I am reading through the overanalization of John Carmacks speech. Everyone is saying this and that throwing out and that's why Doom III sucked etc... It had dumb AI blah blah. You know what call me a moron then because I really enjoyed Doom III. You know what I had a lot of fun blasting zombies away and scaring the pants off myself playing that game.

So what if the AI and scenarios were scripted. They worked extremely well and bottom line is it was a hell of a fun ride. I enjoyed it, Honestly if I wanted great AI I would go play real paintball(not that i wouldn't want it for wwII shooters etc..). Actually that might be worse now that I think of the way my friends and I play.


And let me preempt anyone trying to be funny with the following post
" Your a moron"

All I have to say to that is

"A good one."
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So what if the AI and scenarios were scripted. They worked extremely well and bottom line is it was a hell of a fun ride. I enjoyed it, Honestly if I wanted great AI I would go play real paintball(not that i wouldn't want it for wwII shooters etc..). Actually that might be worse now that I think of the way my friends and I play.


That's the problem. Regardless of whether you liked the AI, atmosphere, graphics, etc most of the people who didn't like it simply didn't find it fun. Whatever that magical "fun factor" is, for a lot of people D3 didn't have it, especially compared to other modern games in the genre.

You're entitled to like what you like, but likewise you are not going to convince other people that it's a good game simply because you enjoyed it when they didn't.
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I thought it was a decent game, and I did play all the way through it.
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I did enjoy Doom3 the first time I played it, I just found it had little to no replay value for me.
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That's the problem. Regardless of whether you liked the AI, atmosphere, graphics, etc most of the people who didn't like it simply didn't find it fun. Whatever that magical "fun factor" is, for a lot of people D3 didn't have it, especially compared to other modern games in the genre.

You're entitled to like what you like, but likewise you are not going to convince other people that it's a good game simply because you enjoyed it when they didn't.

I don't know what is "a lot of people" but D3 sold very well on both PC and xbox (so much they're even porting the expansion pack to the xbox). I enjoyed D3 a lot and I've beat it four times now (versus the 2 times for HL2 and FarCry - even though I considered HL2 my 2004 GotY).

I think it's a question of taste. No game is going to be perfect for everyone everytime but I'm happy I'm able to enjoy such different games as D3, Torment, Tetris, Mario 64, Deus Ex, Street Fighter II, UT, etc. The last thing I want is for every game to be the same, I really don't want to go back to "WWII overload" or similar.

It's not always entertaining when there's all sorts of game comparisons going on. Am I the only one that enjoyed both Quake 3 and UT?
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I did enjoy Doom3 the first time I played it, I just found it had little to no replay value for me.

i started to get bored half way through it.... it was simply too repetative. there was just endless supply of small dark rooms and after playing half the game you could forsee with 80%+ spawn points where you will be attacked.... and if you got killed then there was no surprise, nothing was different...

like it would be _THAT_ hard to make enemies spawn at different place after you die :roll:

thats what killed the fun for me, i started to use God mode just to look at graphics and specially cause i also wanted to see last levels which were finally something different, but it was too late to save D3 in my eyes....

simply too much of the same in first 2/3 of the game == boring and repetative.
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i played a while, then set it aside for several weeks, then finished it during a marathon weekend session hoping it would get better, it didnt'

i found it too repetitive, plus the action isn't my type of action (stuff jumping out of nowhere and attacking you)...too heavy on the shock factor. you'd have to die a few times just to have enough time to find effective cover/choke point to fend off the latest group.

since most envrions looked alike, the type of attack was correspondingly limited to a few types.

plus constantly searching for codes to unlock cabinets to get stuff was way to tedious. what's wrong with smashing open crates?

plus way too dark. how about some variety?
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Yeah, but the first time thru there was at least a bit of variations to the repetitiveness that were broken up by some truly interesting bits. (I liked hell.)
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I did enjoy Doom3 the first time I played it, I just found it had little to no replay value for me.
I agree, but unfortunately few games have had replay value for me. I haven't played through hl2 again though I started but gave up, or far cry. The thing is that they are all kind of repetitive in my eyes.

BTW silence I kinda agree, I mean I enjoyed D3 don't get me wrong, but they had some things that could have been used such as the oxygen thing. I didn't even realize I was supposed to be finding bottles at first b/c there was no need so effortless to walk across a courtyard. Anyway, have a oxygen bottle in a car when you have to race across to another facility would be kinda cool, or something like that to break it up.
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You know that was a great suggestion regarding randomly generating spawn points. It would add to the replayability. But I went in wanting a scare you out of your pants type of game. And thats what I got.

I liked it almost as much as I liked AVP 2. I freaking love that game. Must be one of my fav shooters of all time. Just so entertaining.

Speaking of no AI, just intense fighting. Anyone here try Painkiller? I had the demo and never bought the game. I really wanted to just never got too it. Seemed like it would be lots of fun to play.
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In relationship to the whole Doom series. D3 was bad. As a scary dark game it its ok. Its just that the whole heart and soul of Doom and Doom 2 are not in D3. And then all the politics rendering that came before it and during.... What a waste. JC and id dont have many more years to make games... the last game was a waste of there time and my game time.
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Whatever that magical "fun factor" is, for a lot of people D3 didn't have it, especially compared to other modern games in the genre.

Who are these "a lot of people"?

It is always misdirected to base the experience of a group on the 5% "Hard Core Gamers".

Most of my casual gaming friends loved it. Why? It was not too complicated. They hate having to have "6 fingers" to play a FPS these days--they are too complicated. They want to aim, shoot, kill, repeat. The game was dark, scary, and suspenseful. It was basic "Reach locked door, find key, open locked door" gameplay. Nothing innovative for sure, but it was polished for what it was.

And if anyone forgets, D3 is a sequal to a "Old School" FPS. It was for the casual D1&2 fans.

The only way I can read "a lot of people" objectively is looking at the sales numbers, and outside of HL2 I believe D3 has outsold every other FPS on the PC and it has done well on the Xbox.

Ps- I hated Doom 3.

You know what I had a lot of fun blasting zombies away and scaring the pants off myself playing that game.

Everyone's tastes are different. Don't be too put off by the opinions of those on a hardcore gaming forum (people who post on forums online about games are most assuredly hard core). Hardcore gamers tend to like cutting edge, indepth, difficult, and 'new' gaming experiences.

In general FPS are a hot target. The genre is much more evolutionary now, not revolutionary, and many good games do not keep interest because many hardcore gamers have played similar games before. "Been there done that". Which is true, so unless you love FPS they can get old (I personally dislike FPS single player... HL2 is the only one I have liked in the last years). Speaking of HL2, it was a commercial and critical success yet many here hated it also.

Overall, tough crowd for FPS.

Me personally, I did not like Doom 3. BF2/HL2 are more my style/taste/genre. By all means enjoy D3 though. The more games you enjoy the better!
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Who are these "a lot of people"?


