What do YOU think of DOOM?

[BladeRnR]

Well I had in my hands at 10:00a.m this morning. Rushed home, installed without drama. Set it to run at 1280*1024 on High Quality with 2X AA and 4X AF. Runs like an absolute dream (Not sure of the FPS but it 'feels' quick). Current card is an Albatron 6800GT.

First (quick) impressions after 3 levels before I get back to it:

- Awesome story intro. Far more depth than anticapted. Very much a Half-Life type introduction to the game

- Insane lighting effects and shadows. Subtle sound effects all over the place, steam blowing out of pipes, computers humming, machinery everywhere doing 'machine stuff'. Textures are downright beautiful. Models look pre-rendered. The torch lighting is to die for!

- Game interaction with computers/PDA is really, really well done and the voice acting is extremely professional (Not cheesy). This is as close to movie quality as anything I've seen since Half-Life.

- A.I so far is a mixed bag and I'm playing it on middle level (1 above Recruit I think). Some quite scary scenes that will make you jump no matter how prepared you think you are. Some enemies have given me a run for my money and are quite clever. Not quite up to Far Cry A.I (Yet).

- Absolutely seemless interface to listen to voice recording and read E-mails you pickup through the levels. Read and listen to everything as you'll get valuable clues as to lock codes etc to open stuff. The story is really quite well done although it's really similar to System Shock 2 so far in that department. Still great.

That's a quick first impression. Let me know what you all think! Ok - back to hell I go! :)

Cheers

Blade

[PtP]

Yeah would agree with most of what you have said, The real impact to me is the lighting effects they are astounding, this is what we are to expect now obviosly so welcome to 2004 ;)

Oh and I browsed through my screeny directory after hitting F11 numorous times through the game and only found one decent pic.

He is one ugly mother ;)

[Bully]

:drool: :drool: :drool:

[[WTF]hakenspit]

dont lie PtP thats you on your webcam ;) hmm nice graphics might need to buy it sooner than I had thought

[stinger]

what can I say about it - AWESOME!!!
I like the lighting effefts of it and graphics are so stunning its almost like a movie :)

but I wish the monsters wouldnt jump at ya when you open the doors, gonna get a heart attack :P

[citizen-X]

Whats your full rig blade mate?

I must say i am totally impressed with d3.. I was just expecting it to be intense graphics with no storyline and just a typical Run n blast till i get bored game...thats not the case

It is so damn crisp and the lighting is fwoar!

My fav is definitly the interaction with the computer terminals..looks really nice

Thumbs up to iD for this one..definitely worth the wait..

Current rig:
P4 3.2ghz, 1gig PC3200 Geil Dual channel, MSI 875P mobo, Powercolour Radeon 9800pro 128mb
Running D3 at 1024 * 768 Medium Quality

Havn't tried high qual yet..gonna give it a bam

[BladeRnR]

I've just finished playing it for about 8 hours straight :) It just gets better and better as you get deeper into the game. I've got the Plasma, Chain Gun, Machine Gun, Hand grenades, Pistol and Shotgun. The effect when firing the Plasma gun is godamn amazing. I've got a ton of screenshots which I'll post here to give you an idea of what it looks like on a current graphics card.

Citizen-X here's my current specs:

P4 3.0Ghz Northwood @ 3.6 Ghz
1Gig PC3700 XMS Memory
Nvidia 6800GT @ Ultra speeds (400/1100)
Audigy 2 Platinum

That's the important stuff anyway. All I will say about this game is it's a system killer but apparently scales very well. I'm running 1280*1024 with 2AA and 4 AF in 'High Detail' and it runs like butter. IF you are in the market for a new card or want to see Doom 3 in all it's glory then I wouldn't go past the 6800GT. Clocks straight to Ultra speeds out of the box effortlessly for $770 - $797 if you look hard enough. One thing to remember is iD coded D3 specifically for Nvidia hardware. It's well known (also) that Nvidia have a superior OpenGL driver which ATi are trying to rectify with a rewrite (A 6800GT beats ATi's uber X800XT PE in Doom 3!).

Anyway I'll post some pics tomorrow as I'm buggered. They'll be Hi-Res so major 56k warning!

Cheers

Blade

[citizen-X]

ok cool. I thought there was probs running D3 if u O/C ur cpu? cause i can do around 3.65ghz stable using stock HSF.

Are you using stock HSF or 3rd party ? if so what are u using.

Ive been really cautious atm as to what card to get.. either the 6800 GT or the x800 XT. In the long run what do you think should be bought?

[[wtf]trauma]

Incredible game, i've been known to say ID make great engines first and tack on a game at the end. After playing Doom3 for several hours I couldnt be more wrong.

