pbmax@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:19 am :
for those that played both, what are the pros and cons of each game? which one is better and why?

its interesting to hear eneryone's opinion because they are so different. some say hl2 is very detailed but yet others say its rather bland. some say d3 at least had a story where has hl2 doesn't (or at least one you can follow). i even heard someone say that if you took the pretty water and gravity gun out of hl2 you'd be left with just an average game.

i often go back to d3 and boot up a random map to just gawk at the details and level design. it can't get any better. i find it hard to believe that hl2's graphics could be better.

anyway, i'll be buying hl2 soon but until then i'd like to hear what you all have to say about it...



|DRC| Photek@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:29 am :
It rocks.



Jafo@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 3:51 am :
Ack... not the dreaded d3 vs hl2 thread :twisted:

You know that I could go on forever about this topic but I love both of them, they both have pro's and cons but my main ones are :)

d3edit to hammer is a porshe to a pinto.
SOftimage as a modeler is, well... holy christ what can you say :)

d3 added way to much overhead to shove through a pipe making a 32 player game a little hard to conceive.

Mod wise I actaully think that Hl2 is more portable, but there we are talking disadvantages for making doom3 so god damn pretty. In a world of direct x you can only do so much in the end. So HL2 may not be as detailed but you can't have it both ways right now, the best of both worlds is a sacrafice. The technology in GPU's suggest you have to trim something in order to make it multiplayer friendly. Far Cry kind of messed up there too. Some may disagree but I have yet to play Far Cry Multi and feel like all was okay, something is always a ton of frames behind lagging the rest.

Most fan boys will assert ah this sucks and that sucks, It drives me crazy. D3, Hl2 are tools for the making of what a mod team desires. There will always be a "Wow, that sucks that doesn't", reaction but an uneducated kid once threw up a post stating how much better the PC version of Splinter cell was compared to the xbox version as the models contained more poly's. I had to take a red line in photshop and trace the poly edges to show they were the same. Then he tried to argue those were only the outer edges and there we more in the middle, thick huh?

I guess my point is that niether is truely better than the other... well okay except the editor tools :) lol

Fact is D3 is not geared towards mutilplayer, just as Tribes is not geared towards a single player aspect, vengeance... sheesh...what were they thinking. :) So D3 can budget in overhead that other games can't. Not that it is a mistake it is preference, I personally believe the longevity of a game survives off of on-line interaction, how many doom3 clans are there? It's almost absurd thinking about it right?

I guess target is the key. Target audience is really nothing to argue over and developers can't worry about those demands... playing catch with doggy was pretty forking cool though :)



W01f@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:01 am :
As far as the singleplayer experience goes, HL2 makes Doom3 seem like wolf3d (gameplay wise). I actually liked HL2's graphics better too, though Doom3 does use more advanced technology. It's just the way they use the source engine in HL2 that makes it look so amazing. Especialy the last chapter, which IMO is better looking than anything ID has ever done.



Drin@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:59 am :
whats wrong with hammer?



Jafo@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:17 am :
Hammer is okay, just kind of hard to compare with d3ed... or cryogened.. or radiant.. or ... lol



Drin@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:29 am :
im worried. I hate the doom 3 editor. I can make like 2 or 3 complete UT 2k4 maps in the time it takes me to make and detail a small doom 3 level, nevermind scripting, enemies, tweaking and all that. I was thinking I would have to be some sort of accended being to create an entire level that lasts more then 3 minutes. I was hoping I could make something cool with half life 2 in a slightly smaller time period. but...?



Eutectic@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:58 am :
Jafo wrote:
Hammer is okay, just kind of hard to compare with d3ed... or cryogened.. or radiant.. or ... lol


I prefer DoomEdit myself but Hammer (which is nothing more than an improved version of Worldcraft really) does have a few advantages over it:

1. It's more stable as an application. Better written, cleaner code underneath it with a better GUI.

I hate to say it but I have a hunch the code is most likely very sloppy in DoomEdit and it's riddled with memory leaks which makes it very crash-prone as your map gets bigger and bigger.

2. Hammer is a separate application from the Source engine and thus can be maintained separately from the engine.

The fact that DoomEdit is an undissociable part of the Doom3 engine is both a curse and a blessing. It's a blessing because it allows real-time render and lighting. It's a curse because Id can't release the source code of the editor since it's part of the engine. So, that eliminates any possibility of ever seeing gifted amateurs make a "GTK Radiant" flavor of DoomEdit. We are totally at Id's mercy in that regard.... and whether the stability bugs in DoomEdit will ever be fixed is anybody's guess.

Ideally, DoomEdit should have been written as a plug-in to the Doom3 engine so that the Editor code could be maintained separately from the engine code... but unfortunately, as the song goes: run.. rabbit run....


DoomEdit also has several problems:

1. DoomEdit doesn't "see" OGG sound files in the pak files (and the vast majority of them are OGG rather than WAV). It can play them fine, it just cannot recognize files with the .ogg file extension.

2. DoomEdit's model and skin selection dialogs cannot render MD5 models in the model view. The model view itself only has limited usefulness because it has no zoom feature. Using real-time lighting with only one light source doesn't help either.

3. The entity selection dialog's "editor_var ..." fields are very finicky. If you put too much text in the definitions of those in the .def files, the field is cut off abruptly

4. The texture window sometimes gets corrupted if you have too many texture shaders loaded. Probably related to memory leaks.

5. It doesn't manage system resources very well. If you have a custom gamma setting (like I do) and DoomEdit crashes, you can't restore your desktop's default gamma with your graphic card's desktop properties window. The only way to reset gamma is by rebooting.

6. It's a huge memory hog.

7. For some reason, it hates my Athlon64 FX-51 processor based machine on which it never runs for more than 5 minutes without crashing (the game by itself runs fine BTW).

8. DoomEdit sometimes corrupts your maps. This forces the designer to make daily back-ups of his maps for the whole duration of the design cycle (and keep ALL of those as separate files) otherwise he is at constant risk of losing months' worth of work.

So DoomEdit is far from perfect. But in terms of controls, productivity, texturing, etc... I agree that it's second to none once you're familiar with the numerous key/mouse button combinations. However, it's badly in need of stabillity. For all intents and purposes, it's a beta level software.

Fix those problems and THEN... you got the best damm editor in the world :)



goodoldalex@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:22 am :
Eutectic wrote:
If you have a custom gamma setting (like I do) and DoomEdit crashes, you can't restore your desktop's default gamma with your graphic card's desktop properties window.
Tip: When this happens, run D3 or an old version of Q3 (1.11) or the Q3 demo, set the in-game gamma to 1 and use the CRASH console command. You're back to normal and I haven't noticed any system anomalities after using this method :)



Eutectic@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:46 am :
Thanks for the workaround. It will come in handy when DoomEdit crashes and I don't care to reboot right away because I'm in the middle of something else like working in my text editor or browsing these forums :)



hellstorm27@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:28 pm :
I think the Doom 3 expansion pack is a particularly important consideration for a Doom 3 vs HL2 thread. This being because, IMO, while the original Doom 3 levels were very immersive, to me they smacked a little of "id seemed to have a lack of ideas", particularly in the base sections where it seemed to be a case of "shoot that Imp, watch another Imp jump out at you, shoot this Imp". I don't see that as a big deal, but the repetitive nature of the gameplay means that I tend to play Doom 3 in short bursts, rather than being engrossed for hours like in some other shooters.

I don't believe that the problem was anything to do with the engine, or even the AI- having played various custom levels, and got into level designing myself, it would appear that the SDK and editor provide the capability to produce environments and gameplay as varied as those of, say, Far Cry or HL2.

The expansion pack, IMO, is what is needed to give Doom 3 the gameplay "facelift" to give it the amount of variety and completeness of HL2. The fact that another company is producing the levels under the supervision of the guys at id Software means that there is promise for a more varied experience- they can take the ideas of id and bring a lot of their own ideas into the mix.

Unfortunately it seems that many people, upon preferring HL2 to Doom 3, don't want anything to do with the expansion pack because "it will just be more of the same".

As far as I'm concerned, although I wasn't really disappointed by id's levels, what really makes Doom 3 a classic is the new engine and the capacity for some excellent mods and custom levels. When I get HL2 for Christmas, I won't be surprised if I find 'bare bones' HL2 superior, gameplay wise, to 'bare bones' Doom 3. Whether I will find HL2's mods and custom levels better than Doom 3's is much harder to predict.



bb_matt@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:12 pm :
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years.

Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.

I'm enjoying HL2 far more than Doom3, the amount of work that has gone into the game is so apparent, it's actually quite incredible.

I'm literally gobsmacked at the game - the interactivity and fun is ingenious.

*spoiler alert" - having recently got through the sand traps section, I'd have to say that so far, that's the most fun I've had with an FPS since Far Cry.
The whole concept of not walking on the sand, the thumping machines was a bit Dune sci-fi. The ant-lions are very "starship troopers", then there's the flotsam and jetsam all over the place - bust up boats, crates, tyres, corrigated iron, all this stuff you can mess around with - it's a very rich environment. I spent 20 minutes building a continuous pathway across the sand just for the heck of it - I think I managed about 100 metres :D

The people that say there's no story in Half-Life2 must have a very short attention span. The whole thing is layered with stories. It may not all link up, but that's a good thing - Half-Life 3 ! :lol:

Doom3 was fun, but not as fun as this which at the end of the day, is what counts for playing games.

For editing it's an entirely different matter.

The doom3 engine is capable of everything quake3 was and more.

Take a dev team as talented as Valves and let them loose on the Doom3 engine for the next 5 years ... - oooh baby, now we're talkin' !

id are the kings of the FPS engine, valve are the visionaries and story tellers

... that's so corny ... :lol:



Exitus@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:23 pm :
Heres my comparison:
Advanteges of Doom 3:
- Scripting Engine (.script, .gui, etc)
- Dynamic Lighting
- Scary
- Believable weapons and storyline
- Special FX
- Realistic Glass Fracturing

Advanteges of Half Life 2:
- Not a system hog (Doom 3 runs at around 10 fps on all low, but in half life 2 on my 5200fx with everything on medium/high i get around 60fps)
- Physics Puzzles
- Gravity gun (=D) j/k
- Already coded Vehicles, already present in the game
- Havok Physics Engine enables almost anything to be interacted with
- Immersive Gameplay
- Believable characters and storyline
- Suspense
- Varied environments, never really repetitive
- Squad based combat
- Ability to control some NPCs
- Uses the STEAM platform *
- Water Refraction
- Outside Environments

Disadvateges of Doom 3:
- Repetitive gameplay
- System hog
- No water refractions, let alone water

Disadvanteges of Half-Life 2:
- Low res Textures in some places
- No scripting system (as far as i know of, but could probably be coded in)
- Small arsenal, albeit interesting
- The world isnt dynamically lit, but all entities are
- Unrealistic Glass Fracturing

Hope this helps a lot of you compare the two games. If you think im missing something or if im wrong tell me.

Also be aware that i did not talk about mods, and that is for a reason, and that is because how good mods are and how flexible they are depends on the skill level of the team.

* - Some people may say that steam is bad, but in reality, its a good thing. While i could write a whole other comparison saying if it's good or bad, its easy to see that it is good because if someone developes a new cheat or hack, valve can easily counter it and release it, and everyone on the steam network has it.



|DRC| Rarek@Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 4:15 pm :
Pro to HL2.

You can go outside. :P



pbmax@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 9:59 pm :
bb_matt wrote:
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years. Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.


i have played about a 3rd of the game and so far i have the opposite opinion. its fun to play, but to me there is nothing revolutionary or even new (except for the character animations- those are very well done).

where's the immersive detail? the out door maps of city 17 are so barren, empty and fake. contrast that with the cities in knights of the old republic which where filled with lots of characters and activity.

i'm even a little bored in some parts. i don't understand how people can elevate this game to such a lofty status. yes, its a good game but its not all that great- certainly not the greates fps ever. no way. take away the gravity gun and character animations and you are left with a pretty average game, imo.



rgun@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:13 pm :
pbmax wrote:
bb_matt wrote:
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years. Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.


where's the immersive detail? the out door maps of city 17 are so barren, empty and fake. contrast that with the cities in knights of the old republic which where filled with lots of characters and activity.


In it's defense I don't think a city that is under attack from a aggressive faction wouldn't have a lot of "characters and activity" going on. This is a war torn city you are running through, and I saw exatly what I expected to see. A lot of soldiers and striders, and then small pockets of rebels fighting them off. Did you want to local grocery store to open up it's doors and sell you some +5 stamina drink (yeah, yeah bad reference to KOTOR :))?

Also, I don't know why a lot of people (not just you pbmax) have the idea in their head that a game has to revolutionize a genre in order to be good. The way I see it, Half Life 2 took the FPS genre added in characters that we actually care about, and put it into a world that is as realistic I have ever played in. Now, I am not saying the graphics are the most realistic, but the way the world feels is. In my opinion HL2 is a damn good game, and a fun one at that!

And your comment about taking away the gravity gun and character animations is completely irrelevent. If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there. Boring gameply with no story, and very little interaction with the world.

Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed both games, but I had a lot more fun with Half Life 2. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to finish Doom 3 because I just didn't care after a while. I just think some people are being much too critical of Half Life 2 just because a lot of reviewers are saying things like "...the best game ever made."



hellstorm27@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:44 pm :
Quote:
Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed both games, but I had a lot more fun with Half Life 2. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to finish Doom 3 because I just didn't care after a while. I just think some people are being much too critical of Half Life 2 just because a lot of reviewers are saying things like "...the best game ever made."


Didn't exactly the same sort of thing happen with Doom 3? The early reviews rated it disproportionately high, and many people were disappointed.



pbmax@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 4:31 pm :
rgun wrote:
If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there.


i agree if you mean take away the lighting from d3. thats whats makes the game unique. take that away and you are left with an average game as well.



bb_matt@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:09 pm :
I'll throw a spanner in the works here and say that Half-Life 2 started off like a ground breaking game, but ended like a same old, same old FPS.

A lot of people will agree with this analogy.

The entry point and subsequent gaming experience was so awesome as to take the breath away - but - excuse the tongue-in-cheek pun, the game ran out of steam past the half-way-mark.

:wink:



pieisgood@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:31 pm :
pbmax wrote:
rgun wrote:
If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there.


i agree if you mean take away the lighting from d3. thats whats makes the game unique. take that away and you are left with an average game as well.

If we take away the physics from HL2.



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:34 pm :
pbmax wrote:
sparhawk wrote:
In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more.


i hate it when people say this. d3 is a fully featured game. just because the gameplay was straight forward doesn't make it a tech demo.


As can be seen in the quote this is just my opinion. :) D3 has the feeling of a techdemo to me, because it is simply to repitative. When I play it I have the impression that it was done without love for the game itself. It doesn't really matter if this is true or false, because this is just what I personally experience when I play it and there is no arguing about it. I'm not talking about objective facts here, just about the gameplay value it provides for me, which is purely subjective, and it was simply not there.

Nevertheless I don't rue the money I spent for it, because I also get a lot of satisfaction out of the modding for it. So it was still worth the money to me, but not on the gameplay side.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:45 am :
My opinion on the demo thing:

First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.

Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.

The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)

Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine. Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3. I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.

On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter. So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 9:27 am :
goodoldalex wrote:
First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.


The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).

