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Silikone

Id Tech 4 VS Starbreeze

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I always liked the engine of Doom 3 and the things it did that are still considered novel today. However, after playing the 2004 version of Riddick, I can now easily see the shortcomings of Doom 3. Both games look very similar, and they were released around the same time. Riddick came first, though its PC version arrived later.
Both games are powered by engines that almost appear identical. Indeed, they use many of the same algorithms, and they both run on OpenGL. However, comparing both, Riddick seems to have quite an edge.
Characters are less blocky, self shadowing is enabled on everything, textures are sharper at the cost of being compressed, it has dynamic bloom, corpses don't disappear, and there is even soft stencil shadowing that had a way larger hit on performance than it was worth.
Was Id Tech 4 really inferior? I certainly don't doubt that John Carmack did a lot of optimization magic. What is the secret behind Starbreeze's development?

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Woah, I wasn't aware of this game's existence since I've never really gotten a chance to watch any COR stuff. Talk about ahead of its time:

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Did John Carmack work on this engine? I mean hands-on, programming it like the previous ones?

I was under the impression that he wasn't the lead coder for it.

Ontopic: Doom 3 at its best looks better than CoR at its best. I love how Doom 3 and Quake 4 look, especially with that bumpmapping mod. If it wasn't for the goddamn disappearing bodies and weak sounds/guns ...

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LkMax said:

I think that video is of the "remastered" version that came with Dark Athena.

It is. This is from the original 2004 release, which honestly looks better due to the lack of post-processing.


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When I first time saw Riddick (very nice game btw) I was thinking it is on DOOM 3 engine, the graphic is so similar. Levels are smaller than in DOOM 3, but models looks for more complex comparing to D3. Id wait to much time to release the game. DOOM 3 should came out in 2003.

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Silikone said:

Characters are less blocky


Nope. Shadows looked way inferior as well. Butchers Bay was a mere appetizer for me while I waited for Doom 3.

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Escape from butcher bay is one of my favorite First person shooters, so good In my opinion. They Did look very similar But I think that's mainly from the bump mapping, I think there were better lighting effects in butcher bay as well.

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Coopersville said:

Nope. Shadows looked way inferior as well. Butchers Bay was a mere appetizer for me while I waited for Doom 3.

How are they inferior? They pretty much work the same way with the exception of self shadowing characters in Riddick. It's true that this causes artifacts, and shadow mapping suffers from a similar problem with flickering edges on steep angles, but no self shadowing at all has its own ugly moments.

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I played through Dark Athena on my old Xbox 360 days. But never finished Butcher bay (I keep getting stuck)

While they do look similar, doesn't mean they are. It was a coincidence and also because they caught up with new technology and used it, like Doom 3.

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I always knew those random npcs in Doom 3 were so generic looking, those two screenshots together really shows it.

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Voros said:

I played through Dark Athena on my old Xbox 360 days. But never finished Butcher bay (I keep getting stuck)

While they do look similar, doesn't mean they are. It was a coincidence and also because they caught up with new technology and used it, like Doom 3.

I'm sorry to hear that as I feel Butcher bay is far superior to dark athena, Do you remember where your stuck?

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The Starbreeze Engine at least seems to allow for different levels of specular highlights, something that id Tech 4 did not, which is why everything in Doom 3 looks like rubber.

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GoatLord said:

I really sincerely thought, up until this thread, that the game was running on idtech4.

Jesus Christ me too.. I distinctly recall reading somewhere that it was a heavily modified Doom 3 engine.. I remember doing multiple playthroughs of this, killing everyone I can stealthily, on my old chipped XBOX.. the shaders and textures are so similar?

Does this engine really have no relationship to idtech4?

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MrGlide said:

I'm sorry to hear that as I feel Butcher bay is far superior to dark athena, Do you remember where your stuck?

Umm, part where there is this spaceship on a platform and the yellow desert in the horizon. With a few mechs in the area guarding. Killed them, nothing happens. Shot the lights (IDK why), nothing happens. Went to the spaceship to see if I can interact with it, nothing happens.

I agree Butcher Bay is a lot more challenging and authentic (we find out how Riddick gets those eyes). Finished Dark Athena on my first try, but I'm just unhappy that I never fought Warden Hoxie.

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CreamCheese said:

Jesus Christ me too.. I distinctly recall reading somewhere that it was a heavily modified Doom 3 engine.. I remember doing multiple playthroughs of this, killing everyone I can stealthily, on my old chipped XBOX.. the shaders and textures are so similar?

Does this engine really have no relationship to idtech4?

Looking at the console, it even has variables that look like something straight out of Id Tech.
It's a shame that the engine is so poorly documented. I would so much put Riddick assets in Doom 3 and vice versa to see exactly how the graphics pipelines differ.

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