What about this?

[Wobbo]

^^^ Precisley

[mmnpsrsoskl]

AndrewB said:

What does graphics power have to do with it? If the game has the power to display the enemies while they're alive, then it definitely has the power to display them while they're dead! They don't magically start sucking up memory or resources while they lay there dead, unless there's a really bad programmer on the team.

You offer Goldeneye and Perfect Dark as examples, but no explanation as to WHY they dissolve after they die. They disappear when you reach a certain distance away. Why? What would be the drawbacks to leaving them there?

Jesus fucking christ...maybe to increase per-fucking-formance. Sorry if I sound a tad pissed off, but fuck I forgot to explain my example. Shit on me. Jeez...

[dsm]

The only thing I have against the game not being split up in actual levels with an intermission tally screen at the end, is that it's one more small thing to detract from the overall feel of the old game.

But as it is not a paramount element, I don't care all that much about it - I don't give a shit whether I have a good idea of how far in the game I am or not (I had no idea how far I was when I reached mission 5 of RtCW for instance - I thought I was much closer to the end than I was) as long as the damn game entertains me.

[Xzyl]

Lord FlatHead said:

And if you're talking about monsters actually magically spawning into your view - that does happen at one point in the leaked video.

8:59 into the leaked video an imp spawns in front of the player.

[gatewatcher]

Xzyl said:

8:59 into the leaked video an imp spawns in front of the player.

the imp falls from the ceiling and hits a light on the way down... that wasn't a spawn.

[AndrewB]

mmnpsrsoskl's post

To increase performance? There are tons of lame ways to increase performance in a game, such as having a thick fog everywhere, having textures lower their resolution once they reach a certain distance away, and whatever.

The point is, if the game performance was good enough BEFORE the monsters died, why does it need to be gradually sped up as each monster is killed?

[Wobbo]

Because the dead can pile up all in one place, causing that one ara to slow down massivley

AND YES THE IMP ACTUALLY TELEPORTS IN, YOU CAN SEE RED MAGIC WHERE HE SPAWNS

and yes it DOES look as corny as it sounds

[dsm]

gatewatcher said:

the imp falls from the ceiling and hits a light on the way down... that wasn't a spawn.

Uhh, I didn't see it fall down from the ceiling - I just saw it pop out in the middle of nowhere in a flash of red light.
If it fell from the ceiling, you'd have seen rubble come crashing down and the imp would land on the floor, crouching when landing, raise up again in its full height and then attack.
None of this happened - a flash of red light appears, the lamp overhead swings because of the atmospheric disturbances and the imp suddenly just stands there.

It's pretty evident in my eyes that the imp teleported in.

[Livo]

When it teleports in, you hear a strange noise in the area as the imp appears. I don't know whether that was the teleport sound or it was just some machinery/computers nearby going crazy because of the disturbances.

[Liam]

Half-Life has those chapters, what more do you need?

Edit: eh, in response to AndrewB complaining about not knowing how far you are in HL

[mmnpsrsoskl]

AndrewB said:

To increase performance? There are tons of lame ways to increase performance in a game, such as having a thick fog everywhere, having textures lower their resolution once they reach a certain distance away, and whatever.

The point is, if the game performance was good enough BEFORE the monsters died, why does it need to be gradually sped up as each monster is killed?

Why? So the memory can be allocated to other things such as triggered events, or spawning enemies...This happens when you play Goldeneye/Perfect Dark, if they left bodies there, the game would eventually slow to a snail's pace...but I am only using these 2 games as an example...

I don't wanna fight other such a trivial matter. N64 sucks at graphics. DooM III won't.

[gatewatcher]

dsm said:

It's pretty evident in my eyes that the imp teleported in.

well i think its hard to tell. i just dont think that was a spawn. i mean, there's a flash of light, and then it appears. But why is the light swinging, like something hit it?

[Lord FlatHead]

Because the spawn released energy or something, and exerted force on the objects in the room.

[gatewatcher]

well i have watched it a few more times, and DSM, i have to agree with you now. it clearly is a spawn and the light moves because the imp smacks it while throwing fire at you.

[gatewatcher]

Lord FlatHead said:

Because the spawn released energy or something, and exerted force on the objects in the room.

that could probaly be right too.

