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DeAdLy_cOoKiE

Doom III suggestions/future engines

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Doom III is probably the most anticipated game - state of the art technology, top notch graphics, and an overall great game/concept - of all times.

However, It's a hobby of mine to discuss about future engines (for instance wireframe engines, with flat/untextured/outlined polygons - mix between mercenary/elite and tron the movie ... or more important, game developers working on 'areas/parts' instead of 'levels', cleverly glued together - parts that are needed to render - through use of 'portal' technology). Or discuss about games currently in development, and how they could be improved, or even discuss new type of games that could be possible with current engines (in development), in this case the Doom III engine.

Like I said, Doom III is probably the best thing that has happened for games in years. A great leap forward on what games should be like, how games should be played, taking it to a new level. In a way, it offers all the goods previously done in other games, combined and polished in one game (similar like Halo; indoor/outdoor, vehicles/1st person), and a state of the art engine to bring it to reality with extreme realism, immersive. Some things I like in Doom III are camera's (mouse controlled?), computer terminals (interactive? - perhaps you can play a game of Doom I/II, in-game?), the stamina feature, and the animation/ragdoll physics. And hopefully, a lot of FREEDOM!

I am very happy with the choices made for Doom III, it's shaping up really good, and in general it is what I think a game should be like.

However, there are always new ideas to be explored. Personally, I've played many games, old and new, on many platforms, and there are always things/elements you'll encounter in other games (or rendered movies/series such as action man or starship troopers for instance, even comics such as yoko tsuno or storm) that are original, or just plain cool, and would be great to see in a game.

Doom III, just like it's predecessors, will no doubt be a milestone - a good example for other developers to learn from. But let's keep in mind that there are other games that are 'classics' as I'd prefer to call them, which have done things right.

Some games come to mind right now (with good elements for Doom III perhaps):
- Alien Breed (Tower Assault); Great game overall, excellent level design/art, and good atmosphere. It offers (lit) elevators, keycards, samples (when entering a new zone), switch-to-dark (destruction sequence), variety in buildings/style/art, fragile (breakable) walls in certain levels, terminals (on where you can play 'pong') etc.
- Flashback; Sci-fi game with a deep story and overall great design/settings.
- Exile; Classic 70's style sci-fi game, very deep and alluring, about exploring a cave system by foot or by JETPACK (!), encountering various lifeforms both friendly and vicious, deadly robots, pass-protected doors and transporters, structures. With focus on FREEDOM (you are free to do what you want, and you cannot die and there are NO levels, and you have the ability to transport yourself anywhere you like in the world), physics (particles) - objects having their own weight, dynamic water/wind, A.L. ™ (Artifical Lifeforms - birds, frogs, bees, fish, imps etc.). And a great Novella to lure you in even more.
- Halflife (2); Still one, if not the best 3D experience to have. I like the dejavu moments, when you're crawling through airducts, looking out openings, to see areas you've traversed before. HL2 will offer a lot of good things. For instance, I like the zooming-in effect when dialogue happens.

Exile is probably THE game I would like to see in 3D (ala Doom III)! It has unbelievable potential to be a blockbuster - nothing has been done like it, or closely similar. An excellent site about exile (ECS - Amiga): http://www.nemmelheim.de/exile/index.html
Note: I'm in the process of mapping the world of Exile, for nostalgia, and perhaps for someone to do a PC conversion (hi-res), and others (3D developers - Mr. Carmack and cohorts) to get inspiration from. It's 95% done, and will be hosted at that site most likely when completed.

