Expectations of engine improvements

Even though it's using idtech5, we all know that vast improvements will be made to the engine that will result in Doom 4 looking significantly prettier than Rage. What sort of visual effects do you suspect will be implemented? Keep in mind that I'm not talking about features, such as destructible environments or iron sights; I'm purely speaking superficially. Here's a few of my speculations:

- Shadows cast and received on every single surface, with simulation of penumbra and complex effects such as shadows from smoke and fog, and the caustics you see on glass.

- A complex gore system which will allow enemies to be dynamically killed, which would finally result in death sequences as awesome as the sprites.

- High-detail textures that won't look fuzzy, even at close range.

- The ability to allow models to switch between several levels of detail based on your hardware, thanks to Directx 11 tesselation.

- Polygon counts high enough that there would be very little angularity in models.

- Realistic looking flesh for monsters. That's still very difficult because artists still struggle to remove the plastic/ceramic look of complex surfaces.

- Subtle fur shading for say, hairy Baron of Hell goat legs or the hair on the player's head.

- Realistic looking fluid. Doom 3 had very little fluid and Rage seems to not have much either.

Much smoother movement in intent models. And a not-so-all-knowing AI.

I have to admit that I was glad to hear Rage would be the first game to utilize IdTech 5. All I could think was, "Well at least if they screw things up it won't be on a DOOM game." Not to totally diss RAGE, but I really hope id learns from some of the problems RAGE brought to light and makes sure to correct them in DOOM 4.

Utilization of a physics system that's actually good.

Optimization to make it actually bloody work on PC properly.

MANUAL GRAPHICAL SETTINGS OPTIONS OUT OF THE BOX.

Ability to access console via ` instead of CTRL + ALT + `.

Character animations that aren't as... weird(for lack of a better term) looking as RAGE's.

Enough contrast to make lighting differences noticeable unlike RAGE and BRINK.

Maybe as a joke make the brightness slider actually alter the brightness from default to darker with no option to make the game brighter. That would certainly be a good slap in the face to the people who feel the need to crank up the brightness to ridiculous levels and post a very gray video on youtube.

Shadows cast and received on every single surface, with simulation of penumbra and complex effects such as shadows from smoke and fog, and the caustics you see on glass.

In combination with Megatexture and the wide open game environments, this could kill even some of the beefiest cards. It would undoubtedly look really good, but I personally don't think dynamic lighting is a very important feature in many games. Rage's lighting looked good enough to me.

Ability to access console via ` instead of CTRL + ALT + `.

Actually I kind of like this feature. You can turn it off in Doom3 anyway.

Character animations that aren't as... weird(for lack of a better term) looking as RAGE's.

I agree with this. The animation needed a bit more work. Part of the problem is that unlike Quake 4, Rage didn't use any motion capturing. I read a news article several months ago that said Doom4 would use motion capturing, so that's a good sign.

Maybe as a joke make the brightness slider actually alter the brightness from default to darker with no option to make the game brighter. That would certainly be a good slap in the face to the people who feel the need to crank up the brightness to ridiculous levels and post a very gray video on youtube.

I can't say I agree with this - and if you don't mind me saying it's clear that you've got extreme prejudices against those with opinions that differ from those of yours. I don't want to offend, but you really should calm down and reign in the attitude.

High-detail textures that won't look fuzzy, even at close range.

I'm not sure if you know this, but there are two factors that determine texture detail. The first is the texture filter, which translates the texture data to the renderer in such a way as to reduce aliasing and approximate real-world details. Rage apparently uses a simple filter to improve performance but this makes the textures look grainy: the quality of the textures could thus be mildly improved pretty easily by changing the filter out for a better one.

But the second factor is the resolution of the texture data itself, and this is where the real hard limits come in. Even when Rage used serious compression techniques and thinned out texture data for hidden/shadowed polygons, the entire game still took up a whopping 25 gigabytes. Constrast that number to the uncompressed internal builds of the game, which took up three terabytes of space. My point is that the biggest limit here is simply storage space.