Quote:
Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.


I also didn't like Quake while Q2 was fun to play. Q3 is also fun to play, because it's focus is quite different.

Quote:
The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)


I didn't say it IS a tech demo I said it just feels like a tech demo to me. At least that is what I wanted to say. :) Of course I know that it is not a demo, but the fact is that it feels like one to me.

Quote:
Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine.


No denying that.

Quote:
Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3.


Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Quote:
I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.


It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters. Even though Duke Nukem 3D was a cool game I always hated this when they did this as well.

Quote:
On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter.


I totally forgot to mention this. :) I thought about it first, but when I wrote my review I forgot about this (and some other thigns I also wanted to mention. So I just add it here. :)

Yes, you are right. The amount of ammo you can carry is VERY limited and feels a bit to me like an artifical way of making the game harder without effort on the developer side. It is quite restricting. Especially when you have to fight against two helicopters but you can only carry 3 rockets at the same time. Maybe this is more realistic because of the weight, but gameplaywise I think it is a bad decision. Also for the other ammo like MP and this stuff.

Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead. The guy who gives you the shotgun later was standing on this balcony and shot some monsters from there. So I thought it might be possible to climb up there. I used the gravity gun to collect some stuff and managed to put it in such a way that I created a bridge to the balcony. I took me about 45 minutes to achieve this only to realise that some visible barrieres were planted there so I couldn't reach the balcony at all. Such things are VERY annoying for a modern game because it gives you the feeling that you are severly restricted from the developers. Maybe there is some other way up there, but I didn't bother anymore, because I don't like invisible barriers when they are not needed.

Quote:
So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)


It certainly made heavy use of Havoc. This is the only big plus for HL2 because everything else is just a normal linear shooter. But then again. Painkiller also uses Havoc and it is real fun to use it, but they didn't bother to make gameplay use of the phyiscs most of the time. Otherwise HL2 wouldn't be much better than Painkiller only more hype.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:56 pm :
sparhawk wrote:
The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.

BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much. In reality, the difficulty to create the content is actually basically the same. So no, it's not rushed, that's a fact - however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)

Quote:
Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Well, it depends what you're looking for. For me, a good game is good technically, with well-done design (incl. map design), not screwed or buggy and/or fun (and a few other things). I'm definitelly not into games that just need to be different, creative, independent and stuff like that. I love the first Splinter Cell because it's my game, it's very well executed and not because it is or is not creative, and I love SCCT as well, although it's almost the same. I like Daikatana since it has great game and level design, it's fun like hell (IMHO) and I couldn't experience almost any bugs. I found Halo (demo) to be great since it's Bungie-style fun, and not because it has vehicles. I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind. I like Doom 3 for the design, polish, and because it's very entertaining for me. It may not be creative by design (like the first Half-Life), it's more in the detail put into it.

And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity. D3 is simillar to first-person horror games, like Clive Barker's Undying, which is not a very populated genre anyway.

Quote:
It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters.

Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)

It's like the gravity gun in HL2. Some people just can't let it go, while I can't have enough of monsters spawning behind me ... if it's a good game that is :)

Quote:
Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead...

Funny, I don't give a shit about that. Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.

And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 11:16 pm :
goodoldalex wrote:
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.


The rushed feeling was not because of maps lacking detail or such. Quite on the contrary the maps were very well done and a lot of detail and work was put in them. The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter. Painkiller is still a straightforward shooter, but the maps were VERY good designed and the additional gameplay elements (tarot cards, secrets, optional objectives, some riddles like the one with the zombie where you had to figure out how to kill it, etc.) spiced up the game quite a lot. This made the impression that they really cared for the game itself even though it is "just" a shooter. Incidently I had the feeling that, because of timepressure, these details got lost over time, because there are more such extras in the beginning then in the end.

Quote:
BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much.


Nah! That's not the case with me. :) I know what D3 can do and I'm really impressed with it. Otherwise we wouldn't have sticked with D3 for our mod.

Quote:
... however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)


You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Quote:
I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind.


That's funny because I also didn't like Far Cry. Don't know whats wrong with it. Technically it is really good. It is beautifull to look at and gameplay mechanics also didn't seem to be so bad, but somehow it didn't manage to get me going. It lacked that "I want to see what happens next." for me.

Quote:
And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity.


I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :) I see this as a good sign, because it means that the artists managed to keep the artistic style to be the same as for D1 and D3.

Quote:
Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)


LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

Quote:
Funny, I don't give a shit about that.


I guess this is because I'm a fan of Thief and when I see such a balcony I at immediately think how to get up there. :)

Quote:
Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.


Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Quote:
And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.


IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.



goodoldalex@Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:41 am :
sparhawk wrote:
The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter...

I get your point, anyway this again proves that you're not satisfied with D3 as a whole. Painkiller can hardly be compared to Doom and I don't think that any of that special PK stuff could be implemented in it, however what people are missing in Doom the most is stuff present in the 'modern' games - like physics puzzles, large exteriors, intelligent AI and so. However those things would make it just another 'Far Cry/HL2/Chrome' game - and, er, vegetation in Doom? Hardly. Some people even complain about the hellish environment and the enemies.

So the point, Doom may not be perfect, but I don't know how could its gameplay be enhanced so it would be more pleasant to everyone. Altering it in one way would bastardize it in another. I think the developers knew exactly what are they doing. Doom is a natural, it's not forced crippled in such way as HL2 (in which you cannot play with weapons since there's no ammo but you need to use that gravity thing).

That's why I'm worried about what's Raven doing with Quake 4. Is it still going to be the simplistic Quake?

Quote:
You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Ah yeah, right :) I also like scifi games. Didn't really give it much thought, but yeah, Doom is actually scifi :)

Quote:
I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :)

That experiment visually reminds me of Quake 2. But than again, Quake 2 is based quite a lot on Doom 1+2, so I guess it makes sence. Anyway gameplay-wise, Doom 3 s different a lot, as I said I begun to play Ultimate Doom just a few weeks ago (not finished yet), as well as replay D3, so I know for sure :)

BTW I managed to obtain a Voodoo 4 card, I'll give it a shot as soon as I build an old AGP-based PC together.

Quote:
LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

I still remember playing the Quake 2 demo for the first time, when I managed to look the wrong way just to realize I've got the Berserk behind me :) Scary. The Pinky in D3 can give quite the same feeling, so yeah I like this if it's well done.

Another thing why Doom got my respect is that it manages to scare the player without throwing some ugly shit on the display. Maybe it's just me, but from what I saw in games like Undying, The Thing, the Resident Evil series or Silent Hill series and other, those games always have to show off creatures that make me puke. Doom mostly relies on atmosphere and the element of surprise. Remember the first time to find the shotgun? :) Or the hallway with the machinegun at the end? My fauvorites, usually I replay every interesting scene in the games I play but I could never force myself to go through those two again.

Quote:
Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Which reminds me. In the demo (Ravenholm level) there's a point where you can walk around a wall just to get to the same spot - which triggers a zombie spawn everytime. Walk around ten times and you get ten zombies coming from a completelly dead end alley - and BTW, when you walk to the end of that alley the zombie spawns directly behind you :) I actually managed to watch it pop out of nowhere a few times. An AAA '04 game, yep. I wonder if that's already patched through Steam :)

Quote:
IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.
Well I managed to play with the gravity gun in HL2 for maybe 20 minutes. It was fun but then I switched to cheats and unlimited shotgun ammo, as I was getting f**kin tired of having to look for bricks, radiators and other material to throw (I had my 'pet radiator' which I used as a weapon for half of the level but then I lost it somewhere). I finally got D3:ROE so I'll see how much am I going to use the grabber in this one but I believe I'll just stick to the weapons, since that's me. Also, physics is nice to watch (Max Payne 2) but I don't want to get it in my way of doing things.

Good luck with the mod... and don't overphysice it too much, leave the alternative :)



kinkytheclown@Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:23 pm :
I've played both and I enjoyed Doom 3 WAY more. That's partially because I love scary games, but I really enjoyed HL1, so why not HL2? I think the thing I really liked about HL1 was its realistic architecture and atmosphere and almost the whole time you really feel like you're just trying to get the hell out of there and survive. It had a really cool atmosphere.

In Half Life 2 you're basically just some freedom fighter runninfor reasons that aren't made clear. I can't understand how people praise the storyline unless their usual material is the backs of cereal boxes and Saturday morning cartoons. Just because something doesn't totally suck doesn't mean it's not mediocre. I think part of the problem too is that I played Painkiller before playing HL2. People would rave about shooting the crossbow, or how amazing the physics are, or the enormous bridge... Painkiller had all that. Also if you ever played the mod They Hunger, that wraps up more of what HL2 had. Ravenholm wasn't as creepy to me as that, and god knows how many games and mods there are for the end section where you're fighting in a ruined city. And the AI, well I ended up using the gravity gun on a turret gun and killing my entire team on purpose if that says anything. HL2 is not a bad game, but it certainly isn't a great game either. There really wasn't much in there that I haven't seen before.

Now Doom 3. Doom 3 isn't the end-all game either, but it dishes out in spades what I think HL2 lacked, which is atmosphere. I mean this game really does things right when it comes to creating a tense situation. You have a nice calm opening, then all hell breaks lose with flying skulls possessing people and had me worked up enough in the beginning to start putting confirmation shots in bodies that looked dead.

Then you have things happen like the mirror scene, or later on when I start hearing a woman's voice whispering shit to me faintly like "they took my baby". They did a damn good job in creating the right atmosphere. I didn't like Hell so much (I think it should have been more shocking like 1, with parapelegic corpses bound up in chairs and such) or the ruins (it just didn't feel as interesting), but I totally enjoyed the rest of it. It has its flaws, but it sucked me in enough to not really care about them.



romperstomper@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:24 pm :
what Kinktheclowns aid i agree upon,
and umm if doom3 is a demo, then its a heck of a bigass
demo ;)



pbmax@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:54 am :
more hl2 love from gamespy

"As was the case in Half-Life 2, the graphics in Episode One are drop-dead gorgeous; there may not be another graphics engine today capable of consistently producing such attractive scenes in so many different settings. From the dramatic sights outside the crumbling Citadel to the shimmering reactor core to the dramatic lighting effects when fighting zombies in the dark, it's almost impossible to take a bad screenshot in Episode One. The NPCs are once again rendered with amazing detail and animations, and Valve has included the advanced HDR lighting effects that it showcased last year in the Lost Coast tech demo.

"Probably the biggest change introduced in Episode One is how Alyx fights at Gordon's side for the majority of the game. Plenty of shooters have tried this and failed, with NPCs who get lost or get in the way or are just plain annoying. Valve strikes just the right notes with Alyx; she doesn't nag Gordon, she can competently follow you around, and even provides useful support a lot of the time.

:roll:



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:24 am :
lol ;)
hl2 is easily the most overrated game of all times,
im not saying its totally shite, just that its sooo
immensly overhyped and overrated its almost reaching
pathetic regions, hl1 is 1000 times better and id rather
play that than hl2 any day :roll:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:15 am :
hl1 = 2nd best FPS of all time, period. :) Second only to Doom 1.

HL2 is somewhere far, far lower in my ranking... I've played a lot more enjoyable games then that. I've heard Episode 1 plays just like Valve promised HL2 would 3 years ago. That's good, i guess... considering it took 3 years of aditional work to make their statements true.



goodoldalex@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:22 pm :
Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ...

So how's everyone doing? :)



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 11:31 pm :
"Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ... "
Well, if it is the dudes that made Blueshift expansion, im not at all surprised, Gearbox i think theyre called, funny tho cuss their OpFor was good, but since that everything theyve made sucked major backside



pbmax@Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:57 pm :
there will be no HL3. the episodes are now going to conclude the story.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:23 am :
but there WILL be a HL2E3. :)



Eddie@Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:05 am :
Half-Life 2 was a great game but I hated the civilians! I purposely killed them and actually felt more sorry when my robot sentry died in Doom 3!

I'm not buying any more Valve games though. I love CSS and play it all the time but I just bought DODS and that is a waste of money - it's a half-assed completed game. I'm not going to bother with the whole episodes either. I'll save my money up for something like Prey instead.

I just don't like Valve as a company and their attitude where they just release games unfinished and patch it up through steam later.



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:34 pm :
pbmax wrote:
sparhawk wrote:
In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more.


i hate it when people say this. d3 is a fully featured game. just because the gameplay was straight forward doesn't make it a tech demo.


As can be seen in the quote this is just my opinion. :) D3 has the feeling of a techdemo to me, because it is simply to repitative. When I play it I have the impression that it was done without love for the game itself. It doesn't really matter if this is true or false, because this is just what I personally experience when I play it and there is no arguing about it. I'm not talking about objective facts here, just about the gameplay value it provides for me, which is purely subjective, and it was simply not there.

Nevertheless I don't rue the money I spent for it, because I also get a lot of satisfaction out of the modding for it. So it was still worth the money to me, but not on the gameplay side.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:45 am :
My opinion on the demo thing:

First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.

Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.

The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)

Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine. Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3. I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.

On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter. So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 9:27 am :
goodoldalex wrote:
First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.


The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).

Quote:
Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.


I also didn't like Quake while Q2 was fun to play. Q3 is also fun to play, because it's focus is quite different.

Quote:
The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)


I didn't say it IS a tech demo I said it just feels like a tech demo to me. At least that is what I wanted to say. :) Of course I know that it is not a demo, but the fact is that it feels like one to me.

Quote:
Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine.


No denying that.

Quote:
Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3.


Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Quote:
I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.


It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters. Even though Duke Nukem 3D was a cool game I always hated this when they did this as well.

Quote:
On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter.


I totally forgot to mention this. :) I thought about it first, but when I wrote my review I forgot about this (and some other thigns I also wanted to mention. So I just add it here. :)

Yes, you are right. The amount of ammo you can carry is VERY limited and feels a bit to me like an artifical way of making the game harder without effort on the developer side. It is quite restricting. Especially when you have to fight against two helicopters but you can only carry 3 rockets at the same time. Maybe this is more realistic because of the weight, but gameplaywise I think it is a bad decision. Also for the other ammo like MP and this stuff.

Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead. The guy who gives you the shotgun later was standing on this balcony and shot some monsters from there. So I thought it might be possible to climb up there. I used the gravity gun to collect some stuff and managed to put it in such a way that I created a bridge to the balcony. I took me about 45 minutes to achieve this only to realise that some visible barrieres were planted there so I couldn't reach the balcony at all. Such things are VERY annoying for a modern game because it gives you the feeling that you are severly restricted from the developers. Maybe there is some other way up there, but I didn't bother anymore, because I don't like invisible barriers when they are not needed.

Quote:
So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)


It certainly made heavy use of Havoc. This is the only big plus for HL2 because everything else is just a normal linear shooter. But then again. Painkiller also uses Havoc and it is real fun to use it, but they didn't bother to make gameplay use of the phyiscs most of the time. Otherwise HL2 wouldn't be much better than Painkiller only more hype.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:56 pm :
sparhawk wrote:
The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.

BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much. In reality, the difficulty to create the content is actually basically the same. So no, it's not rushed, that's a fact - however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)

Quote:
Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Well, it depends what you're looking for. For me, a good game is good technically, with well-done design (incl. map design), not screwed or buggy and/or fun (and a few other things). I'm definitelly not into games that just need to be different, creative, independent and stuff like that. I love the first Splinter Cell because it's my game, it's very well executed and not because it is or is not creative, and I love SCCT as well, although it's almost the same. I like Daikatana since it has great game and level design, it's fun like hell (IMHO) and I couldn't experience almost any bugs. I found Halo (demo) to be great since it's Bungie-style fun, and not because it has vehicles. I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind. I like Doom 3 for the design, polish, and because it's very entertaining for me. It may not be creative by design (like the first Half-Life), it's more in the detail put into it.

And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity. D3 is simillar to first-person horror games, like Clive Barker's Undying, which is not a very populated genre anyway.

Quote:
It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters.

Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)

It's like the gravity gun in HL2. Some people just can't let it go, while I can't have enough of monsters spawning behind me ... if it's a good game that is :)

Quote:
Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead...

Funny, I don't give a shit about that. Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.

And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 11:16 pm :
goodoldalex wrote:
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.


The rushed feeling was not because of maps lacking detail or such. Quite on the contrary the maps were very well done and a lot of detail and work was put in them. The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter. Painkiller is still a straightforward shooter, but the maps were VERY good designed and the additional gameplay elements (tarot cards, secrets, optional objectives, some riddles like the one with the zombie where you had to figure out how to kill it, etc.) spiced up the game quite a lot. This made the impression that they really cared for the game itself even though it is "just" a shooter. Incidently I had the feeling that, because of timepressure, these details got lost over time, because there are more such extras in the beginning then in the end.

Quote:
BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much.


Nah! That's not the case with me. :) I know what D3 can do and I'm really impressed with it. Otherwise we wouldn't have sticked with D3 for our mod.

Quote:
... however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)


You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Quote:
I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind.


That's funny because I also didn't like Far Cry. Don't know whats wrong with it. Technically it is really good. It is beautifull to look at and gameplay mechanics also didn't seem to be so bad, but somehow it didn't manage to get me going. It lacked that "I want to see what happens next." for me.

Quote:
And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity.


I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :) I see this as a good sign, because it means that the artists managed to keep the artistic style to be the same as for D1 and D3.

Quote:
Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)


LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

Quote:
Funny, I don't give a shit about that.


I guess this is because I'm a fan of Thief and when I see such a balcony I at immediately think how to get up there. :)

Quote:
Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.


Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Quote:
And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.


IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.



goodoldalex@Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:41 am :
sparhawk wrote:
The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter...

I get your point, anyway this again proves that you're not satisfied with D3 as a whole. Painkiller can hardly be compared to Doom and I don't think that any of that special PK stuff could be implemented in it, however what people are missing in Doom the most is stuff present in the 'modern' games - like physics puzzles, large exteriors, intelligent AI and so. However those things would make it just another 'Far Cry/HL2/Chrome' game - and, er, vegetation in Doom? Hardly. Some people even complain about the hellish environment and the enemies.

So the point, Doom may not be perfect, but I don't know how could its gameplay be enhanced so it would be more pleasant to everyone. Altering it in one way would bastardize it in another. I think the developers knew exactly what are they doing. Doom is a natural, it's not forced crippled in such way as HL2 (in which you cannot play with weapons since there's no ammo but you need to use that gravity thing).

That's why I'm worried about what's Raven doing with Quake 4. Is it still going to be the simplistic Quake?

Quote:
You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Ah yeah, right :) I also like scifi games. Didn't really give it much thought, but yeah, Doom is actually scifi :)

Quote:
I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :)

That experiment visually reminds me of Quake 2. But than again, Quake 2 is based quite a lot on Doom 1+2, so I guess it makes sence. Anyway gameplay-wise, Doom 3 s different a lot, as I said I begun to play Ultimate Doom just a few weeks ago (not finished yet), as well as replay D3, so I know for sure :)

BTW I managed to obtain a Voodoo 4 card, I'll give it a shot as soon as I build an old AGP-based PC together.

Quote:
LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

I still remember playing the Quake 2 demo for the first time, when I managed to look the wrong way just to realize I've got the Berserk behind me :) Scary. The Pinky in D3 can give quite the same feeling, so yeah I like this if it's well done.

Another thing why Doom got my respect is that it manages to scare the player without throwing some ugly shit on the display. Maybe it's just me, but from what I saw in games like Undying, The Thing, the Resident Evil series or Silent Hill series and other, those games always have to show off creatures that make me puke. Doom mostly relies on atmosphere and the element of surprise. Remember the first time to find the shotgun? :) Or the hallway with the machinegun at the end? My fauvorites, usually I replay every interesting scene in the games I play but I could never force myself to go through those two again.

Quote:
Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Which reminds me. In the demo (Ravenholm level) there's a point where you can walk around a wall just to get to the same spot - which triggers a zombie spawn everytime. Walk around ten times and you get ten zombies coming from a completelly dead end alley - and BTW, when you walk to the end of that alley the zombie spawns directly behind you :) I actually managed to watch it pop out of nowhere a few times. An AAA '04 game, yep. I wonder if that's already patched through Steam :)

Quote:
IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.
Well I managed to play with the gravity gun in HL2 for maybe 20 minutes. It was fun but then I switched to cheats and unlimited shotgun ammo, as I was getting f**kin tired of having to look for bricks, radiators and other material to throw (I had my 'pet radiator' which I used as a weapon for half of the level but then I lost it somewhere). I finally got D3:ROE so I'll see how much am I going to use the grabber in this one but I believe I'll just stick to the weapons, since that's me. Also, physics is nice to watch (Max Payne 2) but I don't want to get it in my way of doing things.

Good luck with the mod... and don't overphysice it too much, leave the alternative :)



kinkytheclown@Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:23 pm :
I've played both and I enjoyed Doom 3 WAY more. That's partially because I love scary games, but I really enjoyed HL1, so why not HL2? I think the thing I really liked about HL1 was its realistic architecture and atmosphere and almost the whole time you really feel like you're just trying to get the hell out of there and survive. It had a really cool atmosphere.

In Half Life 2 you're basically just some freedom fighter runninfor reasons that aren't made clear. I can't understand how people praise the storyline unless their usual material is the backs of cereal boxes and Saturday morning cartoons. Just because something doesn't totally suck doesn't mean it's not mediocre. I think part of the problem too is that I played Painkiller before playing HL2. People would rave about shooting the crossbow, or how amazing the physics are, or the enormous bridge... Painkiller had all that. Also if you ever played the mod They Hunger, that wraps up more of what HL2 had. Ravenholm wasn't as creepy to me as that, and god knows how many games and mods there are for the end section where you're fighting in a ruined city. And the AI, well I ended up using the gravity gun on a turret gun and killing my entire team on purpose if that says anything. HL2 is not a bad game, but it certainly isn't a great game either. There really wasn't much in there that I haven't seen before.

Now Doom 3. Doom 3 isn't the end-all game either, but it dishes out in spades what I think HL2 lacked, which is atmosphere. I mean this game really does things right when it comes to creating a tense situation. You have a nice calm opening, then all hell breaks lose with flying skulls possessing people and had me worked up enough in the beginning to start putting confirmation shots in bodies that looked dead.

Then you have things happen like the mirror scene, or later on when I start hearing a woman's voice whispering shit to me faintly like "they took my baby". They did a damn good job in creating the right atmosphere. I didn't like Hell so much (I think it should have been more shocking like 1, with parapelegic corpses bound up in chairs and such) or the ruins (it just didn't feel as interesting), but I totally enjoyed the rest of it. It has its flaws, but it sucked me in enough to not really care about them.



romperstomper@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:24 pm :
what Kinktheclowns aid i agree upon,
and umm if doom3 is a demo, then its a heck of a bigass
demo ;)



pbmax@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:54 am :
more hl2 love from gamespy

"As was the case in Half-Life 2, the graphics in Episode One are drop-dead gorgeous; there may not be another graphics engine today capable of consistently producing such attractive scenes in so many different settings. From the dramatic sights outside the crumbling Citadel to the shimmering reactor core to the dramatic lighting effects when fighting zombies in the dark, it's almost impossible to take a bad screenshot in Episode One. The NPCs are once again rendered with amazing detail and animations, and Valve has included the advanced HDR lighting effects that it showcased last year in the Lost Coast tech demo.

"Probably the biggest change introduced in Episode One is how Alyx fights at Gordon's side for the majority of the game. Plenty of shooters have tried this and failed, with NPCs who get lost or get in the way or are just plain annoying. Valve strikes just the right notes with Alyx; she doesn't nag Gordon, she can competently follow you around, and even provides useful support a lot of the time.

:roll:



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:24 am :
lol ;)
hl2 is easily the most overrated game of all times,
im not saying its totally shite, just that its sooo
immensly overhyped and overrated its almost reaching
pathetic regions, hl1 is 1000 times better and id rather
play that than hl2 any day :roll:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:15 am :
hl1 = 2nd best FPS of all time, period. :) Second only to Doom 1.

HL2 is somewhere far, far lower in my ranking... I've played a lot more enjoyable games then that. I've heard Episode 1 plays just like Valve promised HL2 would 3 years ago. That's good, i guess... considering it took 3 years of aditional work to make their statements true.



goodoldalex@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:22 pm :
Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ...

So how's everyone doing? :)



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 11:31 pm :
"Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ... "
Well, if it is the dudes that made Blueshift expansion, im not at all surprised, Gearbox i think theyre called, funny tho cuss their OpFor was good, but since that everything theyve made sucked major backside



pbmax@Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:57 pm :
there will be no HL3. the episodes are now going to conclude the story.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:23 am :
but there WILL be a HL2E3. :)



Eddie@Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:05 am :
Half-Life 2 was a great game but I hated the civilians! I purposely killed them and actually felt more sorry when my robot sentry died in Doom 3!

I'm not buying any more Valve games though. I love CSS and play it all the time but I just bought DODS and that is a waste of money - it's a half-assed completed game. I'm not going to bother with the whole episodes either. I'll save my money up for something like Prey instead.

I just don't like Valve as a company and their attitude where they just release games unfinished and patch it up through steam later.



pbmax@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:19 am :
for those that played both, what are the pros and cons of each game? which one is better and why?

its interesting to hear eneryone's opinion because they are so different. some say hl2 is very detailed but yet others say its rather bland. some say d3 at least had a story where has hl2 doesn't (or at least one you can follow). i even heard someone say that if you took the pretty water and gravity gun out of hl2 you'd be left with just an average game.

i often go back to d3 and boot up a random map to just gawk at the details and level design. it can't get any better. i find it hard to believe that hl2's graphics could be better.

anyway, i'll be buying hl2 soon but until then i'd like to hear what you all have to say about it...



|DRC| Photek@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:29 am :
It rocks.



Jafo@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 3:51 am :
Ack... not the dreaded d3 vs hl2 thread :twisted:

You know that I could go on forever about this topic but I love both of them, they both have pro's and cons but my main ones are :)

d3edit to hammer is a porshe to a pinto.
SOftimage as a modeler is, well... holy christ what can you say :)

d3 added way to much overhead to shove through a pipe making a 32 player game a little hard to conceive.

Mod wise I actaully think that Hl2 is more portable, but there we are talking disadvantages for making doom3 so god damn pretty. In a world of direct x you can only do so much in the end. So HL2 may not be as detailed but you can't have it both ways right now, the best of both worlds is a sacrafice. The technology in GPU's suggest you have to trim something in order to make it multiplayer friendly. Far Cry kind of messed up there too. Some may disagree but I have yet to play Far Cry Multi and feel like all was okay, something is always a ton of frames behind lagging the rest.

Most fan boys will assert ah this sucks and that sucks, It drives me crazy. D3, Hl2 are tools for the making of what a mod team desires. There will always be a "Wow, that sucks that doesn't", reaction but an uneducated kid once threw up a post stating how much better the PC version of Splinter cell was compared to the xbox version as the models contained more poly's. I had to take a red line in photshop and trace the poly edges to show they were the same. Then he tried to argue those were only the outer edges and there we more in the middle, thick huh?

I guess my point is that niether is truely better than the other... well okay except the editor tools :) lol

Fact is D3 is not geared towards mutilplayer, just as Tribes is not geared towards a single player aspect, vengeance... sheesh...what were they thinking. :) So D3 can budget in overhead that other games can't. Not that it is a mistake it is preference, I personally believe the longevity of a game survives off of on-line interaction, how many doom3 clans are there? It's almost absurd thinking about it right?

I guess target is the key. Target audience is really nothing to argue over and developers can't worry about those demands... playing catch with doggy was pretty forking cool though :)



W01f@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:01 am :
As far as the singleplayer experience goes, HL2 makes Doom3 seem like wolf3d (gameplay wise). I actually liked HL2's graphics better too, though Doom3 does use more advanced technology. It's just the way they use the source engine in HL2 that makes it look so amazing. Especialy the last chapter, which IMO is better looking than anything ID has ever done.



Drin@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:59 am :
whats wrong with hammer?



Jafo@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:17 am :
Hammer is okay, just kind of hard to compare with d3ed... or cryogened.. or radiant.. or ... lol



Drin@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:29 am :
im worried. I hate the doom 3 editor. I can make like 2 or 3 complete UT 2k4 maps in the time it takes me to make and detail a small doom 3 level, nevermind scripting, enemies, tweaking and all that. I was thinking I would have to be some sort of accended being to create an entire level that lasts more then 3 minutes. I was hoping I could make something cool with half life 2 in a slightly smaller time period. but...?



Eutectic@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:58 am :
Jafo wrote:
Hammer is okay, just kind of hard to compare with d3ed... or cryogened.. or radiant.. or ... lol


I prefer DoomEdit myself but Hammer (which is nothing more than an improved version of Worldcraft really) does have a few advantages over it:

1. It's more stable as an application. Better written, cleaner code underneath it with a better GUI.

I hate to say it but I have a hunch the code is most likely very sloppy in DoomEdit and it's riddled with memory leaks which makes it very crash-prone as your map gets bigger and bigger.

2. Hammer is a separate application from the Source engine and thus can be maintained separately from the engine.

The fact that DoomEdit is an undissociable part of the Doom3 engine is both a curse and a blessing. It's a blessing because it allows real-time render and lighting. It's a curse because Id can't release the source code of the editor since it's part of the engine. So, that eliminates any possibility of ever seeing gifted amateurs make a "GTK Radiant" flavor of DoomEdit. We are totally at Id's mercy in that regard.... and whether the stability bugs in DoomEdit will ever be fixed is anybody's guess.

Ideally, DoomEdit should have been written as a plug-in to the Doom3 engine so that the Editor code could be maintained separately from the engine code... but unfortunately, as the song goes: run.. rabbit run....


DoomEdit also has several problems:

1. DoomEdit doesn't "see" OGG sound files in the pak files (and the vast majority of them are OGG rather than WAV). It can play them fine, it just cannot recognize files with the .ogg file extension.

2. DoomEdit's model and skin selection dialogs cannot render MD5 models in the model view. The model view itself only has limited usefulness because it has no zoom feature. Using real-time lighting with only one light source doesn't help either.

3. The entity selection dialog's "editor_var ..." fields are very finicky. If you put too much text in the definitions of those in the .def files, the field is cut off abruptly

4. The texture window sometimes gets corrupted if you have too many texture shaders loaded. Probably related to memory leaks.

