Hey all,
Long time no post
Just thought you’d be interested in a recent Slashdot post on a leaked Doom 3 alpha version. I guess it’ll be all over the net soon but you’ll find it for now via http://www.slashdot.org in the recent stories.
Bye
Oh, BTW, I realize that it’s illegal/immoral etc to download the alpha. I’m not condoning it, and I haven’t downloaded it myself (I run a Sun workstation at the moment so I couldn’t run it anyway). Just thought that some of you might be interested in quietly having a look at the technology “live”.
IMHO the alpha won’t do anything to hurt Id anyway, probably the opposite - free advertising - since the general consensus seems to be (in non-technical terms) it rocks.
ehh what is all this BUZZ about ILLEGAL crap … I bet guys at ID are happy that this leak generates SO MUCH FREE BUZZ for them … Hell they have nothing to be ashamed of, this LEAK ROCKs … REALLY STUNNING work…
I had leaked UT2k3 before, and I bought Retail version of UT2k3 when it came out. I saw leaked Doom3, and I will buy it when it comes out too … So there FREE PRESS did not hurt anyone …
and if ID would be MAD at someone about the leak, they should be more careful to whom they give their software to (the hero Jackass that leaked it on the net)… They can’t expect DOOM STARVED gamers to hold themselves from downloading early showing, months before final version will see the light …
I say LET IT LEAK !!!
Hello.
This is new and interesting to me.
I only run a GeForce2 though so it won’t really be so funny on my system I guess.
What is the alpha like? Do you get to play some ‘real’ levels, ready with scripts and all? In that case you would kind of spoil the shocking-effect for the retail, wouldn’t you?
Anyway I think id-software does not need any bigger buzz about their product. It probably is at it’s highest now, don’t you think?
I’m currently sitting here and wonder what a REAL id fan would do. Eagerly grasp the unfinished work or patiently wait for Carmack and his friends to finish another piece of perfect art. 
I think I go waiting anyway and drool over some screens.
I will defintitely get the retail, though, and most probably do some hardware shopping the same day.
Thanks for the info ffish.
[This message has been edited by B_old (edited 11-03-2002).]
it’s essentially the e3 demonstration… i have just no clue how they got it working that fast on the e3… i bet it was a video 
doesn’t work smooth on any gpu i’ve seen (thought, my radeon9700 has some weird hw settings currently… you know, i can run it at 2 fps, both on 400x300 and on 1280x1024… so it’s the cpu… )
well. i’ll buy doom3… i haven’t ut2003 (i don’t like it…)…
it looks much bether than the pictures i’ve seen somehow. i’m impressed. id, good job now just get it fast
I managed to ‘find’ the doom3 demo. Its basically what was shown at e3, there are 3 small levels but it chugs like a goodun on my ath xp1900 with a gf3. at 640x480 it can run at a steady-ish 20fps but when you start shooting the monsters it can drop to less than 1fps. all Textures seem to be at least 1/2 res too.
Like carmack has just said, you cant judge the actual game on this, but i cant see what drastic steps he’s going to be able to take for this game to be playable and enjoyable on anything less than a radeon 9700 
Originally posted by Ventura:
Like carmack has just said, you cant judge the actual game on this, but i cant see what drastic steps he’s going to be able to take for this game to be playable and enjoyable on anything less than a radeon 9700
less then 9700? cough cough i have two fps cough on my 9700…
okay, if i disable shadows its fast. and it’s not a fillrate issue. i’ll check my pc with my friend next weekend to find out what buggers him… poor pc
But then again, what do you expect?
I know from a friend that late Quake 3-engine powered games won’t run super-fluid on a XP1600+ & GeForce4 and some insane settings. And Doom 3 really takes it two steps further.