Lighting is incredible, animation is great, texture art is incredible, most importantly the gameplay is fantastic. Besides, there is nothing more fun then blowing away a zombie with a shotgun. Tying it in to real websites is nice as well, shame that you cannot browse real websites from within the game at certain consoles.

Playing at 1600x1200 without any frame rate issues at high quality settings. Suprisingly, on my brothers system (AMD 3200xp, 1g DDR400 ram, Geforce 4 ti4200 oc to ti4600) it runs great at medium settings at 800x600 and still looks really good as well. ID's doom3 engine should be playable and look good even on low end systems :)

I do have one problem though, sound cuts out on me sometimes when surround sound is enabled, checked www.planetdoom.com and a few people are getting the same problem with the audigy 2 ZS, hopefully a fix is found soon.

Although MP is capped at 4 players at the moment, this can easily be increased like in the alpha version. It will never be able to handle 30 players with the current netcode but 10 player mods should be quite possible. Can you imagine a natural selection type mod with this engine?!

Posted my system specs below:

OS: WinXP Professional 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build #2600)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (Barton) , 2.19 GHz
Video: Philips 109B40 on ATi Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition (1600x1200x32bpp 75Hz)
Sound: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [C400]
Memory: 1024MB
Connection: Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC

P.S the lost soul and pinky demon figurine i got with it from EB are nice as well, they watch over me when im banging the table in frustration in regards to the surround sound problems im getting.

[citizen-X]

3:20am

finished doom 3...and damn was it goood!

[BladeRnR]

ok cool. I thought there was probs running D3 if u O/C ur cpu? cause i can do around 3.65ghz stable using stock HSF.

Are you using stock HSF or 3rd party ? if so what are u using.

Ive been really cautious atm as to what card to get.. either the 6800 GT or the x800 XT. In the long run what do you think should be bought?

No problems at all O/C. Carmack simply said there MAY be problems with overclocked video cards - not O/C CPU's :) I have encountered none so far. I'm using a Coolermaster 3D GT cooler for the CPU. Best air-cooler I've ever used.

What card should you buy for the long term? The 6800GT of course! That's why I bought it! Many reasons and here's some:

- Nvidia's legendary driver stability. Forceware (So far) are brilliant. Tried over 20 titles and all passed with flying colours.

- I never ran shadowing in any games with ATi due to poor performance (Thief 3 has really bad bugs here on Ati's card). Flawless on 6800GT.

- 6800GT has 16 rendering pipes. X800 Pro has 12 even though you can mod the X800 Pro I was a little wary about such a large mod.

- 6800GT O/C straight to Ultra speeds out of the box. Some guys are getting insane O/C's with this thing (450/1200)! I tried 440/1180 and it worked! Backed it off though because you just dont need it.

- Nvidia's OpenGL is well known to be totally superior to ATi's which is why Ati are rewriting their OpenGL driver. ATi has the slight edge in DirectX *shrugs* but I haven't seen it yet.

- Nvidia has Shader Model 3.0. This feature cannot be overstated - there are at least 8 titles coming out 2004/2005 that all support SM3.0. Stalker - Oblivion Lost anyone? Far Cry already has it and I can atest it looks fabulous and boosts performance. 1280*1024 2AA with 8AF and this game is butter.

- 6800GT has a hardware based Mpeg2 Encoder/Decoder chip which has yet to be exploited. Apparently Nvidia are going to use it soon. The 6800GT is a totally new architecture. The X800 series is simply a refresh of R3xx technology which stretches back to the 9700.

That's all I can think of for now. Nvidia's IQ has been revamped and I can't tell the difference anymore between them and what I used to run (9800XT). I'm not going to turn around and say ATi is crap - very far from it. Just for now Nvidia has the better bang for buck card and is more futureproof due to architecture/features. I guess that's why ATi are releasing a X800GT to combat the 6800GT :) Nice feature with Nvidia's card is you can turn Trlinear and Anistropic Filtering optimizations On/Off in the driver.

BTW I just bought a Logitech 510 Optical Mouse as well. Verdict? Best damn mouse I've EVER used. Stunning speed and accuracy in games. What a difference it is compared to my old Dell rebadged Logitech. Holy Cow! 800dpi and 40 inches a second speed. Awesome mouse - get one!

Cheers

Blade

[BladeRnR]

trauma']Incredible game, i've been known to say ID make great engines first and tack on a game at the end. After playing Doom3 for several hours I couldnt be more wrong.

Lighting is incredible, animation is great, texture art is incredible, most importantly the gameplay is fantastic. Besides, there is nothing more fun then blowing away a zombie with a shotgun. Tying it in to real websites is nice as well, shame that you cannot browse real websites from within the game at certain consoles.

