Doom3???? My Thoughts

[LaSH]

As far as the game goes,kinda reminds me of UNREAL 2 the awaking. As for the DEATH MATCH,way slower than what i prefer. And i dont like the fact you cant slide left and right. And your left and right arrow keys is recognized as shift keys. So you really cant assign them as eneything.



As for the graphics,i got mine set on the lowest setting. And i have to say it has the best by far. Maybe i am jumping to conclusions here,still to early to tell.

[SALvation]

So far I really like the SP and haven't tried the MP yet. The SP in the first level is very intense with all the marines screaming over the radio and the lights flickering on and off. Wow.

[Slice]

What is the movement like? Is it slow going or can you run and stuff? What do the weapons feel like? Do they seem like they are weak or do they own?

[ME BIGGD01]

i just picked it up at best but today but until i get to build the new system, i wont be messing with it.

[SALvation]

SP: Movement is mostly walking so far. You can run with the shift button but I haven't had to yet. Only weapons I've gotten are pistol (weak) and the shotgun which feels damn good.

MP: Takes some getting used to. Still has a very scary feel to it, especially when someone grabs the berserk powerup. It actually scared the crap out of me as some guy went running by me screaming his head off. Weapons feel good but most of the maps are confined. Also its dark so you can hide in the shadows without being seen unless someone is using their flashlight. At one point a guy was chasing me with a rocket launcher, I ran around the corner and hit in the shadows behind some boxes. He ran buy me, I shot the barrel next to him, big explosion and one dead prey.

Also sound plays a key role in MP. I was turning the corner behind some guy, hit a pile of metal boxes by accident which fell down and he heard me, proceeding to gib me.

Its still hard to gauge the MP though because there are few good servers, and everyone is trying to get their feet wet still. So far I like it.

Back to playing...

[SALvation]

Oh and let me be the first to post a win... :D

[SALvation]

Also people can spot you coming around corners by your shadows.BTW my screens are at 1028x760 running on high quality. The number in the upper left is FRAPS.

[OUTLAWS high ping camper]

Looks nice, excellent detail in that screenshot. There are 6 Best Buy stores near me.... but none of them have it yet.

[ME BIGGD01]

is there a benchmark for this game to see how your system performs?

if so, where and how?

[SALvation]

You can run a timedemo which grabs the true framerate since in game its locked to 60fps. I'm not sure how to run it though, but I do know that CTRL+ALT+~ brings down the console.

[SALvation]

Found it:

"To run timedemo...access the console at the main menu by pressing ctrl+alt+` and then type "timedemo demo1" without quotation marks."

[SALvation]

Oh BTW, there are already 8 and 16 player servers out there. Sure they are running off of home boxes and suck ass, but it shows people are doing it right off the bat.

[Death Engineer]

My first impression is: Wow! The SP action is intense. It will actually make you jump. The in-game music as the ambient sounds/noise are everything you'd expect from a well made game.

I have to say that my system really can't handle it though. Running on an Athlon XP2000+ with a Geforce 3 TI200, I have it set on 640x480 on Low graphics (the lowest setting) and it is still fairly framey. It's playable, but not without noticeable glitches (like when opening doors).

I'm probably going to have to wait until I upgrade my video card to do any multiplayer action as it seemed even slower than the SP. :(

[JIMINATOR]

try turning off all of the shadows, speculars, etc in advanced settings.

eh, but then SP will not be any fun...

[PJ'l_Master]

OMG...i CANT WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[EXEcution]

Courtesy of the same guy that made that doom 3 movement movie. :)
Some are cheats and some are to screw around with a bunch of settings.
How to enable your console:

"Edit your Doom 3 shortcut on your desktop so that it says:
"[your doom3 directory]\Doom3.exe" +seta com_allowconsole 1
Then just press ~ to open it up, if you don't change your shortcut you'd have to press CTRL+ALT+~ to get into your console... (thanks to fei for that one :))

A few of the more important commands wich you'll probably be using a lot:

+ recorddemo (name) --> Records a demo
+ playdemo (name) --> Plays a recorded demo
+ compressdemo --> No idea what this does, but it sounds sweet :p
+ recordcmddemo --> Probably a function to record a sort of macro or so, let me know if you figured out what it does.
+ playcmddemo --> Plays a cmddemo :p
+ com_showfps 1 ( --> shows your frames per second in the top right corner of your screen

