Quake 4?

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
I always find these comments silly. I have read many times over that DoomIII is basically a DX7 game and it's simply ridiculous IMO. Simply because they started working on it when DX7 was the standard doesn't make it a DX7 engine. It would be like saying that all X86 CPUs are 1980's technology. Sure, the standard was created in the 80's, but 99% of the technology in the CPUs came far after that.

I don't have the quote handy, but I read something from Carmack (at least I *think* it was from him) a while back that said, essentially, "The guts of Doom3 is a DX7-level engine, with DX8.1 and/or DX9 shader effects on top of it." (and, obviously, Doom3 is an OpenGL game, but it uses the same sorts of functions available in DirectX7, 8, and 9.)

Higher versions of DirectX are *supersets* of the previous versions -- that is, DirectX8 is "DirectX7 plus some other stuff", and DirectX9 is "DirectX8 plus some other stuff." And the core functionality for drawing and manipulating 3D objects and textures hasn't really changed in the last few versions. So, if you want to support DirectX7 hardware, it makes sense to write what is basically a DirectX7 game with DX8 and DX9 features added on top of it, rather than writing a ground-up DirectX9 game and then trying to find a way to make DirectX7 cards capable of running it.

Thus, depending on your perspective, Doom3 *could* be called a "DirectX7" game, but that wouldn't really give you the whole picture.

 

[Slacker]

Umm.... maybe I missed it, but, when is Q4 going to be done? been playing Q3 since the hardware test :shocked:

 

[Childs]

Heh Insomniak, like I said, it was misleading! Too many ways to interpret that statement.

Anyways, I don't think I've played a bad Raven game yet, so Q4 should be pretty good. I'm actually looking forward to id's new game than Q4. It would be interesting to see them try and do something different. I wish more game companies would travel off the well taken path, like American McGee and Alice.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: Childs
Anyways, I don't think I've played a bad Raven game yet, so Q4 should be pretty good. I'm actually looking forward to id's new game than Q4. It would be interesting to see them try and do something different. I wish more game companies would travel off the well taken path, like American McGee and Alice.

Alice was fun, but it had bad luck.

It's bad luck was that I purcahsed it in an EA double pack, and it was bundled with Clive Barker's Undying, which outshined it in every way possible.

It was still good though, even if it was only Mario 64 in different clothes.


EDIT: Mario 64

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Insomniak

Originally posted by: Childs
Anyways, I don't think I've played a bad Raven game yet, so Q4 should be pretty good. I'm actually looking forward to id's new game than Q4. It would be interesting to see them try and do something different. I wish more game companies would travel off the well taken path, like American McGee and Alice.

Alice was fun, but it had bad luck.

It's bad luck was that I purcahsed it in an EA double pack, and it was bundled with Clive Barker's Undying, which outshined it in every way possible.

It was still good though, even if it was only Mario 3 in different clothes.

Well, I liked the twist on the Alice in Wonderland story. I played Undying for a bit, but Alice was the First 3rd Person game I played all the way through, and I did it to see how everything turned out. Alice and Max Payne were the only 3rd Person games I have ever finished, and I've been playing PC games since Wolf 3D.

 

[slpaulson]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Insomniak
For the record Id has let me down. Every game since Doom 1 has been the same. Space Marine. Zombies. Same damn thing. Doom 3 does not have me excited in the least except for the pretty face, and no I don't plan to buy it.

I agree. Action Quake (a mod for Quake 2) is a better game than Quake 2 AND Quake 3. It was made by a bunch of 14-year olds! What does that tell you?

Action Quake was so good. I was in a couple clans for it back in the day.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: cRazYdood

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Insomniak
For the record Id has let me down. Every game since Doom 1 has been the same. Space Marine. Zombies. Same damn thing. Doom 3 does not have me excited in the least except for the pretty face, and no I don't plan to buy it.

I agree. Action Quake (a mod for Quake 2) is a better game than Quake 2 AND Quake 3. It was made by a bunch of 14-year olds! What does that tell you?

Action Quake was so good. I was in a couple clans for it back in the day.

LMK if you're up for a DM. I'm a pretty serious Action Quake player. Are you any good at Cliff2?

