What about this?

Ya know? I've been wondering about this "kick-ass" graphics engine id dazzled us all with, but something started nagging at me. Something that hit me like a huge BFG blast! Something that classic doom has that all these "kick-ass" new FPS game engines can't seem to no longer do. Remember in classic DOOM whenever or wherever you "mixed-it-up" with any of the former humans/Demons and then you leave the area to do whatever....And you happen to come back to that area, you'd see the the bodies STILL LYING THERE!! It's kinda like returning to a pivital incident or a scene of some gross crime, this is something I always adored about old DOOM and what I don't see in most FPS of today. It seems that these newer game engines can't handle dead bodies staying at an area or permenant area wreckage anymore. What my concern is will we see this in DOOM3 or will id and their D3 engine will be able to handle dead corps that stay at an area no matter how long you mettle around the game level as well as area damage?

Thoughts anyone?

I'd say almost certainly. Doom3 is quite different from the original in concept-- that is, that of an interactive cinematic experience vs. a blast-fest. Each creature, is placed for effect, not as space filler. This combined with the attention to realism suggests a resounding "yes" to you question.

Also, the "bathroom scene" gives an example of a dead body not only not dissapearing, but being used in further events...

Agreed, there should be no corpse-dissolving. If newer games require corpses to disappear, again, this is a mark of technological regression, NOT progress.

I think you're right about that AndrewB, it is not progress. Doom 3 SHOULD have corpses that stay, but then again, it may not be able to be like that, considering that they are high poly models...then again...if the level can handle the enemies WAITING there, then why not lying there dead?

Now that I think about it, there is no logically justifiable reason why dead corpses cannot remain there indefinitely. They're no different than live monsters waiting in a spot.

AndrewB said:

Now that I think about it, there is no logically justifiable reason why dead corpses cannot remain there indefinitely. They're no different than live monsters waiting in a spot.

True, but what would happen if monsters actually spawned in the level, like something that just creates enemies, you might have 100 corpses in the room, imagine the slowdown...

But otherwise you point is true.

First of all, spawning monsters would be silly for a game such as Doom 3. That's for Hexen-like games, with things such as magic and spells and supernatural stuff.

Secondly, some games that don't have spawning monsters dissolve corpses anyway. There is no possible reason for this other than some programmer wanting the level to look cleaner, or something like that.

I WANT THE DEAD BODIES TO FUCKING PILE UP, NOT FADE AWAY!

AndrewB said:

First of all, spawning monsters would be silly for a game such as Doom 3. That's for Hexen-like games, with things such as magic and spells and supernatural stuff.

No it's not. Imagine you're walking trough a hallway, approaching a door. It may very well be that there is nothing behind it until the very moment you open the door - at which point the monster gets spawned into the game. It makes perfect sense to do this, since you don't notice a thing and it doesn't have to draw the monster as you're approaching the door.

And if you're talking about monsters actually magically spawning into your view - that does happen at one point in the leaked video.

Well, monsters do teleport in the original DOOM, so I suppose that wouldn't be such a sad thing in Doom 3. However, there's nothing to indicate that the monsters will spawn from nowhere indefinitely ala-Hexen. There should be a set number of monsters in the map when it begins, and a kill ratio at the end of the level. The kill and item and secret ratios give the player a reason to play the same map over and over, after all.

AndrewB said:

There should be a set number of monsters in the map when it begins, and a kill ratio at the end of the level. The kill and item and secret ratios give the player a reason to play the same map over and over, after all.

Considering everything indicates that levels will be in the style of one continuous map broken up into segments, I think the kill/item counter is gone for good.

Linguica said:

Considering everything indicates that levels will be in the style of one continuous map broken up into segments, I think the kill/item counter is gone for good.

Sweet!
/me drools
The kill/item counter sucked.

Actually, I think the loss of the kill counter will seriously reduce the number of single player maps. The kill counter always signified the end of the level, hence the end of that persons created adventure...

Then again, I'm just a crazy man.

Pffft, the corpses remaining is pretty nice, but it ain't paramount to create a kick-ass game - what's a lot more important is that the flow of monsters to kill is steady and that the game is FUN.

And btw, RtCW didn't have a corpse dissolve system. Why? Because fans wanted corpses to stay - I'm quite sure that you wont have anything to worry about in this regard (though I think it's laughable that people get so worked up about a small thing like corpses disappearing).

If corpses do dissolve I am quite sure there will be a console command to change the amount of time it takes them to disappear, or else turn it off.

If corpses stay, I assume that they will be solid. What about killing a dead enemy in a small hallway so that you can't walk through anymore ? I mean, would I have to cut it into pieces and/or will the Doomguy be able to push/pull objects (maybe up to a specific mass) ?

In that case, you'll probably have to gib the corpse if it's solid, or just alter the console commands to get rid of it. I just hope that at times they don't turn into corpses that can't be gibbed, thus blocking your path- that was annoying in Half-Life at times.

If the entire game is one big map, well, that really sucks. The same way Half-Life sucked. Games like that, there's absolutely no sense of how far you are into the game. You just have to force yourself to continue on until something significant happens, and even then, you don't know how significant that thing will be in comparison to things later on in the game.

Imagine battling through the maps, absolutely no idea of how you're progressing in the game. Then you reach some milestone and a cimematic video starts playing. You don't know if you've reached the end of the first map, or the end of the episode, or the end of the game.

On second thought, forget that analogy. Imagine climbing a mountain, except you have no idea how high that mountain is and have no way of tracking your altitude. Wouldn't that feel a bit frustrating? Half of your brain is telling you to turn back and stop playing, the other half is telling you to continue on. It just sucks I tell you, it sucks.

yeah but it's realistic, and could be done good (example, you see how far you're in the game by the level architecture, which gets progressively more and more hellish...)