Things/elements I would like to see in future engines:
- Shadow diffuse/soft shadows, cubic environment mapping (sphere reflecting it's surroundings):
http://files.back2roots.org/p/3dadd24.jpg
- Portal Technology ™ (Prey) - This opens up many interesting possibilities if implemented in an engine, such as creating random levels with a library of pre-fabbed rooms/corridors). Merge outdoor/indoor, seamless (even go subsurface, real-time). Mix a space action engine with 1st person (in mothership) - Imagine exploring the ship, to find windows which you can gaze out, looking at a space war outside (or in the same sense, being an astronaut floating in space gazing into the window). The window being a portal. Other ideas: Generate an HUGE maze, with relatively few pre-fabbed corridors/rooms, dynamic as you walk through - walk out a room and the maze looks the same but, as you'll find out eventually, it changed - you triggered something, but NOT by something obvious like a button. Escher-like stuff: inside out/upside down/relativity - look into a doorway as you notice someone looking into a doorway, which turns out to be you. Imagine multiplayer games in levels like these:
http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/back-bmp/LW375.jpg
http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/back-bmp/LW389.jpg
- Mapglueing (in combination with Portal Technology) - No loading times, worlds/levels seemingly infinite. Blurring effect at a certain distance.
- Elements found in OLD games/demos - Maze generator/solver etc. Creating random/dynamic levels on the fly, with for instance generated 'arrows' pointing to specific locations, hints/clues, generated airducts within the maze, etc. Special effects (seen in old demos) as textures (plasma/fire/water ripple/infinite zoom), wireframe models (morphing) as a texture on a computer screen, or 3d hologram (or a small plotted star system).
- Freedom/immersiveness - In my opinion, most games seem too linear. A story driven game with 'levels' is nice, but it's much nicer to be immersed in a world, free to do what you want, explore, backtracking if you feel like it. Solve puzzles in order for you to progress deeper into the world.
- Elevators - picture a game where you have to go to floor 4 to get an item/key to unlock another elevator back on floor 1 which will take you to floor 5.
- Realistic (rising) water/wind/fire, organic lifeforms (plants/trees etc).
- Extras - Replay function (record demos, dynamic 3rd/1st person views, cam swooping), fix feet with angle of floor (slide if an angle is 45'), cinematic (interactive) cut-scenes/camera angles/flashbacks, render mode (use of high resolution models/environments, displacement mapping); the ability to pause the game by pressing a key enabling the engine to take a high reso, high quality screenshot - what would normally be impossible to achieve real time at a high framerate - before returning back to game/play mode. In-game cam control (as cheat), switch between 1st/3rd person, ability to pan with mouse, cam swooping; press a certain key(s) and the cam instantaniously swoops high speed at first, towards an enemy/projectile/object, and slows down if it's in close range. But most important: options - the ability to turn features on or off.

Anyways, if you feel like posting comments/ideas about Doom III or future engines, you might as well do it here.

Cheers,
DeAdLy_cOoKiE

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- Freedom/immersiveness


If you think doom 3 is going to do that well, youre playing the wrong games. For FPS examples of freedom, see System Shock, Deus Ex.... Then when you find games like that constricting, say doom 3 will allow freedom again AND hold a straight face.

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I meant Doom III does a good job of immersing you in the world. Not sure how much freedom you have, I hope it's not too linear. But what I mean, is that when you have a (dynamic) game/world with focus on 'freedom', not neccessarily 'levels', randomly scattered objects/items, and objectives that does not need to be completed in a specific order, in general the game will have a longer life-span.

Imagine a game where you can just enter, and be immersed in it straight away, enjoying the surrounding, play with physics, explore.

Again, 'exile' as a great example of what I think a game should be like (in 3D).

And yes, I forgot System Shock (both 1/2), wich is, like you said a great game, which is also very immersive. I would like to see that kind of freedom in Doom III.

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Well, from what I've seen, the doom 3 levels will certainly be full of life (or death?). Machinery and computers buzzing and whirring in every direction you look. That should give a great atmosphere at least. I generally dont like level design that seems to be purposeless. Great as it is, DX had some terrible examples of that with long winding empty corridors that existed for no reason.... and in the exploration areas as well, where you have more time to stop and consider everything. Eugh.