And here's the full list of commands wich i found in the .nfo for cheats :P
(and NO i don't use cheats, i figured that the commands could be in there)
_use
_moveRight
_moveLeft
_moveDown
_forward
_back
_right
_left
_lookDown
_lookUp
_attack
_moveUp
_speed
_strafe
_button7
_button6
_button5
_button4
_button3
_button2
_button1
_button0
aasStats
addarrow
addline
aviDemo
benchmark
blinkline
bindlist
bind
centerview
compressDemo
connect
clearlights
conDump
clear
cvar_restart
cvarlist
combineCubeImages
com_drawfps
crash
collisionModelInfo
dirtyfeet
dir
demoShot
disconnect
dmap
echo
envshot
exec
exportmodels
editSounds
editLight
editor
error
fillrate
flashlight
focusSoundsEditor
give
game_memory
gfxinfo
in_restart
kill
killRagdolls
killMoveables
killMonsters
keepTestModel
listModels
listSkins
listMaterials
listImages
listModes
listLightDefs
listEntityDefs
listMonsters
listEntities
listThreads
listSounds
listAnims
listCollisionModels
listlines
listVertexCache
map
modulateLights
noclip
notarget
nextanim
overlayGUI
path
poplight
parsewait
printShader
printMode
playDemo
playCmdDemo
playerModel
prevanim
reload
reloadSounds
reloadSoundShaders
reloadFx
reloadanims
reexportmodels
removeline
runReach
runAAS
recordCmdDemo
recordDemo
recordCmdDemo
recordDemo
renderbumpFlat
renderbump
roq
reloadGuis
reset
regenerateWorld
reloadImages
reloadShaders
reloadModels
script
reloadEntityDefs
quit
s_musictrack
s_cacheInvalidate
s_cacheInfo
s_restart
seta
set
spawn
setviewpos
setStepGamma
setu
sets
sizeDown
sizeUp
screenshot
spawnServer
stopRecording
say
testTrace
testImage
testShader
testBump
testLight
touchFx
touchGui
touchFile
toggle
testSIMD
touchMaterial
testFx
touchSound
listSoundShaders
touchParticle
testDamage
testblend
testanim
testParticle
testModel
testWipe
testGUI
timeDemo
testmap
touchSkin
touchModel
unbind
unbindall
vid_restart
vstr
writeConfig
writePrecache
weapon
weapnext
where
weapprev
weaponSplat
god
Test some out, and change the console key as it says in the beginning,. :thumbs:

[EXEcution]

maybe this should be a pinned thread in the upcoming Doom 3 forum :P

[SALvation]

You can add the code "god" to that list. Just type it in to turn god mode on...er...so I heard.

[OUTLAWS 9.99repeating^32]

Here is another review from a guy from another forum that I found(named Frood from gotrice.org, not a professional in the gaming industry or a reporter of any sorts):






--------------------

XP - Frood

Well, I got to play DooM 3 yesterday at Activision, and I thought I'd give a little mini review, or at least some observances about different aspects of the game.

Movement/Gameplay:

Movement felt more like quake2 than quake3 or other id games. Players didn't move particularly quickly, or jump particularly high or far. There were many instances where I felt that I should be able to make a jump upwards but could not. I didn't get a good feel for air control because I spent almost no time in the air, there are only a few jumps to items and most of them are pretty routine.

The gameplay is very similar to other id games. Almost nothing new has been added. There are lightswitches and control panels which you can access in game, triggering traps or secret areas. Now to trigger them you have to actually walk up to them and click them, a mouse cursor appears to do that, which was pretty slick. No more pressing buttons with your body, or use buttons. There was one new use of a button, where it would set a spawn timer on an item (the 100H). So you'd have to wait 20 seconds after the button was pressed to get the item, which was a very interesting gameplay change which could be neat for TDM.

Teleporters work like other id games, except now they've added a teleport effect which takes a little time to complete and looks cool the first time you see it. Kind of like being sucked through a tunnel. It doesn't really add anything to the gameplay except a time delay between hitting the teleporter and hitting the exit.