5. It doesn't manage system resources very well. If you have a custom gamma setting (like I do) and DoomEdit crashes, you can't restore your desktop's default gamma with your graphic card's desktop properties window. The only way to reset gamma is by rebooting.

6. It's a huge memory hog.

7. For some reason, it hates my Athlon64 FX-51 processor based machine on which it never runs for more than 5 minutes without crashing (the game by itself runs fine BTW).

8. DoomEdit sometimes corrupts your maps. This forces the designer to make daily back-ups of his maps for the whole duration of the design cycle (and keep ALL of those as separate files) otherwise he is at constant risk of losing months' worth of work.

So DoomEdit is far from perfect. But in terms of controls, productivity, texturing, etc... I agree that it's second to none once you're familiar with the numerous key/mouse button combinations. However, it's badly in need of stabillity. For all intents and purposes, it's a beta level software.

Fix those problems and THEN... you got the best damm editor in the world :)



goodoldalex@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:22 am :
Eutectic wrote:
If you have a custom gamma setting (like I do) and DoomEdit crashes, you can't restore your desktop's default gamma with your graphic card's desktop properties window.
Tip: When this happens, run D3 or an old version of Q3 (1.11) or the Q3 demo, set the in-game gamma to 1 and use the CRASH console command. You're back to normal and I haven't noticed any system anomalities after using this method :)



Eutectic@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:46 am :
Thanks for the workaround. It will come in handy when DoomEdit crashes and I don't care to reboot right away because I'm in the middle of something else like working in my text editor or browsing these forums :)



hellstorm27@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:28 pm :
I think the Doom 3 expansion pack is a particularly important consideration for a Doom 3 vs HL2 thread. This being because, IMO, while the original Doom 3 levels were very immersive, to me they smacked a little of "id seemed to have a lack of ideas", particularly in the base sections where it seemed to be a case of "shoot that Imp, watch another Imp jump out at you, shoot this Imp". I don't see that as a big deal, but the repetitive nature of the gameplay means that I tend to play Doom 3 in short bursts, rather than being engrossed for hours like in some other shooters.

I don't believe that the problem was anything to do with the engine, or even the AI- having played various custom levels, and got into level designing myself, it would appear that the SDK and editor provide the capability to produce environments and gameplay as varied as those of, say, Far Cry or HL2.

The expansion pack, IMO, is what is needed to give Doom 3 the gameplay "facelift" to give it the amount of variety and completeness of HL2. The fact that another company is producing the levels under the supervision of the guys at id Software means that there is promise for a more varied experience- they can take the ideas of id and bring a lot of their own ideas into the mix.

Unfortunately it seems that many people, upon preferring HL2 to Doom 3, don't want anything to do with the expansion pack because "it will just be more of the same".

As far as I'm concerned, although I wasn't really disappointed by id's levels, what really makes Doom 3 a classic is the new engine and the capacity for some excellent mods and custom levels. When I get HL2 for Christmas, I won't be surprised if I find 'bare bones' HL2 superior, gameplay wise, to 'bare bones' Doom 3. Whether I will find HL2's mods and custom levels better than Doom 3's is much harder to predict.



bb_matt@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:12 pm :
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years.

Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.

I'm enjoying HL2 far more than Doom3, the amount of work that has gone into the game is so apparent, it's actually quite incredible.

I'm literally gobsmacked at the game - the interactivity and fun is ingenious.

*spoiler alert" - having recently got through the sand traps section, I'd have to say that so far, that's the most fun I've had with an FPS since Far Cry.
The whole concept of not walking on the sand, the thumping machines was a bit Dune sci-fi. The ant-lions are very "starship troopers", then there's the flotsam and jetsam all over the place - bust up boats, crates, tyres, corrigated iron, all this stuff you can mess around with - it's a very rich environment. I spent 20 minutes building a continuous pathway across the sand just for the heck of it - I think I managed about 100 metres :D

The people that say there's no story in Half-Life2 must have a very short attention span. The whole thing is layered with stories. It may not all link up, but that's a good thing - Half-Life 3 ! :lol:

Doom3 was fun, but not as fun as this which at the end of the day, is what counts for playing games.

For editing it's an entirely different matter.

The doom3 engine is capable of everything quake3 was and more.

Take a dev team as talented as Valves and let them loose on the Doom3 engine for the next 5 years ... - oooh baby, now we're talkin' !

id are the kings of the FPS engine, valve are the visionaries and story tellers

... that's so corny ... :lol:



Exitus@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:23 pm :
Heres my comparison:
Advanteges of Doom 3:
- Scripting Engine (.script, .gui, etc)
- Dynamic Lighting
- Scary
- Believable weapons and storyline
- Special FX
- Realistic Glass Fracturing

Advanteges of Half Life 2:
- Not a system hog (Doom 3 runs at around 10 fps on all low, but in half life 2 on my 5200fx with everything on medium/high i get around 60fps)
- Physics Puzzles
- Gravity gun (=D) j/k
- Already coded Vehicles, already present in the game
- Havok Physics Engine enables almost anything to be interacted with
- Immersive Gameplay
- Believable characters and storyline
- Suspense
- Varied environments, never really repetitive
- Squad based combat
- Ability to control some NPCs
- Uses the STEAM platform *
- Water Refraction
- Outside Environments

Disadvateges of Doom 3:
- Repetitive gameplay
- System hog
- No water refractions, let alone water

Disadvanteges of Half-Life 2:
- Low res Textures in some places
- No scripting system (as far as i know of, but could probably be coded in)
- Small arsenal, albeit interesting
- The world isnt dynamically lit, but all entities are
- Unrealistic Glass Fracturing

Hope this helps a lot of you compare the two games. If you think im missing something or if im wrong tell me.

Also be aware that i did not talk about mods, and that is for a reason, and that is because how good mods are and how flexible they are depends on the skill level of the team.

* - Some people may say that steam is bad, but in reality, its a good thing. While i could write a whole other comparison saying if it's good or bad, its easy to see that it is good because if someone developes a new cheat or hack, valve can easily counter it and release it, and everyone on the steam network has it.



|DRC| Rarek@Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 4:15 pm :
Pro to HL2.

You can go outside. :P



pbmax@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 9:59 pm :
bb_matt wrote:
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years. Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.


i have played about a 3rd of the game and so far i have the opposite opinion. its fun to play, but to me there is nothing revolutionary or even new (except for the character animations- those are very well done).

where's the immersive detail? the out door maps of city 17 are so barren, empty and fake. contrast that with the cities in knights of the old republic which where filled with lots of characters and activity.

i'm even a little bored in some parts. i don't understand how people can elevate this game to such a lofty status. yes, its a good game but its not all that great- certainly not the greates fps ever. no way. take away the gravity gun and character animations and you are left with a pretty average game, imo.



rgun@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:13 pm :
pbmax wrote:
bb_matt wrote:
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years. Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.


where's the immersive detail? the out door maps of city 17 are so barren, empty and fake. contrast that with the cities in knights of the old republic which where filled with lots of characters and activity.


In it's defense I don't think a city that is under attack from a aggressive faction wouldn't have a lot of "characters and activity" going on. This is a war torn city you are running through, and I saw exatly what I expected to see. A lot of soldiers and striders, and then small pockets of rebels fighting them off. Did you want to local grocery store to open up it's doors and sell you some +5 stamina drink (yeah, yeah bad reference to KOTOR :))?

Also, I don't know why a lot of people (not just you pbmax) have the idea in their head that a game has to revolutionize a genre in order to be good. The way I see it, Half Life 2 took the FPS genre added in characters that we actually care about, and put it into a world that is as realistic I have ever played in. Now, I am not saying the graphics are the most realistic, but the way the world feels is. In my opinion HL2 is a damn good game, and a fun one at that!

And your comment about taking away the gravity gun and character animations is completely irrelevent. If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there. Boring gameply with no story, and very little interaction with the world.

Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed both games, but I had a lot more fun with Half Life 2. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to finish Doom 3 because I just didn't care after a while. I just think some people are being much too critical of Half Life 2 just because a lot of reviewers are saying things like "...the best game ever made."



hellstorm27@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:44 pm :
Quote:
Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed both games, but I had a lot more fun with Half Life 2. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to finish Doom 3 because I just didn't care after a while. I just think some people are being much too critical of Half Life 2 just because a lot of reviewers are saying things like "...the best game ever made."


Didn't exactly the same sort of thing happen with Doom 3? The early reviews rated it disproportionately high, and many people were disappointed.



pbmax@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 4:31 pm :
rgun wrote:
If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there.


i agree if you mean take away the lighting from d3. thats whats makes the game unique. take that away and you are left with an average game as well.



bb_matt@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:09 pm :
I'll throw a spanner in the works here and say that Half-Life 2 started off like a ground breaking game, but ended like a same old, same old FPS.

A lot of people will agree with this analogy.

The entry point and subsequent gaming experience was so awesome as to take the breath away - but - excuse the tongue-in-cheek pun, the game ran out of steam past the half-way-mark.

:wink:



pieisgood@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:31 pm :
pbmax wrote:
rgun wrote:
If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there.


i agree if you mean take away the lighting from d3. thats whats makes the game unique. take that away and you are left with an average game as well.

If we take away the physics from HL2.



Mr.Spline@Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 1:13 am :
[EDIT] I just want everyone to know I still think Doom3 is the best thing since sliced bread. Don't get me wrong. But I'm still gonna have to stand by my previous post, and if 72% of all statistics are made up. Then I say I base that information on statistics. Oh and don't worry the next best thing is on it's way :lol:



lou@Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 12:55 am :
In ROE's first map you see water rising (or blood, everything's red, you can't really tell) with some bodies floating in it in one of those 'what's going on with the level, bertruger is laughing, am I going to die?' moments.
Not sure if this is scripted or bouancy physics, will have to look into it.



Desert Fox@Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 12:25 am :
Why do people want to compare games? Its like comparing ones basketball with another.

Ex.
Person 1: My basketball is better! Its more orange!!!
Person 2: Oh Yeah?! Well my basketball is more cleaner! What now?
Person 1: Who cares if its cleaner? Mine is still more orange!
Person 2: Well mine bounces better!
Person 1: *pops the basketball* Not anymore!

Do you see how retarded this sounds?

Point: Game weren't created to be compared. They were created to be enjoyed.

Note: I like hl2 and d3, but imo both games deserved a much lower score. I think that their scores were greatly influenced by the hype and that is why they are so much higher than they are suppose to be.



[noob]plonker@Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 7:30 am :
word.



Crylar@Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:01 am :
Desert Fox wrote:
Why do people want to compare games? Its like comparing ones basketball with another.

because some of us are fanboys.

Why not compare them?



Desert Fox@Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 2:28 am :
Crylar wrote:
Desert Fox wrote:
Why do people want to compare games? Its like comparing ones basketball with another.

because some of us are fanboys.

Why not compare them?


Person 1: My basketball is better! Its more orange!!!
Person 2: Oh Yeah?! Well my basketball is more cleaner! What now?
Person 1: Who cares if its cleaner? Mine is still more orange!
Person 2: Well mine bounces better!
Person 1: *pops the basketball* Not anymore!

Point: Its retarded. Games are meant to be played, not compared.



ninjiapirate@Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:45 pm :
pbmax wrote:
or people like me who can't stand valve's lofty status and untarnishable reputation. everything they do turns to gold no matter if its really worthy or not.

hl2 was a great game, but not as great as every fanboy and game review made it out to be. hl2's faults like steam, omitted features, bugs, inconsistant lighting and shadows, etc... are ignored while other games like d3 get torn apart eventhough its one of the most polished games that was released last year.


A good example of this was PC Gamers review of HL2 vs. Vampires Bloodlines. Both using the Source engine, both have the same bugs, errors, etc. Yet the HL2 review failed to mention any and the Bloodlines review penalized the game because of them.


Personally, both games were good.

The Source engine is the last of the current technology, Steam came from Gabe Newell's origins at Microsoft.

The D3 engine is capable of much more, such as the renders from pregame press releases show, but current tech isn't. The D3 engine will be around for the next 5+years, Source may get a year or 2 as a AAA licensed engine.



pbmax@Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:08 pm :
other than bloodlines, what games are using the source engine? anyone?



Dante_uk@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 12:47 pm :
What's the current version of HL2 now?

I gave up playing it ages ago ( shortly after I completed it ) because I got fed up of wait 20/30 mins for all the damn steam updates!!

Seems like every week there's an update / fix / new mp map(which I don't what or care about ).

Doom3 is soon(I hope) to become version 1.3, I played and completed it twice (2nd time on nightmare level) using 1.0 and never had a problem.
HL2 crashed to desktop a couple of times during play.



MaxiM@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 2:00 pm :
VALVe's inability to efficiently remove bugs with patches is obvious. That's probably one of the reasons behind Steam - they can release tiny updates all the time instead of one fat, thoroughly tested patch that fix mostly evetything it should. Some of those updated are untested and faulty and are producing even more bugs. That's why they are recalling those updates soon after. Thanks to Steam they feel free to treat their customers like shit, because they can and noone can do nothing about it.

Go VALVe!



pbmax@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 5:32 pm :
anyone know of other developers using source engine?



ninjiapirate@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:13 pm :
About the Steam self patches.

I bought the game when it came out. It ran fine, I played half way through it...........

Then along came patch (15) I believe it was. All of a sudden, motion sickness, sound stuttering and locking up and so on. Rendered the game unplayable.

My opinion let the user decide on patching. Why patch a game for a soundblaster fix if you don't have a soundblaster card. Or and ati fix if you don't have an ati card.

That's the beauty of allowing us to decide to patch or not to patch. Don't force the user to.



Minion@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:50 pm :
pbmax wrote:
anyone know of other developers using source engine?
Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines is the only one I'm aware of.

It was a pretty big letdown though.

The developers who made it (Troika) ended up closing the company down shortly after its release. Not because they were bad developers though =P The game industry is heading in a direction where you can't get anywhere unless you're an in-house developer for a bigger company such as Ubisoft because it's too difficult to secure funding.

Pretty unfortunate.



Burrito@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 7:46 pm :
Source Engine licensees:

Arkane Studios - Arx Fatalis 2
Smiling Gator Productions - Twilight War: After the Fall

http://www.halflife2.net/index.php?page=licensed



MelvinB@Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 10:42 am :
Screenie of HL²:Aftermath:

Image

Bigger version:
http://www.gamer.nl/images/content/Erwi ... 9719_0.jpg

They are going for the Doom³-atmosphere! :lol:



pbmax@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 1:09 am :
actually, that's pretty funny :D

you think the boys over at planethalflife are going: "looks like sh*t. its too frickin' dark!" :roll:



c--b@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 2:24 am :
pbmax wrote:
you think the boys over at planethalflife are going: "looks like sh*t. its too frickin' dark!" :roll:


If they dont, they're damn hyporcrites.

Heres hoping **Crosses toes** :P



idiom@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 9:16 am :
This thread is like some simmering pot that pops every now and again :P



Desert Fox@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 4:03 pm :
Dante_uk wrote:
What's the current version of HL2 now?

I gave up playing it ages ago ( shortly after I completed it ) because I got fed up of wait 20/30 mins for all the damn steam updates!!

Seems like every week there's an update / fix / new mp map(which I don't what or care about ).

Doom3 is soon(I hope) to become version 1.3, I played and completed it twice (2nd time on nightmare level) using 1.0 and never had a problem.
HL2 crashed to desktop a couple of times during play.