Playing at 1600x1200 without any frame rate issues at high quality settings. Suprisingly, on my brothers system (AMD 3200xp, 1g DDR400 ram, Geforce 4 ti4200 oc to ti4600) it runs great at medium settings at 800x600 and still looks really good as well. ID's doom3 engine should be playable and look good even on low end systems :)

I do have one problem though, sound cuts out on me sometimes when surround sound is enabled, checked www.planetdoom.com and a few people are getting the same problem with the audigy 2 ZS, hopefully a fix is found soon.

Although MP is capped at 4 players at the moment, this can easily be increased like in the alpha version. It will never be able to handle 30 players with the current netcode but 10 player mods should be quite possible. Can you imagine a natural selection type mod with this engine?!

Posted my system specs below:

OS: WinXP Professional 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build #2600)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (Barton) , 2.19 GHz
Video: Philips 109B40 on ATi Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition (1600x1200x32bpp 75Hz)
Sound: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [C400]
Memory: 1024MB
Connection: Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC

P.S the lost soul and pinky demon figurine i got with it from EB are nice as well, they watch over me when im banging the table in frustration in regards to the surround sound problems im getting.

I've yet to encounter the sound problem you've had Trauma but apparently they list it in the Readme.txt (I haven't looked yet). In the options when you go to pick 'Surround Speakers' it says something like 'Surround speakers not detected please check your Windows Speaker settings'. In game though I'm getting surround :) Wierd. It will be fixed in the patch.

Nice one on the Pinky/Lost Soul figurine - you must have Pre-Ordered it lucky bugger! I got a Mancubus figurine in mine (The big fat dude with Rocket Launchers on his arms!).

BTW where did you get the X800XT PE? They are like rocking horse shit even in the U.S! They haven't been released here in Australia unless I'm wrong (And I really LOOKED for one before opting for the 6800GT). Don't tell me you bought one on Ebay! Oh hang on no you didn't - you modded an X800 Pro didn't you :) Come on come on list it as a modded X800 Pro :)

Cheers

Blade

[citizen-X]

ahhahaha

yeah he modded it alright :)

[[wtf]trauma]

Hiyas,

I dont list it as a modded card for a few reasons. One it was originally an X800 pro VIVO card with 1.6ns ram. This is literally the same card as the x800xt pe except it has been flashed with the x800pro rom.

ATI ran out of time to make a pro VIVO card so just used the XT's instead. All I had to do was flash it with X800xt pe rom. Now has the same core/mem, 16 pipes, same speed ram. None of that having to draw a line joining up dots on the boad and all that crap.

So instead of modding an x800pro to XT, all I have really done is reflash an x800xt board back to what it should be. If anyone here is thinking of doing this, make sure the board has 1.6ns ram, otherwise it is not a true x800xt board (should say GC16 on the top of the RAM).

[[wtf]trauma]

Cat 4.9 beta drivers are out for Radeon cards, specifically to improve Doom3 performance, and i guess any other OpenGL game. Check it out here:

http://www.teamradeon.com/

Says users with newer radion cards can expect improvements between 5 - 30% in speed.

[Carcrash]

ay dude, ive read plenty of articles about ppl doin that to there X800pros when they get the ones wif the 1.6ns ram.... the place i buy stuff from (www.it-rite.com) doesnt have those ones so i was wondering where u got yours from along wif ne other details u fiond relavent as im about to upgrade from my 9800pro.... someone offered me $300 for it so im sellin soon.....

[[wtf]trauma]

I bought a Gecube x800pro VIVO from a computer swap meet. Really whether it is a Sapphire or Powercolor or whatever should not matter as long as it is a VIVO version with 1.6ns ram, otherwise it will not be a true X800xt board and probably has the extra 4 pipes laser cut.

If i wasn't buying at the swapmeet I would have probably gone to www.cpl.net.au

One thing you have to do is way up the price difference in your mind and decide whether you just want to go straight to x800xt without any of the hassle or risk (the risk is extremely low as you can simply flash back to your original bios if you want, but theres always a chance). Make no mistake thought, I was scared shitless doing it, even though it is a fairly painless and easy thing to do, what if I killed my $700 card!

I remember seeing a link from http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp to some australian store that sells the x800pro VIVO flashed to x800xt pe, with store warrenty, wasn't a bad deal.

Really whether you go for Nvidia or ATI doesnt make a huge difference, they are both extremely fast cards. Nvidia has the upper hand in OpenGL games and ATI has a slight edge on directx games. Guess it comes down to what games you play. Saying that, I installed the cat 4.9beta drviers and get about 4-6 fps higher now. Not a huge increase but not bad for a beta driver, happy that they are doing something about OpenGL performance.

