From D3 sceptic to D3 fan

[PK4EVA]

I finally got round to accepting the darkness as it is and am genuinely starting to enjoy this thing. Ok, I'm only playing at lowest diff setting, but nevertheless I'm having fun carefully walking into every little corner, hoping for some armor or medkit, whilst keeping my finger ready to switch from flashlight to a weapon.
I'm even using standard brightness in Win and medium D3 brightness settings now.

So far, so good. Killed 3 or 4 Imps now, so I don't really know where I'm at progress-wise, but it's fun playing it alone in the dark with my 5.1 speakers.
It's not very scary so far though, I'd rather call it "atmospheric".

Wall detail looks quite bad with my GF4 Ti4200 (640x480, ugh) and I can't say ANYTHING about monster detail since you can hardly see 'em without your trusty flashlight, but I'm having fun.

And in the end, that's all that counts.

[AirRaid]

Can I be the first one to say "I told you so"?

A tip for your GF4 Ti (assuming its 128MB) - go into the doomconfig.cfg and find the setting to turn compressed normal maps on/off. And use UNCOMPRESSED normal maps. It's not much of a performance hit, but it does increase the quality of the game a lot.

[dsm]

PK4EVA said:

It's not very scary so far though, I'd rather call it "atmospheric".

Doom 3 is probably not very scary if you're used to watching nasty horror flicks and there are most likely 'horror games' that are scarier, but compared to previous Id games (yes, classic Doom included), it gets at least me pretty nervous (and I wasn't even scared playing the classic Doom when it came out).

Atmospheric is the right word I'd use about Doom 3 in any case.

[Lord FlatHead]

I started replying the game last week and I too am I enjoying it much more than the first time around. Dark room, speakers at a normal level (it's the sounds that get to me most), medium difficulty setting. It's cool.

[BlueSonnet]

Doom 3 is at its scariest when you get down to the hell area if you ask me. Otherwise its not scary enough to put you off a good night's sleep, even if you don't watch horrors. Maybe i'm just being machine-like.

[PK4EVA]

dsm said:

Doom 3 is probably not very scary if you're used to watching nasty horror flicks ...
Atmospheric is the right word I'd use about Doom 3 in any case.

I am used to watching very nasty horror yeah (and some real stuff too *coughEugeneArmstrongcough*). But I STILL had problems with System Shock 2 the last time I TRIED to play it ...

So it doesn't get more and more scary as you move on? Shucks, I was hoping for that.

I'll play around with the .cfg to see if I can get it any better looking, maybe go to 800 or 1024, switch on more detail and check the fps.

First id game I really like! :D

[Sporku]

PK4EVA said:

So it doesn't get more and more scary as you move on? Shucks, I was hoping for that.

Not really. It starts to get repetitive with the scare tactics after a while (There's only so many monsters you can have pop around the corner before you get used to it).

For example, hell, which iD software said would pretty much be the scariest part of the game, scared me much less than the second level of the game even.

Not that hell isn't cool or anything, though. One of the best levels in the game, in fact.

[PK4EVA]

You know what would be pretty scary? If you were to be in a certain place, turn around and LITERALLY be face-to-face with a growling monster. This couldn't be done with regular scripting ofcourse, since the monster should appear right in front of you when you turn. Maybe one could create a "dynamic" script that would make the monster appear when you're within a certain area and keeping into account your X-Y-Z coordinates, placing the monster maybe 50 Z-coords from your viewpoint?

Does this make sense at all? ;)

[AirRaid]

Makes sense, sure. But placing it 50 on Z from you would put it above you. ;)

Might be a little hard to detect exactly what direction youre facing during gameplay, but I'm sure it would be possible.

[XXoXX]

Heh, what if you are facing a wall? The poor monster get stuck in the wall.