Surface interaction

[12ga.]

I was reading how different surfaces in Half-life react differently per say, wood will shard and burn, metal will richochette bullets so on so on.
My question is has anyone heard whether there planning on putting this type of interaction in DOOM III?

[Naked Snake]

Why? It's just a lame gimmick anyway.

[The Flange Peddler]

i don't think so. Whilst the DooM3 engine has some ragdoll physics and such, I think I read somewhere that id won't be making the world all that interactive.

I don't see how it's a lame gimmick though. If implemented badly maybe, but if implemented and utilised correctly it could open a whole load of new gameplay possibilities.

[12ga.]

BBG said:

Why? It's just a lame gimmick anyway.

whys it a lame gimmick?

[Naked Snake]

Let's see :

1) will it affect gameplay? Probably not, I don't see any situations that call for really needing to shatter a lot of wood.

2) does it serve any purpose other than to look cool? This kinda goes hand in hand with affecting gameplay

3) did much care go into coding it? Will it be buggy and slow down my system or will it be flawless and be optimized so that it will never slow me down?

[Arioch]

BBG said:

Let's see :

1) will it affect gameplay? Probably not, I don't see any situations that call for really needing to shatter a lot of wood.

You'll have a lot of fun breaking crates in HL2. Except the crowbar usage looks really gay in the gameplay videos.

2) does it serve any purpose other than to look cool? This kinda goes hand in hand with affecting gameplay

There are opportunities for gameplay improvement with appropriate usage in level design. Nothing that hasn't been done before though. For example: in Jedi Knight 2 there are surfaces that can shatter upon impact, or cause weaponry to ricochet off, etc. I really don't know what's so special about this feature in HL2.

3) did much care go into coding it? Will it be buggy and slow down my system or will it be flawless and be optimized so that it will never slow me down?

Hey, it's Valve!

[Fredrik]

Gimmicks of this kind can help immerse you in the game - in quite the same way that realistic physics and textured polygons do.

[The Flange Peddler]

All these very same questions can be asked about DooM3 and it's great lighting engine. We'll have to wait and see if these new features trully add much to gameplay.

But to be honest, over the past decade or so, most technological advances have been towards making better and better graphics. I like the idea of trying to advance a game engine in a different way.

[12ga.]

The Flange Peddler said:

All these very same questions can be asked about DooM3 and it's great lighting engine. We'll have to wait and see if these new features trully add much to gameplay.

But to be honest, over the past decade or so, most technological advances have been towards making better and better graphics. I like the idea of trying to advance a game engine in a different way.

I can tell you about the lighting system it helps add alot of feel to the game, casts perfect shadows you can hide in, you can see shadows or demons comming from behind you, all sorts of things that make the game come alive, personaly I love what they have done with the lighting.

[The Flange Peddler]

12ga. said:

I can tell you about the lighting system it helps add alot of feel to the game, casts perfect shadows you can hide in, you can see shadows or demons comming from behind you, all sorts of things that make the game come alive, personaly I love what they have done with the lighting.

I agree with you. id have been saying this all along, but they haven't really shown any real gameplay evidence of this yet (the trailers do show a dark, scary world yes, but they haven't shown how shadows really effect gameplay). But yeah, we'll have to wait and see.

But I also think the idea of having an interactive and manipulatable world, where every object has true physical characteristics and acts in an appropriate manner equally (or more) exciting.

[12ga.]

The Flange Peddler said:

I agree with you. id have been saying this all along, but they haven't really shown any real gameplay evidence of this yet (the trailers do show a dark, scary world yes, but they haven't shown how shadows really effect gameplay). But yeah, we'll have to wait and see.

But I also think the idea of having an interactive and manipulatable world, where every object has true physical characteristics and acts in an appropriate manner equally (or more) exciting.

Oh but it is spectacular :) I'v played the alpha and the lighting is absolutly insain.

[The_Aeromaster]

The Flange Peddler said:

I agree with you. id have been saying this all along, but they haven't really shown any real gameplay evidence of this yet (the trailers do show a dark, scary world yes, but they haven't shown how shadows really effect gameplay).

I wouldn't say that... in the leaked E3 video the player uses shadows to hide from the hell knight. And if walking right past a monster because you can't see it and then it rips your fuckin head off from behind doesn't qualify as effecting gameplay, I don't know what does.

