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Doom 3 BFG Edition and TDM sitting in a tree


jay pettitt

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Possibly not K.I.S.S.I.N.G. after all.

 

I'm sure everybody already knows, but there's a new PC rehash of Doom 3 around the corner with the original content running on quite a lot of the newer idTech5 (not the original idTech4) code base and apparently isn't mod friendly - ie it seems likely that TDM won't run on it.

 

I'm hoping that this is a good thing in a round a bouts sort of way and JC will manage to work it so the Open Source Tech 4 engine ends up getting a working renderer. But that's nothing but idle speculation and wishful thinking on my part.

 

In the mean time it's possibly not the smoothest thing for TDM.

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Releasing a "refresh" of your game whilst breaking mod-compatibility is a dumb thing to do. Some of the biggest successes with regard to id games have been the mods.

 

Anyway, TDM 1.08 surely wouldn't be using the new EXE included with this Doom 3. TDM will have its own executable now and it might still run (at least to some extent). Of course if id did something like change the file format for the models (unlikely), or encrypted the PK4s (more likely) we're pretty screwed.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Possibly not K.I.S.S.I.N.G. after all. I'm sure everybody already knows, but there's a new PC rehash of Doom 3 around the corner with the original content running on quite a lot of the newer idTech5 (not the original idTech4) code base and apparently isn't mod friendly - ie it seems likely that TDM won't run on it. I'm hoping that this is a good thing in a round a bouts sort of way and JC will manage to work it so the Open Source Tech 4 engine ends up getting a working renderer. But that's nothing but idle speculation and wishful thinking on my part. In the mean time it's possibly not the smoothest thing for TDM.

 

I don't know how relevant the BFG edition for TDM actually is. For now, we have everything we need, plus a lot of open bugs and missing art assets.

 

Sure, getting a renderer update would be nice, but it is not essential - replacing D3 art asets is a much bigger gain for us (standalone, yeah!) IMO.

 

Fixing longstanding bugs (translation not 100% done, horse needs work etc) and improving existing systems (SEED could use a complete overhaul, we still don't have working subtitles, and the fx system is so weak that we don't even use it but instead hard-coded all effects (healing, damage, holy water), the compressed normals are nec. for systems since we only have 32bit memory, but haven't happend yet etc) would be a much much higher priority than adding more "bling" to the renderer.

 

And on top of that our working force is already quite low and constantly seems to shrink - so I'd hope we'd get someone to help us to finish our current work instead of someone who adds something that we don't really need right now.

 

Just my 0.02€, of course.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Oh, I get it now, the worry is that some people only by the BFG edition and then can't play TDM. That might be the case, but hopefully the time between the release of BFG edition and TDM going standalone is not that long.

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Maybe a solution would be to e-mail id/Carmack and ask them to try not to break TDM compatibility. We're not talking about a mod made by one guy here with a couple of screenshots and no download links.

 

We're talking about a mod with over 50 (60?) missions and gigabytes of custom content. It could be as simple as sending them a list of the assets that TDM relies on so they can keep them available.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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The BFG edition would be finished by now and I doubt they are going to go out of their way to ensure mod compatability. We're pretty much free and clear of D3 at the moment, it's just a matter of time in order to replace all of the shared D3 assets so we can be stand alone. If id releases the source code to the BFG edition, that would be great though as we could probably integrate the renderer improvements if they were any good.

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Yeah... since they ported Doom 1 & 2 to Id Tech 5, it wouldn't surprise me if they sorta did the same for Doom 3.

Especially since megatexture was Carmack's solution to the huge increase in RAM usage due to Normal Map data

and Id Tech 5 is essentially the completion of that project. Depending on what's been ported and how, I wouldn't

be surprised to find that the models have been moved to Id Tech 5 formats an that most of the texture and normal maps

have been baked into megatextures (hopefully not baked lighting though... except maybe the monorail level?).

 

I was surprised to see how unfriendly RAGE has been to mods and this news along with the Doom 1 & 2 news pretty-much

foreshadows the future with Id Software titles. They are more concerned with "online community" (and the possible

cheats and exploits) than the "mod community". If RAGE is any indicator, any future mods that do not use the GPL version,

will need a monstrous Megatexture editor and Modo for content creation.

 

I was hoping they would just spiff-up Id Tech 4 with minor changes and up the texture resolution... but now it doesn't look like that's the plan.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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What teh hell, I don't see any sense of re-releasing this game anyway :huh:

 

EDIT: DOOM III, I mean Doom III guys! Before you kill me thinking I spoke of TDM :laugh:

Edited by SeriousToni

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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What teh hell, I don't see any sense of re-releasing this game anyway :huh:

iD ain't iD anymore. It's Zenimax now. Y'know, Horse Armor DLC and stuff...

"Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; Steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man"

- Arab proverb

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Yeah... since they ported Doom 1 & 2 to Id Tech 5,

 

Niels, can you elaborate on that? I have never heard of such a thing.

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Niels, can you elaborate on that? I have never heard of such a thing.

 

http://www.psu.com/a016402/Doom-3-BFG-gets-new-terrifying-trailer says:

 

This ultimate gathering of Doom awesomeness will contain HD versions of all three Doom games alongside Trophy support and additional content in the form of 'The Lost Mission', a pack of eight levels that picks up where Doom 3 left off as you return to Mars to stop a full-scale invasion from Hell.

 

I think that hints at it, but I am not sure what it exactly means by "HD versions of all three Doom games".

