Open areas

Using curve patches, I'm sure you could have some fairly decent outdoor areas, you'd just have to avoid overpopulating them with enemies/models etc, since AFIAK shadows from these things cause the biggest increase in polycount.

But what do you expect, it's not like Unreal2 is anywhere near as technically stunning as D3 - it would be able to run huge areas with lots of people with the kind of engine features it has.

dsm said:

That article is from last year. The info is outdated and they later stated that they had possibly dropped the idea of outdoor areas for reasons they wouldn't go into detail about. They hinted that it was not totally impossible, but they wouldn't count on it.

Ouch, that sounds like a disappointment. I'd love to see some outdoorlevels. Walking around on the surface of Mars with all the stars above you could provide an excellent eerie atmosphere.

All right, lemme get this off my chest.

First of all, Doom 3's engine is very well capable of rendering huge outdoor areas - everyone who says something different deserves to be beaten to a bloody pulp for spreading mean rumours that damage Doom 3's reputation.
The E3 presentation last year showed a huge Martian landscape in the intro sequence - I've even seen illegal screenshots of this, so I can tell that those areas are HUGE. It has also been stated numerous times by the iD guys that while Q3Team Arena had some decent sized outdoor areas, they intend(ed) to expand on this and enable the D3 engine to render even larger areas - and it seems that they succeeded in this judging by the E3 presentation last year.

Then there was a comment that made me frown. The old Doom had large outdoor areas? Yeah it did, some in Hell and in Doom 2 - certainly not in Doom e1 and e2.
There were some smaller areas that seemed to be outside, but since windows in that game didn't have any glass (but they were most likely supposed to suggest that these window'ish holes had glass), it'd be prudent to assume that these so-called "outdoor areas" were actually protected by a large glass dome.

And I seem to remember all those terraforming arguments before and it seemed to be concluded that it'd take forever to do. And when I look at screenshots, Mars doesn't look all that terraformed. Actually, it looks very un-terraformed and very uninviting to go outside. Besides, are outdoor areas really that necessary? I think not, Doom 1 was all about claustrophobic hallways and rooms and that's the way I prefer it too.
I usually hate large outdoor maps, because they usually involve a lot running and little gunning - Doom 3 is supposed to be scary, and to achieve this, it will have to be mostly indoor. Some outdoor areas in Hell is a must though, but even in Hell, there must be some claustrophobic caves.

I'd save the outdoor areas for the potential retelling of Doom 2 (hopefully, the sp mission back will be a retelling of Doom 2, because then we won't have to wait so long for it), while keeping Doom 3 - the retelling of Doom 1 - like Doom 1, which is primarily claustrophobioc.

As long as they enable the player to take a look at the landscape outside by looking through windows, it's better than having it indoor with no view of the outside at all.

Oh yes, and look at the recent "spider screenshot". This shot proves that Doom 3 is not just cramped spaces - there are larger rooms too.

Disorder said:

Walking around on the surface of Mars with all the stars above you could provide an excellent eerie atmosphere.

Add to that some dust that gets violently blown against the glass of your helmet and the sound of a raving sandstorm and I would hold my breath all the way.

Yes, I don't need huge outdoor areas in mars, but in hell it is a must.

Just saw the comment about surving for 2 minutes exposed to Martian elements. No F'ing way. You'd be dead in 10 seconds, tops.

You'd be non-functional in about 1 second due to severe frostbite you'd get on your whole body.

Crix said:

You'd be non-functional in about 1 second due to severe frostbite you'd get on your whole body.

Non-functional in 1 second? No way. Even if you were exposed to vacuum, you'd stay conscious for at least 10 seconds and be recoverable for another minute.

The average temperature on Mars is about -50°C. Wearing regular clothes, a human can easily stand 10 minutes in that temperature. Even on the extreme end (-80°C), you'd have time to reach safety.

The thing you'd die from would more likely be suffocation due to lack of oxygen, which would occur after only a few minutes and though indeed be solvable by providing the Mars personnel with carriable emergency oxygen tanks.

Fredrik said:

Non-functional in 1 second? No way. Even if you were exposed to vacuum, you'd stay conscious for at least 10 seconds and be recoverable for another minute.