[The Flange Peddler]

The_Aeromaster said:

I wouldn't say that... in the leaked E3 video the player uses shadows to hide from the hell knight. And if walking right past a monster because you can't see it and then it rips your fuckin head off from behind doesn't qualify as effecting gameplay, I don't know what does.

Well if I'm being overally critical I could say I could set a sector in DooM1 to have light level 0 and I probably wouldn't see an enemy until it bit me up the ass. But I know what you mean.

The thing about the Hell knight is interesting though. In most games enemies don't take notice of the light levels and such. They just track the player down wherever you are. Does the DooM3 enemy AI take into account lighting or can it just track the player whatever? I haven't seen much written on this topci... Though it sounds a cool idea.

[doomedout]

The Flange Peddler said:

The thing about the Hell knight is interesting though. In most games enemies don't take notice of the light levels and such. They just track the player down wherever you are. Does the DooM3 enemy AI take into account lighting or can it just track the player whatever? I haven't seen much written on this topci... Though it sounds a cool idea.

Well, that is perhaps one of the most compelling points in a long time. I actually went back to the alpha on this one, and to my surprise, they actually do. That adds a lot to the gameplay in fact, and I was pretty excited when I discovered this. When you hide, if you cast a shadow, and if it intersects an enemies line of sight, they will know where you are. However, if the enemy cannot see the shadows OR the outline of the doomguy, then the demons do not know you are there.
(Unless there is a demon out there that has infra vision...heh)

Another good example would be the e3 leaked video. THIS certainly adds to the gameplay of the game innumerably.

[The_Aeromaster]

I would like to see key enemies, like the pinkie demon, able to sniff u out, even if u hide, although it must be implemented properly, ie. it doesn't act like it sees you, it just goes into the shadow like it knows ur there, like following a rabbit into a bush or somethin.

[12ga.]

The_Aeromaster said:

I would like to see key enemies, like the pinkie demon, able to sniff u out, even if u hide, although it must be implemented properly, ie. it doesn't act like it sees you, it just goes into the shadow like it knows ur there, like following a rabbit into a bush or somethin.

hmmmm :-) sounds interesting to me, I like it, it would make the pinkey seem like more of a hunter.

[pickle965]

12ga. said:

hmmmm :-) sounds interesting to me, I like it, it would make the pinkey seem like more of a hunter.

Hell yeah, that would make for some intense moments.. You see a Pinky patroling the hallway, you quickly dash to a hiding spot in the shadows, armed with your pistol and and a few bullets. The Pinky senses your movement and goes over to where your hiding, looks straight in your direction sniffing you out as you stand there shaking ready for it to make a move... heh sounds cool to me.

[Arno]

12ga. said:

I was reading how different surfaces in Half-life react differently per say, wood will shard and burn, metal will richochette bullets so on so on.
My question is has anyone heard whether there planning on putting this type of interaction in DOOM III?

Most of this can already be done in the Quake3 engine. With the use of shaders, you can specify for each texture how it sounds when you walk over it, how it sounds when shot and how the sparks look like. You can specify for destructable entities how much damage they can take and what type of shards appear (wood, brick, etc).

Burning wood is something I've never seen before, so that would be cool.

[WhilelM]

Zaldron said:

The scripts have no parameters related to texture/geometry tolerance, but everything indicates bullets and other projectiles can be reflected by surfaces.

I tried to make it more evident by fucking up with those text files but I didn't get any conclusive proof. It seemed to work best with the shotgun but the spread cone made it hard to judge. Well, it's just an alpha anyway, but the code is there already.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12537&postid=211033

[Arioch]

Seriously speaking, HL2's method seems like a shitload of hardcoding. While this makes for an easy "wow" effect early on, the utter inflexibility of such an approach (as they did take for HL1) would make level editing a pain later on.

Mark my words.

[AirRaid]

Hmm... Hardcoding? In the video(s) they said that if it's textured like wood, the game will make it react like wood, or textured like metal then it would react like metal. Seems dynamic to me. Only question I have is how the Source engine identifies what the texture looks like. If it goes by a texture name then it can be easily bypassed... and if you have to set that kinda stuff manually then yeah, back to square one. You could do that for breakables in Half-Life.

[Arioch]

Exactly: hardcoded associations between highly specific textures and physics models.