No need to be defensive - you only have to look at the reception it got - from reviewers, web forums, newsgroups, etc. Even at B3D there were a lot more people that didn't care for the game than liked it.

Sure, no game is going to be liked by everyone, but if you look at the reception of D3 compared to UT2004, Far Cry, HL2, Painkiller, etc, D3 had a lot less people saying they enjoyed it than the other games.

Personally I found D3 very simplistic and grindingly repetative. It was a long tech demo for the D3 Engine, with graphics and sound from 2005, but gameplay and level design from a decade ago. It was simply hard work to finish, with little reward or fun for me. Other people said they felt the same way. You can search the web or this forum to find them.

That's not to say people didn't enjoy the game. Just a lot of people also didn't enjoy it.
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I still can't seem to bore myself enough to give D3 another try. Everytime I do launch it, I'm stuck in the same room and lack any kind of drive whatsoever to get out of it.

Then again, I never got back into FarCry again ... guess I'm weird like this. :-(
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It just annoyed me... like the vast majority of games :lol:


On the subject of AI, JC is right. You could put amazeing A.I. in Doom 3 and nobody would ever tell the difference. The levels are very linear, crampt and not particularry interactive, there's not much more an advanced A.I. could do over a simple one. OK so Doom 3's A.I. was parrticularry awful, but so was Painkillers and thats a great game.

Anyway most peoples idea of a good A.I. is one which can dive through gaps ;)
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Well between the PC and Xbox, Doom 3 has sold 3 million copies so far, so I'm guessing a fair number of people like it... ;)

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200508/N05.0813.1950.27388.htm
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I liked it and I played it through twice. Once in Windows and once in Linux. Yes, it was a bit repetive in the middle, but once you get to hell, it's really great until the end.
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Personally, I felt it was a good game, but not a great game. It definitely had its flaws, but I felt the action was fairly fun, and the atmosphere was pretty good. The final boss was a bit of a pushover, though :)
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exactly...

I started it, stopped in Alpha Labs towards the end, didn't play it for few months, and than started again and couldn't stop... The beginning was good, got sloppy in the middle and second half + the end was GREAT! I loved more enemies towards the end, and I would wish for more of them troughout... and as a scary shooter - this was completely it.

Anyhow... I had a pause with Far Cry before I finished it, and I still haven't finished HL2 almost did it, but not quite done yet... so out of the three I liked D3 the most...
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I think everyone who is so critical of Doom3 are forgetting what Doom 1&2 were really like... ;)
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I think everyone who is so critical of Doom3 are forgetting what Doom 1&2 were really like... ;)
Well, I for one felt that the game totally captured the essence of those older games (having just played through them not too long before with GLDOOM). But I seriously wish they'd found some other method of "surprising" the player than the tremendous number of monster closets (the spider thingies crawling out of openings was decent, but the openings they crawled through were way too distinctive).
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I know, it's just I keep hearing complaints about the AI and it's like; "Hey guys, remember the first two games monsters AI? Run straight at you and try and kill you? They did a PERFECT job of recreating that!"....y'know?

I never thought the Doom series was supposed to be deep, just creepy and violent. My biggest complaint about D3 was that it was too dark and you couldn't use your flashlight & gun, but mods and monitor adjustments fixed that up and I did rather enjoy the game. :)
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Doom 3 has a bit better AI than that, though. Not so much on the hell monsters, but on the marines. All monsters seem to get a fair bit better on higher challenge levels, too.
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On the subject of AI, JC is right. You could put amazeing A.I. in Doom 3 and nobody would ever tell the difference. The levels are very linear, crampt and not particularry interactive, there's not much more an advanced A.I. could do over a simple one. OK so Doom 3's A.I. was parrticularry awful, but so was Painkillers and thats a great game.

Anyway most peoples idea of a good A.I. is one which can dive through gaps ;)

I'd argue he is just plain wrong there. The A.I. on display in Fear is a lot more fun and challenging to play against than anything Doom3 could muster despite the demo levels being linear, crampt and not very interactive. There the marines you are attacking do try to user covering fire to advance, flank you, seek cover and generally provide a far more satisfying fight then Doom3's frankly boring 'run towards player and attack until dead' A.I.

I've played and replayed the demo six or seven times now. Each time the AI has been a little bit different in what it did. Doom3 I borrowed and frankly was slugging my way through to the end out of sheer willpower to see the ending than actual fun I was having.
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No need to be defensive - you only have to look at the reception it got - from reviewers, web forums, newsgroups, etc. Even at B3D there were a lot more people that didn't care for the game than liked it.

1. It got an overall of 88% at gamerankings.com, so overall I would have to say reviewers did like it.

2. The game sold exceptionally well. I am not being defensive, I am argueing that looking at a certain demographic and making a judgement is not fair, which leads to...

3. Like I noted, judging hardcore gamers -- i.e. Those who post on internet forums about games -- as a general judgement of a games reception is not fair, especially when the game was not intended to be for hardcore gamers only.

You call it simplistic; may I deposit that a massive segment of the gaming population is not "hardcore" and that many games have become too complex. From level layout, difficulty, number of buttons and keys they have to remember, and so forth, they just are not as fun for a LOT of gamers. Point, click, shot. Wash, rinse, repeat.

When you look at it from that perspective--as a nastolgic FPS sequal to Doom and Doom 2--and compare the large sales, I do not believe it is fair to be as negative.

Now if we were to say that many hard core FPS gamers looking for an evolution or revolution in FPS did not like the game, well, I would have to agree ;)

Sure, no game is going to be liked by everyone, but if you look at the reception of D3 compared to UT2004, Far Cry, HL2, Painkiller, etc, D3 had a lot less people saying they enjoyed it than the other games.

See, that is what I am saying, right there. "A lot of less people". That is far too broad. You are taking the reception voiced by people on internet forums-- a VERY small demographic --and extrapolating that to overall.

What I am saying is you cannot look at the reception of critical hardcore gaming FPS junkies like ourselves (I am as bad as the next one!!) and use words like "a lot of people" because quite honestly we are NOT "a lot of people". We are the minority.

That is why games like Myst, Deer Hunter, and Sims have sold so well. They target a mass audiance who loves the games and leaves us scratching our heads.

I believe FPS have done the same thing. They have evolved so much in complexity they turn off MANY casual gamers. I know that is true of my dad. When I was a kid we used to play Doom over our home network. By the time Quake II rolled around he felt they were too complicated and as FPS got harder he stopped playing them.

D3 brought him back to FPS. He enjoyed the simple "kill everything" gameplay. And the sales numbers of D3 indicate it is a huge success.

That is, a LOT of people really liked it. So basing a game by the reception of online forum posters (when the game is not necessarily designed for us) is unfair. It is like trying to get an objective view of the Sims from a gaming forum. It says more about our tastes than the game. Complex != better for most gamers.