[I have a Athlon 1200 & GeForce2 now and most probably I won’t update before Doom 3 is released. I always hated to be anxious about how good certain games will run, and will take no risk for Doom [img]http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/smile.gif[/img]]
![http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/smile.gif[/img]](http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/smile.gif%5B/img%5D){kind=link}
I did acquire the alpha via local contacts 
It actually runs at a fairly consistent 20fps on my PC but I don’t think I’ve got enough regular RAM for it, or something else is up coz I keep getting ‘vertex cache overflow’ errors. Really shouldn’t discuss this though. But yeah, it looks pretty freakin’ good.
-Mezz
You have to remember too that this demo really doesn’t have much or any optimizations, it’s just to showcase the engine. According to Carmack this demo was also not meant to be played interactivly by people. Around that time (E3) John Carmack said the engine was pretty much complete feature wise, so now it’s time for serious optimizations. He has about a year or so of doing that, it will be better. It’s been quite a while since E3 so i’m sure doom 3 runs much much faster now. John also said that doom 3 should run on a geforce 3 (with a good cpu of course) at high detail settings at around 30Hz. I’m sure he will live up to that. Assuming the user has at least a 1.5GHz and no less than 512MB of ram of course.
It sucks my dial-up is so damn slow. I only have 30MB of the alpha so far.
-SirKnight
the thing that get me is i dont believe you can design a game engine and then throw in any major optimisations later.
I believe carmack is using a beam tree to cut out some of the shadow volume overdraw. then if youve got scissoring too, there arent many major optimisations left that he wouldnt have done in the previous 2 years of development of the engine alone.
So i cant see it getting much faster at all. and you can fun the game as low as 320x200 
but i guess we’ll all have to wait and see.
It runs at an average of 20 FPS on my system from work (1700+ AMD XP and Gf2 Ti 64 Mb). What’s worrying me most is the stencil shadow effects on some surfaces like the faces of the characters where you can see sudden dark triangles when the character surfaces modify their orientation relatively to the light. Also, I’ve activated the wireframe and the portals rendering (is there any BSP in the scene?) and many of the surfaces are still visible even though they should be culled by the portals (like the monsters). Still more work at HSR? Anyway, I hope they’ll improve it until the release since there are some visible artifacts at surfaces joints (floating point errors?) and some depth-fighting like problems between surfaces in some places. John was saying that there was a lot of overhead introduced by the shadow volumes (mainly fillrate) but I’ve disabled the shadows and there were no significant change at the FPS. The physics is great but not for the characters. When shooting a dead character the same predefined animation is played. Anyway, a great game and I can’t wait until the final release. Btw, how can I change the resolution?
It runs at an average of 20 FPS on my system from work (1700+ AMD XP and Gf2 Ti 64 Mb). What’s worrying me most is the stencil shadow effects on some surfaces like the faces of the characters where you can see sudden dark triangles when the character surfaces modify their orientation relatively to the light. Also, I’ve activated the wireframe and the portals rendering (is there any BSP in the scene?) and many of the surfaces are still visible even though they should be culled by the portals (like the monsters). Still more work at HSR? Anyway, I hope they’ll improve it until the release since there are some visible artifacts at surfaces joints (floating point errors?) and some depth-fighting like problems between surfaces in some places. John was saying that there was a lot of overhead introduced by the shadow volumes (mainly fillrate) but I’ve disabled the shadows and there were no significant change at the FPS. The physics is great but not for the characters. When shooting a dead character the same predefined animation is played. Anyway, a great game and I can’t wait until the final release. Btw, how can I change the resolution?
Dave - there’s something wrong with your card or system configuration, else my Geforce3/Athlon 1.3Ghz is about 10x as fast as your 9700. Heck, licu’s Geforce2 is faster. I’m guessing you’re simply out of memory or have a really low end CPU?
licu - there is a variable in the config file, I believe it’s called r_mode, that you can use to adjust the resolution. 3 = 640x480, 4 = 800x600, etc. How do you enable wireframe mode?
[This message has been edited by Zeno (edited 11-04-2002).]