The average temperature on Mars is about -50°C. Wearing regular clothes, a human can easily stand 10 minutes in that temperature. Even on the extreme end (-80°C), you'd have time to reach safety.

The thing you'd die from would more likely be suffocation due to lack of oxygen, which would occur after only a few minutes and though indeed be solvable by providing the Mars personnel with carriable emergency oxygen tanks.

Just another thing im remembering hearing about is the little buggies they used on mars for soil samples they said the electronics in them were fried from the extreme heat and radiation after 45 mins to an hour?

12ga. said:

Just another thing im remembering hearing about is the little buggies they used on mars for soil samples they said the electronics in them were fried from the extreme heat and radiation after 45 mins to an hour?

I couldn't find any articles about this so I don't have any facts, but I would guess that it happened due to electromagnetic radiation heating up the metallic parts (fork-in-microwave effect). A lesser problem for organic humans.

Though I could be wrong about this, please point me at an article if you have one.

Here is a page about a cool Mars buggy-thing: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/rovercom/rovcom.html.

Fredrik said:

I couldn't find any articles about this so I don't have any facts, but I would guess that it happened due to electromagnetic radiation heating up the metallic parts (fork-in-microwave effect). A lesser problem for organic humans.

Though I could be wrong about this, please point me at an article if you have one.

no I dont have any articles on it sorry from what i remember I saw it on the discovery channel.

First of all, Doom 3's engine is very well capable of rendering huge outdoor areas - everyone who says something different deserves to be beaten to a bloody pulp for spreading mean rumours that damage Doom 3's reputation.
The E3 presentation last year showed a huge Martian landscape in the intro sequence - I've even seen illegal screenshots of this, so I can tell that those areas are HUGE.

Sorry to disappoint you, but that "huge" martian landscape isn't nearly as vast as it may seem in the video. Once you noclip around the area you see that basically everything is built with the player's position from the window in mind, and like I said, it's not built to scale. If you want I'll take some screencaps of the area to better illustrate this. Right now I have seen nothing to prove that the engine can do LARGEish outdoor environments with the same kind of attention to detail as the indoor areas. And I'm not saying any of this to damage Doom3's reputation, I'm just stating what I think to be the truth.

Doom3's indoor areas are actually quite often lower detail than many modern Q3 maps. From my brief experiences with DoomEdit, it seems to me that it's a pretty hard engine to work with, because you have to try and minimize the number of lights and map detail, whilst still keeping things looking good. I might try doing an outdoor area when I get win2k up again actually.

DaJuice said:

Right now I have seen nothing to prove that the engine can do LARGEish outdoor environments with the same kind of attention to detail as the indoor areas. And I'm not saying any of this to damage Doom3's reputation, I'm just stating what I think to be the truth.

You're not hurting Doom3's reputation, but I'm willing throw in my good reputation in to say that the engine can do largeish oudtoor environments, but of course no "rolling terrain" or similar things.

If you take the huge Team Arena map and compare it I'd say you can doo bigger, more detailed and of course better looking outdoors with Doom3.

The only thing you have have to take care of is the amount of lightsources displayed. But when rendering huge outdoors one lightsource can achieve nice results: a huge sun.

BTW - the martian landscape is actually pretty big. Nocliup down to the oppisite part of the window and look back - if that's not an acceptable size then what is.
I've made some "tests" with outdoors about 5 or 6 times the size of the intro level (in any dimension) and they looked very good, especially with added detail.

ToXiCFLUFF said:

...because you have to try and minimize the number of lights and map detail...

I think that crunching map detail isn't halfway as important as keeping an eye on the lightcount. If you stay within the old 8k tris limit of Quake3 you'll still have plenty of polys to burn.

If you read some forums of the offscreen rendering world you can gain a good insight how to set up a properly lit environment with three light sources.

But I agree - lighting a secene is an art of it's own.

DaJuice said:

Right now I have seen nothing to prove that the engine can do LARGEish outdoor environments with the same kind of attention to detail as the indoor areas.

