Explosions

How do you think the explosions are going to look in Doom3? I can't recall seing any footage of any yet... and the idea that they're going to use sprites seems a little out-dated, compared to the rest of the graphics that we've seen. I personally detested the modelled explosions in Quake2 - they just looked too regular and smooth.

They're most likely going to be particles.

I don't care - as long as they look cool.
The fire in Doom 3 looks awesome, so I have grounds to believe that the explosions will look good too.

Aren't explosions generally followed by fire? Heh :P

I hope it's like the fire used in RTCW, but better. But that fire was pretty awesome stuff.

Well, if anyone here recalls the email Kevid Cloud sent me a while ago, where he said that total removal of sprite based behaviour (explosions, fire, etc...) is on their list of "to do" things, so I really expect the explosions in DOOM III to be very much improved over what we're seeing now.

Dima said:

Well, if anyone here recalls the email Kevid Cloud sent me a while ago, where he said that total removal of sprite based behaviour (explosions, fire, etc...) is on their list of "to do" things, so I really expect the explosions in DOOM III to be very much improved over what we're seeing now.

It's about time too, to be perfectly honest. I'd like to see 3d explosions, but not like those in Quake 2 - where it was some animated model.

What are other ways of doing stuff like fire/smoke/explosions besides sprites?

Like in quake3 you could see that all the fire, explosions were 2d pictures with an alpha channel, right? For the little torches on the walls there would be two pictures (probably the same) arranged perpendicular to each other so that they make an X if viewed from above. This looks better IMO than the fire meshes used in quake 1. But the sprites reveal their nature when they interact with surfaces: you can see a discreet line when a smoke/fire texture intersects a floor.

So are they gonna get rid of this? It seems like they are not. I remember one Doom3 screenshot where the imp is powering up his fireball next to his chest and you see the "flame" appearing on the other side of his hand and the discreet line where the fire texture meets his arm. Are there any ideas how to make light, smoke, fire, sound, interact with "solids" like they are supposed to? Maybe this is tech for Carmack's next engine.http://www.doomworld.com/php/screenie.php?dir=/e32k2/&number=1

In the tenebrae mod he mentions some glow effect or "overbright" thing that will appear his next version. He says it also appears in Halo 2. Could this be used to somehow at least blur the line where smoke/fire intersect a surface?

BTW, Tenebrae looks awesome! I get shit FPS but playing in 320X240 with 4X AA looks great. And yeah, anisotropic filtering is totally necessary to not have the floor look like soup.

I dont think theyll get rid of sprite explosions, but they might try to cover it up with volume effects and whatnot.

it would take a voxel engines to do REAL 3d volume explosions i think

In my life, all but 3 farts have been more powerful and impressive than Quake 2's explosions. They're pathetic.

Crix said:

So are they gonna get rid of this? It seems like they are not. I remember one Doom3 screenshot where the imp is powering up his fireball next to his chest and you see the "flame" appearing on the other side of his hand and the discreet line where the fire texture meets his arm. Are there any ideas how to make light, smoke, fire, sound, interact with "solids" like they are supposed to? Maybe this is tech for Carmack's next engine.

Uh, actually, even if the glow of the fireball was completely volumetric (I think it actually is, but I'm not sure) then there would still eb clipping issues like that, because when it comes down to it, two contrasting surfaces are clipping through each other, at an angle the camera can see. The best way to combat what we're seeing in that screen would to actually 'chop out' the parts of the fireball which the hand is in front of... basically the bits that are in shadow due to the centre of the ball being on the other side of the hand. That would look awesome, but would probably rip a bit of rendering time away for something which is pretty small, and quite frankly not going to be noticed when you're close enough to a monster to see it, when it's about to fire at you.

You understood exactly what I meant, AirRaid. Could shadows be applied to sprites? Hmm... I can see that getting complicated very fast. I wonder how much extra power it would require. It would probably not much more than just sticking another light source in the imps hand. It seems like you could somehow make a fire-texture-sprite child to a parent light. The texture would be full bright except for the areas that were in that one light's shadows. Dunno. I'm not a coder but sounds like it might work.

I disagree about this being a small deal. Getting rid of clipping errors 100% would really make the world much more convincing. The less we can tell that we're looking at a computer screen and more conviced we are looking through a window the better. In Doom3's case, a damn scary window that I would definately keep locked at all times :)

Lord FlatHead said:

In my life, all but 3 farts have been more powerful and impressive than Quake 2's explosions. They're pathetic.

Quake 1's are far worse - they didn't even LOOK like explosions.

quake2 explosions is just sprites.. just take pak explorer, and youll see bunch of explosion pics in main pak..

zzz said:

quake2 explosions is just sprites.. just take pak explorer, and youll see bunch of explosion pics in main pak..

How come they look like models ingame then?

Crix said:

You understood exactly what I meant, AirRaid. Could shadows be applied to sprites? Hmm... I can see that getting complicated very fast. I wonder how much extra power it would require. It would probably not much more than just sticking another light source in the imps hand.

I can see where you're headed, but if we're working with sprites, then you have to take into account that the sprite is flat, and is the same from every angle. Which leads to complications when the sprite is completely hidden by the hand (say, if you were standing to the left a bit in that screen) then, in reality, you'd still see a glow of the fire, but in the engine, you wouldnt, because the hand would be completely cutting off the light source in the imps hand from the camera, so it wouldn't show anything. I still say the best way would be to calculate what parts of the fireball aren't in direct view of the centre of the ball, and to just not draw them... after all, we're already doing everything else on a per-pixel basis.

Crix said:

I disagree about this being a small deal. Getting rid of clipping errors 100% would really make the world much more convincing. The less we can tell that we're looking at a computer screen and more conviced we are looking through a window the better. In Doom3's case, a damn scary window that I would definately keep locked at all times :)

Yea, I guess it would enhance the realism, which of course is always a good thing, but I think this kind of stuff won't be seen until Carmack get around to showing off his next engine, or maybe the one after that.

zzz said:

quake2 explosions is just sprites.. just take pak explorer, and youll see bunch of explosion pics in main pak..

Eh, Q2 explosions are definately models. You're on crack.

I think there's still explosion sprites in the PAK file because that's what Q2Test was using.

Lord FlatHead said:

I think there's still explosion sprites in the PAK file because that's what Q2Test was using.

Definitely - I remember that the demo disappointed me somewhat because the sprite explosions looked like crap - at least the model explosions ended up looking better than the sprites.