LOL you all complain about problems with HL2. Well heres my complaints. Doom 3 crashes if i play it for over two hours and i have to run it on 800x600 to get playable fps. HL2 never crashed for me and i could run it on 1024x768 with settings set to high. Also when i installed that 1.2 update, ROE gave me this weird warning and crashed before even starting. One update screwed up my game and i had to reinstall. It was a pain in the ass. HL2 however gave me over four updates and i never had any problems with any of them. Isn't this situation ironic? You say HL2 is giving you trouble, while i say that D3 is giving me trouble. lol. These developers are fucking with our heads.



Dante_uk@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 9:08 pm :
Desert Fox wrote:
Dante_uk wrote:
...
Doom3 ... never had a problem.
HL2 crashed to desktop a couple of times during play.


LOL you all complain about problems with HL2. Well heres my complaints. Doom 3 crashes if i play it for over two hours and i have to run it on 800x600 to get playable fps. HL2 never crashed for me and i could run it on 1024x768 with settings set to high. Also when i installed that 1.2 update, ROE gave me this weird warning and crashed before even starting. One update screwed up my game and i had to reinstall. It was a pain in the ass. HL2 however gave me over four updates and i never had any problems with any of them. Isn't this situation ironic? You say HL2 is giving you trouble, while i say that D3 is giving me trouble. lol. These developers are fucking with our heads.


I guess the main difference is hardware, your on ATI, I'm Nvidia.

New Screenshot: The guy/thing in the background is the really spooky one, casts no shadow !! maybe it's a vampire, escaped from bloodlines :)



estevancarlos@Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:53 pm :
I have what I suspect is a run of the mill video card. An Nvidia Quadro 64mb card a a 2.8ghz intel processor and 1gig of ram. I have HL2 and just dled the Doom3 demo.

I had decided to purchase HL2 instead of Doom3 because of my fears and assumptions that Doom3 simply would not run at all appropriately with my video card, strangely though, it is the opposite.

I'm not sure why but I have a difficult time running HL2 at a decent frame rate even at its lowest settings. Particularly during certain moments in the game. But with Doom3 (the demo at least) on its lowest, or slightly higher than lowest settings, it runs near flawlessly and looks substantially better than when i run HL2.

Is it the engines and their efficiencies? The level design? The physics aspects of the two games, meaning, there are so many obejcts surrounding you constantly in HL2, that can be controlled and lie around. Are those affecting things substantially?

I'm pleasantly surprised by this. So now i can join the Doom3 community to some extent.



Desert Fox@Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:41 am :
ninjiapirate wrote:
The D3 engine will be around for the next 5+years, Source may get a year or 2 as a AAA licensed engine.


I don't think the D3 engine is going to last 5+ years. Technology is rapidly being replaced these days so it may last only 2 or 3 years. Of course i could be wrong but who really knows. Also i agree that the Source engine isn't going to last very long. But what can you expect from an engine that was built for the year of 2003.



Hajile@Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:40 am :
Graphics wise. Here's a pic i found.

http://img175.echo.cx/img175/6754/reeve ... nu22wq.jpg

The left is HL2, the right is Doom3. :lol:

He was using it for comparing video cards, but i thought it's better used for this type of thread.



MaxiM@Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:03 am :
Yup, it shows it pretty well. I wonder how HL2 fanboys would react on that pic :twisted:



Desert Fox@Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:11 pm :
Hajile wrote:
Graphics wise. Here's a pic i found.

http://img175.echo.cx/img175/6754/reeve ... nu22wq.jpg

The left is HL2, the right is Doom3. :lol:

He was using it for comparing video cards, but i thought it's better used for this type of thread.


LMAO! That just made my day. And MaxiM im a HL fanboy. :D



Dante_uk@Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 2:46 pm :
Hajile wrote:
Graphics wise. Here's a pic i found.

http://img175.echo.cx/img175/6754/reeve ... nu22wq.jpg

The left is HL2, the right is Doom3. :lol:

He was using it for comparing video cards, but i thought it's better used for this type of thread.


Looks like Nvidia card has better bump mapping too :)



Vorac1ous@Posted: Sun May 08, 2005 4:32 am :
You would be right in saying that.



ZizZ^@Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 8:55 pm :
That is true!

I have ATI n when i go to a friend who has "softer" nvidia card im always impressed by the visual quality. The difference is really something!



romperstomper@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 2:16 am :
go buy HL2 and get free government supervision and no extra cost in the form of (the word itself makes me vomit) steam,
not to mention a constant nonworking buggy laggy crappy trojanfilled piece of junk as well.
I fail to see how HL2 can even be considered as good as Doom, that thought makes me lmao, half the game one is chased by some chopper, and then follows the most lame gayassed pathetic B version of Doom aka ravensholm ... Did anyone really got any scared of that???
Far Cry is 100 times the game than HL2, if you think HL2 is good and havent played Far Cry, buy that instead!



bad marine ass@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 1:16 pm :
whoopee doo I'm getting a 6600GT next fortnight so I can finally play D3 at 800x600 on High!!! Gotta love the optimized engine :D

Yeah I know its way off topic sry, but I couldnt resist

Anyway, I'm really amused by 2 things in the HL2 mod community

1) People claiming that D3 Radiant is harder to use than Hammer. I haven't used Hammer, but Radiant is by far one of the easiest editors I've ever used. It took me about a day to learn the basics, plus a week to fully understand how it works. As for Worldcraft, it took me about 3-4 days and I still couldn't understand the basics yet, maybe I didn't have the patience back then, but my point is, claims that people make such as "D3 editor is hard to use omgz!" is just plain biasness and fanboyism imho.

2) More modders in the HL2 community. It's like at least 20% of them own Doom 3, but they don't seem to have the patience to give Radiant and the mod tools a shot. And then they start churning out mod after mod after mod after same old mod and are back where they started, because firstly there is a lack of followers for that mod, and secondly, it's like a "why bother" sort of thing. Doom 3 modders, on the other hand, are more collaborative. Most teams are currently working on a "we are family!!!" basis, whereas the way I see it from hlfallout.com, the mod teams are simply...mod teams



PaladinOfKaos@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 5:51 pm :
I've found that Hammer is harder to learn than the Radiant editors, but if you can stretch your fingers to opposite sides of the keyboard, and still have a hand for the mouse, you can do some things really, really fast.

The lack of patch meshes in hammer bugs me, though...has the entire HL2 community not found them, or is it really all brush-based?

And having a real-time preview definately gives d3 an advantage.

As for the modders, I completely agree. I've been sort of hovering on this forum because I've been messing with HL2, and on all of the forums I've found so far, n00b bashing seems to be encouraged... There isn't a forum like D3W, where just about everyone is willing to help. The forums are clogged with people making the same maps, and dissing anyone who tries something new, unless it's clearly not possible in D3, in which case they see it as a sign of their superiority (I.E. a physics-enabled rope bridge)


As for the tech, Each has its own place. Doom3 is geared towards dark and spooky (though we have seen well-lit maps, they aren't quite the same), whereas HL2 is geared towards being backward-compatible. d3 can't turn off its real-time lighting, but HL2 can turn off its high-res textures, hi-poly models, etc. The only thing that's really a "new" technology (as opposed to just boosting polys) is the physics, and that's not even in-house.

Considering that Doom3 uses an all-new system for lighting, and everything is in-house, I'd say that its physics are excusable.

Summing up the mini-rant: Doom3 does much better when you want to get the bump-mapping to look right with your flashlight. HL2 is good if you want that corpse to fly in a realistic manner.



goodoldalex@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 6:09 pm :
bad marine ass wrote:
whoopee doo I'm getting a 6600GT next fortnight so I can finally play D3 at 800x600 on High!!! Gotta love the optimized engine :D
You'll do better than that, my 6600 non-GT runs Doom in 1024*768 / Ultra Q / 2x FSAA, so you'll get about 1/3 the performance more... :)



Desert Fox@Posted: Tue May 24, 2005 2:27 am :
bad marine ass wrote:
...whereas the way I see it from hlfallout.com, the mod teams are simply...mod teams.


HLFallout is dead. The site and forum still work, but the good old glory days are long gone. The forums are now filled with spammers and newbs, while the website team doesn't really care about updating anymore. I believe that there is only one person that actually even bothers to update. The rest quit or left with the rest of the old members. And yes, HL2's mod are really ****ty right now. But there are some promising mods that are in development such as Resistance and Liberation, Insurgency, Sven Co-Op 2, and possibly Natural Selection: Source.

I wish this whole "comparing games" thing would stop already. What will you gain if you win anyway? More self-esteem? A bigger ego? Besides Doom 3 and Half Life 2 are already old news, so why bother comparing them anymore. No one (except you guys) would care. So why can't we just stop comparing and enjoy our games for what they are?



brandon9271@Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 5:49 am :
to me, Halflife 2's lighting is very screwy. You can see lots of seams when you shine the flashlight on things. Its almost as though certain textures can only recieve light from one angle and if you move 180 degrees and shine the flashlight it will light. is this an engine problem/limitation or sloppy mapping and texture creation? This looks especially bad on decals where the texture underneath is lit but the texture on top is not. I noticed this the very first day I bought HL2 and thought.. wow, that looks like total arse! oh and I've noticed these same crazy seams with the specular also. very wacky...

FLASHLIGHT OFF
Image
FLASHLIGHT ON (notice the crap lighting on the leaves)
Image

if you move 180 and shine light from the other side it lights it vice versa.. wtf?



pbmax@Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 3:27 pm :
its old news that the lighting in hl2 is borked. its not unified like the doom3 engine. the source engine's lighting system uses different tricks and hacks pieced together. sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't.

i also noticed this odd lighting problem right away. from one direction, certain surfaces do not recieve light, but they do from the opposite direction. i have no idea why though...



Crylar@Posted: Sun May 29, 2005 5:10 pm :
pbmax wrote:
i also noticed this odd lighting problem right away. from one direction, certain surfaces do not recieve light, but they do from the opposite direction. i have no idea why though...


Reason: Fuckedup engine...



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:50 pm :
Well, maybe this has been said already but I also want to give my opinion. :)

One thing I don't like about HL2 is Steam. If it were not for that I think it would be a great game. Since the point if this thread is not to talk about steam I will therefore ignore it in my comparison.

I have played HL2 about halfway through and completed D3 and I must say that HL2 as a game is way better then D3. When I first run D3 it was rather creepy once the action started. One thing that I was a bit dissapointed is that in D3, when you start walking through the base in the intro (before the action starts) most models are already looking almost like the zombies they turn out to be later. This seemed to me a bit like they cut down the time by reusing the same models later on. Of course if a soldier turns into a zombie he will still look basically like a zombie, but the models already had a zombielike quality about them when they were not yet turned into them.

As a game HL2 is much more interesting to play then D3. The first few situations in D3 were quite interesting and tense, but after you realised the pattern it became boring. Go into a take out the visible monsters, take a few steps, turn around and kill the monsters that suddenly jump out from the back. Go in the next room and repeat. The rare puzzles later on didn't really help, because it was just not enough. After some repetitions I switched to god mode and forced me to play the whole game through because I wanted to see what is in there what we might use for our mod.

When I played HL2 my first impression was not so good. Starting in the trainstation the graphics and texturing looked much worse then the graphics in D3. It also was not clear to me how I should start the actual game until I found that ladder so I was spending some time running around in the station and wondering what I'm supposed to do there. Once you get in the real game the it picks up pace quite considerable and really pmanages to pull you in. You get the feeling as if it were you that is chased. Of course it doesn't manage this all the time, but I think the gameplay is sufficient immersive to keep you on playing. I really loved when you had to use the boat (what is it called?) to go through the canals because the graphics reminded me strongly when I still lived in Vienna and we were going through some canals which looked very similar, so this was a bonus of the game because it recreated this feeling of my youth, which may not be true for most others. :) Also the variety of enemies makes it quite interesting to continue playing while in D3 it's bascially the same throughout the game.

The physics in D3 was pretty bad IMO. Of course HL2 uses Havoc which is an excellent physics engine and this added a lot to the gameworld. I think that physics will play a much stronger part in upcoming games because it can really make the world much more believable and fun if properly implemented. HL2 did this IMO very good while the physics in D3 seemed more like an afterthought. Of course since the physics is fully implemented in the SDK you can replace it with some other, which is a very good thing, while Havoc can not be removed from HL2 (but then again why would you?).

The engine itself there is no denying that D3 is far superior than HL2. Enginewise I think taht HL2 is pretty average. It doesn't add anything new and the lighting is most of the time faked. You can see this pretty good in some situations where the engine clearly shows that shadows are more a hack than a result of the lighting. A very good example of this is the yard where you have to lift the big containers with the magnetic arm. When you play around with it you can easily see how bad the shadows are. This doesn't hurt the game itself because most of the time you wont't notice it unless you look for it. It has already been mentioned that HL2 is very good at lipsynching, even though I dont really see why this would make much difference for anybody. This is helpfull in cutscenes but doesn't really change the game itself.

My conclusion is. If I want to play a game I would go for HL2. It is much more fun to play than D3 which is simply boring. Since this is purely a personal thing not everybody will agree with me here but everybody is entitled to his own opinion. For modding I can not really say much because I wont mod for HL2 because of Steam. Also there are other, more technical reasons as well to go with D3 and not all of these reasons may apply to others. Still it is not a good idea to select an engine just because of some hunch. D3 offers some advantages and HL2 does and whatever suits your mod more should be the deciding point for which engine to use.

Personally I think that one has to clearly seperate the game D3 from the engine. In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more. For some it is even an entertaining game, which certainly is a bonus.

Some reasons why I stick with D3.

1) I don't intend to learn two different engines to mod for because it takes enough time to learn one. As long as the engine can do what I want there is no real reason to switch.
2) D3 also runs on Linux and Mac(?)
3) Id is known to give away the sourcode to the public after some time, so we can expect the same happening for D3 as well.
4) Lighting is MUCH better in D3.
5) D3 runs on OpenGL and is therfore not reliant on DirectX.
6) Id has a much better reputation with me then Valve. Valve represents more the money greedy company to me, that I would like to avoid. Especially Carmack is known to have a strong personal attachment with the open source community.



pbmax@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 3:34 pm :
sparhawk wrote:
In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more.


i hate it when people say this. d3 is a fully featured game. just because the gameplay was straight forward doesn't make it a tech demo.



Rayne@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 3:37 pm :
So, even Painkiller is a techdemo.



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:31 pm :
Rayne wrote:
So, even Painkiller is a techdemo.


Comparing D3 and Painkiller I would definitely say that Painkiller is a game on it's own. I'm really a fan of Doom but D3 was just to boring for me, while Painkiller defnitely provided hours of fun just playing it, listening to the really cool ambience or examining the levels, which really provided a good atmosphere. That's what I miss in D3.



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:34 pm :
pbmax wrote:
sparhawk wrote:
In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more.


i hate it when people say this. d3 is a fully featured game. just because the gameplay was straight forward doesn't make it a tech demo.


As can be seen in the quote this is just my opinion. :) D3 has the feeling of a techdemo to me, because it is simply to repitative. When I play it I have the impression that it was done without love for the game itself. It doesn't really matter if this is true or false, because this is just what I personally experience when I play it and there is no arguing about it. I'm not talking about objective facts here, just about the gameplay value it provides for me, which is purely subjective, and it was simply not there.