Actually, Rage did use motion capture for the enemies.

Xeros612 said:

Maybe as a joke make the brightness slider actually alter the brightness from default to darker with no option to make the game brighter. That would certainly be a good slap in the face to the people who feel the need to crank up the brightness to ridiculous levels and post a very gray video on youtube.

And a slap in the face to anyone with an older CRT monitor, too, right? I guess those guys can all go to hell, since footage taken under their gamma/brightness settings looks suboptimal on today's shitty overbright LCD screens.

Actually, Rage did use motion capture for the enemies.

Yes, but not the NPCs in Wellspring (as far as I know; they just look a little weird).

Mithran Denizen said:

And a slap in the face to anyone with an older CRT monitor, too, right? I guess those guys can all go to hell, since footage taken under their gamma/brightness settings looks suboptimal on today's shitty overbright LCD screens.

Except the people doing this that I'm referring to are on LCD HDTVs and LCD monitors, deciding to crank the brightness up so their whiny 12 year old subscribers don't post a billion comments about how "hard" it is to see something slightly dark in the video while they're watching on their faggoty "mobile devices".

Why the fuck would you still be on a CRT in this day and age anyways? An "older" one at that? Especially when we're talking about modern games? LCD monitors aren't very expensive unless you're getting some huge one and they come with the same- if not more- brightness and contrast settings as CRTs. Don't start snapping at me just because you or one of your buddies is still using shit that outdated.

And christ, if you can afford a rig strong enough to run iD Tech V, you can afford a decent monitor. The original point was a joke anyways.

@Redeemer For the first point you responded to: That's true, but on the steam release that for some reason fucks with the "steam cloud" backup saving system, and given the hardware issues I've been dealing with this quarter (laptop HDD dying in september, my GPU overheating and shutting down my PC just earlier today while I was playing DNF in the Hive level), I don't want to risk not having that kind of backup system just to fix requiring an unnecessary extra two keypresses to open the console that's a minor gripe, but one that ought not have been in the engine all things considered.

For the third point: Haha, no. Refer to what I wrote above in response to Mithran, sans the hostility. It's got nothing to do with "prejudice" or "calming down" (because where the fuck was I not calm in the original post?), it's a matter of jokingly suggesting a feature to tell off people who make shit-quality videos for, as mentioned above, "whiny 12 year old subscribers[...]". I guarantee you that if I had a large following on youtube my Doom 3 videos would be filled with bitching about it being "too dark". You can fix "too dark" by adjusting your brightness settings. You can't fix "huge mass of compression artifacts in gray(formerly dark) areas".

Xeros612 said:

Except the people doing this that I'm referring to are on LCD HDTVs and LCD monitors, deciding to crank the brightness up so their whiny 12 year old subscribers don't post a billion comments about how "hard" it is to see something slightly dark in the video while they're watching on their faggoty "mobile devices".

Why the fuck would you still be on a CRT in this day and age anyways? An "older" one at that? Especially when we're talking about modern games? LCD monitors aren't very expensive unless you're getting some huge one and they come with the same- if not more- brightness and contrast settings as CRTs. Don't start snapping at me just because you or one of your buddies is still using shit that outdated.

I wasn't concerned about whatever whiny youtube nonsense you're on about, I just made the point that a functional brightness slider is a worthwhile feature to some people, and crippling it to spite a bunch of twelve year olds on the internet is sort of a retarded idea.

I happen to use a couple of my older high-end CRTs on occasion, as their contrast and color still beats any LCD monitor that I've ever seen to this day. They both work fine (so I never need to turn up the brightness myself), though there are people out there who aren't so lucky, but still haven't switched to an LCD yet for whatever reason. It might only be like 5% or less of the people who would ever play Doom 4 anyway, but crippling their ability to adjust the game so that it's properly viewable is a dumb idea if the only goal is to trot out some misplaced vindictiveness toward people who make videos that you don't like. I get that you were trying to make a joke or whatever, and I wasn't trying to snap at you, so I apologize if I struck a nerve or something.

