The demon horde

More towards Zaldron and Dima but anyone can bog on in. I still play doom over the quakes for 2 resons. One - cruddy computer :) Two - hordes, utter hordes of monsters. Is it looking like the doom engine will support this sort if thing? Would they have to down size the poly count on a few monsters in favour of having utter hordes of them? Do you feel this is a valid point???

Jim Dose said the following in the interview with Daily Radar:

"It's too early to say, but considering that we're going for much higher detail characters, as well as a highly detailed and dynamic environment, you can probably draw your own conclusions."

It's obvious that there WON'T be hordes of monsters in the new doom game and honestly, I think the game will be much better this way.
Did you see the MacWorld new doom demonstration?
The characters are amazingly detailed and feature real time bumpmapping together with real time shadows and tons of other new stuff.
I won't even go to the dynamic enviroments...
Can you imagine the slowdown that would accur if you put even 8 enemies on screen at once?!?
The tech in Doom is really revolutionary and was not developed by John for the purpose you suggested.
You can expect 4-5 enemies on screen at once, max.


I would suggest you to buy Serious Sam, it has nice graphics and HORDES AND HORDES of enemies (I won't give you the number, it will scare you).
It is a really nice game and I enjoyed it from the start till the end.

P.S

You seem to be very intrested in technological aspects of engines...
I would recommend you to read Zaldron's New Doom Engine article as it gives a good example of the technology new doom is powered by.
It is located on Lord FlatHead's site under the articles section.

The link is:

http://lordflathead.doomcenter.com

Dima : was that the demo showing off the GeForce3? firstly my god what a peace of hardware but 4 or 5 enemies max? are you serious? I would have thought it would be good for at least 8 which is sort of a multiplayer number from Q3Arena... As for the detail. Surely you would rather more nasties on screen then seeing if they are smiling or frowning or frothing? For npc's its all part of it but the nasties? Gimmie shotty fodder anyday - even if they are smart as hell.

Also on a slight side note - has anyone heard of a game that was in developement called "prey" or did my mind make the whole thing up?

Yes, I was referring to the GeForce 3 Demo.
Yes, 4-5 max.

Last time I heard of Prey, it was still in development and was supposed to ship 8 months after Duke Nukem Forever's release.

i'll miss the hordes...*sniffle*

Dima said:

Yes, 4-5 max.

Yeah, I do think you're right, but it is a shame. 4-5 monsters is Quake, not DooM.

Dammit... 4-5? DAMMIT
That really IS a shame. Say what you want, but loads of people like Doom because of the hordes of enemies. Maybe, when Doom3 comes out, the game will rock so hard, that it won't matter anymore.. but I doubt it.

I'll miss the rush you get when taking on 3 Demons, 2 Imps, and 5 Shotgun Guys, but I suppose it'll be all for the best. The technology would be enough to slow down anybody's computer, so imagine what it'll be like when you're taking on 18 bad guys. The frame rate would slow to a crawl, and the game would be virtually unplayable. Like I said, it's all for the best.

Well, I'm pretty sure then engine is able to render hundreds of monsters at the same time. It's the hardware were things get tricky.

While T&L can help in this issue, by computing the large polycounts, there's still a complex lighting pipeline to render and a crap load of textures to put in scene. Add the AI that will consume the spare CPU pretty quick and you have an idea.

As every game out there, having 16 guys in front of you will be possible and playable. But I don't know if the GeForce3 will be enough. The problem here is the framerate.

If you have 35 fps, you're in heaven, UNLESS you change the amount of polys/texels to render. People look for video cards that spit 120 fps so they can resist the slowdowns withouth going under 60 fps.

I'll say a GeForce3 won't be the hardcore multiplayer gamer's choice, but the minimum PLAYABLE requirement.

If id's aiming for GF3 as a good standard, then it is obvious that we won't be seeing many monsters at the time. Remember Quake 1, where there was max 5 or 6 guys at the same time. Anyway, that was hard as hell, since their tactics/AI/stats were a lot harder than DooM's enemies. Expect the same to happen again.

Now, id can choose 2 options. Or they go for a more "slow" pace and super-mega-sharp AI, or they use a pretty good AI and a "continuos flow" of enemies. Instead of presenting the 30 guys at the same time, they come from 3 to 3, just like you can experience in AvP.

Disorder said:

Dammit... 4-5? DAMMIT
That really IS a shame. Say what you want, but loads of people like Doom because of the hordes of enemies. Maybe, when Doom3 comes out, the game will rock so hard, that it won't matter anymore.. but I doubt it.

I can live without hordes. They're pretty boring to me. It's just a lot of circular strafe and continuos gunfire.

Well, I also think hordes won't work out. Not only a cause de hardware restrictions (as if there will be any), but simply because of the project itself.

Didn't they say, they wanted to produce an almost film-like experience? I don't think that kazillions of monsters will make it cut. You can't compare slow suspense to simple shock effects. But Serious Sam really is a great game if You like many enemies.

Zaldron said:

I can live without hordes. They're pretty boring to me. It's just a lot of circular strafe and continuos gunfire.

You've got a point there, hordes do tend to get rather boring. I'd rather have one or two monsters jump out from the shadows and scare the hell out of me than mow down hundreds upon hundreds of brainless zombies.

Dima said:

i know where your coming from, man :), but it isn't just the video card, they can make CPU's with mad 3d instructions to speed things up, who knows what new gadgets will have during the time of doom 3's development :]