Nevertheless I don't rue the money I spent for it, because I also get a lot of satisfaction out of the modding for it. So it was still worth the money to me, but not on the gameplay side.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:45 am :
My opinion on the demo thing:

First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.

Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.

The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)

Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine. Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3. I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.

On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter. So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 9:27 am :
goodoldalex wrote:
First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.


The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).

Quote:
Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.


I also didn't like Quake while Q2 was fun to play. Q3 is also fun to play, because it's focus is quite different.

Quote:
The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)


I didn't say it IS a tech demo I said it just feels like a tech demo to me. At least that is what I wanted to say. :) Of course I know that it is not a demo, but the fact is that it feels like one to me.

Quote:
Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine.


No denying that.

Quote:
Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3.


Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Quote:
I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.


It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters. Even though Duke Nukem 3D was a cool game I always hated this when they did this as well.

Quote:
On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter.


I totally forgot to mention this. :) I thought about it first, but when I wrote my review I forgot about this (and some other thigns I also wanted to mention. So I just add it here. :)

Yes, you are right. The amount of ammo you can carry is VERY limited and feels a bit to me like an artifical way of making the game harder without effort on the developer side. It is quite restricting. Especially when you have to fight against two helicopters but you can only carry 3 rockets at the same time. Maybe this is more realistic because of the weight, but gameplaywise I think it is a bad decision. Also for the other ammo like MP and this stuff.

Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead. The guy who gives you the shotgun later was standing on this balcony and shot some monsters from there. So I thought it might be possible to climb up there. I used the gravity gun to collect some stuff and managed to put it in such a way that I created a bridge to the balcony. I took me about 45 minutes to achieve this only to realise that some visible barrieres were planted there so I couldn't reach the balcony at all. Such things are VERY annoying for a modern game because it gives you the feeling that you are severly restricted from the developers. Maybe there is some other way up there, but I didn't bother anymore, because I don't like invisible barriers when they are not needed.

Quote:
So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)


It certainly made heavy use of Havoc. This is the only big plus for HL2 because everything else is just a normal linear shooter. But then again. Painkiller also uses Havoc and it is real fun to use it, but they didn't bother to make gameplay use of the phyiscs most of the time. Otherwise HL2 wouldn't be much better than Painkiller only more hype.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:56 pm :
sparhawk wrote:
The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.

BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much. In reality, the difficulty to create the content is actually basically the same. So no, it's not rushed, that's a fact - however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)

Quote:
Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Well, it depends what you're looking for. For me, a good game is good technically, with well-done design (incl. map design), not screwed or buggy and/or fun (and a few other things). I'm definitelly not into games that just need to be different, creative, independent and stuff like that. I love the first Splinter Cell because it's my game, it's very well executed and not because it is or is not creative, and I love SCCT as well, although it's almost the same. I like Daikatana since it has great game and level design, it's fun like hell (IMHO) and I couldn't experience almost any bugs. I found Halo (demo) to be great since it's Bungie-style fun, and not because it has vehicles. I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind. I like Doom 3 for the design, polish, and because it's very entertaining for me. It may not be creative by design (like the first Half-Life), it's more in the detail put into it.

And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity. D3 is simillar to first-person horror games, like Clive Barker's Undying, which is not a very populated genre anyway.

Quote:
It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters.

Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)

It's like the gravity gun in HL2. Some people just can't let it go, while I can't have enough of monsters spawning behind me ... if it's a good game that is :)

Quote:
Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead...

Funny, I don't give a shit about that. Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.

And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 11:16 pm :
goodoldalex wrote:
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.


The rushed feeling was not because of maps lacking detail or such. Quite on the contrary the maps were very well done and a lot of detail and work was put in them. The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter. Painkiller is still a straightforward shooter, but the maps were VERY good designed and the additional gameplay elements (tarot cards, secrets, optional objectives, some riddles like the one with the zombie where you had to figure out how to kill it, etc.) spiced up the game quite a lot. This made the impression that they really cared for the game itself even though it is "just" a shooter. Incidently I had the feeling that, because of timepressure, these details got lost over time, because there are more such extras in the beginning then in the end.

Quote:
BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much.


Nah! That's not the case with me. :) I know what D3 can do and I'm really impressed with it. Otherwise we wouldn't have sticked with D3 for our mod.

Quote:
... however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)


You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Quote:
I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind.


That's funny because I also didn't like Far Cry. Don't know whats wrong with it. Technically it is really good. It is beautifull to look at and gameplay mechanics also didn't seem to be so bad, but somehow it didn't manage to get me going. It lacked that "I want to see what happens next." for me.

Quote:
And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity.


I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :) I see this as a good sign, because it means that the artists managed to keep the artistic style to be the same as for D1 and D3.

Quote:
Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)


LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

Quote:
Funny, I don't give a shit about that.


I guess this is because I'm a fan of Thief and when I see such a balcony I at immediately think how to get up there. :)

Quote:
Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.


Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Quote:
And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.


IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.



goodoldalex@Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:41 am :
sparhawk wrote:
The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter...

I get your point, anyway this again proves that you're not satisfied with D3 as a whole. Painkiller can hardly be compared to Doom and I don't think that any of that special PK stuff could be implemented in it, however what people are missing in Doom the most is stuff present in the 'modern' games - like physics puzzles, large exteriors, intelligent AI and so. However those things would make it just another 'Far Cry/HL2/Chrome' game - and, er, vegetation in Doom? Hardly. Some people even complain about the hellish environment and the enemies.

So the point, Doom may not be perfect, but I don't know how could its gameplay be enhanced so it would be more pleasant to everyone. Altering it in one way would bastardize it in another. I think the developers knew exactly what are they doing. Doom is a natural, it's not forced crippled in such way as HL2 (in which you cannot play with weapons since there's no ammo but you need to use that gravity thing).

That's why I'm worried about what's Raven doing with Quake 4. Is it still going to be the simplistic Quake?

Quote:
You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Ah yeah, right :) I also like scifi games. Didn't really give it much thought, but yeah, Doom is actually scifi :)

Quote:
I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :)

That experiment visually reminds me of Quake 2. But than again, Quake 2 is based quite a lot on Doom 1+2, so I guess it makes sence. Anyway gameplay-wise, Doom 3 s different a lot, as I said I begun to play Ultimate Doom just a few weeks ago (not finished yet), as well as replay D3, so I know for sure :)

BTW I managed to obtain a Voodoo 4 card, I'll give it a shot as soon as I build an old AGP-based PC together.

Quote:
LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

I still remember playing the Quake 2 demo for the first time, when I managed to look the wrong way just to realize I've got the Berserk behind me :) Scary. The Pinky in D3 can give quite the same feeling, so yeah I like this if it's well done.

Another thing why Doom got my respect is that it manages to scare the player without throwing some ugly shit on the display. Maybe it's just me, but from what I saw in games like Undying, The Thing, the Resident Evil series or Silent Hill series and other, those games always have to show off creatures that make me puke. Doom mostly relies on atmosphere and the element of surprise. Remember the first time to find the shotgun? :) Or the hallway with the machinegun at the end? My fauvorites, usually I replay every interesting scene in the games I play but I could never force myself to go through those two again.

Quote:
Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Which reminds me. In the demo (Ravenholm level) there's a point where you can walk around a wall just to get to the same spot - which triggers a zombie spawn everytime. Walk around ten times and you get ten zombies coming from a completelly dead end alley - and BTW, when you walk to the end of that alley the zombie spawns directly behind you :) I actually managed to watch it pop out of nowhere a few times. An AAA '04 game, yep. I wonder if that's already patched through Steam :)

Quote:
IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.
Well I managed to play with the gravity gun in HL2 for maybe 20 minutes. It was fun but then I switched to cheats and unlimited shotgun ammo, as I was getting f**kin tired of having to look for bricks, radiators and other material to throw (I had my 'pet radiator' which I used as a weapon for half of the level but then I lost it somewhere). I finally got D3:ROE so I'll see how much am I going to use the grabber in this one but I believe I'll just stick to the weapons, since that's me. Also, physics is nice to watch (Max Payne 2) but I don't want to get it in my way of doing things.

Good luck with the mod... and don't overphysice it too much, leave the alternative :)



kinkytheclown@Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:23 pm :
I've played both and I enjoyed Doom 3 WAY more. That's partially because I love scary games, but I really enjoyed HL1, so why not HL2? I think the thing I really liked about HL1 was its realistic architecture and atmosphere and almost the whole time you really feel like you're just trying to get the hell out of there and survive. It had a really cool atmosphere.

In Half Life 2 you're basically just some freedom fighter runninfor reasons that aren't made clear. I can't understand how people praise the storyline unless their usual material is the backs of cereal boxes and Saturday morning cartoons. Just because something doesn't totally suck doesn't mean it's not mediocre. I think part of the problem too is that I played Painkiller before playing HL2. People would rave about shooting the crossbow, or how amazing the physics are, or the enormous bridge... Painkiller had all that. Also if you ever played the mod They Hunger, that wraps up more of what HL2 had. Ravenholm wasn't as creepy to me as that, and god knows how many games and mods there are for the end section where you're fighting in a ruined city. And the AI, well I ended up using the gravity gun on a turret gun and killing my entire team on purpose if that says anything. HL2 is not a bad game, but it certainly isn't a great game either. There really wasn't much in there that I haven't seen before.

Now Doom 3. Doom 3 isn't the end-all game either, but it dishes out in spades what I think HL2 lacked, which is atmosphere. I mean this game really does things right when it comes to creating a tense situation. You have a nice calm opening, then all hell breaks lose with flying skulls possessing people and had me worked up enough in the beginning to start putting confirmation shots in bodies that looked dead.

Then you have things happen like the mirror scene, or later on when I start hearing a woman's voice whispering shit to me faintly like "they took my baby". They did a damn good job in creating the right atmosphere. I didn't like Hell so much (I think it should have been more shocking like 1, with parapelegic corpses bound up in chairs and such) or the ruins (it just didn't feel as interesting), but I totally enjoyed the rest of it. It has its flaws, but it sucked me in enough to not really care about them.



romperstomper@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:24 pm :
what Kinktheclowns aid i agree upon,
and umm if doom3 is a demo, then its a heck of a bigass
demo ;)



pbmax@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:54 am :
more hl2 love from gamespy

"As was the case in Half-Life 2, the graphics in Episode One are drop-dead gorgeous; there may not be another graphics engine today capable of consistently producing such attractive scenes in so many different settings. From the dramatic sights outside the crumbling Citadel to the shimmering reactor core to the dramatic lighting effects when fighting zombies in the dark, it's almost impossible to take a bad screenshot in Episode One. The NPCs are once again rendered with amazing detail and animations, and Valve has included the advanced HDR lighting effects that it showcased last year in the Lost Coast tech demo.

"Probably the biggest change introduced in Episode One is how Alyx fights at Gordon's side for the majority of the game. Plenty of shooters have tried this and failed, with NPCs who get lost or get in the way or are just plain annoying. Valve strikes just the right notes with Alyx; she doesn't nag Gordon, she can competently follow you around, and even provides useful support a lot of the time.

:roll:



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:24 am :
lol ;)
hl2 is easily the most overrated game of all times,
im not saying its totally shite, just that its sooo
immensly overhyped and overrated its almost reaching
pathetic regions, hl1 is 1000 times better and id rather
play that than hl2 any day :roll:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:15 am :
hl1 = 2nd best FPS of all time, period. :) Second only to Doom 1.

HL2 is somewhere far, far lower in my ranking... I've played a lot more enjoyable games then that. I've heard Episode 1 plays just like Valve promised HL2 would 3 years ago. That's good, i guess... considering it took 3 years of aditional work to make their statements true.



goodoldalex@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:22 pm :
Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ...

So how's everyone doing? :)



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 11:31 pm :
"Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ... "
Well, if it is the dudes that made Blueshift expansion, im not at all surprised, Gearbox i think theyre called, funny tho cuss their OpFor was good, but since that everything theyve made sucked major backside



pbmax@Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:57 pm :
there will be no HL3. the episodes are now going to conclude the story.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:23 am :
but there WILL be a HL2E3. :)



Eddie@Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:05 am :
Half-Life 2 was a great game but I hated the civilians! I purposely killed them and actually felt more sorry when my robot sentry died in Doom 3!

I'm not buying any more Valve games though. I love CSS and play it all the time but I just bought DODS and that is a waste of money - it's a half-assed completed game. I'm not going to bother with the whole episodes either. I'll save my money up for something like Prey instead.

I just don't like Valve as a company and their attitude where they just release games unfinished and patch it up through steam later.



pbmax@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:19 am :
for those that played both, what are the pros and cons of each game? which one is better and why?

its interesting to hear eneryone's opinion because they are so different. some say hl2 is very detailed but yet others say its rather bland. some say d3 at least had a story where has hl2 doesn't (or at least one you can follow). i even heard someone say that if you took the pretty water and gravity gun out of hl2 you'd be left with just an average game.

i often go back to d3 and boot up a random map to just gawk at the details and level design. it can't get any better. i find it hard to believe that hl2's graphics could be better.

anyway, i'll be buying hl2 soon but until then i'd like to hear what you all have to say about it...



|DRC| Photek@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:29 am :
It rocks.



Jafo@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 3:51 am :
Ack... not the dreaded d3 vs hl2 thread :twisted:

You know that I could go on forever about this topic but I love both of them, they both have pro's and cons but my main ones are :)

d3edit to hammer is a porshe to a pinto.
SOftimage as a modeler is, well... holy christ what can you say :)

d3 added way to much overhead to shove through a pipe making a 32 player game a little hard to conceive.

Mod wise I actaully think that Hl2 is more portable, but there we are talking disadvantages for making doom3 so god damn pretty. In a world of direct x you can only do so much in the end. So HL2 may not be as detailed but you can't have it both ways right now, the best of both worlds is a sacrafice. The technology in GPU's suggest you have to trim something in order to make it multiplayer friendly. Far Cry kind of messed up there too. Some may disagree but I have yet to play Far Cry Multi and feel like all was okay, something is always a ton of frames behind lagging the rest.

Most fan boys will assert ah this sucks and that sucks, It drives me crazy. D3, Hl2 are tools for the making of what a mod team desires. There will always be a "Wow, that sucks that doesn't", reaction but an uneducated kid once threw up a post stating how much better the PC version of Splinter cell was compared to the xbox version as the models contained more poly's. I had to take a red line in photshop and trace the poly edges to show they were the same. Then he tried to argue those were only the outer edges and there we more in the middle, thick huh?

I guess my point is that niether is truely better than the other... well okay except the editor tools :) lol

Fact is D3 is not geared towards mutilplayer, just as Tribes is not geared towards a single player aspect, vengeance... sheesh...what were they thinking. :) So D3 can budget in overhead that other games can't. Not that it is a mistake it is preference, I personally believe the longevity of a game survives off of on-line interaction, how many doom3 clans are there? It's almost absurd thinking about it right?

I guess target is the key. Target audience is really nothing to argue over and developers can't worry about those demands... playing catch with doggy was pretty forking cool though :)



W01f@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:01 am :
As far as the singleplayer experience goes, HL2 makes Doom3 seem like wolf3d (gameplay wise). I actually liked HL2's graphics better too, though Doom3 does use more advanced technology. It's just the way they use the source engine in HL2 that makes it look so amazing. Especialy the last chapter, which IMO is better looking than anything ID has ever done.



