Just a comment regarding flashlight

FOr all the while that I've read about there being a flashlight, I always assumed it was attached to maybe a submachine gun or something.

From the previews, stating that you have to holster your guns to use it...I guess that's ok, but somewhat strange, since there are guns in the real world that have a light attachments (not really powerful lights, but lights none the less).

Oh well :)

Sanjay

It's just a game.
They made it so that you'll have to switch between flashlight and weapons to make it more dangerous (and to some of us, more exciting) to enter darkened areas.

Entering a dark area with a gun which has an attached flashlight to it isn't scary, because you can just gun down any critter the light falls on (it will also make it easier to hit the target because you basically just need to pull the trigger once the target is lighted up).

Entering the dark room knowing that you only have a shitty little "club" between you and death if you encounter monsters is very unsettling and that's exactly what iD are aiming at.

Personally, I couldn't give a crap about whether the flashlight is attachable or not - I'd rather just trust iD, because they're the ones with several years of experience in making games and they're the ones who have tested it.

dsm said:

Entering the dark room knowing that you only have a shittly little "club" between you and death if you encounter monsters is very unsettling and that's exactly what iD are aiming at.

Bingo. Besides, in the future not everyone could use flashlights attached to guns or rifles. Janitors and scientists probably aren't allowed to be armed, so they would have to use a normal flashlight. You probably picked one up. Use your imagination to fill in the details.

Disorder said:

Bingo. Besides, in the future not everyone could use flashlights attached to guns or rifles. Janitors and scientists probably aren't allowed to be armed, so they would have to use a normal flashlight. You probably picked one up. Use your imagination to fill in the details.

Couldn't of said it better myself. /Applause

/Takes a bow..

Doesn't take two hands to use a flashlight.

Yeah its really ridiculous. I'll understand it in gameplay terms but it's really not that hard.

ho_stun_gun_011022_nh.jpg

auxois said:

Doesn't take two hands to use a flashlight.

it takes two for a shotgun ^_^

Pump-action, sure. Which begs the question of why a military shotgun would be pump-action, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax...

The Gamespy article said that when Willits came across a monster, he screwed up (or did he?) and selected the flashlight and smacked a monster in the head with it and killed the monster. That's one hell of a Maglight.

That's somewhat understandable. Those maglights are pretty heavy flashlights.

dsm said:

It's just a game.
They made it so that you'll have to switch between flashlight and weapons to make it more dangerous (and to some of us, more exciting) to enter darkened areas.

Entering a dark area with a gun which has an attached flashlight to it isn't scary, because you can just gun down any critter the light falls on (it will also make it easier to hit the target because you basically just need to pull the trigger once the target is lighted up).

Entering the dark room knowing that you only have a shitty little "club" between you and death if you encounter monsters is very unsettling and that's exactly what iD are aiming at.

Personally, I couldn't give a crap about whether the flashlight is attachable or not - I'd rather just trust iD, because they're the ones with several years of experience in making games and they're the ones who have tested it.

I love you, my sentiments exactly. I rather have this adaptation of fear which enhances immersiveness, as opposed to the cliche "attached" flashlight. Nice depiction dsm.

Well, as a counterpoint Silent Hill had a flashlight that fit in your pocket, and that didn't detract from the fear level at all. It's not impossible for the flashlight and gun to be out at the same time while still making the game very frightening. Think of it this way: if you have the flashlight out then all of the enemies know where you are, and they can easily (if programmed to) come at you in a way that makes them avoid the light. By doing this you risk being ambushed while you have your light on as opposed to being able to use a more stealthy approach with it off. Also keep in mind that light makes the darkness darker. So while you might be able to see better where the beam hits, everything that isn't hit by the beam will appear darker that it would be otherwise.

Basically the only thing that causes the simultaneous use of a flashlight and gun to be less frightening than the use of only one at a time is the game's design. In the right hands, either way could be equally terrifying.

i all ways assumed that the light would scare off the little spiders and such instead of wasting bullets on them.

I guess my reasoning is...I never found *ANY* game scary.

Maybe they just aren't realistic enough for me (or been thru enough crap in real life to get bothered by a game).

Playing doom 1, 2, the quakes, unreals, half life, descents, it was just an fps game...I guess just wanting more of what "makes sense".

Your note on the scientist, etc makes sense. I agree. Never thought of that, BUT regarding soldiers...uhm no. They could use a flash light and a pistol together for instance.

BUt yeah, it's for gameplay to force it to be harder basically.

Oh well. No big deal.

Sanjay

Speaking of those spiders....DAMN they will be hard to hit.

This light/darkness issue has me thinking. What would be nice is if you could get blinded by lights. All this would take is an accumulator variable is the shader and an ambiant lighting variable dependant on the accumulator from the previous frame... with quite some lag. That way, if you use the flash light and turn it off, everything will be damn dark for a second or two. Turn on the flash light again and everything seems more lighter than it should.
Damn... I love that idea.

I love the idea that the flashlight can go broke without a clear reason (out of batteries or lightbulp broke). That is realism for you!

auxois said:

Pump-action, sure. Which begs the question of why a military shotgun would be pump-action, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax...