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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WTF??

"Doom 3 BFG gets new, terrifying trailer"

 

what PANSY wrote this? i was more scared the first time i seen "My little pony"

 

:laugh:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Over at Doom3world there was a post about it.

 

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=25797

 

Essentially, they didn't want to backport all the network code from RAGE to Doom 1 & 2 so they figured it would

be easier to move the assets over and re-engineer the game code. Pretty strange decision but the other part of

the equation is that RAGE's codebase is optimized for PS3 and Xbox360 so that work is done too... I guess...

 

That RPS article pretty much tells me they are doing the same for Doom 3. We'll see.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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its mainly for console though, zenimax (id) made a deal with microsoft to release all its old games so that they could be played on the console version of idtech 5, tdm wont run on this because for idtech 5 to run on consoles the number of objects in game is less than 2000 something like 1754 objects. As tdm can use 8000+ objects you can see the problem with running tdm on idtech 5.

 

this is the original post from id's site may 30th 2012

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

DOOM 3 BFG Edition is the ultimate collection of groundbreaking games that defined the first person shooter. It includes DOOM, DOOM 2, DOOM 3, and DOOM 3: Resurrection of Evil, as well as the ‘Lost Mission.’ All DOOM 3 content has been re-mastered for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in stunning 3D for an even more terrifying FPS experience.

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

it originally wasn't going to be available on pc. something must have changed that, and I cant find the original post that said these games were going to be console only. might have been deleted.

 

 

I heard that the option to mod idtech 5 games was blocked by microsoft, they dont want xbox players playing free mods.

Edited by stumpy
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I haven't read the articles, but id Tech 5 doesn't have the unified realtime lighting that id tech 4 has, it reverted back to shadow baking, and to be honest I'd rather have the unified lighting we have. But megatextures with compression, that's something that might be nice to have (even though baking big megatextures is an issue, but maybe smaller ones is ok.)... I was imagining hand painting some Dark Mod landscapes and buildings. So if it does go open source later, that's something I'd be happy to see integrated into TDM if possible. I wasn't clear though if the megatextures & old lighting systems have to come together. Maybe there some other engine perks that'd be nice to integrate too?

 

But, yeah, it's just icing on top. We have a solid game right now and fixing the open issues Tels mentioned are most important, I agree.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I knew about the megatexture mod for Doom3, and watched a video on that map you mentioned.

As I understood it, id5 adds compression so the file-sizes don't have to be so astronomical when using them.

Anyway, I'd be happy to see the Doom3 mod version implemented in Dark Mod too.

I think it'd be good for mappers to get used to using a modeling program sometimes anyway, so that's not the worst thing...

One thing I wonder about is I gather that you don't have individual shaders for the surface types anymore (?), so getting the right footstep sound (although maybe you could use the nodraw surface brushes), and I don't know if it messes with the shadows or other surface-type things.

 

Edit: It's not the biggest deal anyway because, honestly, most good TDM levels are about tight spaces, and you could get just as much variety with some modeled architecture that you could also hand paint if you wanted to go all out like that.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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IMO, the only thing really missing in TDM at this point is still SSAO (which I seem to have been preaching about since the dawn of time :D ). Currently, it just looks unnatural with all the objects seeming to float in mid air instead of sitting on the ground. We don't need a new engine because TDM looks top notch (aside from that one thing and maybe soft-shadows) and I think we could also live without mega texture, since we can use decals instead. But some ambient occlusion would magnificently improve believability of the virtual scenes. I have been talking to my good friend namespace about this, whom some of you might still know from his work on GTK Radiant and his support in the development of Dark Radiant, and he totally agrees and even said, that he'd maybe have a shot at implementing it in TDM, once he has some more free time again... :) Definitely looking forward to that!!

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Doom III and The Dark Mod look great already, so no need to worry about this. =) But if some of the cool stuff could be added to TDM without breaking the mod or causing a lot of time to be spent on it, then that would be fine. SSAO would be nice for more realistic shadows around objects, if it worked well with the mod and didn't detract from the more important things that need done. If namespace could add this to the mod and have it be something that can just be turned on as a graphics option in the video menu, that could be cool. =)

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  • 2 months later...

Sooo, the BFG edition is out now. From reading various newsbits i'm glad that i did not bought it. Also you can't buy Doom 3 anymore from steam as standalone. You have to buy the BFG edition or the ID superpack fur just $99. Of course the superpack is not available for German steam users.

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This is a baffling product, since apparently, it is inferior to the original in most aspects except a few extra maps which are reported to be pretty boring.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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The more immediate issue for us is that people that want to play TDM now do not have a ready online way to buy a version of Doom3 that will play it, if Steam only offers the BFG edition for reasonably cheap. (I've read that the BFG edition does not support mods or TDM.) They'll have to buy a used copy of the original CD version or something like that, which is incredibly inconvenient for us. This is aside from the fact it's not all that great as a replacement on its own terms anyway.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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The more immediate issue for us is that people that want to play TDM now do not have a ready online way to buy a version of Doom3 that will play it, if Steam only offers the BFG edition for reasonably cheap. (I've read that the BFG edition does not support mods or TDM.) They'll have to buy a used copy of the original CD version or something like that, which is incredibly inconvenient for us. This is aside from the fact it's not all that great as a replacement on its own terms anyway.

 

Oh dear :( Time to go stand-alone so we can leave that mess behind.

  • Like 2

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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