When I got into the game, I immediately went through all of the cvars to see what I could change/turn off. I discovered that things like bob, kickpitch, kickroll were all server-side variables that clients could not alter or turn off. I also found that FOV is also a server side variable that cannot be changed on the client. I was very dissapointed, but hopefully this can be modded out easily. Of course, turning all the video effects off is possible, including shadows. As pretty as the game is, I think everyone will be playing it in super-ugly mode, because 90% of the beauty of the game comes from the shadows, but they seem like a huge disadvantage in gameplay. While they could be nice for seeing other players shadows ahead of time, footsteps take care of knowing when people are coming. And shadows create so many ridiculous hiding places on the maps that having them on was suicide. I played half the time with shadows and half without to see the difference, and not once did having shadows on seem to help me, and it lead to my death quite a bit.

Weapon hits are indicated as in quake3, with a ding and a red light on your crosshair. That is very important as otherwise you'd have no idea if you hit them at all. The rocket launcher and grenades, being splash, aren't helped as much by this, as it is harder to tell how much damage you actually did.

Items/Weapons:

The weapons are very doom. Fists, pistol, grenades, shotgun, machinegun, chaingun, plasmagun, rocket launcher, BFG, soulcube, chainsaw. I don't know anything about the BFG, soulcube, or chainsaw, as I never saw them on the multiplayer maps. Note that there is no lightning gun and no railgun.

Fists are useless. The pistol is useless, it is a quick 3 shot burst and is about as useful as the quake1 shotgun. The other starting weapon is 2 grenades, which are useful in a "run backwards and throw them straight at the ground while someone chases you" sort of way.

The shotgun was reasonably satisfying. I was able to kill people in one hit often enough, but anything outside of point blank range and you need multiple hits to do anything. It has a very slow reload so you're dead meat against a RL.

Machinegun seemed pretty useless. Rapid-fire pistol. It was hard to tell how much damage you're doing but I got few kills with this weapon unless my opponent was stuck or retarded or both.

Chaingun was very quake2. Long warmup time when you start firing, decent damage, and probably the only good long range weapon in the game. Of course, there is almost nowhere where you'd need a long range weapon, so it isn't very useful either. But having it makes you at least formidable.

Plasma Gun: Very quake3. Pretty good projectile speed, could be a bit faster but they told me it was even slower before so I guess I won't complain. Kills people pretty quick (20 damage a shot I think). If you're on with it, it's probably the best weapon, but utterly useless at any kind of range.

Rocket Launcher: Very quake2. Small splash. Hit someone in the face and they pretty much die, but armor protects a bit. I had trouble telling how much damage I was doing with splash, it feels like you need to hit very close or dead on for it to really do much. It fires pretty slowly, but faster than the shotgun so it is definitely superior at any range. Hard to hit anything at long range because the rockets move pretty slow. Still, thats hardly ever an issue.

The items in the game are strange. I don't know the names of them. There is a 100H on some maps, and an invisibility (I *think* I was invisible at least). There is an item that puts you on some kind of berzerk rage. You run faster and do more damage, but your screen goes tunnel-vision on you. And there is a horrible screaming noise while you do it. It was neat the first time, ok the second, and then got really annoying. That sound is just creepy and too high pitched for me. I couldnt tell how much more damage you did, but it was probably 3x or more.

Armor is either one 50 piece armor, or 5 point armor shards. Armor is armor, like the last few id games. it's defintely good to have, a lot of armor is a big advantage in a firefight, but I didn't pay close attention. Other than this it's just health and ammo around the map. At the lower details it is hard to tell what a lot of stuff is, it is very nondescript (oh, the rectangle is shotgun ammo, and the square is machinegun ammo, oh!). There is definitely incentive to play at the highest detail possible, even if all the bump mapping and shadows are off.

The weapon models aren't very good. Thats about all I can say about them.

Maps:

We played 4 different maps I think, they kind of ran together after a bit. Of the 4, only one of them seemed like it would be reasonable for 1v1 or 2v2 TDM. Two of the maps had large rooms, one with a big spiral staircase around the outside, and one with a huge two level reactor type room. Both of these rooms housed the berzerk item, but otherwise there wasn't much incentive to fight in them, and they were easy to escape. The rest of the rooms all felt super cramped. Small rooms, tight cooridors, poor lighting, in some cases pitch black if the lights were off. The cooridors felt very much like doom2. Nothing on these maps really distinguished themselves as being very interesting. A few places where the map could kill you. One place where a button killed everyone in a room with the invisibility. The item placement for weapons seemed pretty much random. People will have to make third party maps to make any kind of 4v4 or 1v1 really possible or reasonable.