But still, you would have no way of knowing how much more, gbluhhh.. heckish it's going to get. Also, realism should never be implemented at the cost of fun.

AndrewB wrote:
If the entire game is one big map, well, that really sucks. The same way Half-Life sucked. Games like that, there's absolutely no sense of how far you are into the game. You just have to force yourself to continue on until something significant happens, and even then, you don't know how significant that thing will be in comparison to things later on in the game.

Even if the game is divided into separate maps, you still might not have any idea how far in you are. Example: C&C Renegade. The final map felt just like the maps before it, and when it ended, it just up and ended. I didn't even realize it was the last map until the credits started playing.

So it's not just a phenomenon isolated to single-large-map games.

i think that if the dead boddies stay solid and dont dissapear, then staying true to the bathroom scene, they should eventualy rise again (this only applies to zombies, not hellspawn). i mean after all, if you plug a zombie a few times, they might be down, but they aren't any less alive than when they were attacking you. for a true kill i think you should obliterate it with a rocket launcher/bfg/etc so it has no body left to rise again with. any thoughts on this?

Numbered maps without a doubt DO provide a sense of progress in a game, because odds are you'll find out how many levels there are in the game one way or another, by talking to others, or by reading the back of the box. Perfect example, Doom 2.

Gatewatcher: Yes, that makes sense. The zombies in Quake were exactly like that. If there are zombies then they should be like this. I don't really care one way or the other if there are zombies in the game, but come to think of it, the sensation of being forced to use your ammo on an enemy who will keep returning to life would be a nice, thrilling one. The bad guy in Terminator 2 comes to mind.

AndrewB said:

some games that don't have spawning monsters dissolve corpses anyway. There is no possible reason for this other than some programmer wanting the level to look cleaner, or something like that.

Uh, there is a reason, graphics power...Look at Goldeneye, after you killed a bad guy, he dissolved. They fixed it too some extent in Perfect Dark, the body stayed, but after a while (or after you went a certain distance from it) it dissolved...

Also, realism should never be implemented at the cost of fun.

One on hand you say dissolving corpses is realistic, but then cmoplain about one big map...beh. Shit happens. Just pointing it out though.

AndrewB said:

If the entire game is one big map, well, that really sucks. The same way Half-Life sucked. Games like that, there's absolutely no sense of how far you are into the game. You just have to force yourself to continue on until something significant happens, and even then, you don't know how significant that thing will be in comparison to things later on in the game.

Imagine battling through the maps, absolutely no idea of how you're progressing in the game. Then you reach some milestone and a cimematic video starts playing. You don't know if you've reached the end of the first map, or the end of the episode, or the end of the game.

On second thought, forget that analogy. Imagine climbing a mountain, except you have no idea how high that mountain is and have no way of tracking your altitude. Wouldn't that feel a bit frustrating? Half of your brain is telling you to turn back and stop playing, the other half is telling you to continue on. It just sucks I tell you, it sucks.

Why is it frustrataing to not know how far along you are in a game?!?!?!? What does that have to do with fun?

What does graphics power have to do with it? If the game has the power to display the enemies while they're alive, then it definitely has the power to display them while they're dead! They don't magically start sucking up memory or resources while they lay there dead, unless there's a really bad programmer on the team.

You offer Goldeneye and Perfect Dark as examples, but no explanation as to WHY they dissolve after they die. They disappear when you reach a certain distance away. Why? What would be the drawbacks to leaving them there?

Xian said:

Why is it frustrataing to not know how far along you are in a game?!?!?!? What does that have to do with fun?

Read my post again. I clearly explained why.

AndrewB said:

If the entire game is one big map, well, that really sucks. The same way Half-Life sucked. Games like that, there's absolutely no sense of how far you are into the game. You just have to force yourself to continue on until something significant happens, and even then, you don't know how significant that thing will be in comparison to things later on in the game.
[/B]
the game should be about having fun and being immersed, not completing a checklist of what youve dont to the gameworld so you can brag to friends. "Ohhh, i made it to SIGNIFICANT EVENT #23! IM SPECIAL!"

Imagine battling through the maps, absolutely no idea of how you're progressing in the game. Then you reach some milestone and a cimematic video starts playing. You don't know if you've reached the end of the first map, or the end of the episode, or the end of the game.

Who cares? Thats a complaint of how long the game is, not orginization. In real life you wont get a breather.
[B]
On second thought, forget that analogy. Imagine climbing a mountain, except you have no idea how high that mountain is and have no way of tracking your altitude. Wouldn't that feel a bit frustrating? Half of your brain is telling you to turn back and stop playing, the other half is telling you to continue on. It just sucks I tell you, it sucks.

Once again, on a mountain you wont get a little sceen saing ".7 KILOMETERS TO GO!!! 3000 BONUS POINTS FOR NOT USING TOO MUCH OXEGEN!"

So i still dont see how the lack of unreaistic popup sceens make games like half-life suck. It just happens that half-life had long strtches that WERENT FUN. THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH A LARGE STEP FORWARD IN GAME DESIGN

The challenge for the developers is to make the player feel like they're going somewhere and achieving things - without the need of an end-of-level intermission screen. Assuming Doom III has some goal at the end, I'm sure they'll find ways of making clear that you're getting closer to it, without saying "you marked off 30 out of 35 levels".

Say what you want about Half-Life but in this regard it was very nicely done. You fight your way up trough the complex, and as scientists and security guards give you a little insight in what's happened and things to do, you sense you're getting closer to the final conclusions. Then, of course, you get thrown into Xen and you're kind of on your own for the last 4 maps or so.