Drin@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:59 am :
whats wrong with hammer?



Jafo@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:17 am :
Hammer is okay, just kind of hard to compare with d3ed... or cryogened.. or radiant.. or ... lol



Drin@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:29 am :
im worried. I hate the doom 3 editor. I can make like 2 or 3 complete UT 2k4 maps in the time it takes me to make and detail a small doom 3 level, nevermind scripting, enemies, tweaking and all that. I was thinking I would have to be some sort of accended being to create an entire level that lasts more then 3 minutes. I was hoping I could make something cool with half life 2 in a slightly smaller time period. but...?



Eutectic@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:58 am :
Jafo wrote:
Hammer is okay, just kind of hard to compare with d3ed... or cryogened.. or radiant.. or ... lol


I prefer DoomEdit myself but Hammer (which is nothing more than an improved version of Worldcraft really) does have a few advantages over it:

1. It's more stable as an application. Better written, cleaner code underneath it with a better GUI.

I hate to say it but I have a hunch the code is most likely very sloppy in DoomEdit and it's riddled with memory leaks which makes it very crash-prone as your map gets bigger and bigger.

2. Hammer is a separate application from the Source engine and thus can be maintained separately from the engine.

The fact that DoomEdit is an undissociable part of the Doom3 engine is both a curse and a blessing. It's a blessing because it allows real-time render and lighting. It's a curse because Id can't release the source code of the editor since it's part of the engine. So, that eliminates any possibility of ever seeing gifted amateurs make a "GTK Radiant" flavor of DoomEdit. We are totally at Id's mercy in that regard.... and whether the stability bugs in DoomEdit will ever be fixed is anybody's guess.

Ideally, DoomEdit should have been written as a plug-in to the Doom3 engine so that the Editor code could be maintained separately from the engine code... but unfortunately, as the song goes: run.. rabbit run....


DoomEdit also has several problems:

1. DoomEdit doesn't "see" OGG sound files in the pak files (and the vast majority of them are OGG rather than WAV). It can play them fine, it just cannot recognize files with the .ogg file extension.

2. DoomEdit's model and skin selection dialogs cannot render MD5 models in the model view. The model view itself only has limited usefulness because it has no zoom feature. Using real-time lighting with only one light source doesn't help either.

3. The entity selection dialog's "editor_var ..." fields are very finicky. If you put too much text in the definitions of those in the .def files, the field is cut off abruptly

4. The texture window sometimes gets corrupted if you have too many texture shaders loaded. Probably related to memory leaks.

5. It doesn't manage system resources very well. If you have a custom gamma setting (like I do) and DoomEdit crashes, you can't restore your desktop's default gamma with your graphic card's desktop properties window. The only way to reset gamma is by rebooting.

6. It's a huge memory hog.

7. For some reason, it hates my Athlon64 FX-51 processor based machine on which it never runs for more than 5 minutes without crashing (the game by itself runs fine BTW).

8. DoomEdit sometimes corrupts your maps. This forces the designer to make daily back-ups of his maps for the whole duration of the design cycle (and keep ALL of those as separate files) otherwise he is at constant risk of losing months' worth of work.

So DoomEdit is far from perfect. But in terms of controls, productivity, texturing, etc... I agree that it's second to none once you're familiar with the numerous key/mouse button combinations. However, it's badly in need of stabillity. For all intents and purposes, it's a beta level software.

Fix those problems and THEN... you got the best damm editor in the world :)



goodoldalex@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:22 am :
Eutectic wrote:
If you have a custom gamma setting (like I do) and DoomEdit crashes, you can't restore your desktop's default gamma with your graphic card's desktop properties window.
Tip: When this happens, run D3 or an old version of Q3 (1.11) or the Q3 demo, set the in-game gamma to 1 and use the CRASH console command. You're back to normal and I haven't noticed any system anomalities after using this method :)



Eutectic@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:46 am :
Thanks for the workaround. It will come in handy when DoomEdit crashes and I don't care to reboot right away because I'm in the middle of something else like working in my text editor or browsing these forums :)



hellstorm27@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:28 pm :
I think the Doom 3 expansion pack is a particularly important consideration for a Doom 3 vs HL2 thread. This being because, IMO, while the original Doom 3 levels were very immersive, to me they smacked a little of "id seemed to have a lack of ideas", particularly in the base sections where it seemed to be a case of "shoot that Imp, watch another Imp jump out at you, shoot this Imp". I don't see that as a big deal, but the repetitive nature of the gameplay means that I tend to play Doom 3 in short bursts, rather than being engrossed for hours like in some other shooters.

I don't believe that the problem was anything to do with the engine, or even the AI- having played various custom levels, and got into level designing myself, it would appear that the SDK and editor provide the capability to produce environments and gameplay as varied as those of, say, Far Cry or HL2.

The expansion pack, IMO, is what is needed to give Doom 3 the gameplay "facelift" to give it the amount of variety and completeness of HL2. The fact that another company is producing the levels under the supervision of the guys at id Software means that there is promise for a more varied experience- they can take the ideas of id and bring a lot of their own ideas into the mix.

Unfortunately it seems that many people, upon preferring HL2 to Doom 3, don't want anything to do with the expansion pack because "it will just be more of the same".

As far as I'm concerned, although I wasn't really disappointed by id's levels, what really makes Doom 3 a classic is the new engine and the capacity for some excellent mods and custom levels. When I get HL2 for Christmas, I won't be surprised if I find 'bare bones' HL2 superior, gameplay wise, to 'bare bones' Doom 3. Whether I will find HL2's mods and custom levels better than Doom 3's is much harder to predict.



bb_matt@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:12 pm :
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years.

Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.

I'm enjoying HL2 far more than Doom3, the amount of work that has gone into the game is so apparent, it's actually quite incredible.

I'm literally gobsmacked at the game - the interactivity and fun is ingenious.

*spoiler alert" - having recently got through the sand traps section, I'd have to say that so far, that's the most fun I've had with an FPS since Far Cry.
The whole concept of not walking on the sand, the thumping machines was a bit Dune sci-fi. The ant-lions are very "starship troopers", then there's the flotsam and jetsam all over the place - bust up boats, crates, tyres, corrigated iron, all this stuff you can mess around with - it's a very rich environment. I spent 20 minutes building a continuous pathway across the sand just for the heck of it - I think I managed about 100 metres :D

The people that say there's no story in Half-Life2 must have a very short attention span. The whole thing is layered with stories. It may not all link up, but that's a good thing - Half-Life 3 ! :lol:

Doom3 was fun, but not as fun as this which at the end of the day, is what counts for playing games.

For editing it's an entirely different matter.

The doom3 engine is capable of everything quake3 was and more.

Take a dev team as talented as Valves and let them loose on the Doom3 engine for the next 5 years ... - oooh baby, now we're talkin' !

id are the kings of the FPS engine, valve are the visionaries and story tellers

... that's so corny ... :lol:



Exitus@Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:23 pm :
Heres my comparison:
Advanteges of Doom 3:
- Scripting Engine (.script, .gui, etc)
- Dynamic Lighting
- Scary
- Believable weapons and storyline
- Special FX
- Realistic Glass Fracturing

Advanteges of Half Life 2:
- Not a system hog (Doom 3 runs at around 10 fps on all low, but in half life 2 on my 5200fx with everything on medium/high i get around 60fps)
- Physics Puzzles
- Gravity gun (=D) j/k
- Already coded Vehicles, already present in the game
- Havok Physics Engine enables almost anything to be interacted with
- Immersive Gameplay
- Believable characters and storyline
- Suspense
- Varied environments, never really repetitive
- Squad based combat
- Ability to control some NPCs
- Uses the STEAM platform *
- Water Refraction
- Outside Environments

Disadvateges of Doom 3:
- Repetitive gameplay
- System hog
- No water refractions, let alone water

Disadvanteges of Half-Life 2:
- Low res Textures in some places
- No scripting system (as far as i know of, but could probably be coded in)
- Small arsenal, albeit interesting
- The world isnt dynamically lit, but all entities are
- Unrealistic Glass Fracturing

Hope this helps a lot of you compare the two games. If you think im missing something or if im wrong tell me.

Also be aware that i did not talk about mods, and that is for a reason, and that is because how good mods are and how flexible they are depends on the skill level of the team.

* - Some people may say that steam is bad, but in reality, its a good thing. While i could write a whole other comparison saying if it's good or bad, its easy to see that it is good because if someone developes a new cheat or hack, valve can easily counter it and release it, and everyone on the steam network has it.



|DRC| Rarek@Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 4:15 pm :
Pro to HL2.

You can go outside. :P



pbmax@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 9:59 pm :
bb_matt wrote:
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years. Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.


i have played about a 3rd of the game and so far i have the opposite opinion. its fun to play, but to me there is nothing revolutionary or even new (except for the character animations- those are very well done).

where's the immersive detail? the out door maps of city 17 are so barren, empty and fake. contrast that with the cities in knights of the old republic which where filled with lots of characters and activity.

i'm even a little bored in some parts. i don't understand how people can elevate this game to such a lofty status. yes, its a good game but its not all that great- certainly not the greates fps ever. no way. take away the gravity gun and character animations and you are left with a pretty average game, imo.



rgun@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:13 pm :
pbmax wrote:
bb_matt wrote:
We now know what Valve we're doing for so many years. Making some of the most stunning Single Player levels that cram in so much detail, you just get immersed.


where's the immersive detail? the out door maps of city 17 are so barren, empty and fake. contrast that with the cities in knights of the old republic which where filled with lots of characters and activity.


In it's defense I don't think a city that is under attack from a aggressive faction wouldn't have a lot of "characters and activity" going on. This is a war torn city you are running through, and I saw exatly what I expected to see. A lot of soldiers and striders, and then small pockets of rebels fighting them off. Did you want to local grocery store to open up it's doors and sell you some +5 stamina drink (yeah, yeah bad reference to KOTOR :))?

Also, I don't know why a lot of people (not just you pbmax) have the idea in their head that a game has to revolutionize a genre in order to be good. The way I see it, Half Life 2 took the FPS genre added in characters that we actually care about, and put it into a world that is as realistic I have ever played in. Now, I am not saying the graphics are the most realistic, but the way the world feels is. In my opinion HL2 is a damn good game, and a fun one at that!

And your comment about taking away the gravity gun and character animations is completely irrelevent. If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there. Boring gameply with no story, and very little interaction with the world.

Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed both games, but I had a lot more fun with Half Life 2. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to finish Doom 3 because I just didn't care after a while. I just think some people are being much too critical of Half Life 2 just because a lot of reviewers are saying things like "...the best game ever made."



hellstorm27@Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:44 pm :
Quote:
Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed both games, but I had a lot more fun with Half Life 2. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to finish Doom 3 because I just didn't care after a while. I just think some people are being much too critical of Half Life 2 just because a lot of reviewers are saying things like "...the best game ever made."


Didn't exactly the same sort of thing happen with Doom 3? The early reviews rated it disproportionately high, and many people were disappointed.



pbmax@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 4:31 pm :
rgun wrote:
If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there.


i agree if you mean take away the lighting from d3. thats whats makes the game unique. take that away and you are left with an average game as well.



bb_matt@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:09 pm :
I'll throw a spanner in the works here and say that Half-Life 2 started off like a ground breaking game, but ended like a same old, same old FPS.

A lot of people will agree with this analogy.

The entry point and subsequent gaming experience was so awesome as to take the breath away - but - excuse the tongue-in-cheek pun, the game ran out of steam past the half-way-mark.

:wink:



pieisgood@Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:31 pm :
pbmax wrote:
rgun wrote:
If we take away Doom 3's graphics there is absolutely nothing there.


i agree if you mean take away the lighting from d3. thats whats makes the game unique. take that away and you are left with an average game as well.

If we take away the physics from HL2.



Mr.Spline@Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 1:13 am :
[EDIT] I just want everyone to know I still think Doom3 is the best thing since sliced bread. Don't get me wrong. But I'm still gonna have to stand by my previous post, and if 72% of all statistics are made up. Then I say I base that information on statistics. Oh and don't worry the next best thing is on it's way :lol:



lou@Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 12:55 am :
In ROE's first map you see water rising (or blood, everything's red, you can't really tell) with some bodies floating in it in one of those 'what's going on with the level, bertruger is laughing, am I going to die?' moments.
Not sure if this is scripted or bouancy physics, will have to look into it.



Desert Fox@Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 12:25 am :
Why do people want to compare games? Its like comparing ones basketball with another.

Ex.
Person 1: My basketball is better! Its more orange!!!
Person 2: Oh Yeah?! Well my basketball is more cleaner! What now?
Person 1: Who cares if its cleaner? Mine is still more orange!
Person 2: Well mine bounces better!
Person 1: *pops the basketball* Not anymore!

Do you see how retarded this sounds?

Point: Game weren't created to be compared. They were created to be enjoyed.

Note: I like hl2 and d3, but imo both games deserved a much lower score. I think that their scores were greatly influenced by the hype and that is why they are so much higher than they are suppose to be.



[noob]plonker@Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 7:30 am :
word.



Crylar@Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:01 am :
Desert Fox wrote:
Why do people want to compare games? Its like comparing ones basketball with another.

because some of us are fanboys.

Why not compare them?



Desert Fox@Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 2:28 am :
Crylar wrote:
Desert Fox wrote:
Why do people want to compare games? Its like comparing ones basketball with another.

because some of us are fanboys.

Why not compare them?


Person 1: My basketball is better! Its more orange!!!
Person 2: Oh Yeah?! Well my basketball is more cleaner! What now?
Person 1: Who cares if its cleaner? Mine is still more orange!
Person 2: Well mine bounces better!
Person 1: *pops the basketball* Not anymore!

Point: Its retarded. Games are meant to be played, not compared.



ninjiapirate@Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:45 pm :
pbmax wrote:
or people like me who can't stand valve's lofty status and untarnishable reputation. everything they do turns to gold no matter if its really worthy or not.

hl2 was a great game, but not as great as every fanboy and game review made it out to be. hl2's faults like steam, omitted features, bugs, inconsistant lighting and shadows, etc... are ignored while other games like d3 get torn apart eventhough its one of the most polished games that was released last year.


A good example of this was PC Gamers review of HL2 vs. Vampires Bloodlines. Both using the Source engine, both have the same bugs, errors, etc. Yet the HL2 review failed to mention any and the Bloodlines review penalized the game because of them.


Personally, both games were good.

The Source engine is the last of the current technology, Steam came from Gabe Newell's origins at Microsoft.

The D3 engine is capable of much more, such as the renders from pregame press releases show, but current tech isn't. The D3 engine will be around for the next 5+years, Source may get a year or 2 as a AAA licensed engine.



pbmax@Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:08 pm :
other than bloodlines, what games are using the source engine? anyone?



Dante_uk@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 12:47 pm :
What's the current version of HL2 now?

I gave up playing it ages ago ( shortly after I completed it ) because I got fed up of wait 20/30 mins for all the damn steam updates!!

Seems like every week there's an update / fix / new mp map(which I don't what or care about ).

Doom3 is soon(I hope) to become version 1.3, I played and completed it twice (2nd time on nightmare level) using 1.0 and never had a problem.
HL2 crashed to desktop a couple of times during play.



