Doom3 Recording Project Discussion.

[Vile]

There's been talk about possible Doom3 recording projects on other forums, mostly Compet-N and SDA pondering the possibility of a Done Quick project. Right now, it's not looking too hot... so I decided to elaborate on the current problems here as well... here comes a bit of boring text.

First of all, although it's common knowledge by now, Doom3 demo support kinda stinks out of the box. The file sizes are enormous, there is no sound recorded into the demos, and certain effects don't function properly when played back (record a demo where you get the berserk... it's quite a scene). As you can imagine, this doesn't exactly welcome a team-based project, nor does it welcome a complete demo experience, lacking sound and such.

Another thing I experimented with is that larger demos, at least for me, have a horrible time playing back. I tested this with a speedrun of the Hell level that clocked in at about 320 mb. It took 10 minutes to load the demo and played it back at about 2 fps... bleh! Smaller demos only take the loading time of the level itself, and after which, it plays back perfectly fine.

In summation, this means that for those interested in a Doom3 Done Quick project, well... it may be best for some time to be spent waiting for some patches to arrive. Hopefully the demo support will be improved in time (demo support wasn't exactly an essential feature, but a luxury).

In the meantime, I recorded a smaller run just for giggles and converted it to avi. It's a small part of the Hell speedrun on a route I came up with, though my playing kinda stinks. Also, because of the way Doom3 records demos, the timescale dropped by itself whenever I experienced framerate loss, so it wasn't entirely an act of skill. Regardless, I hope it amuses you. I threw in some Metal Slug X music to fill the quiet, and the transition is kinda funny. :)

http://stickmen.dreyermachine.com/vile/Metal_Slug_Hell.zip

EDIT: oh yeah, the video uses the XVID codec. The pauses that occur later on in the vid were not by my design... the demo playback started to get finnicky even then.

[Amaster]

Haha, that was a fun watch, The music was surprisingly fitting.

[DEMOn]

I have heard that some people do have sound in their demos, but maybe they are full of it.
Even though I love quakeX dm demos and quake1 sp demos, I never liked the fact that the game plays differently for different systems... just doesn't seem right at all for keeping the recordings 'fair'.
a Doom3 demo, ala SDA/other, would be cool to see... but then the game is so easy and enhanced movement is disabled, and it is so linear... maybe not. =/

[Vile]

Yeah, apparently there are also problems displaying the computer monitors and some of the gun huds during playback. I also agree about a Doom3 project being pretty... uninspired, since id made an effort to prevent possible shortcuts. It would be very true to the routes that most people would take just playing casually... and by the time the demo issues get resolved, if ever, most people will have probably lost interest.

[hamster]

I've heard that 20-30 min demos are a GIG in size. Are they really that bad? How 'bout 170mb for 25 min vid? That seems like a reasonable compromise.

[myk]

DEMOn said:
I have heard that some people do have sound in their demos, but maybe they are full of it.

Hearken! And that dude that got his ass banned had posted a DM recording with sound... although you could barely hear it under the lame music it included. Haven't seen (nor heard) Vile's yet...

[k00k]

I just recorded a demo myself. I stuffed up a few parts of my actual conversion of the demo file to an avi in Doom3 as my screensaver kicked in a few times, and it records that into the avi as well. However, I got a 5min32sec avi down to just 32Mb in size. Looks fine. Its only at 256x256, but you can fullscreen it and it looks quite acceptable. I did it all in VidPost in 3D Studio Max, and encoding with the DivX codec at 20 frames per second. I'll fiddle around a bit more over the next few days and let you know how I go. Threw a brightness filter on there as well, and guess what? You can actually see things! :)

chers
k00k

[Xulld]

Fraps is the way my friends. I havnt been able to make good use of the ingame too many problems currently.

Fraps works great with fairly small file sizes usually not more than a couple hundreds megs @ .avi dependant on the length of footage taken. However,it will lock the Recording at 20,25,30 Fps as desired.

I have made movie no sound that came out to 19 MB just under 5 minutes long. 640x480, very good quality, and Fraps when recording didnt hurt my framerate too significantly. It will record sound just at the cost of a slightly larger file-size.

Doom_spoiler_movie
Download HERE