It can be a really bad idea because for example there are only relatively few places in any given level you'd want something wood to shatter/burn/break, and you might want to use the texture to signify something else, but instead the game would just let you or any random monster/NPC break it. Ditto with glass-like textures, etc. AFAIK there are quite a few complaints about this sort of hardcoded behavior with specific textures when designing levels for the original Half-Life.

It'd be like if the original Doom engine automatically made a door whereever you placed a door texture, or automatically made nukage pools damage the player if you placed that flat. Feel free to adapt my example to any other level design situation where you might not want an effect automatically associated with a specific design.

[Julian]

Well, if they have a texture effects conf file, this could be quite easy to handle properly.

[Fredrik]

When do we get the first game engine with completely destructible environments?

[toxicfluff]

I seriously doubt that HL2 has this fully automatic and comprehensive physics system which many people seem to think it will have. I'm betting that you will have to mark out each physics affected object as such an entity and THEN the game will work out the mass, material etc, In fact, I'm almost positive of this, given the way most modern 3d engines work - they need a static BSP tree to calculate visibility etc, I think that people are fooling themselves if they think that some of the [admittedly] awesome effects in the movies were not set up in the map design.

[StarFyre]

I find it funny that people think it's a lame gimic.

IMHO, the aspects of destructible environment and realistic physics affecting everything, etc in HL2 is awesome.

The reason...imagine this...

running into a room with some creatures in it. Switching to a minigun and laying waste left to right thru the room. Now with the different types of surfaces, having wood splinter and crack, glass break, metal have dents and stuff richochet off it OR thinner metal getting holes thru it, etc.

THAT makes it seem more real among the lighting, etc. I believe we need EVERYTHING to make it seem more real, not just one or the other.

My idea of the best FPS engine would have doom 3s lighting and shadows, WITH the Source engine physics and reactive materials and deformable materials with red factions deformable levels (but done much more detailed and realistically as in Source).

Sanjay

[dsm]

I don't think it's a lame gimmick, but it certainly isn't the decisive factor in making one game better than another.
I'll wait and see how things look when both games are out. Just because this neat surface feature is revealed in HL2, doesn't mean that there isn't something almost as good in Doom 3.

I mean, iirc you should be able to hear bullets hit metal surfaces in Doom 3 and maybe there will also be other sounds for different types of walls. Fact is: We don't know shit about how iD is dealing with that kind of thing. The Alpha can't be used as proof that there isn't anything special about surface interaction, because the physics engine might not have been fully implemented in that one.

Though if bullets do ricochet off surfaces in HL2, then I have mixed feelings about it - it's cool and realistic, but it might end up being a pain in the ass, because bullets that ricochet off surfaces can end up hitting the player, so if you fire a gun too close to a wall, it might end up killing you instead, which could be just plain annoying.

You'll have a lot of fun breaking crates in HL2

As if breaking crates was fun. It was a neat little feature in HL, but sometimes it got overused in situations where you'd end up growing more impatient and annoyed while smashing away at the crates.
I'm more interested in smashing mashines if it serves a purpose (like a mission objective or a part of a puzzle to shut down a trap), because machines emit a lot of sparks when you smash them and it looks and sounds great if done right - plus, it won't be overused as easily.
But what I really wanna spend my time doing in a first person shooter? Kill stuff, preferably with the good old method of filling them with lead. And then I don't care if wooden walls are apparently among the hardest surface materials in the gaming world, because it doesn't matter if the killing is fun and addictive.

[StarFyre]

Maybe you should be careful where you shoot. I personally do like that realism...

It's prob why I haven't found any games tense or scary, etc...since nothing has clicked as real life does. It's still a game (which is always going to happen) BUT people talk about jumping out of their seats from Half-Life...I never had that reaction..i just ran thru teh game blowing away everyone. I didn't find it tense or anything...

I am not even sure if Doom 3 will be 'scary' in that sense since something would have to be hyper realistic to get that response in some people...

Sanjay

[Arioch]

StarFyre said:

I am not even sure if Doom 3 will be 'scary' in that sense since something would have to be hyper realistic to get that response in some people...

Best Doomworld quote ever.

[grutsch]

doom3: completely new engine with great future, but the way things are computed is still too hardcore to do for instance wood smashing...however in a couple of years it will be possible and this will be very cool...

halflife2: great gfx done with more conservative means... nice but not new realy.