Are corpses going to decay?

[Shamino]

One thing I liked about Doom was that dead bodies never decayed. Does anyone know if this will be true for Doom3?

[Brookhaven M.D.]

Dude.They're already dead.

[nxn]

... and decayed in their own right.

[Shaviro]

That name seems awfully familiar! O_o
I assume you're asking if they will disappear? Afaik they won't 'decay' no.

[Lord FlatHead]

They won't.

[Shamino]

Yes, I meant if they will disappear. Thanks for clarifying it.

[deathbringer]

Bodies of monsters you've killed probably will vanish if you have your back turned for too long, because most modern games do that specifically to piss me off, most notably in sof2, i want to be able to go back round the level and be like "thats the guy i shot in the left eye, thats the one who's ribcage i blasted out with the shotgun..."

[Ultraviolet]

It might be cool if they gradually drew flies and maggots and their skin kinda started to sink in and maybe bloat in spots from natural body gasses escaping into various cavities... and if their skin tone darkened or turned greenish and such... damn, that would be sweet if they did LITERALLY DECAY, not just fade out.

[Fredrik]

How about they reanimate instead.

[dsm]

Fredrik said:

How about they reanimate instead.

In Nightmare yes.

[Scabbed Angel]

Ultraviolet said:

damn, that would be sweet if they did LITERALLY DECAY, not just fade out.

Would it really be that worth the wait?

*Ultraviolet watches dead zombie for 6 straight days before realizing that nothing's happening. "Damn Scabbed Angel was right!" he mutters to himself and realizes that the human body doesn't do to well without food, sleep or water after the 5th day or so*

[Fredrik]

dsm said:

In Nightmare yes.

I think we're skilled enough by now. It would add greatly to the scare factor if there was no way to be sure an area you'd cleaned up was still safe.

[Ultraviolet]

Fredrik said:

I think we're skilled enough by now. It would add greatly to the scare factor if there was no way to be sure an area you'd cleaned up was still safe.

Explosives, please. :D

[Arioch]

Yeah really, I had hoped we were done with the quake zombie thing.

[Tyockell]

yeaa man im pretty sure corpses decay man...

[Fredrik]

Ultraviolet said:

Explosives, please. :D

Real men recover even from getting gibbed.

[Johnatone]

Fredrik said:

Real men recover even from getting gibbed.

REAL MEN demonstrait for us :P

[Ultraviolet]

scarecrow said:

REAL MEN demonstrait for us :P

reel man kan spel

[Grazza]

Ultraviolet said:

reel man kan spel

OMG Danish!!!111

Anyway, it seems hard to believe that corpses will remain completely inert and unchanged, given that id had flies buzzing around corpses as long ago as Quake 2.

[Lectrix]

Its obvious, has anyone not played doom and quake and learned by now that the corpses will stay there till level is complete.

Plus if they do decay what will the arch-vile do in his spare time...

and in the doom alpha, notice the corpses stayed, and you couldnt gib em like in quake 2... archvile with have a field day if its AI lets him navigate whole levels!!! Agghhh scared myself now...

[dsm]

Fredrik said:

I think we're skilled enough by now. It would add greatly to the scare factor if there was no way to be sure an area you'd cleaned up was still safe.

Speak for yourself - I absolutely hate playing in nightmare for the simple fact that monsters don't stay dead (so there really isn't a point to gunning them down - you'd rather just try to get past them) and I'd kill someone (chances are it'd be you ;-P) if Doom 3 ended up with demons that constantly reanimate.
Scary? Perhaps. Annoying as fuck? Hell yes!!!

OMG Danish!!!111

Uhmmmmm.......


No.

"Rigtige mænd kan stave"

[pak9rabid]

true..the the corpses need to stay there in order for the arch-vile to do his thang. buuut, it would be kind of nice to be able to ax the bodies to prevent that from happening, u know like RA3 style :).

[deathbringer]

Heh, saw off the legs and arms of a corpse and the archvile will ressurect them all individually and send them crawling and hopping towards you..it could also turn detatched heads into trites..or it could just 'suck' all the parts of dismemebered bodies back together again

[Mr. Woot]

or you could pick up a zombies arm and beat the shit out of everything else with it............ no, we'll probably see the bodies stay there until the level is complete, you will likely be able to gib the corpses though.............

[toxicfluff]

I think it's good when you randomly have a few monsters spawn in a map every now and then. Not every one like in NM, but just a few like in Hexen. It certainly gets rid of that comfortable, complacent feeling you get once you've cleared an area, and worked well in System Shock .

Though I expect ID will have a similar thing to this in the form of the zombies coming back to life. In the alpha they would die and come back a maximum of 3 times; it didn't work well because they came back too quickly and most reanimated at least once, so I just stuck around intil they were dead. If tweaked a bit though, it'd be a good tool for [more] suspense.

[TwiNCannoN]

On one hand, I like to believe my instincts and say: hell no - polycounts.

On the other hand, I remember hearing an Id member saying some kind of hocus pokus about how dead bodies don't take up polygons, or don't strain a video card, or some kind of wacky talk - and mentioned the staying of bodies in single player.

*shrugs!*

[dsm]

ToXiCFLUFF said:
I think it's good when you randomly have a few monsters spawn in a map every now and then. Not every one like in NM, but just a few like in Hexen. It certainly gets rid of that comfortable, complacent feeling you get once you've cleared an area, and worked well in System Shock .

Perhaps, but it will kill the satisfaction of clearing a whole base (naturally, because you can't clear the whole base). It's a good idea and all, but I think Doom 3 is scary enough as it is already - it doesn't need this extra little thing imo.
I for one would want Doom 3 to at least leave the satisfaction of killing everything alive and that everything killed stays dead, like it was in the old Doom.

They can save constantly reanimating enemies for the Nightmare skill setting, but keep 'em out of every skill setting below that.

Though I expect ID will have a similar thing to this in the form of the zombies coming back to life. In the alpha they would die and come back a maximum of 3 times; it didn't work well because they came back too quickly and most reanimated at least once, so I just stuck around intil they were dead. If tweaked a bit though, it'd be a good tool for [more] suspense.

Agreed on this - zombies shouldn't reanimate too quickly. It should be so that only some of them reanimate and that those that reanimate come in two flavours: Those that reanimate quickly and those that remain "dead" for a while before they get back up.
Oh, and if it could be random which zombies reanimate quick and which reanimate slow, it'd be even better if that's possible.

[Graveyard Disciple]

Decay is a very slow process taking years to fully finish. Having that kind of thing in a game would be utterly pointless.

[Scabbed Angel]

Dear sweet mother of God you are an idiot.

[Ultraviolet]

Scabbed Angel said:

Dear sweet mother of God you are an idiot.

I know that isn't the kind of decay we're really talking about here, but an accelerated biological decay process would look pretty fucking sweet...