Which sucks because I like complex, difficult, and innovative FPS. Simply, a lot of die hard gamers have tastes very different than casual gamers. The reviews are good and the sales are good, so in this case I think hardcore gamers need to come to grips they were not the intended primary audiance if they were not in the mood for an old school FPS.

Just a lot of people also didn't enjoy it.

And based on sales those are in the minority ;)
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I'd argue he is just plain wrong there. The A.I. on display in Fear is a lot more fun and challenging to play against than anything Doom3 could muster despite the demo levels being linear, crampt and not very interactive. There the marines you are attacking do try to user covering fire to advance, flank you, seek cover and generally provide a far more satisfying fight then Doom3's frankly boring 'run towards player and attack until dead' A.I.
Er, the marines in Doom 3 do that, too. They may not have the best marine AI, but they're not simply "run towards player and attack until dead."
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I think everyone who is so critical of Doom3 are forgetting what Doom 1&2 were really like... ;)

What were they like? IMHO Doom2 is still the best game ever.
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I'm playing doom2 on my phone -I enjoy it a lot more than doom3 and it's not just becuase it's a bit of a gimmick.
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Doom 3 was great for the first few hours. Unfortunately it bogs down halfway through and it becomes a struggle to remain interested in going through more of the same corridors to kill more of the same monsters. A greater variation in level design between the start and hell, and more environment interaction puzzles (the crane was a great break in the pace) would have helped a lot.

I played it pretty regularly until Delta Labs, when I finally got bored and let it collect dust for almost a year before finishing it. It looks great, but there's just not enough depth to it.
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And based on sales those are in the minority ;)

You can't use sales numbers to define people's opinions. I'm sure there are lots of people who bought D3. There are lots more people who could have bought it but didn't. What you're doing is like saying "millions of people eat at MacDonalds, so they must make great food!". Well billions of people don't eat at MacDonalds too.

Just look at the reviews - they nearly all have a skewed score because of the graphics score being very high, and they nearly all have the caveat that it's purely a linear run and gun game. I don't have a problem with the graphics and sound scoring very highly because they are very good, but the gameplay is for me what makes a game fun or not. D3 was not fun for me.
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You can't use sales numbers to define people's opinions. I'm sure there are lots of people who bought D3. There are lots more people who could have bought it but didn't. What you're doing is like saying "millions of people eat at MacDonalds, so they must make great food!". Well billions of people don't eat at MacDonalds too.

Just look at the reviews - they nearly all have a skewed score because of the graphics score being very high, and they nearly all have the caveat that it's purely a linear run and gun game. I don't have a problem with the graphics and sound scoring very highly because they are very good, but the gameplay is for me what makes a game fun or not. D3 was not fun for me.

I agree and I also wonder how many wanted to return their copy.
Doom 3 was one of the most hyped games ever and for so much hype i dont think that numbers are that great.

BTW :: Sims sold more copies then Doom 3, does that make them great game?:wink:
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BTW :: Sims sold more copies then Do(o)m 3, does that make them great game?:wink:
Yes the sims was obviously a great game in that many people enjoyed it. But that doesn't mean that I liked it.
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heh...edited name. but yes, Sims were meant for different audience and i really dont think we will find many Sims fans here on these boards. there are too many people here who played different FPS for many years and after all the hype their expectations for D3 were simply too high....

i remember all the movies before game was released and i was really hyped to play it.... but it simply didnt fulfil them.... i remember starting topic to compere D3 and COD:UO and in my eyes COD:UO gameplay simply wiped the floor with D3. why?
diversity..... yes, it was HEAVILY scriptted, but you had different missions,change of pace, twists (like that bombing mission, when you end fighting alongside resistance on the ground) and feeling was simply amazing (i still dont think there is anything in D3 that can compere with boarding ship and coming to Stalingrad)....


for people that arent hardcore FPS players and for example just got into gaming D3 was great experience.... specially cause graphics were good, it had "something", but after playing FPS games for 7 years now (both single and multi) i simply had different idea what to expect from D3 when i was watching all those movies and reading all the hype.... and thats prolly the biggest reason why i got bored with it.... graphics couldnt hold it to the end and gameplay was same all the way....
if there was just a bit more diversity i think D3 would hit many more hearts among hardcore bunch....
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What were they like? IMHO Doom2 is still the best game ever.
You misunderstood me, I was NOT knocking D1 & D2...I loved 'em too. But they weren't exactly "thinking man's shooters", they were the original run backwards gunning like hell at the swarms coming at ya game.

I thought D3 captured that feeling well. Just monsters all out to get you and you frantically just trying to stay alive. :)
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If after the intro that long stretch of Mars base level after level had been cut in half it would've improved the game. I enjoyed the hell and archaeological digs sections toward the end quite a bit, but it was tedious as hell getting there. And the whole story-driven-via-logs element was very poorly written and implemented into the game, especially for someone like me who's played the System Shock titles numerous times each.
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Er, the marines in Doom 3 do that, too. They may not have the best marine AI, but they're not simply "run towards player and attack until dead."

It's always fun to have someone quibble and miss the point. Yes, the marines did do something different. They ran behind boxes, seemed to be the same ones everytime so I had to wonder if it was scripted, and then proceeded to pop up - fire - duck down until I died.

Technically this is different from charge the player attacking until dead, so yes you are right. But it still is hardly good AI and is definitely no where near the flexible and interesting responsiveness the FEAR AI has shown in the demo.

So I'll say it again. FEAR shows us that crampt, shadowy, linear games are considerably improved by using good AI in them. I think JC, despite being pretty on the money when it comes to graphics technology and development, has lost the plot on the question of AI within games.
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Nah, it's not scripted. Run away a little bit and you'll see.
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Nah, it's not scripted. Run away a little bit and you'll see.

it doesnt have much "brain" either..... its like engine took all of their time.....
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Nah, it's not scripted. Run away a little bit and you'll see.

And this is an important distinction in this discussion because...?
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And this is an important distinction in this discussion because...?

You've said they did x, Chalnoth told you they did y, then you said y was scripted, and Chalnoth told you y was not scripted.

In case you haven't noticed Chalnoth is rebutting your arguments. Whether the rebuttal is an important distinction to make for this discussion or not depends on whether your original arguments were relevant to this discussion in the first place.

:insertpopcornsmiliehere:
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Yeah doom3 was good but I doubt it has any good replay value and I when I tried MP it was so dodgy ( like you had to manual enter ips or it wouldn't connect ). Frankly the one bad thing about doom 3 was the AI was dumb and was boring and annoying at times.
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You've said they did x, Chalnoth told you they did y, then you said y was scripted, and Chalnoth told you y was not scripted.

