The more open area, the bigger battle........

Well, I was thinking of somthing that would be cool. Throughout most of the game, we all know its gonna take place inside a facility. But when you go to hell, it would be sweet to have one level, where the terrain is set to max. I mean, one huge open area, tons of marines, and tons of daemons. It would be an all out war! That would be sweet! Or if you think "But your by yourself!" Than the battle like this could take place outside the Mars facility when the invasion begins!

A battle like this would be at night, and tons of terrain effects, like mountains, sand storms, craters, hills...flying limbs :D

Yes, that's a great idea, but why just one level? Why not have the entire game, a good mix of outdoor, and indoor levels. I really hate facility levels, I prefer roaming the outdoors, or visiting realistic locations, like maybe a Mars Colony town, over-run by demons.


But the idea of tons of marines fighting aganst tons of demons sounds excellent at once, in one all out war scene sounds great. Defintely a good idea.

Yeah, but we wouldnt want them to over do the
game with outdoor levels... maybe about six or so?

Me personally, I like indoor better, or if the levels were combination indoor/outdoor I would be even happier.

That´s right, a good combination of indoor and outdoor is the best, like for example the "Installation" episode of Quake2.

That is a fantastic idea! Though I would think that it should only be limited to one level.. 2 at best. Like was said, if something is truly great and memorable, you wouldn't want it overdone, now would you? It would be a fantastic experience.. with monster counts far exeeding any level of Doom.... (ex. Doom 2, level 9- The Pit: Critters= over 200.. maybe 300. I'll have to check ZDoom again to make sure which it is! :| )
But in a mass climactic battle of insanity.. ohh the carnage alone! Just like the war scenes of braveheart!

i love outdoor areas. there should be an elaborate sunset, with clouds and such...hey, the cover of master of puppets by metallica. yeah, thats perfect with the gravestones. it would be really spooky, or it could be like the hell fight seen in spawn the movie. that kicked ass...i love it when theres no limit to the horizon. you just see for miles.

Open enviroments...

For some reason that I still can´t comprehend, gamers are fascinated by this. Why?? I mean, it´s just larger triangles and more space to walk. It´s not a real landscape and yet I can assure you that there are beatiful scenarios on games like Rune, Unreal and Alice (the Hell-looking place at night).

But what´s the fascination with this large spaces? They exist for several years now in the world of FPSs, and most people are starting to add complex tools to render this things.
Sweeney completely forgot about DX8 capabilities and kept focusing on the terrain, at a point that looks like an obsession. Serious Sam, Halo, Tribes 2, Project IGI are a few examples of games where terrain´s a main feature.

Let´s go back to DooM3. Let´s look at the "terrain" feature both technically and gameplay-focused :

The tech : Frankly I don´t think the engine will handle this well unless some completely different code is added. The portal tech allows the engine to make really big rooms. By room I mean something like an hangar or a depot. Complex terrain and messed up walls like rocks and cliffs will make the Portal tech cry.
How does this look? Depends on the amount of lights. The engine, by nature, is dark. Remember Quake 1, Thief or System Shock and you have the scheme. I believe there´s not much of an impact on speed based on the amount of lights, after all, every pixel must go trough the process of being lit, lights or not.
Expect to see hangars in this game, but I think super-realistic natural landscapes are a no-no for this game.
Carmack never gave any info about this issue, and no one asked. id engines had superior indoor detail than epic´s or lithtech´s engines, and IMO this will still be a reality.

From the gameplay perspective, there´s not much of use about terrain. Why?

THE ENGINE CAN´T HANDLE HORDES OF GUYS!!!

Take that in mind. 35,000 polys per character, 30 per room = My GeForce starts to smell funny.
There´s no way id can do this work properly. But why Serious Sam did?

Here´s the answer : id´s making HIGHLY detailed characters, phong-shaded in real time, casting/receiving multiple soft shadows, bumpmapped and with textures that probably range from 512x512 to 1024x1024. Skeletal blended and with sharp AI´s.

Serious has very low polycounts, small texts, gourad shading on the models, framed animation and LOD. Not so far from Quake 1 specs...

Now with "hordes" out of the game... what good are for landscapes? Decoration, that´s for sure. I would love to see some believable scenarios out there in Mars. You´ll see pretty cool open areas, but they will NOT be 8 miles square meshes where you can freely walk.
If they´re going for terrain, I´ll say normal sized, cool looking and one hell of a big guy in the middle. Fighting titanic beings in open spaces is something that I love, keep the smart normal sized bosses for eerie hallways...

I like that idea. It might be something like playing the intro of Doom 64, with the marines invading the overrun base, but on a larger scale, with better graphics. Sweetness.

Yea, that was awesome.. I nearly wee'ed myself when I saw that.
AWESOME, but also funny.. the marines got messed up.. =)