Anyway, I'd think that in a lot of cases it might be preferable to brighten up Doom 3 videos enough so that everyone can at least see what's going on. While almost all gamers probably have a nice bright LCD screen these days, I'd think J. Random Youtuber is a lot more likely to be watching on some crappy failing CRT or through their crappy smartphone, or whatever other crappy screen renders Doom 3's default appearance unwatchable. The grey compression artifacts might look like ass, but at least you won't have people complaining about the darkness. Maybe that quality vs. accessibility tradeoff isn't one that you would want to make, but I can see why others would. If someone is really interested in seeing Doom 3's darkness the way it was intended, then they can always play the game themselves, where they can be as anal about appearance as they like.

Anyway, give me an awesome lighting/shadowing system and I'll be one happy camper.

GoatLord said:

Here's a few of my speculations:[/B]

- Shadows cast and received on every single surface, with simulation of penumbra and complex effects such as shadows from smoke and fog, and the caustics you see on glass.

If they could do this and maintain framerate, I think they would have already. They did mention going to 30FPS to get more graphical detail, so maybe. They also want more enemies onscreen though.

- A complex gore system which will allow enemies to be dynamically killed, which would finally result in death sequences as awesome as the sprites.

This is pretty much a pipe dream.

- High-detail textures that won't look fuzzy, even at close range.

Not happening. Rage's textures already push memory limits on console hardware, and a lot of very decent PC hardware too.

- The ability to allow models to switch between several levels of detail based on your hardware, thanks to Directx 11 tesselation.

This would be nice, but I don't see it happening, to be honest. Carmack tends to eschew fripperies like that for more solid, sweeping improvements.

- Polygon counts high enough that there would be very little angularity in models.

They want even more enemies on screen in Doom4, I can't see the models getting more complex.

- Realistic looking flesh for monsters. That's still very difficult because artists still struggle to remove the plastic/ceramic look of complex surfaces.

Yeah this is a huge artistic challenge that developers are trying to overcome all the time.

- Subtle fur shading for say, hairy Baron of Hell goat legs or the hair on the player's head.

This would be great, but see my comments on more detailed models.

- Realistic looking fluid. Doom 3 had very little fluid and Rage seems to not have much either.

Doom3's fresnel shader used for fluids was awful. Rage's is a lot better, but yeah not much water about in Rage. We'll see what way they go with that.

Personally I'm hoping for a better shadowing system too. I would *like* higher res textures, but I really don't see it happening. Hardware won't change enough in the year or two until the game is done to allow it.

@Xeros: I should be a bit more clear. Your jokes are really not funny, they sound more like bitter complaints than anything. Frankly, if you have something to say, you can say it without acting like an whining 12 year old. Honestly, many times you just come off as a really irritable guy.

Oh yeah, about the "prejudice" thing: I wasn't referring just to your earlier post in this thread but many others you've made across these forums. More often than not when someone disagrees with you you tend to argue your points almost violently to them.

AirRaid said:

That would be nice, but I don't see it happening, to be honest. Carmack tends to eschew fripperies like that for more solid, sweeping improvements.

In addition to this, does OpenGL even have an equivalent to DirectX11's Tesselation at this point? Considering iD Tech V runs on GL and all.

@Redeemer "Facetious" would have been a more appropriate term than joke. Don't give me any of that other horseshit, someone gives me shit I'm going to give it back. It's a simple concept.

AirRaid, you said "This is a pretty much a pipe dream" in reference to my comment about dynamic death animations. Why do you think this is? I know it's not the best example to cite games like Mortal Kombat 9 as showing how far we've come with detailed gore, but I don't think it's a total pipe dream. It being as badass as I see it in my head might be, but surely they could implement a system to have the death sequences be at least somewhat dependent on the weapon and angle of trajectory. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying how difficult such a task would be?

GoatLord said:

AirRaid, you said "This is a pretty much a pipe dream" in reference to my comment about dynamic death animations. Why do you think this is? I know it's not the best example to cite games like Mortal Kombat 9 as showing how far we've come with detailed gore, but I don't think it's a total pipe dream. It being as badass as I see it in my head might be, but surely they could implement a system to have the death sequences be at least somewhat dependent on the weapon and angle of trajectory. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying how difficult such a task would be?

