Doom3 first impressions

Raskolnikov

Just gotten back from a friends house, he downloaded the game (naughty, I know), it looks amazing, even surpasses Far Cry. The level of detail and tension in the game is great! I didn't get to play it long, didn't even bother making a copy since I wouldn't have a hope in hell of running it. My first impression is that it has certainly lived up to the hype.

You guys who're waiting won't be disapointed.

CuLT

Just played 20 minutes of it there and my clothes are PLASTERED to me, thanks id.
I'm going to need to shower every time I play.

My system is getting on at this stage, 2000XP, GF4 Ti4400 and 512MB RAM, but it runs grand on medium, with everything but AA turned on. I'll upgrade for HL2 .
And the 60Hz business is killing my eyes, blood mixed tears of happiness.

shinzon

PcP wrote:

You sure your not trying to save with the same filename instead of typing in somethin different?

Ill have a look again very weird problem this, just trying to save and it suddenly says cant overwrite the autosave file

Shin

KdjaCL

You got any file protection programs that dont allow overwriting? or windows admin settings?

Yes Cult its a sweatfest , you know its ,you hear it , you creep towards and yet you still jump and whip out fists by mashing mouse...LOL

Class game i restarted it on hard as i dount its a game with much replayability.

kdjac

Brock

Shinzon how are u saving if u pressing f5 then it should automatically overwrite it if u are pressing esc and save then u must created a new file before saving as u cannot overwrite the auto saves>
Brock

LegacyUser

alright lads,

I have doom 3. Managed to get my hands on a copy. I have a 9800 pro and it crashes after 10mins or so. There are constantly aritfacts on the screen, is this because i soft modded to a 9800 xt or do i need the latest drivers or both?

Anyone else with a softmodded 9800 pro -> 9800 xt having probs?

I have a powercolor card 128mb 9800 pro -> xt.

2.5ghz p4,
gig of ram.

RuggieBear

cheesedude wrote:

alright lads,

I have doom 3. Managed to get my hands on a copy. I have a 9800 pro and it crashes after 10mins or so. There are constantly aritfacts on the screen, is this because i soft modded to a 9800 xt or do i need the latest drivers or both?

Anyone else with a softmodded 9800 pro -> 9800 xt having probs?

I have a powercolor card 128mb 9800 pro -> xt.

2.5ghz p4,
gig of ram.

I read somewhere that Id warned about using overclocked cards as there was stability issues....perhaps you are suffering something similar.

p

CuLT

Just thought I'd add that the fact that the flashlight needs to be used IN PLACE of a gun was an absolute masterstroke, freaks me out everytime I hear something, take out the flashlight (putting away my gun as a result) to see this zombie stumbling towards me; I then put away the light to take out the gun and it's dark again. I can't see my enemy, but I know he's there. I fire and attempt to judge where to shoot by the muzzle flashes.

Amazing.

LegacyUser

pekelly wrote:

I read somewhere that Id warned about using overclocked cards as there was stability issues....perhaps you are suffering something similar.

p

Oh no.

This is not good. The miniature buzz i got from overclocking an already top card is starting to fade...rapidly. Are you serious? Anyone else shed any light?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

the_syco

Great game. Affter you run thru, guns blazing, retrace your steps. From this, my guns are usually full
As for killing, 3 shots to the head @ close range kills anything. Including those big dogs.

I had 6 health left, so I just ran around shooting everything, hoping I'd find health. Wundered into a room where there was candles, and devil-worship stuff around, and then suddenly the monsters started appearing, and i'm pumping them full of lead, and then one hits me from the side...

If you see some ammo in a dark hole, shine your flash light in first. Chance's are there's a zombie waiting for there, waiting till you're reloading, before they hit you

shinzon wrote:

Im mightily impressed with this game, but one annoying or maybe its me thats missing something, is there a lack of a save feature in this game, all i have is the first autosave and when i try and save a game at another stage it says it cant overiwrite the autosave , and i cant see any other save slots on there

Shin

where the filename is, change it to something else. You may have "autosave" in this space. Just rename it such as "Joe's save game 1", etc

GinjaNinja

Yep overclocking and this game don't go together. Something about the Game using new trasistors that have neve been used before. I can get my Radeon to 440/375 in ATI tool with no arti's. But in D3 If I play at 400/360 I get loads of arti's...Mad ain't it..

All in all the the game is too much hard work for the hardware.... Not worth it in the end.
My system.

