonders that were going to blow our minds and change the world.
But jeez, what more are we going to want from a FPS engine? Doom3 looks so close to photo-realism I wonder what features are left to dream about. I can't even think of anything more I'd want in terms of graphics...any more detail in the image would just seem pointless. I guess I'm still dreaming about more realistic materials. (Expanding on what you see in the Red Faction games with the walls cratering and such...) Any of you still have anything on a "Trinity" list? I'm just curious what significant new features this new engine would have. Is graphical enhancement coming to an end? (Maybe a good thing...we still don't have a decent "narrative engine.") Are things going to move towards just improving AI and physics?
Oh...and anyone know if dead things are going to vanish shortly after disposal in Doom3? I've always hated that in other shooters. I've been playing through Doom again (nostalgia), and it reminded me how much more immersive it is for me when I move back through areas to see all the bodies I've scattered about in little crime-scene tableaus.
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