I think its two different categories that should be seperate then. Dx had some poor level design, but it still allows more freedom than any id game to date. Which is the better thing to have?

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If you want a totally non linear game, try out Morrowind. Its an RPG and all but its completely and utterly non linear. Pretty good too. But the balance is terrible, you can become WAY too high level very easily and quickly and suddenly every monster in the game is dead in 2 seconds. Not so bad if you download some of the mods that increase the difficulty but the developers should have balanced it better.

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- Cubic Environment Mapping (sphere reflecting it's surroundings).
- Portals (Prey) - This opens up many interesting posibilities if implemented in an engine, such as creating random levels with a library of prefabbed rooms/corridors). Merge outdoor/indoor, seamless. With a window as a portal.


Dude, the DOOM 3 engine is full of those features. ;) And from what I figure, DOOM 3 will be making use of the RenderMan (Pixar's renderer, in case you don't know) shaders available in OpenGL 2.0. Now that's impressive. :>

Well, if you've read Carmack's latest GameSpy interview, you'll know of some details on his next engine. It's gonna be an engine to end all game engines. :D

In his next engine, Carmack aims for a generalised solution for both real-time rendering (in games) and ultra-high quality CGI rendering (in movies). An engine that can produce photorealistic images, with fully programmable shaders. Sure, it will probably take a few million render passes, and will run at 5 hrs per frame, but it'll still be much faster and much cheaper than state-of-the-art render farms that cost millions of dollars.

Imagine this level of graphics quality on a home PC. That's gonna put ILM out of job. :D

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Are you sure about D3 using OpenGL 2.0? I thought they just recently finalized the 1.5 spec and it won't be a while til 1.5 hardware, let alone 2.0 harware will start showing up.

Oh yeah, flashback rocked! It had these beautiful hand drawn environments, and IIRC the characters were made using 2D polygons (the game was a side scroller, except without the scrolling). That allowed the character animation to be very smooth.

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One of the things I'd like to see done away with in game engines is the notion of describing the world as a collection of polygons (or solid polyhedra). NovaLogics often criticized voxel engines are where we should ultimately be heading. When you have full volume modelling, sort of excape from that idea of "textures details" that are not interactive. For example, you will inevitably come to textured doors or cabinets that you can't open because they're basically just paitings. With true volume modelling, it's no long prohibitive to just make that door texture a real door, because you're using the voxel space anyway... You'll literally be able to go to a wall panel, take the screws out and see what's inside.

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DaJuice said:

Are you sure about D3 using OpenGL 2.0? I thought they just recently finalized the 1.5 spec and it won't be a while til 1.5 hardware, let alone 2.0 harware will start showing up.

Oh yeah, flashback rocked! It had these beautiful hand drawn environments, and IIRC the characters were made using 2D polygons (the game was a side scroller, except without the scrolling). That allowed the character animation to be very smooth.


Carmack has created an ARB2 rendering path to take advantage of full-fledged OpenGl 2.0 features in DOOM 3. That's like a year ago. If you haven't read Carmack's .plans, I suggest you do now. ;)

And EsH, voxels are definitely very interesting. Carmack tried building a voxel-based renderer after Quake 2, but his venture eventually failed. Sure, you can have fully destructible environments with voxels, but that's not the aim of graphics engines. They are meant to look good. And as of yet, voxel-based engines are still lagging far behind the curve, in terms balancing between visual capabilities and environmental interactivity.

Maybe if video cards were geared towards rendering voxels right from the start... maybe then can your dream come true. But alas, voxel support in video cards has been, and still is, extremely limited. That's likely to be the case for the future generations. We've gone the way of polygonal CGI, and there isn't much chance for turning back now.