2800+ A64
9800 Pro
512 Twinmos Dual DDR 400mhz.
120 gig SATA Samsung

At 1600x1200 it stutters along.
at 1024x768 play fine until monster and then it sutters along.. Very patched and unplayable. I'm not impress and I ain't the only one.
I get 6558 in 3dmark03. Means nothing for this game....

glimmerman

Its even worse than you think. According to some bluesnews posts, the only way some people got rid of various artifacts was by *underclocking* their 9800pros

GinjaNinja

Yea this game pretty much suks ass.

More testing last night confirmed my suspisions..... It eats grapics cards for no reason other than lighting.
But the game is playing pretty bad on my machine at 1024*768. Medium Quality No AA. Averaging 60FPS until someone or thing comes onto the screen then it drops to a whopping 5 FPS.. jerky and unplayable.
I'm not inpressed at all either, the physics engines is pretty poo by todays standards. As stated below the only thing going for it is the textures skins on people......but hardy worth 5 years making me thinks..

I rekon this was shiped early(not optimized) to try to competit with HL2 which by all videos is far superiour in gmae play, physics, graphics etc..... ID were scared and dropped D3 early to try to make some profit. before valve kick their butt.

thats my 2 cents.

BKtje

Yea this game pretty much suks ass.

I dunno dude i think theres soemthign up with your system. If i put mine to stock (ie 2ghz) i can still play on high 1024. My systems got 200mhz and 512mb on ram on yours but there wouldnt be that big a difference that u get 5fps at medium in fights and i get 30fps at high in heavy fights.
Something is up wiht your system and i dont think its id's fault.

the physics engines is pretty poo by todays standards

I think its actually quite good. The bodies aint flying everywhere when they fall like in some games. They just toned it down a bit.

As stated below the only thing going for it is the textures skins on people

huh? The lighting is phenomenal, the atmosphere is the ebst i've ever had in a game and the monsters are pretty cool.

I rekon this was shiped early(not optimized)

From what i've seen it plays very well on most systems (even low spec ones) which shows you that they did put a hell of a lot of effort into optimizin it. I dunno why you think it was shiped early.

HL2 which by all videos is far superiour in gmae play, physics, graphics etc

I can't tell game play from videos so im not gonna discuss that. Graphics i think doom3 wins hands down (maybe cos of the atmosphere the graphics create i dunno) and physics... well i already said what i think of most games physics.

Still you obviously don't like it for whatever reason and thats your decesion.

GinjaNinja

The atmosphere is good but it's not new. Alone in the dark gave the same if not more atmosphere.
True lighting is good, but unplayable and jerky when turned on.
About something wrong with me computer could be but I doubt I'd be able
to run COD/UT2k4 at 1600x1200 2x AA 8x ASF steady(no major fluctuations) 60/35-40 FPS respectivly.
The physics engine - Well it's dumbed down alright but thats not the problem. It's the interactabiliy wit the world that the physics engine suks. sure I can move a few cones and boxes. but not a can on a table ?. This is supposed to be ground breaking lads.
Lets not be fooled.

Batbat

I got Doom 3 last night, it ran quite well at 1000 x 700 at high detail on an ati 9800pro 2.4 P4, I did not have a chance top play it for too long but it seemed to have a good plot, lots of dialogue.

One major annoying problem I had was snow like effect against black background, I tried changing all the settings and installed different drivers , even the new ATI BETA drivers for Doom 3 no fix. In the end I realised that the card was overheating from playing Doom 3 so I took of the side of my case, I think I need another fan (at least).

RE*AC*TOR

Batbat wrote:

One major annoying problem I had was snow like effect against black background, I tried changing all the settings and installed different drivers , even the new ATI BETA drivers for Doom 3 no fix. In the end I realised that the card was overheating from playing Doom 3 so I took of the side of my case, I think I need another fan (at least).

are you overclocking that 9800pro - doom really doesn't like overclocking. maybe try underclocking a little...

Batbat

RE*AC*TOR wrote:

are you overclocking that 9800pro - doom really doesn't like overclocking. maybe try underclocking a little...