Mortal Kombat 9 gets away with it because there's like two character models on the screen at once, and a detailed backdrop behind the stage on which they can move around behind them. A prerequisite for a FPS like Doom 4 is having lots more character models on the screen simultaneously, as well as a world which you can explore, therefore forcing you to spread out the detail instead of concentrating all of your hardware power on some awesome dynamic death animation.

Honestly we won't see a huge leap in visuals like this until the next generation of games console arrive. By which time idtech 5 will have become old and grown a beard.

Xeros612 said:

In addition to this, does OpenGL even have an equivalent to DirectX11's Tesselation at this point? Considering iD Tech V runs on GL and all.

I've always understood that capabilities such as this come from the hardware, not what graphics API you're using. I might be missing something here though.

Not to mention that if Doom 4 is developed in a similar manner to Rage (consoles first, PC after) then we'll be fortunate if we see any post-DX9 exclusives like tessellation on the PC because the Xbox and PS3 have DX9-era GPUs iirc. Whether or not DirectX/Direct3D is being used would make no difference.

GoatLord said:

AirRaid, you said "This is a pretty much a pipe dream" in reference to my comment about dynamic death animations. Why do you think this is? I know it's not the best example to cite games like Mortal Kombat 9 as showing how far we've come with detailed gore, but I don't think it's a total pipe dream. It being as badass as I see it in my head might be, but surely they could implement a system to have the death sequences be at least somewhat dependent on the weapon and angle of trajectory. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying how difficult such a task would be?

K Maybe I was a bit vague with that reply. You mentioned having death sequences similar to the original sprites. You also mentioned the word "dyanamically". Now, the reason MK9 gets away with those animations (I just youtubed a couple, havent played it), is because as DoomUK says, there is shit all else on screen at the time. And in addition, they obviously spent a significant amount of time on those sequences, and correct me if I'm wrong, isn't that something that MK is known for? Brutal Fatalities? The thing is, they are anything but dynamic. They are very carefully hand crafted animations, viewed from very specific camera angles, from what I can see. This is very different from a death animation of a demon that can be viewed from any angle, at any time, in any light, surrounded by a host of other shit the game has to render.

Until someone figures a way to dynamically bisect a polygonal mesh structure that doesn't look like shit, it's not going to happen.

I think the best you can hope for from Doom 4 is a similar system to Rage. Thing is Rage's enemies are all humanoid. Hard to Motion Capture a demonic cybertronic spider.

DoomUK said:

Not to mention that if Doom 4 is developed in a similar manner to Rage (consoles first, PC after) then we'll be fortunate if we see any post-DX9 exclusives like tessellation on the PC because the Xbox and PS3 have DX9-era GPUs iirc. Whether or not DirectX/Direct3D is being used would make no difference.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the 360 runs on like... DX9.0c or something, and the PS3 runs on some older version of OpenGL.

Well, that's disappointing. As fancy as id's engines tend to be, I would have thought they'd jump on DX11's features.

GoatLord said:

- A complex gore system which will allow enemies to be dynamically killed, which would finally result in death sequences as awesome as the sprites.

this.

Every FPS I've played fails at blood and gore IMO. I'm so tired of blood clouds and fixed position/location dismemberment. I'm still waiting for a ground breaking gore system that allows stuff like smoking see-thru-holes in carcasses and mutilation etc. The corpse transformations into red goo in Doom was so satisfying to witness... now bring that to new game tech.

Also, I must add, for kills in games to be satisfying doesn't need overdose of blood. Hell, sometimes, just a realistic stone cold drop right in the place after a headshot from a rifle or pistol would be so much cooler than a red clouded somersault rag-doll overkill....

Left 4 Dead 2 is the closest I've seen to having dynamic kills. It's still ultimately scripted, but at least you get the option of witnessing a number of different deaths depending on where they're hit.