If you are going to quibble, get it right. I said it I had to wonder if it was scripted not that it actually was.
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it doesnt have much "brain" either..... its like engine took all of their time.....
Well, I'm pretty sure that Carmack had little to nothing to do with the AI. And even though the AI of those marines has its shortcomings, all the aspects of good AI are there. All one would need to make them really compelling is add a little bit of scripting (ex. don't always follow player: in most areas the player has only one way to go, so waiting in ambush would often be better).

At the same time, one could argue that it's by design: they're still zombies, after all.

That said, I really would have liked it if some of the monsters, like the imps, had better AI. For example, the imps were shown to move along walls/ceilings during scripted sequences, so it would have been nice if they could do it in an unscripted way, too. I just don't think the marine AI was so bad for the game.
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It's always fun to have someone quibble and miss the point. Yes, the marines did do something different. They ran behind boxes, seemed to be the same ones everytime so I had to wonder if it was scripted, and then proceeded to pop up - fire - duck down until I died.

Technically this is different from charge the player attacking until dead, so yes you are right. But it still is hardly good AI and is definitely no where near the flexible and interesting responsiveness the FEAR AI has shown in the demo.

So I'll say it again. FEAR shows us that crampt, shadowy, linear games are considerably improved by using good AI in them. I think JC, despite being pretty on the money when it comes to graphics technology and development, has lost the plot on the question of AI within games.

All FEARS AI does is get the player in it's line of sight to fire at it then runs away when reloading. It also appears to try running around the player, but doesn't do any of it based on tactical decisions. It just carriers out some predetermined behaviours depending on which ones it can physically carry out (e.g if it can't get to the player it will camp, if it can it will move towards the player). Despite being conceptually simple it appears to be quite complex to alot of people which is why JC said not to bother with ultra complex A.I. In other words FEAR proves his point.

Ok so Doom 3's marine A.I. wasn't as good, but I don't remember their being that many marines in the game anyway and the other creatures (mostely imps) would have been too hard for most players even if they did something remotely cunning such as waiting for the player to walk past or atleast very close untill they pounced, like in the Alpha where the imps were alot faster and scarier :roll:
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I was talking to a developer a while back about scripted missions versus a random mission generator. He said that if you used a random mission generator, you still had to make sure that the missions it generated were interesting to the player. If you were going to do that, you might as well script all the missions and give the player a full experience, show him some sights and set pieces, give him interesting things to do.

Carmack is saying the same thing. There is no point giving NPCs extremely complex AI (which is what the hardware manufacturers think you should be doing with all the extra CPU power), when you can script it, make it interesting, and allow the player's imagination to imbue this simplistic AI with all kinds of intelligence that it doesn't have.

You only have to look at good AI (like bots in UT2004) to see that although this AI can be a challenge to the player, it doesn't actually play like a person, and once you've figured out the rules the AI plays to, it is easy to beat by exploiting those rules.
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Carmack is saying the same thing. There is no point giving NPCs extremely complex AI (which is what the hardware manufacturers think you should be doing with all the extra CPU power), when you can script it, make it interesting, and allow the player's imagination to imbue this simplistic AI with all kinds of intelligence that it doesn't have.

thats where this whole disscusion is based. i just dont think D3 was interesting enough.
too much of same for too long. i just wish they had more diverse enviroments... thats my biggest problem with D3.

you can have open levels with same monsters and it might be fun. as i said, just look at COD:UO and how they managed to get away with even dumber AI and even more scripting... i played COD:UO 3 times and it was always fun....

(speaking of which i might take a loook around and reinstall it ;) )
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thats where this whole disscusion is based. i just dont think D3 was interesting enough.
too much of same for too long. i just wish they had more diverse enviroments... thats my biggest problem with D3.


I completely agree. The very short outdoors and hell levels showed what else could be done, but it was almost more painful to see how they could have done much more than the techno-dungeon crawl that was 85 percent of the levels.

I suspect that the reason why the levels were designed that way was to play to the limitations of the engine. Large, open levels with lots of enemies and lots of shadows would have just been unplayable.

In my opinion, Carmack designed an engine and they put a game around it, rather than designing a game and then building the engine to run it.
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Except large, open levels have been designed for Doom3. They can run just fine, but you just have to be a bit careful what you do with the lighting and object placement (e.g. a lot of trees around sunset would kill rendering performance for stencil shadow volumes).
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Except large, open levels have been designed for Doom3. They can run just fine, but you just have to be a bit careful what you do with the lighting and object placement (e.g. a lot of trees around sunset would kill rendering performance for stencil shadow volumes).

Remember how many people complained of low framerate on release, even with small, cramped levels and minimal enemies?

I'm sure you can "design" a large level if you are very careful by not putting in too many objects or much lighting (if that's the sort of minimalist look you want). Try doing a whole gameful of them with sound, AI, and on the target machines for the D3 release 6 months ago before the G70 arrived, and you'd have a lot of people complaining the game was unplayable.
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Nah, in some ways, it's easier to have a big outdoor level, since the majority of the lighting comes from above. But I think the main problem is that stencil shadow volumes will typically look just too harsh for an outdoor environment. They work okay in dark corridors, but outside they'd only do a decent job of approximating a sunny day sometime near midday. Any cloudiness or foginess and you've got problems, and sunrise/sunset would be horrible for performance.

But you could probably get away with ignoring shadows from ground-based lights entirely, since the sun is so bright.
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Something like this? Outdoor level with 5 O'clock shadows and water with fresnel effect (first screenie has bloom enabled).

http://img297.echo.cx/img297/5226/shot000102vp.th.jpg (http://img297.echo.cx/my.php?image=shot000102vp.jpg)

http://img239.echo.cx/img239/2986/shot000123yu.th.jpg (http://img239.echo.cx/my.php?image=shot000123yu.jpg)

http://img125.echo.cx/img125/2412/shot000178jz.th.jpg (http://img125.echo.cx/my.php?image=shot000178jz.jpg)

Overview (noclipping so no sky):

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1223/overview1ry.th.jpg (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=overview1ry.jpg)
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What framerate on what hardware? Where's the AI? Anyone can produce stills of what is still a smallish outdoor map - that doesn't tell us if it's playable, even at what looks like 1024x768 no AA/AF.
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BZB, I think you're still forgetting that outdoors you need fewer lights. Indoors you need lots of lights to get things properly-illuminated, but outside you often only need one light for the majority of the scene (with any additional lights having a very short range).
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If not sooner we will see how it performs in Quake wars which do look rather well so far
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All FEARS AI does is get the player in it's line of sight to fire at it then runs away when reloading. It also appears to try running around the player, but doesn't do any of it based on tactical decisions.

Not what I've seen of it. Regularly the A.I. will try to use two soldiers to pin me down, while a third then begins flanking. They shift cover while I am reloading and generally do things a bit differently each time.


Despite being conceptually simple it appears to be quite complex to alot of people which is why JC said not to bother with ultra complex A.I. In other words FEAR proves his point.

