Was Doom 3 the first game with this kind of texturing?

[Orchid87]

As you know Doom 3 textures are made of three layers: diffuse maps that define the pixel color, normal maps that define heights and specular maps. This was pretty new for games as many of the games at the time used simplier textures where everything was simply "faked" and drawn on a single texture map file. Even those games from the era that do support bump maps and speculars, like Half-Life 2 and STALKER, use old-style, probably photographied textures with all the real-life bumps and gloss already baked there. Then those games add bumps and specular on top of that for the extra details (STALKER is really generous with that) but the fact is that the textures were made the old way. So was Doom 3 the first game that discarded fake stuff in textures and made everything in real time?

Could this be that other game developers weren't really ready for this? In 2002 many ppl mistakenly bought cheap Geforce 4 MX which was basically a DirectX 7.1 hardware and still had it by 2004. Half-Life 2 had a separate DirectX 7 mode where bump maps, speculars and other shader effects are omitted. And given that its textures had all those fake details, the game looked a little bit worse than in true DirectX 8 or 9 mode by not by much. It was perfectly playable. Remove normal maps and speculars from Doom 3 and you'll get a pretty ugly stuff. Just google "Doom 3 Voodoo". Yeah, pretty much unplayable. But being an (rare) OpenGL game, Doom 3 didn't have to comply to DirectX standards, and it worked on GF4MX with all the graphical details intact. In retrospect it was a nice incentive for a hardware upgrade - the game run really really slow on Geforce 4 MX but looked mostly as good as on a DirectX 9 hardware. So what do you think?

[Tetzlaff]

As far as I know the low-budget title Secret Service: Security Breach http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/secret-service-security-breach was the first game that used that new generation texturing that became standard after Doom 3. It was released in 2003. They have the game world textured with diffuse maps and normal maps. There is also some gloss effect, but (from what I remember) not from a specular map, but in some way using the normal map for it.

[Koko Ricky]

Is that game using stencil shadows too?

[Tetzlaff]

Yes. The engine is AMP2 by 4D Rulers (the studio that made the obscure FPS Gore: Ultimate Soldier) http://www.4drulers.com/news.html

AMP II was used to develop the comercial game Secret Service Security Breach published by Activision this fall, the first game to ship with stencil shadows, bump mapping, specular lighting and per pixel lighting.

[Linguica]

More trivia: 4D Rulers was the company founded by Joel Huenink, who was previously known for his Doom partial conversion All Hell is Breaking Loose!!!

[Orchid87]

I remember reading about 4D rulers and Gore in a 1999 magazine. The game was sorta Quake 1 or Unreal 1 clone back then. Then it disappeared for some years, so it was actlly released?

[VGamingJunkie]

Speaking of ugliness when turning the effects off, I wonder why Doom 3 has this weird Two-Faced effect going on where there's a big ass seam in the middle of their faces when they're not being bump mapped.

[Tetzlaff]

Linguica said:

More trivia: 4D Rulers was the company founded by Joel Huenink, who was previously known for his Doom partial conversion All Hell is Breaking Loose!!!

Interesting, I didn't knew that.

Orchid87 said:

I remember reading about 4D rulers and Gore in a 1999 magazine. The game was sorta Quake 1 or Unreal 1 clone back then. Then it disappeared for some years, so it was actlly released?

Yes, Gore was released. It's mainly a multiplayer game, but it also has a wacky singleplayer campaign where MP maps were slightly modified and joined together with the help of a virtual reality hacking storyline.

You can try it, they released an updated version for free after some time: http://www.freewarefiles.com/Gore-Special-Edition_program_42929.html