On a sidenote, take a look at the Worms 3D engine. If I'm not wrong, it is based on the voxel engine Ken Silverman created. It's extremely interactive: every pixel represented onscreen can be alter in various ways, meaning a completely destructible 3D environment. But the fact it, it doesn't look up to par with Unreal tech or even the Quake 3 engine. As great a genius as Ken is, he couldn't even produce last-gen graphics with his latest voxel renderer. That shows the (lack of) viability of seeing any groundbreaking graphics in the form of voxels, at least not anytime soon.

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chilvence said:

Damn: http://www.advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap03.htm

Shame that voxels are a whole different set of problems to polies. Its a challenge best left for the future if you ask me, it has limited use at the moment compared to polygons, where you can just throw games out the door 10 at a time.

How do you make an animated voxel character?


The demo is impressive for its destructible environments. The graphics are rather poor though. Can't stand the jaggies. But I'm at that would be a non-issue at high-res.

All in all, the demo highlights the complications and disadvantages of a voxel-based engine. What Silverman has accomplished is still light years away from the graphical quality of DOOM 3. Well, you can always blame it on the video card industry... :P

As for animating a voxel-based character, I've no idea about that. But I'm sure ragdoll physics wouldn't work with the current voxel technology. ;)

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Wow, that demo is fairly impressive. Should be interesting to see what happens once the hardware industry picks up this technology...

And I think I'll move this to the tech forum, since that's basically what's going on in here ;)

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DaJuice said:

Are you sure about D3 using OpenGL 2.0? I thought they just recently finalized the 1.5 spec and it won't be a while til 1.5 hardware, let alone 2.0 harware will start showing up.


OpenGL 2.0 got more or less renamed to OpenGL 1.5

Generally speaking OpenGL 2.0 compliance means that a graphics card will feature a freely programmable gpu.
(Overly simpliefied explanation of course)

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Some ideas I came up with, that 'could' be nice to see in Doom III:

- Dum-dum bullets for the pistol; the pistol seems to be a fairly weak weapon, it would be nice if there were special, more powerful bullets to be found in the world. I was thinking of dum-dum bullets, penetrating an enemy before exploding - weakening them, showing the inflicted wounds. Maybe a flamethrower as a special weapon would turn out to be rather nice as well. Or the ability to blow up certain doors, or weak walls with grenades. Also, I would like to see a more drastic effect when an enemy is hit by a for instance a rocket - gibs. And ofcourse the ability to control the force by which a grenade is thrown by holding down the mouse button.
- Heartbeat sensor on the HUD (protection suit); this would add greatly to the atmosphere in Doom III. Accompanied by sound, the rate would get faster if any action is involved or when something drastic is about to happen when you are walking through a dim lit corridor, or when your energy is very low. Ofcourse a beep sound effect if you're dead. The suit's voice could alarm you if you're low on health, or if you're entering a radioactive area.
- Flashback cut-scenes; it would be nice to see one or two flash-back cut-scenes during play (or a scream sound effect), explaining the story (what happened on that specific location) as you go. Perhaps recorded vid-data found on PDA's of dead people, which you can playback on your PDA, or terminal.
- Terminals placed throughout the complex; fully interactive, for you to gather information, enter codes to gain access to certain areas. Or perhaps reload the energy of your protection suit.
- The ability to board a train; it would be nice have a 'pause' during the game, where the train leaves off to a new section, allowing you to view the scenery, or even outdoor settings (gaze at a rotating bumpmapped planet in the sky).
- Base defense system; computer controlled robots, lasers (scanning area/tracking you; a 'red dot' lock-on-target blurring your vision, for you to get out fast (within a sec) - intant dead if you fail), sentry guns, laser blocked passages (laser walls).
- Portals; transport yourself to a different location, instantaniously by walking through a 'portal'. Imagine a doorway/mirror-like artifact located in the middle of a dark empty room (closed backside, walk around it), with lightrays/shadows (from 'the other side' falling through - which you can look through, looking into another world, literally. A passage you can simply walk through to reach a diffent part of the world or hell, whereever the second portal is located (even different levels), seamless. No special effects, just a passage.
- Various structures/locations; military, civilian, storage, science, engeneering, security facilities/buildings, each having their own architectural dispicancies/art. For instance recreation areas (swimming pool/basketball court), cabins, hospitals, detention areas, a hologram room, an undergound cave system, rivers of blood or lava, etc.
- Outdoor level features; fences, generators, minefields, passages to sub-surface areas (storage), bumpmapped rotating planet in the sky. Perhaps a buggy vehicle (or small jeep - dices swinging underneath the mirror).
- Blood responding to bumpmaps; A very subtle effect of blood running down (a bit - until it dries) between cracks on walls/floors, with information taken from the bumpmaps. 'Thickness' and the 'amount' of the fluid as parameters. Maybe footprints if blood is still fresh. Imagine stumbling upon a trail of footprints (or hints on walls) you'd have to follow, different with each game.
- Stamina feature; the ability to run, for a short period, perhaps accompanied by samples of your character breathing faster.
- Last but not least (as a token of...); A 'DeAdLy_cOoKiE (or Conrad) was here' in a marine's locker underneath a female poster (or somewhere). Or the word 'hardwired' in context with a terminal, or a character named 'conrad' if some of the above is used. Yeah, well...