Which then begs the question, if that was his point - why did Doom have such lacklustre AI? As I said at the begining I have far more fun with the AI in the FEAR demo than I did through the entire Doom3 game.
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Agreed, I must've played the FEAR demo like 10 times already, was so bored with doom 3 I BARELY passed it.
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BZB, I think you're still forgetting that outdoors you need fewer lights. Indoors you need lots of lights to get things properly-illuminated, but outside you often only need one light for the majority of the scene (with any additional lights having a very short range).

So why were there no large areas in D3? And my questions on the pictures posted as "evidence" have not been answered.

If you're building a game to showcase the engine you are selling, you'd think they could manage at least one large scale set piece.
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doom3 is almost a year old and people are still slamming it, I don't think doom3 was ever meant to be a tech demo, and it seems the engine can do large areas because it's the same engine use for quakewars and quake4, I think everyone has seen the outdoor areas that are in them, the outside level from quake4 gameplay video is about the same size of a halflife 2 level

as far as doom3 goes I think it just didn't live up to the hype, I don't think it's as bad as some try to make it out to be, but it was good for a one time through, and it's cool to play around with some of the mods out there
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I think a lot of people have been spoiled by a lot of very immersive games since Quake2 came out, and perhaps had expected that id software was going to follow the same route - especially considering how long the game was in development for. I played up to the Delta labs when it came out, then got bored and gave it up. Just got a new system and picked it up again and finished it the other day... I found that the monster closets and other gripes I had last year weren't as bad in the latter half of the game.

But really though.. the monster closet bit - that has no place in any game post-1997.

It would have been nice too if the shadows in the game were actually a part of the gameplay, where you can hide in them, etc. I remember a pretty lame answer from id software saying "monsters can see in the dark" in response to whether or not shadows could be used in such a manner. Only time you can "hide" from anything is when the game is actually hardcoded for them not to see you. Huge missed oppertunity there, imo.
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The AI is likely the AI used in RtCW, which was actually hailed as pretty darn good, mind you that was a while back. Perhaps, it just wasn't adapted all that well for Doom 3, or it was too intensive and so they decided to go with something simpler.
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The AI is likely the AI used in RtCW, which was actually hailed as pretty darn good, mind you that was a while back. Perhaps, it just wasn't adapted all that well for Doom 3, or it was too intensive and so they decided to go with something simpler.

dont foget RTCW multiplayer, which was great.... D3 lacks there also.
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So why were there no large areas in D3?

So, why should there be large areas in D3? Since when was D3 supposed to be about large areas?

If you're building a game to showcase the engine you are selling, you'd think they could manage at least one large scale set piece.

Since when was the game showcasing the engine? This is somewhat circular logic..."The game doesn't do outdoor areas because of the engine, and the engine can't do outdoor areas because the game's a showcase for the engine and doesn't have any outdoor areas." You are the one saying the game was a showcase, and then you use that as proof that the engine can't do outdoor areas. Head spinning logic you've got there.

(It does not, in fact, make sense for id Software to make a tech demo game for their engine, since they make far more money from their own games then from engine licenses)


Perhaps Carmack (and id's other great programmers) made a great versatile engine, and then used it to make a game that was based off of what they wanted to do and not what the engine would let them to do? Perhaps the AI was never intended to be very intelligent (indeed, they've been saying since at least 2002 that the game would have mediocre AI), but that doesn't mean the AI system isn't good. The scripting system powering the AI can do advanced stuff if that's what you want to program it to do. You've got the excellent AAS path system which is responsible for enemies being able to get themselves around without getting stuck or banging into things. It's hardly an engine problem. Now of course it's arguable whether the design choice to have mediocre AI was a good one or not, but in any case it's not an issue of scripted AI vs non-scripted AI...all modern games use scripted AI. It's just how much effort the developer puts into it that makes the difference.

I'm sure you can "design" a large level if you are very careful by not putting in too many objects or much lighting (if that's the sort of minimalist look you want). Try doing a whole gameful of them with sound, AI, and on the target machines for the D3 release 6 months ago before the G70 arrived, and you'd have a lot of people complaining the game was unplayable.

Um, Quake 4? They've said that if you can run Doom 3 you can run Quake 4, so it seems to be about the same hardware target.

Oh, and on my old P3 866Mhz Geforce 4 system, most parts of the game ran at 5-10 fps but the outdoor areas ran at 30+ fps. It seems to be CPU limited because I still mostly get 5-10 fps with a Radeon 9800 Pro...the point is though if anything the game seems to work better outdoors. This is probably mostly because you have far fewer lights (you generally have a lot of small lights indoors, even if most don't intersect), fewer particle effects (Doom 3 used tons of particle effects indoors) and no fog. There are really a lot that has to go into indoor areas which don't in outdoor areas...it's not a simple scale thing "bigger is slower", although I suppose that's the simplistic way most people think.

Remember how many people complained of low framerate on release, even with small, cramped levels and minimal enemies?

All the quality settings really change are what texture layers are compressed...there's really hardly any visual difference. A Geforce 3 can comfortably handle the lowest setting, so there's certainly no reason someone with a proper modern video card can't run Doom 3 fine, unless they're being dense. No surprise really since the art assets were targeted at Geforce 3 level hardware...rather a pity since the game could've looked a lot better on higher end cards if instead of not using texture compression the higher settings used higher resolution texture.

Edit: Typo, I had a Geforce 4 not a Geforce 3
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Hmmmmm strike me blind if I'm lieing but the 1st too Dooms had wide open halls/rooms with swarms of monsters....
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So, why should there be large areas in D3? Since when was D3 supposed to be about large areas?


Since everyone has been saying that D3 is old-school, back to Doom style gameplay, monster closets included. Remember, you don't need complex gameplay because of this. Doom had lots of enemies and lots of large areas. Where are the large areas in D3?


Since when was the game showcasing the engine? This is somewhat circular logic..."The game doesn't do outdoor areas because of the engine, and the engine can't do outdoor areas because the game's a showcase for the engine and doesn't have any outdoor areas." You are the one saying the game was a showcase, and then you use that as proof that the engine can't do outdoor areas. Head spinning logic you've got there.

(It does not, in fact, make sense for id Software to make a tech demo game for their engine, since they make far more money from their own games then from engine licenses)


ID's games have always been tech demos for the engines they want to sell since Q2. :roll: Once again, where are the large areas like in Doom? If the engine can do it, where are they? UT2004 can do massive levels, and they can make the game unplayable on almost any hardware, and we've seen nothing even close to the smallest Onslaught level in D3 with AI at a reasonabale framerate on reasonable hardware.