 

[darXoul]

It might be a paradox but although (or maybe because) I'm a hardcore quaker, I'm not really waiting for Q4. I got everything I want in Q3 - awesome maps (partially created by the community), playability, well-balanced weapons, good network code and last but not least, a fantastic mod, namely Challenge ProMode Arena (CPMA).

I'm not really concerned about graphics in Q4 since I play with virtually no textures, no animated sky and no details anyway. Enemy models are set to Keel bright green, smoke is turned off, lighting is vertex (simple), etc. etc. All for better aim and efficiency. So even if Q4 offers incredible graphics, I frankly don't care at all. I might play vs. bots for a while at highest settings just to see the game in all its technical glory but then it's back to my config making everything look like a game from the 80s

 

[Noid]

Originally posted by: darXoul
It might be a paradox but although (or maybe because) I'm a hardcore quaker, I'm not really waiting for Q4. I got everything I want in Q3 - awesome maps (partially created by the community), playability, well-balanced weapons, good network code and last but not least, a fantastic mod, namely Challenge ProMode Arena (CPMA).

I'm not really concerned about graphics in Q4 since I play with virtually no textures, no animated sky and no details anyway. Enemy models are set to Keel bright green, smoke is turned off, lighting is vertex (simple), etc. etc. All for better aim and efficiency. So even if Q4 offers incredible graphics, I frankly don't care at all. I might play vs. bots for a while at highest settings just to see the game in all its technical glory but then it's back to my config making everything look like a game from the 80s

I've had players say... "wtf is that ,,, a screenshot ...?" when showing my graphics.
To compete online againt the LPB's,,, I also play this way.

I was ranked top 10 in instagib awhile ago. And I would'nt be able to do that without the tweaks that sustain my rock solid 125fps (google on FPS jumping)

So,,, cheers to all the tweakers out there ... and keep on fraggin!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Regs

Originally posted by: ikickpigeons
i belive doom3 will be an expirence worth while. plus we need to think past just the "doom" games. Think of all the games, mods, that are going to come out from this engine. I think we need to be prepaired to play games off this engine for another 3 years..

D3 is going to be a completly different game then the others. Almost like a playable sci-fi horror movie. Its focusing more on the enviorment, plot, and suspense rather than just going through rooms blowing crap up. What critics think of the game now that all it is a platform for the next FPS graphics engine with no game backing it.

All of the still pictures shown thus far sure seem like it. It appears to have much more of a Resident-Evil "look" about it, but with a dark and brooding atmosphere, then the original Doom's action-based focus. That's not to say that it won't have action, I honestly don't know, and wont, until I finally get to play it.

Know what would shock me completely? If they dropped multi-player features altogether for D3, and instead waited for Q4 to implement them. Yet, strangely, I wonder if they might do just that. Does the D3 box mention multi-player deathmatch support at all?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Ugh, ok, infer some here.

Yes, Id's renderer's are built on OpenGL, so they technically have nothing to do with DX technology. However, the features that are being put to use in the Doom 3 tech mostly came around in the timeframe of DX7 and the original GeForce.

I suppose a clearer way to state it would be that Doom 3 is built on GeForce 1 level tech?

I rather disagree with that. It might well have been true, that the current "high-end" video card available for PCs was the GF1, around the time of D3's original development starting, but remember, these guys design/write engine code, for hardware intended to be out 2-3 years from then - meaning, that they actually write for hardware that doesn't even exist as a commercial product then. So many people don't realize the way that these things work in the games industry.

Especially all of the stuff that Carmack was writing about in his 'finger'/.plan file texts, floating-point rendering pipelines, etc. None of that stuff actually existed in the consumer PC video-card space in hardware in that timeframe, it's only rather very recently that such things are possible in hardware at all.

I would be personally very disappointed and surprised, if D3 was only "DX7 level" technology, because I'm quite sure that it is far beyond that. Don't forget that OpenGL can run vertex/pixel-shader "fragment programs" too, with vendor-specific extensions.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: stnicralisk
Wont D3 incorporate HLSL? Hasnt this only recently begun to be added to the drivers of both ATi and nV?

HLSL is not a driver-level feature, it is an application/source-level feature. The output of which is DirectX shader API code, which is then passed to the low-level video driver, and then compilied into optimized hardware-level code by the driver.