Originally posted by Zeno:
[b]Dave - there’s something wrong with your card or system configuration, else my Geforce3/Athlon 1.3Ghz is about 10x as fast as your 9700. Heck, licu’s Geforce2 is faster. I’m guessing you’re simply out of memory or have a really low end CPU?
licu - there is a variable in the config file, I believe it’s called r_mode, that you can use to adjust the resolution. 3 = 640x480, 4 = 800x600, etc. How do you enable wireframe mode?
[This message has been edited by Zeno (edited 11-04-2002).][/b]
well… it runs at the same speed on smallest and on highest res… so… it’s not the vpu… but yes, the cpu has problems with the configuration currently, its a celeron2gig, and it tells me everywhere that it does not find l2 cache (except inteltools can find it )… and, if it’s without, i understand why its slow in the shadowvolume generation code (as else, it is very fast, if i disable the shadows…)…
if i overclock to 2.66giga (runs for half an hour, then its too hot ), i can get 3fps instead of 2… if i am in an edge of the world, watching the edge (so that nearly everything gets culled and no cpu work has to be done anymore) i get fast fps again…
fillrate is no issue… there are two problems on my pc: l2 cache bug, and it runs at agp 2x currently as my radeon is one of the first generation, and the mobo (8x agp) is incompatible with it… i just got it to work (somehow) to run at 2x agp… now its quite stable… (but i need an intel specification following mobo anyways to get my radeon working correctly… at 8x agp, of course )
i have 256mb ram… should be enough…
where are you guys getting the demo?!? I checked out the links on slashdot and they went to shots and cfg hacks… Where to?
Thanks…
kazaa gets it more and more, others have some ftp connections… i got it from a friend, over ftp… i’m sure someone can contact you with some adress (i can’t, at work currently…)
256mb ram is not enuf thats your problem davepermen,
ive only got 128mb (and the nearest town with more than 10,000 ppl is 3 hours drive away i can really expand that just yet ) so im not even gonna try downloading it.
though from the screenshots doom3 definitly is getting better + better with each iteration (though this might be an old demo).
20fps does seem ok (what some ppl are getting i expect theres heaps of room for optimization)
at the same time though the fps is a bit of a killer whats the cause (stencil shadows?? im guessing)
i havent any shadows in my game (i want to add radiosity later) but i have no framerate issues at all (i can throw 20 lights on screen (prolly double what doom3 has) + the fps bearly hiccups (this on my celeron433 + gf2mx200 (which has no fillrate i do limit each mesh to maximum 13passes though otherwise fillrate does kick in))
true my lighting equation is 80% of doom3 (that last 20% takes a LOT more work + i figure 20% better quality for a fifth of the framerate, nah )
question for ppl that have done stencil shadows in a real (ie not a demo) application what hit are u taking?
are the stecnil shadows worth it? (personally they dont look to great cause of the low polygonness)
then again the framerate hit might be for the ‘extra’ lighting equations, physics who the f knows
omfg…
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=44077&cid=4591655
Ya, the screen shots are nice, but I’m so tired of seeing people kiss his *ss… boo hoo… someone stole my demo… someone make a comparison to jesus in here…
I hope none of you subscribe to the Carmack group butt kissing…
Sorry… had to vent…
Originally posted by zed:
[b]question for ppl that have done stencil shadows in a real (ie not a demo) application what hit are u taking?
are the stecnil shadows worth it? (personally they dont look to great cause of the low polygonness)
then again the framerate hit might be for the ‘extra’ lighting equations, physics who the f knows
the shadows worth it. doom3 is nothing without the dark deep shadows everywhere… and you don’t really note they are sharp, as there is a lot of smooth dark shading around…
i’m really impressed of it, the game has style. the pictures never really had.
the models don’t feel lowres anymore, they feel natural (natural … zombies… yeah )… ut2003 looks like crap somehow against it, just so… void. doom3 has depth in it, it feels… somehow… great job artists, great job carmack, great job all together…
the physics? well, ut has physics. doom3? hm… those where animations i’ve seen. but they look, as all does, stylish good. they have stile. the ut ones look more like a rigid body demo of crashtestdummies