It's a common mapping guideline to keep the detail low in a large outside area and to put a lot of detail in small indoor areas. It keeps the amount of visible polygons a bit constant throughout the map. I wouldn't expect it to be different for Doom3.

BNA! said:

I think that crunching map detail isn't halfway as important as keeping an eye on the lightcount. If you stay within the old 8k tris limit of Quake3 you'll still have plenty of polys to burn.

If you read some forums of the offscreen rendering world you can gain a good insight how to set up a properly lit environment with three light sources.

But I agree - lighting a secene is an art of it's own.

Yeah, you are right actually... especially when there is monsters/models around, the number of lights seems to become the biggest factor. I've noticed that not many people have got the hang of lighting an area really well with only a few lights yet. In the maps I downloaded, there was 24 lights in view at some areas.

ToXiCFLUFF said:

In the maps I downloaded, there was 24 lights in view at some areas.

Welcome to Stutter3world.com :)

I don't know why I maintain a resource forum for technical aspects of Doom3 mapping if the people who go there just don't try to understand the engine.

People who just can't wait to supply custom content for Doom3 are so focused on their own importance as illegal doom3 mappers that they tend to completely overlook any base-guideline for working with this engine.

The thing I really fear when the game will be out is the ridiculous amount of custom maps plastered with swinging lights and / or stroboscobic effects.

The dynamic lighting allows for awsome effects (I did a pixar style animation of a jumping lamp just for fun and it turned out damn great) but to waste lightsources on a scene for nothing should be considered a crime in this engine :)

OK, thanks BNA!, rolling terrain is exactly what I had in mind when refering to large outdoor environments, I assumed everyone was on the same page as me. That's why I'm saying it's a limitation of the engine. There are plenty of new games out that are capable of doing these rolling terrains that stretch into the distance, yet Doom3, the big daddy of all engines will not be able to pull this off so well. In that way, the engine is not as versatile as many others.
But I pray outdoor gameplay will be a bigger part than they make it seem. I hope they don't just see it as a novelty, and instead use it as a way to introduce a bit of fresh flavor into id games instead of the same old, monster pops out of corrdior thing. But from the looks of it Doom3 ain't that game.

DaJuice,

besides FlightSims I can only name one game to have rolling Terrain: Tribes

There are surely others, but I can't name them.

As far as Doom3 is concerned - I think it'll be 90% indoors, but well - that's just the way it is.

There will be other games utilizing this engine which may eventually focus on larger outdoor protions, but for Doom3 I can't see it happen and I can't see it "fit in".

As always - time will tell and Doom3 will sell.

DaJuice said:

yet Doom3, the big daddy of all engines will not be able to pull this off so well. In that way, the engine is not as versatile as many others.

Does anyone have any facts to support their claims that Doom III, for some reason, "can not handle" outdoor areas ? I'll believe it when I read it in JohnC's .plan file.

dsm said:

Then there was a comment that made me frown. The old Doom had large outdoor areas? Yeah it did, some in Hell and in Doom 2 - certainly not in Doom e1 and e2.
There were some smaller areas that seemed to be outside, but since windows in that game didn't have any glass (but they were most likely supposed to suggest that these window'ish holes had glass), it'd be prudent to assume that these so-called "outdoor areas" were actually protected by a large glass dome.