Perhaps Carmack (and id's other great programmers) made a great versatile engine, and then used it to make a game that was based off of what they wanted to do and not what the engine would let them to do? Perhaps the AI was never intended to be very intelligent (indeed, they've been saying since at least 2002 that the game would have mediocre AI), but that doesn't mean the AI system isn't good. The scripting system powering the AI can do advanced stuff if that's what you want to program it to do. You've got the excellent AAS path system which is responsible for enemies being able to get themselves around without getting stuck or banging into things. It's hardly an engine problem. Now of course it's arguable whether the design choice to have mediocre AI was a good one or not, but in any case it's not an issue of scripted AI vs non-scripted AI...all modern games use scripted AI. It's just how much effort the developer puts into it that makes the difference.


Or maybe they hung their hat so firmly on the one trick pony of shadowing, and then used the CPU for all kinds of things that could have been passed to the graphics card, that they can't do large areas at a reasonable speed? Or maybe the engine looks crappy when you make levels without shadowing (as people have said)? Maybe large indoor levels = lots of shadows = low performance? Maybe outdoor levels = few shadows = looks crappy.


Um, Quake 4? They've said that if you can run Doom 3 you can run Quake 4, so it seems to be about the same hardware target.


And that's not looking like it's doing large areas, looking at the movies. I was very disappointed. Sure there's a few set piece animations going on, but mostly you're still stuck in corridors and trenches. Why is that do you suppose?
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They should have named the game differently, because it's just totally different than Doom/Doom2. This was supposed to be a Doom remake, dammit!

Fortunately there are enough people out there who make very nice mods. Doom/Doom2 mods for D3 really rock, although these are not 100% done yet.
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Id missed the boat. Well because JC did the most of his code on a NV30....DUH! you remember that card and the "golden drivers". Also no coop because JC hates to play with people, just wants to play by himself, Didnt want to make a GAME he wanted to make a movie.... and he realy digs pointy headed people...
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Since everyone has been saying that D3 is old-school, back to Doom style gameplay, monster closets included. Remember, you don't need complex gameplay because of this. Doom had lots of enemies and lots of large areas. Where are the large areas in D3?

Maybe you should listen to what the developers were telling you for the past few years, and not what "everyone" was saying. Doom 3 was a reimaging, not a sequel or a remake...the developers were very clear about what they were doing.



ID's games have always been tech demos for the engines they want to sell since Q2. :roll:

Says who? You? Who are you to say they were tech demos? You may not have liked them, but that doesn't mean other people didn't. You must not have a very good point if you have to prove it using facts you make up.

Or maybe they hung their hat so firmly on the one trick pony of shadowing, and then used the CPU for all kinds of things that could have been passed to the graphics card, that they can't do large areas at a reasonable speed? Or maybe the engine looks crappy when you make levels without shadowing (as people have said)? Maybe large indoor levels = lots of shadows = low performance? Maybe outdoor levels = few shadows = looks crappy.

Well, the CPU can't be used that much for graphics stuff. On my old system I turned all the graphics options off (shadows, ect.), set the texture resolution at something like 32x32, and ran the game in 320x240 and the framerate was the same. No doubt it was because of things like the particle effects and the animation (Doom 3 uses Inverse Kinematics on all it's characters) which just simply need a proper CPU. It's rather a no brainer that a P3 866Mhz isn't going to cut it for modern games. So, what exactly did they do on the CPU that they should've done on the graphics card?


And that's not looking like it's doing large areas, looking at the movies. I was very disappointed. Sure there's a few set piece animations going on, but mostly you're still stuck in corridors and trenches. Why is that do you suppose?

You clearly haven't seen the shakey cam video of the single player at QuakeCon. The outdoor bits weren't shown that long (they switched to other levels without hardly playing any of the outdoor level), but you could see they were at least as large as other games (except Far Cry...have to wait for Quake Wars to see that).
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It's the only game out that makes me go; "Yikes, it looks grrreat!!". But it has to played in a totally dark room on a high end puter to look it's best. :)

The "D3 tech" is great, and i have high hopes for Quake 4, Prey (..and RTCW 2? Oh yes, please!) etc. But Doom 3 - The Game ain't that hot. The first hour of the game is really excellent. At least i thought so the first time i played it. That hour is one of the best gaming experiences i've had so far. ;-)
But of course i got bored when i reached..what? Alpha Labs? Just like everyone else.
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Well because JC did the most of his code on a NV30....DUH!

Which is why the NV30 performance was so bad in the ARB2 path for a while that he had to create a special path for the NV30 to get framerates comparable to the ARB2 path? (Once some driver issues were cleared up the NV30 was able to run the ARB2 reasonably well and he removed the NV30 path) Last benchmarks I saw actually had the Radeon 9800 beating the GeforceFX card.


Also no coop because JC hates to play with people, just wants to play by himself, Didnt want to make a GAME he wanted to make a movie.... and he realy digs pointy headed people...

Carmack didn't make the game, he did some of the engine (the renderer). He's a tech guy, and outside of a couple things like the GUIs, he just let the artists do their thing. It's funny how people complain about the "Carmack is a god" thing, and then attribute so much of id's games to him. Damn hypocrites is all I can say...
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But of course i got bored when i reached..what? Alpha Labs? Just like everyone else.

and thats the problem.... you can sell millons of copies due to hype, but when people become bored less then half way through game, then it means something....

i dont care what engine can or cant do.... i just think game could have been shorter and much more fun... it was like "go through labs for 10 hours and fuck you" feeling....
5 hours less of gameplay could made D3 better game... there was really _NO_ need for hours of same room and corridors....

BORING AS HELL....
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BORING AS HELL....
Well, considering that the Hell levels were some of the most fun in the game, I'd say that the mid-game levels were more boring than hell :)
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Well, considering that the Hell levels were some of the most fun in the game, I'd say that the mid-game levels were more boring than hell :)
:lol:
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i dont care what engine can or cant do.... i just think game could have been shorter and much more fun... it was like "go through labs for 10 hours and fuck you" feeling....
5 hours less of gameplay could made D3 better game... there was really _NO_ need for hours of same room and corridors....

BORING AS HELL....


Hence the Xbox version. :)
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Hence the Xbox version. :)
Which, by the way, is currently selling quite well indeed:
http://xbox.gamespy.com/

....not that I'd be caught dead playing an FPS on a console, but there you have it.
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Why are those results from all the way back in April anyway?
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D3 Xbox came out at the start of April. It sold a ton, but I guess it has died off a bit since.

edit: oh, I see.... GSpy hasn't updated the stats... weird...

Which, by the way, is currently selling quite well indeed:
http://xbox.gamespy.com/

....not that I'd be caught dead playing an FPS on a console, but there you have it.


lol


I "suppose" it's the reason they are porting RoE to the Xbox as well. It doesn't seem likely that they are doing a director's cut for co-op this time though....
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And my questions on the pictures posted as "evidence" have not been answered.

First of all, I'm sorry I'm only able to reply now as my ISP decided I was not worthy to be graced by their interweb access these past couple of days (again and again and again and again ad nauseum).