Yeah thats what fixed it last night, I underclocked it then they went away almost, so i took off the side of the PC, you would not believe the heat coming from the card, Im amazed it still works. ANyway after removiing the side cover of the case I set the clock speed back to normal (not overclocked) it was fine then, great GFX, no prob at 1024x700.

plus itw worth installing the ati beta drivers for slight improvement in speed

Im very impressed so far, nice atmosphere

Big Nelly

Waiting for my copy but was wondering are any of the previous version worth a look at? decent games or not? see play have Doom 2 I think it is for a tenner! worth investment? :rolleyes:

RE*AC*TOR

Batbat wrote:

Yeah thats what fixed it last night, I underclocked it then they went away almost, so i took off the side of the PC, you would not believe the heat coming from the card, Im amazed it still works. ANyway after removiing the side cover of the case I set the clock speed back to normal (not overclocked) it was fine then, great GFX, no prob at 1024x700.

plus itw worth installing the ati beta drivers for slight improvement in speed

Im very impressed so far, nice atmosphere

i think mostly from reports only people with x800s are noticing much of an improvement with the beta drivers. what brand 9800pro do you have? what kinda cooler? I know the powercolors have a fairly flimsy cooler on them...

Dr. Loon

neilbrady79 wrote:

was wondering are any of the previous version worth a look at? decent games or not? see play have Doom 2 I think it is for a tenner! worth investment? :rolleyes:

You've never played the originals?!? :eek: That's mad. I don't know if you can get them for free or what nowadays, but yeah they'd be worth having a copy of.

Big Nelly

Dr. Loon wrote:

You've never played the originals?!? :eek: That's mad. I don't know if you can get them for free or what nowadays, but yeah they'd be worth having a copy of.

Only back onto a PC a while now before that was Console boy so never really played these games.....seen this on play and was going to get if any use......get the history and so on! haha

http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=PC&title=178869

Ponster

Minimum Requirements

50 MHz or any Pentium/Athlon
8MB RAM, 64MB for XP (128MB recommended)
Windows Compatible graphics Card
140MB Free Disk Space
Quad Speed CD-ROM


Ahh, those were the days

AFAIK, DOOM I is available as freeware.

Dr. Loon

I installed the original Doom there a while back for the laugh, I was freaked playing it though. So used to new FPS games, that it annoyed me not being able to use the mouse to look around. Still, back in the day, they were great.

lodgepole

There's an openGL version of Doom available for download somewhere, I can't remember what its called though. It uses a new engine that plays just like the old one, except you can use your mouse for looking around in 3d as you would for newer fps's.

Those specs are too high btw, I used to play Doom on my old 286.

edited to add link... http://sourceforge.net/projects/doomlegacy/

RuggieBear

It's taking me a little while to get used to the darkness....(perhaps i'm too used to the tropical paradise that is FarCry). i find it kinda irritttating that i have to keep switching flashlight and my weapons... It's also killing my machine on medium detail..... :eek:

TwoShedsJackson

Some tweaks here for folk on a 128meg card, mainly Radeon 9800s and the like:

seta com_videoram "128" <--- 128 because I have the 128mb Ti4200...was only being read as 64mb by doom

seta com_allowconsole "1"

Change These to what I have here:

seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "512"

seta image_cacheMegs "96"

seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST" <-- Normally says GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR

seta image_anisotropy "0"

That got me up to the in-game max of 60fps on a 3GHz machine with Radeon 9800 and 2 gigs of RAM. (at 1024x768 and High quality)

Make a file in your doom3/base directory called autoexec.cfg and put them in there and the game will exec them every time it runs, otherwise it deletes them from the Doom3.cfg file itself.

Also, putting these:

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "256"
seta image_cacheMinK "20480"

into the same file on a machine 1 gig or more of RAM may improve fps for you. Do not change the 'useCache' setting to 1 without putting in both of the other lines or the game will crash.

Dr. Loon

Lodgepole wrote:

There's an openGL version of Doom available for download somewhere, I can't remember what its called though. It uses a new engine that plays just like the old one, except you can use your mouse for looking around in 3d as you would for newer fps's.

Those specs are too high btw, I used to play Doom on my old 286.

edited to add link... http://sourceforge.net/projects/doomlegacy/

Yeah it allows you to use the mouse alright, but still you can't look up/down in the game regardless. That's what freaked me out.

satchmo

Try jDoom instead, it's a GL/DX engine that has polygonal models and allows you to jump, look up, look down etc. Just add the original Doom .WADs and play the whole game again! I sat down just to give it a go for a few minutes, and ended up playing the whole game again for about 4 hours! (It's amazing the secret rooms you remember)

lodgepole

satchmo wrote:

Try jDoom

That's the one I had before... Disregard the link I gave earlier and get this one, it's a lot better.