Slow pacing of Doom 3 vs. other FPS?

[bswjrny]

I've been out of the gaming world for about 4 years, but with the purchase of my new 'rig' (specs below) have gotten caught up in the excitement of new titles liks Doom 3, Far Cry, etc.

My question: All other things being "pretty good" (3DMARK3- 8,132/ Aquamark - 52,770) is a game like Doom 3 supposed to be so much.. slower.. than say Half-life, or any of the other FPS I've played over the years?

I understand that Doom 3 pushes the limits of even the best systems, but even in low to medium settings things seem to move much more gradual. I don't mean in the "story," I mean in actual movement.

If there's not some huge performance consideration I'm overlooking (& no other sings of degradation, not maxxing out anything... is this just the way the game was designed?

Thank you!

-------------------------------------------------------

Intel P4
3.4 GHz
1 GB
Chaintech 6600GT PCI-E

 

[uOpt]

Doom3 and Half-life actually behave very differently.

Doom3 makes use of the more "raw" aspects of 3D: many polygons, expensive texturing, light effects.

Half-Life2 blows its performance mainly in the shaders.

The reason is that Doom3's point the the athmosphere, the surroundings nd the architecture of the place. Half-Life 2 is more people in the game and story-telling and needs the shaders to create convincing close-up animations, especially on faces, for clothing and the like.

Personally I was very surprised how good Doom3 runs on older hardware. John Carmark surely went through some length to get older hardware into the Doom3 scope. Of course Doom3 likes to run on fast hardware, but it doesn't insist on it like e.g. Far Cry does.

 

[Rage187]

Half-life 2 looks like MaxPayne 2 texture quality.

 

[Fern]

I understand that Doom 3 pushes the limits of even the best systems, but even in low to medium settings things seem to move much more gradual. I don't mean in the "story," I mean in actual movement.

Your rig should play D3 fine. What are your FPS?. Use the console command to report the FPS on the screen. That way we will know if rig is set up bad. Looks OK though judging by the benchies you posted.

Fern

 

[RealityTime]

I get the impression you are referring to the actual speed you walk at in d3. I agree it is a slow movement speed and no its not your rig, its just the pace you walk at in d3. I usually have shift down and run most of the time when I play it. It is kind of weird that you move so slowly. That was the big letdown with doom3 for me, the graphics certainly came through, but I was hoping for classic doom gameplay ie. large open spaces with lots of monsters coming from all directions and a fast paced movement through the game, running and gunning etc. Not the tight closed rooms/hallways and a couple monsters here and there. Thats where I think doom 3 failed big time, if they had paired the technology with that classic doom play it would have been a stellar game. It ended up just being a very nice to look at game. half the time though I'd have to turn on god mode, take out my flashlight and walk up to monsters to get a good look at how impressive they were. turn on the farging lights id.

 

[OnEMoReTrY]

Originally posted by: MartinCracauer
Doom3 and Half-life actually behave very differently.

Doom3 makes use of the more "raw" aspects of 3D: many polygons, expensive texturing, light effects.

Half-Life2 blows its performance mainly in the shaders.

The reason is that Doom3's point the the athmosphere, the surroundings nd the architecture of the place. Half-Life 2 is more people in the game and story-telling and needs the shaders to create convincing close-up animations, especially on faces, for clothing and the like.

Personally I was very surprised how good Doom3 runs on older hardware. John Carmark surely went through some length to get older hardware into the Doom3 scope. Of course Doom3 likes to run on fast hardware, but it doesn't insist on it like e.g. Far Cry does.

Since when did doom 3 use many polygons?

 

[d2arcturus]

i dunno what i'm doing, i never expected the performance i'm getting with my rig (in all its outdatedness)
i play doom 3 on high settings at 1280x1024 with 2x anti-aliasing and it's steady at 60fps, i think i'm gonna take it up a notch

in the immortal words of peter griffin: "friggin sweet!"

 

[bswjrny]

That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Graphics look superb; it's fun to watch the monsters and the general feeling of creepiness/unease (esp. sounds) is cool.

But the "walking" is just so slow! I don't want rain on ID's parade, 'cause I really do appreciate the twisted images and "horror" of it, but for actual gameplay... it gets kinda boring. Not to mention claustrophobic (but maybe that's my "issue"). You _do_ have to resort to God mode to really soak it all in...

Honestly I've been playing Half-life (the original) and loving it: bright, fast-paced, room to breathe and just as much imagination (packed into 6 yrs old technology, I understand). As I mentioned, I've been out of games for awhile, last title I really played was "Giants:Citizen Kabuto" (which is excellent, BTW).

Someone else mentioned finding out what my 'console' FPS stats are. Will do that shortly and report back. But what I'm hearing from you guys is that this is the way player movement was intended to be, slow & creepy.

B

 

[Fern]

Just set it to "always run", that's what I did. IIRC, I set "w" to run instead of walk. I remember having to press another key if I wanted to slow down.

If you don't like the run speed. I'd guess you could adjust that in the cfg. file to speed it up. Just gogle for D3 tweak guides.

Fern

BTW, Welcome to the Forums!

 

[bswjrny]

Found answer to my question re slow movement in Doom 3:

"60 FPS internal lock"

While reading through initial online Doom 3 benchmarks before the game was released, it became obvious that the game included an ?internal tick? or FPS lock of 60 FPS which was failed to be mentioned. This means that when you play Doom 3, the most FPS you?ll ever obtain is 60 FPS no matter what hardware you are using.

As far as we can gather from our talks with ATI and nVidia over the past few days (ID did not respond to us), the 60 FPS lock is in place to create a smoother gaming experience by having a better chance at producing more consistent frame rates. John Carmack, the head-honcho developer at ID Software suggests another reason:

"The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz, so if it rendered any faster, it would just be rendering identical frames. A fixed tic rate removes issues like Quake 3 had, where some jumps could only be made at certain framerates. In Doom, the same player inputs will produce the same motions, no matter what the framerate is."

Some are calling it an ?anti-cheat device? around the forums but we aren?t here to decide the good and bad reasons for including the lock ? the fact is, it?s there and at this stage it cannot be removed.

From a real-world standpoint, it is important people are aware of the 60 FPS lock when it comes to benchmarking with Doom 3. If we cannot play Doom 3 above 60 FPS, why should any score over this be considered important? That?s one of the questions which plagued our minds for the past few days. Even with the 60 FPS lock, we consider scores over this important as Doom 3 is a good graphics card benchmark (as you will soon see in our own benchmarks, CPU doesn?t play much of a roll) and scores over 60 FPS will provide a good way of telling how your system will perform as you ramp up Image Quality settings such as AA and AF.

The important thing to remember is that at this stage, until ID Software let us know how to disable the FPS lock or release a patch to do so (and that?s IF they do either!), your maximum game play FPS in Doom 3 is 60 FPS. At the end of the day I would have preferred an option to disable the FPS lock as choice is always good but ID obviously decided otherwise.

Text

 

[Fern]

To remove the 60fps cap try this:

so all you do, is go into the console, and enter.

com_fixedtic -1

check your FPS with this command.

com_showfps 1

It's been noted that you can turn off the cap in single palyer only IIRC.

Fern