Secondly, I think you're being way too defensive on this issue :). You don't see any mention of performance in my post because the "evidence" I posted was directed at Chalnoth showing that you can do sunrise/sunset outdoor areas, you can make the shadows look reasonably good, you can have this fog on the distant horizon, etc.

But since you asked for performance figures, those shots are taken at 1024 @ High Quality (which means 8xAF). On my 3.2C + R9800 Pro 128mb I get anywhere between 15 and 60fps depending on where you are and where you're looking at. For reference, in D3 I usually get between 25 and 60fps. If I use a distance-based performance optimisation D3 has (but is disabled by default) you can bump the fps ~8 in the worst case scenario.

If you allow me a segway for a sec on the reason for this performance, as you can see from the overview pic there is a lot of water it it and it's all a single plane with the sexy fresnel effect shader. Because of this you can't bisect it with a visportal (D3's main level optimisation feature) so this means whenever you are in the main courtyard area everything is being rendered even if it would generally be culled away if visportals worked correctly with reflections - if you're an engine licensee I have no reason to think fixing this wouldn't be a trivial matter. As a curious statistic, the average polycount being batched and rendered whenever you're at one end of the map looking all the way across the other is around 500K tris(150K are shadow volume tris) which is Epic's estimation for UE3 maps' polycount. Another thing to bear in mind is that that level is running water physics code that lets objects/enemies bob and weave realistically similar to HL2 as well as the 3D skybox effect, again similar to HL2. (which is not noticeable from those pics).

Now, on HL2 I play at 1024 at Max Quality with 6xAA/16xAF but the truth is Source isn't doing everything D3 is doing and in this level you can actually make a day/night cycle and just have your shadows work correctly with that with no extra effort because they are inherently dynamic. In all these engine comparisons it's important to keep in perspective exactly what each engine is doing, you can't just compare framerates as if it were an apples and apples situation.

As for the "smallish" comment, I resent that heh. The playable area of the couryard is roughly equivalent (if not larger) than most courtyards in HL2's city areas and the polycount is way, way higher.

Having said all that, I agree completely with the persons who said outdoor areas are actually easier on the engine. On that level you only have one light (the sun) casting shadows. There is an additional ambient light to make shadows brighter as it befits an outdoor setting and then there are small light sources (the car's headlights, the street lamp, etc.). In a regular D3 level you usually have at least 2-3, sometimes even 5-6 lights all shining on a very small area because you need many to properly light a room when you have so many occluders. D3 computes per pixel light on a per light/surface interaction so that means a lot of this computation is "wasted" because of overlapping light volumes. This just doesn't happen in an outdoor setting. On the other hand, it is harder to keep polycounts lower but even yesterday's hardware eats polys for breakfast, batching is a much bigger issue.
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Not what I've seen of it. Regularly the A.I. will try to use two soldiers to pin me down, while a third then begins flanking. They shift cover while I am reloading and generally do things a bit differently each time.

It may very well do those things, but not because the programmer created an algorithm that allowed it to work out what to do with each AI team member based on tactical information. Two of the team members might have randomly decided to stand still and fire while the other decided to randomly try running around the player in a circle.

I'm not saying FEAR's AI is bad, but that it may not be as intelligent as it seems. What players might mistake for intelligence may just be semi random behaviour.

Which then begs the question, if that was his point - why did Doom have such lacklustre AI? As I said at the begining I have far more fun with the AI in the FEAR demo than I did through the entire Doom3 game.

Even if Doom 3's AI was as good as FEARS, the rest of the game would have dragged it down. FEAR just has better gameplay it terms of the weapons, enemy stats/type, player movement, effects etc. if you gave it Doom 3's AI it would still be fun. Not quite as fun because Doom 3's AI was more linear, but I don't think it would ruin it that much.

I generally don't like Doom 3 atall, but I think JC's comments on AI were correct. Maybe his overall approach to AI isn't.
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I think the biggest problem I think with Doom3 was all the hype/overhype. People expected the be all/end all of video games from the hype and when it turned out to just be a really good single-player FPS everyone got pissed off.

Looking back on D3 I find myself liking it better than right after I finished playing it. It wasn't a bad game at all in retrospect, I just expected it to be so much more I guess. http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/images/smilies/icon_redface.gif
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I think the biggest problem I think with Doom3 was all the hype/overhype. People expected the be all/end all of video games from the hype and when it turned out to just be a really good single-player FPS everyone got pissed off.

Looking back on D3 I find myself liking it better than right after I finished playing it. It wasn't a bad game at all in retrospect, I just expected it to be so much more I guess. http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/images/smilies/icon_redface.gif

make that "average" and we will agree. ;)
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What would the performance of doom 3 be with proper textures and a proper ammount of polygons so heads aren't ponty?
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make that "average" and we will agree. ;)
How about we split the difference and go with "pretty decent" as it did add some new eye-candy? (Shadows and such ;) )

What would the performance of doom 3 be with proper textures and a proper ammount of polygons so heads aren't ponty?
They made a game like that, called it Half-life2 or something... ;)
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How about we split the difference and go with "pretty decent" as it did add some new eye-candy? (Shadows and such ;) )

i could live with that.... but gameplay.... oh well... i hope this is my last bitching over D3, which was big disappoitment for me... so be it....:wink:
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i could live with that.... but gameplay.... oh well
I don't think they weren't really aiming for gameplay in D3 so much as for atmosphere, and I think that was one of their major tactical errors in developing the game. (Just IMHO)
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It may very well do those things, but not because the programmer created an algorithm that allowed it to work out what to do with each AI team member based on tactical information. Two of the team members might have randomly decided to stand still and fire while the other decided to randomly try running around the player in a circle.

I'm not saying FEAR's AI is bad, but that it may not be as intelligent as it seems. What players might mistake for intelligence may just be semi random behaviour.

FEARs AI reacts to dynamic events via some form of perceptual model. They seem to have rudimentary visual and audio zones of detection because they react to noise that you make and to your flashlight whenever they see it. If you muck around with it not only do they do that but when searching for you, because you have relocated out of immediate sight, then the first guard to spot you calls out your position which the other guards then react to.

I don't think their overall behavior is as semi-random as you make out and they certainly seem to have implemented some form of group AI co-ordination in the mix.



Even if Doom 3's AI was as good as FEARS, the rest of the game would have dragged it down. FEAR just has better gameplay it terms of the weapons, enemy stats/type, player movement, effects etc. if you gave it Doom 3's AI it would still be fun. Not quite as fun because Doom 3's AI was more linear, but I don't think it would ruin it that much.

Doom3's AI pretty much just charged you, allowing you to do things like open a door - trigger the demons - duck back through the door and then as the monsters charged through the now open door to get to you shotgun them in the back repeatedly. I've yet to get FEARs AI to do the same thing.


I generally don't like Doom 3 atall, but I think JC's comments on AI were correct. Maybe his overall approach to AI isn't.