[AndrewB]

Xian said:

Because the dead can pile up all in one place, causing that one ara to slow down massively

I was prepared for that response. If the dead can pile up all in one place causing that room to slow down massively, isn't it a given that the ALIVE may also pile up in the exact same way? If it's possible for LIVING monsters to be rounded up into an area ala-DOOM style, then doesn't that mean that Carmack & Company decided that the slowdown caused by rounding up hordes of monsters isn't too bad? And if the engine simply can't handle too many live monsters in one area, that means they would put in preventative monsters (similar to monster-impassable lines) to prevent them from over-collecting in a single area. And if they can't over-collect in a single area while ALIVE, then it's also impossible for them to over-collect in an area while DEAD.

[AndrewB]

mmnpsrsoskl said:

Why? So the memory can be allocated to other things such as triggered events, or spawning enemies...

But obviously the memory CAN be allocated to these events anyway! If dead monsters caused problems, then live monsters would have to be causing at least an equal amount of problems!

This happens when you play Goldeneye/Perfect Dark, if they left bodies there, the game would eventually slow to a snail's pace...but I am only using these 2 games as an example...

How do you know it would? The only way it could slow it down is if the enemies keep spawning and spawning out of nowhere indefinitely, as the overall number of enemies in the map keeps growing and growing.

Rather than having corpses disappear, they could simply avoid performance issues by not having an indefinite number of monsters spawn into the map continually.

[Xzyl]

I remebered trying to finnish off Doom 2 but it was crashing on me durring the last level. A friend explained that the game was running out of memory from all the dead bodies on the map (I only had 8 MB at the time). 16 MB later it ran without a problem. I see the same thing happening if they try to make piles of dead bodies with Doom 3. Although, they do need to come up with better ideas for getting rid of dead bodies other than just fading away. Melt them, smoke them, or scorch them anything but fade them.

[Liam]

The zombies shouldn't fade away. They should either get back up after a while to start fighting again or they should just lie there. I could see the hellspawn maybe burning up or disintigrating when they die or something though.

[AndrewB]

Xzyl said:

I remebered trying to finnish off Doom 2 but it was crashing on me durring the last level. A friend explained that the game was running out of memory from all the dead bodies on the map (I only had 8 MB at the time). 16 MB later it ran without a problem. I see the same thing happening if they try to make piles of dead bodies with Doom 3. Although, they do need to come up with better ideas for getting rid of dead bodies other than just fading away. Melt them, smoke them, or scorch them anything but fade them.

As has been talked about, Map30 is a map that continues to spit out and spawn monsters indefinitely. If they did have a map similar to Map30 in Doom 3, then I can see where they might need to dissolve corpses somehow. However, I believe that Map30-type maps suck anyway, and that they should avoid these indefinite-demon-spawn maps altogether rather than disrupting the believability of the game by causing corpses to disappear.

[gatewatcher]

Liam the Bard said:

The zombies shouldn't fade away. They should either get back up after a while to start fighting again

yeah thats what i said. that seems to me to be the best idea.

or they should just lie there.

thats what Xzyl said about being a problem. boddies take up too much memory. maybe with 512 you'll be ok, but they are intense graphics tho.

I could see the hellspawn maybe burning up or disintigrating when they die or something though.

like vampires, good idea. i'd say thats what id will probaly do.

[gatewatcher]

AndrewB said:

As has been talked about, Map30 is a map that continues to spit out and spawn monsters indefinitely. If they did have a map similar to Map30 in Doom 3, then I can see where they might need to dissolve corpses somehow. However, I believe that Map30-type maps suck anyway, and that they should avoid these indefinite-demon-spawn maps altogether rather than disrupting the believability of the game by causing corpses to disappear.

yes i agree. perhaps thats why there is so much talk about being a huge end-game boss.

[mmnpsrsoskl]

AndrewB said:

The only way it could slow it down is if the enemies keep spawning and spawning out of nowhere indefinitely, as the overall number of enemies in the map keeps growing and growing.

That does happen in Goldeneye/Perfect Dark.

Fuck who cares...as long as we get DooM III, i'll be happy.

[Phoenix]

AndrewB said:

As has been talked about, Map30 is a map that continues to spit out and spawn monsters indefinitely. If they did have a map similar to Map30 in Doom 3, then I can see where they might need to dissolve corpses somehow. However, I believe that Map30-type maps suck anyway, and that they should avoid these indefinite-demon-spawn maps altogether rather than disrupting the believability of the game by causing corpses to disappear.