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- Dum-dum bullets for the pistol; the pistol seems to be a fairly weak weapon, it would be nice if there were special, more powerful bullets to be found in the world. I was thinking of dum-dum bullets, penetrating an enemy before exploding - weakining them, showing the inflicted wounds.

Lame. Weapon upgrades suck.

Maybe a flamethrower as a special weapon would turn out to be rather nice as well.

I wouldn't mind that, especially if they manage to create fire that looks more realistic than what's been shown so far.

Or the ability to blow up certain doors, or weak walls with grenades.

That might happen. But probably only in special, pre-scripted cases, I'm afraid.

Also, I would like to see a more drastic effect when an enemy is hit by a for instance a rocket - gibs.

Well, duh.

- Heartbeat sensor on the HUD (protection suit)

Maybe.

The suit's voice could alarm you if you're low on health, or if you're entering a radioactive area.

Perhaps so.

Flashback cut-scenes; it would be nice to see one or two flash-back cut-scenes during play (or a scream sound effect), explaining the story as you go. Perhaps recorded vid-data found on PDA's of dead people, which you can playback on your PDA, or terminal.

Yes.

Terminals placed throughout the complex; fully interactive, for you to gather information, enter codes to gain access to certain areas.

WILL be there.

Or perhaps reload the energy of your protection suit.

Sure.

The ability to board a train; it would be nice have a 'pause' during the game, where the train leaves off to a new section, allowing you to view the scenery, or even outdoor settings.

Will most likely be there (yay).

Base defense system; computer controlled robots, lasers (tracking you), sentry guns, laser blocked passages.

Risks getting annoying and unimaginative. Demonized robots would be cool though :P

Portals

Will probably be there in one way or another, seeing as Doom had lots of 'em.

Various sections

Will certainly be there.

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I've just visited a site with a bunch of interesting screenshots: http://www.tenebrae2.com/tb2_screenshots.html

I know little about it, but, it's definately worth checking out. It looks very similar to Doom III.

Take a look at this screenshot:
http://www.tenebrae2.com/screenshots/tenebrae2_tb-base_07.jpg

It looks like an elevator, exactly the type of elevators I would hope to see in Doom III. Note the 'level 2' sign on the wall, and the (typical sci-fi) yellow/black stripes on the elevator platform. Great shot.

Hopefully cards can render scenes like this in a few years:
http://files.back2roots.org/p/g6_17.jpg

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Fairy Gnome Goat said:
If you want a totally non linear game, try out Morrowind. Its an RPG and all but its completely and utterly non linear


Try Gothic2. I've posted a small review of this 3rd person RPG a while ago in Everything Else.

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