This article with give you the best idea of how Doom3 will perform on your system with a range of different cards. http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

[[wtf]trauma]

BTW, didnt take long for multiplayer servers to come out with more then the 4 player cap, just checked and theresa couple of 16 player servers. I'm sure the performance will be improved a fair bit when dedicated server side comes out, can't imagine its that good with 16 players at the moment.

In other news, some people are planning to make a system shock mod for the doom3 engine, heres hoping they have the talent to pull it off.

I want a nhatural selection mod for it! :) Skult = spider, Onus = Pinky Demon, etc. Don't want to give away all the creatures in doom3 to those that havent played it. If the netcode can handle it, I can't imagine a better engine for a mod like that. For performance reasons the physics side of the netcode (moving boxes, barrels, etc.) may need to be dumbed down a bit, but I doubt that would matter.

Other mods being worked on: Coop mod http://coop.doom3maps.de/

[citizen-X]

anyone with a 9800pro tried the 4.9 cat beta drivers??

I dun wanna install it till i read that theres a possibility of a performance boost consdiring its directed at x800 cards :(

[PtP]

I am having no performance issues in Doom 3 with my 9800xt so I didnt bother installing them ;)

[[wtf]trauma]

check rage3d forum, some people saying their fps is the same, some saying its 1-2 fps better. Seems to really be made for x800 series so far, although this is a beta driver so might be different in the final version.

[AussieWilly]

is it ready yet PtP????
are we there yet???
are we??

[[wtf]trauma]

you waiting for a new vid card to be delivered or something willy ?

[AussieWilly]

ummmm, new box all together.
866 p111 with radeon 8500 just wont cut the mustard.

when ptp designed my 866, I was the fastest kid on the block.

[[wtf]trauma]

So what beast are you getting ? :)

[PtP]

A good stable/solid 3gig P4 with 1gig ram and all the bells and whistles ;)

[PtP]

Oh and back on topic I must admit now being at the 3/4 spot of the game as much as the eyecandy is great ( I mean AWESOME) the gameplay leaves a little to be desired, dont get me wrong its not a bad game it just more of the same over and over again, ie: 1. walk down dark corridoors 2. lights go dim monsters jump out 3. kill monsters with cool weapons 4. goto1.

I feel its more of a engine showoff that a serious effort at putting together a great keep you enthrawlled game. By all means anyone that hasnt got the game yet go grab it and have fun just dont expect the impact on your concept of games life HL did to us a few years back and personally I feel Farcry has had a larger impact on me on how great games of today can and will be, mind you I have never been a lover of mindless shootem ups like doom, quake and more recently painkiller and much prefered fps's that exersise your mind a little more like sin, hl and more recently Farcry.

This is all my 2 cents ;)

[PtP]

Oh and Blade lets have a rumble like the old days ;)

Sif I would buy a card that plays Doom3 better when Half-life 2 will be 30% faster with a Radeon and HL2 will give birth to all the mods that I will be playing on a daily basis for the next 4 years and doom 3 will go into the garage after playing it ;)

[NWM]

Anyone wanting a performance increase might like to try this:
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoom/topic.asp?fid=5733&tid=1438663

[[wtf]trauma]

im nearing the end now, I agree with Ptp that it isnt a revolution in gameplay, but it's certainly rocking my boat. HL2 and the mods will be awesome, and from the HL2 benchmark tests, will kick arse on ATI cards. I dont know what the netcode in Doom3 is really able to handle, there could be some pretty good mods for it as well.

Either way, definintely worth the money.

[BladeRnR]

Oh and Blade lets have a rumble like the old days ;)

Sif I would buy a card that plays Doom3 better when Half-life 2 will be 30% faster with a Radeon and HL2 will give birth to all the mods that I will be playing on a daily basis for the next 4 years and doom 3 will go into the garage after playing it ;)

LOL mate my flaming days are over (Unless Thomo and CSM come back for HL2 Mods). And in my weakened non-flaming state of mind you'd beat me like a 14 year old with a penthouse magazine ;)

There were a lot of factors this time around for me. You simply cannot buy an X800XT PE at the moment and I didn't want to mod one. For now the 6800GT is more than enough. As I said Ati is still an awesome card manufacturer and if they had their card out at the same time I would have bought it.

Who knows? With the refresh cards coming out late this year I might reevaluate and go back to ATi. As always it all depends who has the faster card at the exact moment I make my decision :) Half-Life 2 will be interesting though. As for Doom 3 you were right on the money as far as gameplay goes. It was rather boring but at least it looked nice :)

Cheers

Blade