Yes, map 30 "spit" out monsters. Even at 8MB, I died before the program crashed. You get maybe one or two "tries" to hit the bulls eye or you are dead, game over. I liked map 30. I don't want "realistic" games I want fun to play games.

As for corpses disappearing, well, again it's a fantasy. Those creatures evolved with a build-in funeral, burning up for example.

Either way, I don't think there is anything to worry.

[Wobbo]

AndrewB said:

I was prepared for that response. If the dead can pile up all in one place causing that room to slow down massively, isn't it a given that the ALIVE may also pile up in the exact same way? If it's possible for LIVING monsters to be rounded up into an area ala-DOOM style, then doesn't that mean that Carmack & Company decided that the slowdown caused by rounding up hordes of monsters isn't too bad? And if the engine simply can't handle too many live monsters in one area, that means they would put in preventative monsters (similar to monster-impassable lines) to prevent them from over-collecting in a single area. And if they can't over-collect in a single area while ALIVE, then it's also impossible for them to over-collect in an area while DEAD.

EDIT: I was wrong about that one.


There is an extremeley limedted amount of resources, level desingeners and programmers need to use memory as SOON AS POSSIBLE. Getting rid of polygons is one way, so just after so-and-so dies, stuff can be allocated for the next area.

[Livo]

There'll most likely be a option in the console for the time taken for corpses to fade, so I don't see what all the fuss is about. If you have a good computer and you don't mind any possible frame-rate hit, knock yourself out by altering the console commands. If you want a decent frame-rate, regardless of your computer's specs, set it to fade after a few minutes then.

[AndrewB]

The way I see it, all monsters should remain indefinitely by default, and making them fade should be attainable through some obscure cheat or command.

[dsm]

AndrewB said:

The way I see it, all monsters should remain indefinitely by default, and making them fade should be attainable through some obscure cheat or command.

A cheat wouldn't make sense - it should be an option in the options menu for those with 'lower end' systems.

[Darkhound]

AndrewB said:

If the entire game is one big map, well, that really sucks. The same way Half-Life sucked. Games like that, there's absolutely no sense of how far you are into the game. You just have to force yourself to continue on until something significant happens, and even then, you don't know how significant that thing will be in comparison to things later on in the game.

Imagine battling through the maps, absolutely no idea of how you're progressing in the game. Then you reach some milestone and a cimematic video starts playing. You don't know if you've reached the end of the first map, or the end of the episode, or the end of the game.

hmm i dont agree, in a game like doom 3, they are trying to scare you with a sinister and dark atmosphere as one of the main selling points.. games that have level 1, level 2 etc never acheive this, take all "scary" games [this isnt my opinion of what a scary game is just examples from popular opinion] such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, AvP2 to name but a few. None of them had "levels" they were all just one ongoing story.. the sense of fear is shattered when you get to a screen with kill stats etc. Its much better in my opinion to immerse the player in one stoy, because thats what its meant to be. Splitting it into levels only takes away from the atmosphere of a game

AndrewB said:
I was prepared for that response. If the dead can pile up all in one place causing that room to slow down massively, isn't it a given that the ALIVE may also pile up in the exact same way? If it's possible for LIVING monsters to be rounded up into an area ala-DOOM style, then doesn't that mean that Carmack & Company decided that the slowdown caused by rounding up hordes of monsters isn't too bad? And if the engine simply can't handle too many live monsters in one area, that means they would put in preventative monsters (similar to monster-impassable lines) to prevent them from over-collecting in a single area. And if they can't over-collect in a single area while ALIVE, then it's also impossible for them to over-collect in an area while DEAD.

You say that its impossible for them to overaccumulate while dead if they dont overaccumulate while alive. Its not the two single items [dead and alive] that cause the problem. If the computer is only having to draw live enemies, it can put the power that would have been used on the dead enemies [which you cant even see anymore so why do you care?] into the surrounding scenery and other things, therefore increasing performance, mainly fps. Although if it has to draw live and dead enemies, it takes away from the available power decreasing performance

[fraggle]

AndrewB said:

If they did have a map similar to Map30 in Doom 3

God I hope not.