Thats about all I have. If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to ask em, I'll do the best I can. If I had to make a recommendation, I guess all I would say is don't buy an nvidia card just because it runs doom3 better, or you will be dissapointed.

Forgot a couple important things:

Weapons require reloads. For example, the RL will only hold 5 shells at a time, and there is a reload button. Some weapons take forever to reload. If you pick up ammo for an empty weapon, and then switch to it, it won't reload automatically so you'll sit there with 0 shots until you hit fire or reload.

There is no indicator as to when you pick up a weapon, or what weapon you picked up. But players drop their last used weapon. So you have to pay more attention to what you're getting, especially at low detail where it's hard to tell the plasma gun from the machine gun or the RL from the chaingun, and the shotgun looks like a knobby stick.

XP - Medic:

You drop your last used weapon? does that mean you don't pack the weapons but you simply carry 1 weapon at all times?

other questions:

- Can you modify gfx rendering on the fly (ie. mipmap)

- Is there strafe running?

- Is there a secondary (alt) fire to the weapons are are they basic

- Was it any fun for you to play or did it seem like more of a chore?


XP - Frood:

No alt fire, it's just regular doom/quake weapons

Its just like quake/doom/whatever, you drop the weapon you happen to be using. You still can carry umpty scrunch weapons at once. Weapon switching is sloooooow.

I'm not sure what you mean by "on the fly". I could change all graphics options except resolution in the game without restarting. I dont think there are more graphics options than in say, quake3. It's very similar, you can make it super ugly to play it. On even the best hardware I'd expect it to be set to at least pretty ugly,if not super ugly.

I'm not sure what you mean by strafe running. If you mean like quake1 style strafing back and forth makes you faster, I tried that and didnt notice anything. if you just mean the ability to strafe at a run speed, yes. If you mean something else, I dont speak your language.

It was kind of fun. It reminded me of why I enjoyed playing FPS games, more than say UT2004 did. But it really just made me want to play quake3 or quake1, not continue to play doom3.

[EXEcution]

Here is another review from a guy from another forum that I found(named Frood from gotrice.org, not a professional in the bla bla bla
Nice find 9's worth a look/read.

[ME BIGGD01]

i am starting to regret that i bought this game. it seems that it is to slow and the only thing good about it is that it has good graphics. for 53 bucks i would think it would not get you bored so fast.

[SALvation]

I wouldn't buy it for MP but definitely for SP. The good news for MP is there are a ton of mods in dev.

[OUTLAWS high ping camper]

Picked it up today at Electronic Boutique....Woot! :)

[EXEcution]

My guess is that the first mod to be developed will be a sped up version of doom 3.
Also i did not look into this but did ID ever release a map/character editor with the game?

[OUTLAWS high ping camper]

As far as the game goes,kinda reminds me of UNREAL 2 the awaking. As for the DEATH MATCH,way slower than what i prefer. And i dont like the fact you cant slide left and right. And your left and right arrow keys is recognized as shift keys. So you really cant assign them as eneything.



As for the graphics,i got mine set on the lowest setting. And i have to say it has the best by far. Maybe i am jumping to conclusions here,still to early to tell.

I don't understand your comment amount the left and right arrow keys. I was able to assign them to move left and right (just like in sam).

BTW, I not much for games that make me think, this whole "mission accomplished" stuff is kind of a turn off for me.
But hey...once those zombies start coming after you....whoa, this game is awsome! :thumbs:

[OUTLAWS high ping camper]

Just got done playing some multi-player. I liked it. Talked a guy into having a fist fight.....damn he punched hard! :)
Spectator mode rocked....talk about lightning fast...and you can fly too, I thought that was pretty cool. :)

[MR. SLiK]

i think some of you guys wont like it because it isnt Serious Sam. Heck, some of you hadnt even played fps until serious sam.

[JIMINATOR]

well, he does have a chainsaw!!! :thumbs:

[He Is Legend]

i think some of you guys wont like it because it isnt Serious Sam. Heck, some of you hadnt even played fps until serious sam.

Doesnt matter

Doom 3 kicks the sh!t outta anygame!!! :D

[He Is Legend]

I still say the old Dooms are my favorite