I think his comments reflect the somewhat older school design philosophy he has. Remember he was on record as campaigning during the design phase to remove even the limited amount of terminal interaction present in Doom3. This simpler approach to game design of very very straight forward run and gun is a major reason that while I appreciate the engine tech involved I have bought only one id game since Quake - Return to Castle Wolfenstein and that reminded me why I hadn't bought id games in such a while.
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How about we split the difference and go with "pretty decent" as it did add some new eye-candy? (Shadows and such ;) )


They made a game like that, called it Half-life2 or something... ;)
Come on.
I mean with the lighting and shadowing.
Hl2 had good textures/polygon counts but the lighting and shadowing is less then impressive.
i.e shadows in wrong places etc.
I think the source engine suits Hl2 good for wide open areas where it's much more easu notice low res textures and not as concerned with shadowing, but if someone were to do a doom 3 level with the source engine it wouldn't be neary as good.
riddick and doom 3> any other fps game imo.
Far cry is pretty close though, it's a nice blend of traditional detail (poly/texturing) and shaders/lighting and shadowing.
I love the stencil shadowing and lighting.
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I did enjoy Doom3 the first time I played it, I just found it had little to no replay value for me.

Same thing for me ... enjoyed the game the first time but not interrested to replay soon or later.

RainZ
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ethe dynomite is not locatable... uuurm yeah.... :rolleyes:

I liked doom 3 as well, but then that makes me a complete idioot as well I guess
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FEARs AI reacts to dynamic events via some form of perceptual model. They seem to have rudimentary visual and audio zones of detection because they react to noise that you make and to your flashlight whenever they see it.

They react to it in a relatively simple way though. They don't use any complex decision makeing algorythms to choose their course of action. If they did my CPU would take a battering.

If you muck around with it not only do they do that but when searching for you, because you have relocated out of immediate sight, then the first guard to spot you calls out your position which the other guards then react to.

Sharing each others line of sight isn't complex AI.

I don't think their overall behavior is as semi-random as you make out and they certainly seem to have implemented some form of group AI co-ordination in the mix.

There's lots of things that could pass for group coordination, although I was probably being over zelous with the word random.

Doom3's AI pretty much just charged you, allowing you to do things like open a door - trigger the demons - duck back through the door and then as the monsters charged through the now open door to get to you shotgun them in the back repeatedly. I've yet to get FEARs AI to do the same thing.

I was playing Doom 3 yesterday and noticed that two marines were camping while another appeared to be running around trying to find a way to flank me... or was he just running around for no reason and were the marines who were camping doing it because they had worked out it gave them a tactical advantage or just because they had been lucky with the random number generator?

Also I have indeed been able to get the FEAR AI to run after me to their doom. Infact I have been able to get the AI in every FPS I have played to do that. It's hardly supriseing though as I have seen human players do it too.
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AI can be smarter than human players though, b/c AI can see through walls and such. If a human player hears a sound to the right he has no idea which specific box you are hiding behind in a game it always knows where, but only tells the AI to act on it when it is flagged as noticing you. That is very different and gives AI an advantage compared to a real person. Of course that is more than balanced in that AI strategies suck balls and are repetitive.
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I don't think you can call that smarter, though.
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I agree in a sense, but if a person could see through walls in real life it would be a quite a talent :p . I just lumped that into being smart, though it is really just unrealistic, but that is inevitable since it is a game.

And bTW I did not disable my rep, so I don't know how it happened, but then I really don't care. :lol:
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Well, in one-on-one matches you can often sense opponents without seeing them. If you know a lot about a map, it's possible to set up an ambush just by hearing an item/weapon pickup or two.
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They react to it in a relatively simple way though. They don't use any complex decision makeing algorythms to choose their course of action. If they did my CPU would take a battering.

I rather thought from the discussion here that FEAR was thought to be a processor hungry game. Certainly the difference in performance between an AMD 64 3000+ and an XP 2500+ using the same rendering hardware and memory sizes hints very strongly that it wallops the CPU. Some of that is most likely the AI processing because they definitely do have a perceptual AI awareness model of some kind running internally.

Given that the FEAR AI is showing better physical awareness, like using flung debris for cover, then I think it is reasonable to argue it is a more complex AI simulation than you seem to be arguing for.


Sharing each others line of sight isn't complex AI.

No, but it is tactical awareness implemented showing some group AI has been programmed in. Something that was being asserted as not being there.


Also I have indeed been able to get the FEAR AI to run after me to their doom. Infact I have been able to get the AI in every FPS I have played to do that. It's hardly supriseing though as I have seen human players do it too.

In doom3 you don't have to try hard at all, the FEAR AI you do have to work at it a bit. Are there weakness you can exploit in the FEAR AI, hell yes. I can see already that their propensity for rolling through windows can be exploited.

The real test is going to be the full game when we have a variety of creatures to fight to see how they differ in combat styles and approach. All I can say is to re-iterate the point I made earlier - I've had way more fun playing the short FEAR demo and just messing with the game AI than I had through the entirity of Doom3.
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Just bear in mind that the slow bus speed of the Athlon XP 2500+ makes it quite a bit slower than the Athlon 64 3000+, morso than the performance ratings suggest. This, in fact, may make more of a difference as the Athlon 64 system has more memory bandwidth and lower memory latency.
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Aww, i hated D3, but i think it's very subjective.

For a 30 year old like me, playing D3 gets boring very quickly, when you have played D1, D2, Q1, Q2, Q3, <add other gazillon of shoot the horny monster that approaches you at sigh games> playing D3 is nothing different, there are basically no new things respect to older fps, its just the same shit all over again and again and again...

That said, if i was 16 without the <gazillon fps> background, i'd probably love D3, so im not surprised it sold really well.

It could have been a lot better game with some very easy changes, like you said, not fixed monster spawns (booooring and lame, get the item monsters appear at your back, reach position x and monsters spawn, aarrgh..) a bit more story (i appreciated the holodiscs you can read) and a bit more dialogue with the "NPCs", at least before hell door is opened.

Also, they could let you do more before all the mess happens, like patrol missions or things like that, it's pretty unfortunate because the levels are pretty good (despite being boringly dark) and the background "story" isnt very bad (very used theme though), but i wonder if that would of bored 16 year old players.
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I never said their wasn't any `group AI', what I am saying is the Fear AI doesn't take actions because it evaluated the situation using complex aglorythms, it doesn't know which place is best to take cover, or whether trying to flank the enemy is a good idea or even if it's possible judgeing by some of the radio conversations. It just does it because thats what it's been programmed to do, it relys on the fact that statistically it's actions will sometimes appear to be intelligent or human like.

Sometimes it will run away when reloading even though it puts it in a even more dangerous position, if it took a wide range of factors into account and wieghted them against each other, it would stay put.
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That said, if i was 16 without the <gazillon fps> background, i'd probably love D3, so im not surprised it sold really well.
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one word....HYPE......
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