DooM 1 e1m1 and e1m3 just for examples. Okay, you start out in the room in the first level and by the exploding barrel and at the top of the stairs there are "windows", true. At that time with the engine capabilities rendering glass would have not been possible or at least not in a comparably believable way. But in the same map right before the final room, there is a secret area where you go outside and in the middle of the toxic pool you can see through the in the first room, where you get armor. Also in e1m3 you go outside mid-level where there is an area surrounded by slime and imps on either side of you in a higher structure surrounding the slime (I'm sure anyone would be familiar with these and all the other areas in the first game not in just in Hell). To assume that there is some sort of "large glass dome" protecting you from the phobos atmosphere is as comparable in foolishness to defend the fact that the 15 mile wide ship in Independence Day crashing into the world didn't nuke everything by (insert unlikely "well is was an alien craft so it. . . argument). Trying to explain something that is unlikely (Being alive outside on a Martian moon) with an even unlikelier solution (Giant dome, which would have to be hinted at like the glass--it can be excused/assumed because its in a window shape) is trying too hard to defend a mute point. My point is, yes in real life you'd probably die. I don't know or care how quickly, it's a fact regardless. But in a movie or game the entertainment factor needs a buffer zone in our imaginations for it to work and for us to be able to enjoy it. Like in Independence Day, you could look at it logically that earth would have been nuked in the end in real life, but if you don't allow yourself to be entertained that's your own fault if you have a bad experience with a movie, game, etc. I've rambled enough, just while not giant canyons in DooM, there are outdoor areas moderately large enough for the time in gaming, and there's no dome. He has a suit and that's good enough for me, even though ironically I'm a bitch to watch movies with for the same reason I'm arguing. *murmurs bitterly, "It would have blew up earth dammit ; P*

I think it´s just a rumour spread by other game´s fanboys, because they need something to pick on, so that they can believe by themselfes the Unreal2 or Halflife2 or Halo2 engine is superior. And the reason for the rumour are the Doom 3 screenshots, which show corridors instead of "wow look at this, a giant landscape with trees and sunrise" Epic style screenshots.

If Doom3 can render landscapes of this size I'll be happy.

http://www.gameblitz.com/images/un2.jpg
http://www.macgeneration.com/jeux/images/unreal2/01.jpg

Scabbed Angel said:

DooM 1 e1m1 and e1m3 just for examples. Okay, you start out in the room in the first level and by the exploding barrel and at the top of the stairs there are "windows", true. At that time with the engine capabilities rendering glass would have not been possible or at least not in a comparably believable way. But in the same map right before the final room, there is a secret area where you go outside and in the middle of the toxic pool you can see through the in the first room, where you get armor.

I wouldn't call that a "huge outdoor area", in fact, it's rather small and could have been protected under a large glass dome or simply a glass roof. Anything else?

Also in e1m3 you go outside mid-level where there is an area surrounded by slime and imps on either side of you in a higher structure surrounding the slime (I'm sure anyone would be familiar with these and all the other areas in the first game not in just in Hell). To assume that there is some sort of "large glass dome" protecting you from the phobos atmosphere is as comparable in foolishness to defend the fact that the 15 mile wide ship in Independence Day crashing into the world didn't nuke everything by (insert unlikely "well is was an alien craft so it. . . argument).

I dunno who's the most foolish...you for insinuating that a Mod is a fool, thus making his blood boil, or me for suggesting something pefectly likely, which you haven't managed to gather proper proof against in your post. Again, that area is not what I'd call "a huge outdoor area" - it's merely a long room where the roof appears to be "missing".

Trying to explain something that is unlikely (Being alive outside on a Martian moon) with an even unlikelier solution (Giant dome, which would have to be hinted at like the glass--it can be excused/assumed because its in a window shape) is trying too hard to defend a mute point.

I'm still waiting for you to come up with some hard facts that could suggest that a giant glass dome is unlikely about 143 years into the future.

My point is, yes in real life you'd probably die. I don't know or care how quickly, it's a fact regardless. But in a movie or game the entertainment factor needs a buffer zone in our imaginations for it to work and for us to be able to enjoy it. Like in Independence Day, you could look at it logically that earth would have been nuked in the end in real life, but if you don't allow yourself to be entertained that's your own fault if you have a bad experience with a movie, game, etc. I've rambled enough, just while not giant canyons in DooM, there are outdoor areas moderately large enough for the time in gaming, and there's no dome. He has a suit and that's good enough for me, even though ironically I'm a bitch to watch movies with for the same reason I'm arguing. *murmurs bitterly, "It would have blew up earth dammit ; P*

This last quote is the only part of your post that I can agree with. Yes, games don't need full realism - I guess I only argued so vehemently against outdoor areas in Doom 3 because I truly hate large outdoor scenarios. Imo, large outdoor scenarios are nothing but showing off of the engine, providing beatiful scenery and "saving" the claustrophobic types from mad fits, but it rarely contains much decent gameplay material. I pretty much avoid the large outdoor maps in RtCW, because they're the least fun levels to play.