No offense towards you or your opinions, and please note also that I'm leaving my personal opinion out of this, but afaik, most people prefer a pump-action shotgun in their games for those (and perhaps other) reasons:

1. It makes an awesome sound. No reload sound can hold a candle to a well-designed pump-action shotgun reload sound.

2. It makes the shotgun feel more like a shotgun - not everybody out there is a gun-nut who knows all that much about auto-shotguns, but they know a shotgun, because pump-action shotguns have become popular through action movies. How many popular action movies have you seen in which automatic shotguns were used over pump action shottys? Well ok, I dunno if there are a lot of movies featuring auto-shottys, but I can tell you that the majority of the really popular action movies I've seen had pump-action shotguns, despite the fact that the movies were set in an age where autoshotguns were common.
To the avarage person, an autoshotgun does not register as a shotgun. But anyone who see a pump-action slide on a gun and hear a distinct *chuck-chack* sound when it's reloaded will say "that's a shotgun!".

3. An autoshotgun usually feels more like a sort of rifle to most people.

Sorry, but I believe that's the way it is and I believe iD is going for what is popular and mainstream - only pump-action shottys are mainstream and popular enough to fill the bill here.

About a flashlight still being scary even if attached to a gun: Well, I admit that I might have made a faulty argument by claiming that it ain't scary, however, I'm pretty sure (and common sense would make this clear too) that a separate flashligt would be a lot more scary than a machinegun-attached flashlight. You can easily fight back the instant the light ray falls on an enemy if the flashlight is attached to a gun - you can't easily fight back if you first have to switch back to a weapon and that's a Hell of a lot more scary than the already scary experience of traversing dark corridors with a flashlight attached to your gun. - And that, my dear friends, is what iD are aiming at. They have repeatedly stated (or just implied) that they want Doom 3 to be the scariest game they could possibly make.

Then there's the issue of keeping the game simple - think about it, simplicity is what iD are all about. If they did allow for cross-carrying the pistol and flashlight, how would you shoot with the pistol and club the enemy simultaneously? That would require iD to assign an extra fire key for the flashlight specifically and I would be much mistaken if J. Carmack wouldn't rather swallow a barrel of hot tar than allow for such a "gimmick". Hence, they make the flashlight and pistol two separate things, unless I've missed out on something somewhere about it being possible to cross-carry pistol and flashlight in which case I apologize.

I love the idea that the flashlight can go broke without a clear reason (out of batteries or lightbulp broke). That is realism for you

Sorry, but I don't love that idea. I believe such a type of realism elements like this should be avoided like the plague when designing games. It'd be like having guns that jam which isn't even fun - it's just damn annoyinh.
In games, it is essential to have your tools work right every time, or else people will get fed up with the game (one of the reasons why games always own real life).
I do admit that it sounds very neat at first, but if you actually went in and implemented and tested it thoroughly, you would probably find the conclusion that it would be more of a nuisance than fun. Sorry again.

You are correct and dead-on in your comments about shotguns. I don't disagree in the least. I do still think it's a little silly when you think about it from a realism point of view, but in this particular instance it's largely irrelevant. Besides, there are a number of reasons to use a pump-action shotgun over an automatic one - primarily, intimidation (the sound of a pump-shotgun's action is quite intimidating) and firing low-pressure rounds. Also, the chamber isn't going to heat up and start melting plastic casings.

The guy in the movie "phonebooth" explains it very well. It's like that hero from a movie, he walks up the the enemie to finish him off and he cocks his gun, now why didn't he have his gun cocked from before? because that sound is scary. or something like that.

I assumed you'd carry a shotgun with a flashlight duck taped to it. cause I read somewhere that youd have a flashlight mounted shotgun, but I guess things change.

I could see the batteries dying out near the end of the next trailer. It's all pich black and you can make out your hands smacking the flashlight and when it goes back on there's a Hell Kight infrond of you raoring in your face that catches everyone by serprise - end of trailer.

Try firing a rocket launcher and holding a flashlight. Sure it [i]could[/] make sense for them to have had a flashlight equiped to a gun, but it really IS for gameplay. Just pretend our little marine friend left it in the drawer with his playboys and foret about it.

I saw in one of the many articles linked on the front page that "when you have the flashlight out, you wont be able to carry any powerful weapons too", which does sort of imply that you'll be able to have the pistol out too..but knowing the pistol from the first two dooms that wont be much of an advantage anyway, and the moment you spot an enemy you'll be running in panic down the corridoors, switching to the shotgun and waiting, staring into the darkness for the slightest sound of movement, only (if you have surround sound anyway) to hear an omunoius scraping from behind you...

damn in gonna love this game

I have no problems with the flashlight... I think it's OK actually. I think the particles could need some improvement though... I've seen better

You could just turn your screen gamma up to 120 if you don't like it.

The half life flash light is sorta how I would have expected the Doom3 light to work... Sure, it's right where you're aiming, but not only did the light SUCK(peripheral vision was still nill) but the batteries ran out if you left it on. I was playing opposing force yesterday, and I was walking through the underground area with those things that shoot the purple plasma, and my night vision ran out of juice unexpectedly. I had to sit in the dark with only my hearing to warn me of an attack until I had enough battery power to get back on the move.

It would be even cooler if you could only carry a handgun with the light. It was mentioned here before that the handgun/flashlight combo would be cool, but would be crap against most monsters. I mean, who here is gonna try a Tyson run in Doom3 their first time through?

The HL flashlight is almost completely useless.

This is a very good example of one of the things that the Doom 3 light code could handle exceptionally well.

Well if someone wants to waste all the suspense to have a flashlight and gun at the same time, why don't they just add night vision goggles. That would scratch your itch wouldn't it?

I still have yet to see a game do NVG properly.

cyber-menace said:

Well if someone wants to waste all the suspense to have a flashlight and gun at the same time, why don't they just add night vision goggles. That would scratch your itch wouldn't it?

Lol.. too true!