Oh yes, and just for the realism record, since 'Freddie Rik Krueger' believes that you can survive so long outdoors on Mars: successfully handling a weapon in Mars' atmosphere is very unlikely because the recoil is considerably more powerful due to Mars' lower-than-Earth gravity - firing the shotgun out there would send you flying backwards through the air or simply break your arms. Thankfully, it's just a game, and I hope it'll be a FUN game (which means a game with 90% indoor action among other things).

The E1M8 courtyard is about 200x150 meters.

successfully handling a weapon in Mars' atmosphere is very unlikely because the recoil is considerably more powerful due to Mars' lower-than-Earth gravity - firing the shotgun out there would send you flying backwards through the air or simply break your arms.

Gravity is a vertical force and doesn't have a bloody thing to say about the horizontal force a fired weapon exerts on the one that holds it. You would "fly" backwards with the same speed you'd get on Earth, which is also known as zero meters per second provided that you have your feet on the ground.

dsm said:

I wouldn't call that a "huge outdoor area", in fact, it's rather small and could have been protected under a large glass dome or simply a glass roof. Anything else. . .

First off, I'm not trying to insult you and am not calling you foolish. Regardless of you being a Mod, disagreeing with your opinion is not foolish, just I don't think that though your idea could explain that, unless it was somehow implied, there would be giant glass domes surrounding the base. I'm just saying that everyone who argues reality in a fictional gaming enviroment is arguing a mute point. Who cares? Chances are that demons wouldnt be physically materialized and we'd be fighting them with holy artifacts rather than guns. Which would be more fun? Sorry, but Heretic was lame. As I said it may not be a "canyon" (ie "huge outdoor area") but it wasn't a closet, either. Relatively speaking it was pretty large. Size doesn't matter anyway, hold your giggles if you will. ; P

dsm said:

I'm still waiting for you to come up with some hard facts that could suggest that a giant glass dome is unlikely about 143 years into the future.

Don't hold you breath : ) My point was not that a glass dome was unlikely, hell it could be, i just don't think that that was even considered. If everyone is so concerned with the reality factors of games, find a simulator. I could go on and on listing things that are not likely, and countering it with why not to bitch about it, but im just trying to say that taking realism so seriously in a game that is not in anyway realistic (in terms of situation not the lighting etc.) or nitpicking is foolish because there will be no answers to be had. I hope to have just as much fun as you in it, but, though i dont want to be running Lassi style to a Cyberdemon or something, i do like outdoor areas. Large glass domes or no. I still think it was the suit or id simply didn't give a shit. Nostalgia man, no offense.

The idea of having a huge glass dome that encapsulates a habitated area is ridiculous. I'll argue this point:

It wouldn't serve any purpose in protecting from stuff like storms, radiation or meteorites. There are already building walls for that, and building walls are more powerful and easier to repair than giant domes of glass. Regardless of technology.

It wouldn't serve any useful purpose in holding a local atmosphere. Light-weight protective suits would be cheaper and easier to build, duh.

If you were to encapsulate an area somehow, why choose glass or even a transparent material? There's no need for seeing the sun - you could just as well place any solar cells on the roof of a metal dome. A solid metal construction would give better protection and be easier to build . Yes, glass is awfully hard to work with.

Fredrik said:

The idea of having a huge glass dome that encapsulates a habitated area is ridiculous. I'll argue this point:

It wouldn't serve any purpose in protecting from stuff like storms, radiation or meteorites. There are already building walls for that, and building walls are more powerful and easier to repair than giant domes of glass. Regardless of technology.

It wouldn't serve any useful purpose in holding a local atmosphere. Light-weight protective suits would be cheaper and easier to build, duh.

If you were to encapsulate an area somehow, why choose glass or even a transparent material? There's no need for seeing the sun - you could just as well place any solar cells on the roof of a metal dome. A solid metal construction would give better protection and be easier to build . Yes, glass is awfully hard to work with.

Ridiculous, foolish. . . j/k ; ) Good point though. Suits, man, give me a suit!