MaxiM@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 2:00 pm :
VALVe's inability to efficiently remove bugs with patches is obvious. That's probably one of the reasons behind Steam - they can release tiny updates all the time instead of one fat, thoroughly tested patch that fix mostly evetything it should. Some of those updated are untested and faulty and are producing even more bugs. That's why they are recalling those updates soon after. Thanks to Steam they feel free to treat their customers like shit, because they can and noone can do nothing about it.

Go VALVe!



pbmax@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 5:32 pm :
anyone know of other developers using source engine?



ninjiapirate@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:13 pm :
About the Steam self patches.

I bought the game when it came out. It ran fine, I played half way through it...........

Then along came patch (15) I believe it was. All of a sudden, motion sickness, sound stuttering and locking up and so on. Rendered the game unplayable.

My opinion let the user decide on patching. Why patch a game for a soundblaster fix if you don't have a soundblaster card. Or and ati fix if you don't have an ati card.

That's the beauty of allowing us to decide to patch or not to patch. Don't force the user to.



Minion@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:50 pm :
pbmax wrote:
anyone know of other developers using source engine?
Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines is the only one I'm aware of.

It was a pretty big letdown though.

The developers who made it (Troika) ended up closing the company down shortly after its release. Not because they were bad developers though =P The game industry is heading in a direction where you can't get anywhere unless you're an in-house developer for a bigger company such as Ubisoft because it's too difficult to secure funding.

Pretty unfortunate.



Burrito@Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 7:46 pm :
Source Engine licensees:

Arkane Studios - Arx Fatalis 2
Smiling Gator Productions - Twilight War: After the Fall

http://www.halflife2.net/index.php?page=licensed



MelvinB@Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 10:42 am :
Screenie of HL²:Aftermath:

Image

Bigger version:
http://www.gamer.nl/images/content/Erwi ... 9719_0.jpg

They are going for the Doom³-atmosphere! :lol:



pbmax@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 1:09 am :
actually, that's pretty funny :D

you think the boys over at planethalflife are going: "looks like sh*t. its too frickin' dark!" :roll:



c--b@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 2:24 am :
pbmax wrote:
you think the boys over at planethalflife are going: "looks like sh*t. its too frickin' dark!" :roll:


If they dont, they're damn hyporcrites.

Heres hoping **Crosses toes** :P



idiom@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 9:16 am :
This thread is like some simmering pot that pops every now and again :P



Desert Fox@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 4:03 pm :
Dante_uk wrote:
What's the current version of HL2 now?

I gave up playing it ages ago ( shortly after I completed it ) because I got fed up of wait 20/30 mins for all the damn steam updates!!

Seems like every week there's an update / fix / new mp map(which I don't what or care about ).

Doom3 is soon(I hope) to become version 1.3, I played and completed it twice (2nd time on nightmare level) using 1.0 and never had a problem.
HL2 crashed to desktop a couple of times during play.


LOL you all complain about problems with HL2. Well heres my complaints. Doom 3 crashes if i play it for over two hours and i have to run it on 800x600 to get playable fps. HL2 never crashed for me and i could run it on 1024x768 with settings set to high. Also when i installed that 1.2 update, ROE gave me this weird warning and crashed before even starting. One update screwed up my game and i had to reinstall. It was a pain in the ass. HL2 however gave me over four updates and i never had any problems with any of them. Isn't this situation ironic? You say HL2 is giving you trouble, while i say that D3 is giving me trouble. lol. These developers are fucking with our heads.



Dante_uk@Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 9:08 pm :
Desert Fox wrote:
Dante_uk wrote:
...
Doom3 ... never had a problem.
HL2 crashed to desktop a couple of times during play.


LOL you all complain about problems with HL2. Well heres my complaints. Doom 3 crashes if i play it for over two hours and i have to run it on 800x600 to get playable fps. HL2 never crashed for me and i could run it on 1024x768 with settings set to high. Also when i installed that 1.2 update, ROE gave me this weird warning and crashed before even starting. One update screwed up my game and i had to reinstall. It was a pain in the ass. HL2 however gave me over four updates and i never had any problems with any of them. Isn't this situation ironic? You say HL2 is giving you trouble, while i say that D3 is giving me trouble. lol. These developers are fucking with our heads.


I guess the main difference is hardware, your on ATI, I'm Nvidia.

New Screenshot: The guy/thing in the background is the really spooky one, casts no shadow !! maybe it's a vampire, escaped from bloodlines :)



estevancarlos@Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:53 pm :
I have what I suspect is a run of the mill video card. An Nvidia Quadro 64mb card a a 2.8ghz intel processor and 1gig of ram. I have HL2 and just dled the Doom3 demo.

I had decided to purchase HL2 instead of Doom3 because of my fears and assumptions that Doom3 simply would not run at all appropriately with my video card, strangely though, it is the opposite.

I'm not sure why but I have a difficult time running HL2 at a decent frame rate even at its lowest settings. Particularly during certain moments in the game. But with Doom3 (the demo at least) on its lowest, or slightly higher than lowest settings, it runs near flawlessly and looks substantially better than when i run HL2.

Is it the engines and their efficiencies? The level design? The physics aspects of the two games, meaning, there are so many obejcts surrounding you constantly in HL2, that can be controlled and lie around. Are those affecting things substantially?

I'm pleasantly surprised by this. So now i can join the Doom3 community to some extent.



Desert Fox@Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:41 am :
ninjiapirate wrote:
The D3 engine will be around for the next 5+years, Source may get a year or 2 as a AAA licensed engine.


I don't think the D3 engine is going to last 5+ years. Technology is rapidly being replaced these days so it may last only 2 or 3 years. Of course i could be wrong but who really knows. Also i agree that the Source engine isn't going to last very long. But what can you expect from an engine that was built for the year of 2003.



Hajile@Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:40 am :
Graphics wise. Here's a pic i found.

http://img175.echo.cx/img175/6754/reeve ... nu22wq.jpg

The left is HL2, the right is Doom3. :lol:

He was using it for comparing video cards, but i thought it's better used for this type of thread.



MaxiM@Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:03 am :
Yup, it shows it pretty well. I wonder how HL2 fanboys would react on that pic :twisted:



Desert Fox@Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:11 pm :
Hajile wrote:
Graphics wise. Here's a pic i found.

http://img175.echo.cx/img175/6754/reeve ... nu22wq.jpg

The left is HL2, the right is Doom3. :lol:

He was using it for comparing video cards, but i thought it's better used for this type of thread.


LMAO! That just made my day. And MaxiM im a HL fanboy. :D



Dante_uk@Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 2:46 pm :
Hajile wrote:
Graphics wise. Here's a pic i found.

http://img175.echo.cx/img175/6754/reeve ... nu22wq.jpg

The left is HL2, the right is Doom3. :lol:

He was using it for comparing video cards, but i thought it's better used for this type of thread.


Looks like Nvidia card has better bump mapping too :)



Vorac1ous@Posted: Sun May 08, 2005 4:32 am :
You would be right in saying that.



ZizZ^@Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 8:55 pm :
That is true!

I have ATI n when i go to a friend who has "softer" nvidia card im always impressed by the visual quality. The difference is really something!



romperstomper@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 2:16 am :
go buy HL2 and get free government supervision and no extra cost in the form of (the word itself makes me vomit) steam,
not to mention a constant nonworking buggy laggy crappy trojanfilled piece of junk as well.
I fail to see how HL2 can even be considered as good as Doom, that thought makes me lmao, half the game one is chased by some chopper, and then follows the most lame gayassed pathetic B version of Doom aka ravensholm ... Did anyone really got any scared of that???
Far Cry is 100 times the game than HL2, if you think HL2 is good and havent played Far Cry, buy that instead!



bad marine ass@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 1:16 pm :
whoopee doo I'm getting a 6600GT next fortnight so I can finally play D3 at 800x600 on High!!! Gotta love the optimized engine :D

Yeah I know its way off topic sry, but I couldnt resist

Anyway, I'm really amused by 2 things in the HL2 mod community

1) People claiming that D3 Radiant is harder to use than Hammer. I haven't used Hammer, but Radiant is by far one of the easiest editors I've ever used. It took me about a day to learn the basics, plus a week to fully understand how it works. As for Worldcraft, it took me about 3-4 days and I still couldn't understand the basics yet, maybe I didn't have the patience back then, but my point is, claims that people make such as "D3 editor is hard to use omgz!" is just plain biasness and fanboyism imho.

2) More modders in the HL2 community. It's like at least 20% of them own Doom 3, but they don't seem to have the patience to give Radiant and the mod tools a shot. And then they start churning out mod after mod after mod after same old mod and are back where they started, because firstly there is a lack of followers for that mod, and secondly, it's like a "why bother" sort of thing. Doom 3 modders, on the other hand, are more collaborative. Most teams are currently working on a "we are family!!!" basis, whereas the way I see it from hlfallout.com, the mod teams are simply...mod teams



PaladinOfKaos@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 5:51 pm :
I've found that Hammer is harder to learn than the Radiant editors, but if you can stretch your fingers to opposite sides of the keyboard, and still have a hand for the mouse, you can do some things really, really fast.

The lack of patch meshes in hammer bugs me, though...has the entire HL2 community not found them, or is it really all brush-based?

And having a real-time preview definately gives d3 an advantage.

As for the modders, I completely agree. I've been sort of hovering on this forum because I've been messing with HL2, and on all of the forums I've found so far, n00b bashing seems to be encouraged... There isn't a forum like D3W, where just about everyone is willing to help. The forums are clogged with people making the same maps, and dissing anyone who tries something new, unless it's clearly not possible in D3, in which case they see it as a sign of their superiority (I.E. a physics-enabled rope bridge)


As for the tech, Each has its own place. Doom3 is geared towards dark and spooky (though we have seen well-lit maps, they aren't quite the same), whereas HL2 is geared towards being backward-compatible. d3 can't turn off its real-time lighting, but HL2 can turn off its high-res textures, hi-poly models, etc. The only thing that's really a "new" technology (as opposed to just boosting polys) is the physics, and that's not even in-house.

Considering that Doom3 uses an all-new system for lighting, and everything is in-house, I'd say that its physics are excusable.

Summing up the mini-rant: Doom3 does much better when you want to get the bump-mapping to look right with your flashlight. HL2 is good if you want that corpse to fly in a realistic manner.



goodoldalex@Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 6:09 pm :
bad marine ass wrote:
whoopee doo I'm getting a 6600GT next fortnight so I can finally play D3 at 800x600 on High!!! Gotta love the optimized engine :D
You'll do better than that, my 6600 non-GT runs Doom in 1024*768 / Ultra Q / 2x FSAA, so you'll get about 1/3 the performance more... :)



Desert Fox@Posted: Tue May 24, 2005 2:27 am :
bad marine ass wrote:
...whereas the way I see it from hlfallout.com, the mod teams are simply...mod teams.


HLFallout is dead. The site and forum still work, but the good old glory days are long gone. The forums are now filled with spammers and newbs, while the website team doesn't really care about updating anymore. I believe that there is only one person that actually even bothers to update. The rest quit or left with the rest of the old members. And yes, HL2's mod are really ****ty right now. But there are some promising mods that are in development such as Resistance and Liberation, Insurgency, Sven Co-Op 2, and possibly Natural Selection: Source.

I wish this whole "comparing games" thing would stop already. What will you gain if you win anyway? More self-esteem? A bigger ego? Besides Doom 3 and Half Life 2 are already old news, so why bother comparing them anymore. No one (except you guys) would care. So why can't we just stop comparing and enjoy our games for what they are?



brandon9271@Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 5:49 am :
to me, Halflife 2's lighting is very screwy. You can see lots of seams when you shine the flashlight on things. Its almost as though certain textures can only recieve light from one angle and if you move 180 degrees and shine the flashlight it will light. is this an engine problem/limitation or sloppy mapping and texture creation? This looks especially bad on decals where the texture underneath is lit but the texture on top is not. I noticed this the very first day I bought HL2 and thought.. wow, that looks like total arse! oh and I've noticed these same crazy seams with the specular also. very wacky...

FLASHLIGHT OFF
Image
FLASHLIGHT ON (notice the crap lighting on the leaves)
Image

if you move 180 and shine light from the other side it lights it vice versa.. wtf?



pbmax@Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 3:27 pm :
its old news that the lighting in hl2 is borked. its not unified like the doom3 engine. the source engine's lighting system uses different tricks and hacks pieced together. sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't.

i also noticed this odd lighting problem right away. from one direction, certain surfaces do not recieve light, but they do from the opposite direction. i have no idea why though...



Crylar@Posted: Sun May 29, 2005 5:10 pm :
pbmax wrote:
i also noticed this odd lighting problem right away. from one direction, certain surfaces do not recieve light, but they do from the opposite direction. i have no idea why though...


Reason: Fuckedup engine...



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:50 pm :
Well, maybe this has been said already but I also want to give my opinion. :)

One thing I don't like about HL2 is Steam. If it were not for that I think it would be a great game. Since the point if this thread is not to talk about steam I will therefore ignore it in my comparison.

I have played HL2 about halfway through and completed D3 and I must say that HL2 as a game is way better then D3. When I first run D3 it was rather creepy once the action started. One thing that I was a bit dissapointed is that in D3, when you start walking through the base in the intro (before the action starts) most models are already looking almost like the zombies they turn out to be later. This seemed to me a bit like they cut down the time by reusing the same models later on. Of course if a soldier turns into a zombie he will still look basically like a zombie, but the models already had a zombielike quality about them when they were not yet turned into them.

As a game HL2 is much more interesting to play then D3. The first few situations in D3 were quite interesting and tense, but after you realised the pattern it became boring. Go into a take out the visible monsters, take a few steps, turn around and kill the monsters that suddenly jump out from the back. Go in the next room and repeat. The rare puzzles later on didn't really help, because it was just not enough. After some repetitions I switched to god mode and forced me to play the whole game through because I wanted to see what is in there what we might use for our mod.

When I played HL2 my first impression was not so good. Starting in the trainstation the graphics and texturing looked much worse then the graphics in D3. It also was not clear to me how I should start the actual game until I found that ladder so I was spending some time running around in the station and wondering what I'm supposed to do there. Once you get in the real game the it picks up pace quite considerable and really pmanages to pull you in. You get the feeling as if it were you that is chased. Of course it doesn't manage this all the time, but I think the gameplay is sufficient immersive to keep you on playing. I really loved when you had to use the boat (what is it called?) to go through the canals because the graphics reminded me strongly when I still lived in Vienna and we were going through some canals which looked very similar, so this was a bonus of the game because it recreated this feeling of my youth, which may not be true for most others. :) Also the variety of enemies makes it quite interesting to continue playing while in D3 it's bascially the same throughout the game.

The physics in D3 was pretty bad IMO. Of course HL2 uses Havoc which is an excellent physics engine and this added a lot to the gameworld. I think that physics will play a much stronger part in upcoming games because it can really make the world much more believable and fun if properly implemented. HL2 did this IMO very good while the physics in D3 seemed more like an afterthought. Of course since the physics is fully implemented in the SDK you can replace it with some other, which is a very good thing, while Havoc can not be removed from HL2 (but then again why would you?).

The engine itself there is no denying that D3 is far superior than HL2. Enginewise I think taht HL2 is pretty average. It doesn't add anything new and the lighting is most of the time faked. You can see this pretty good in some situations where the engine clearly shows that shadows are more a hack than a result of the lighting. A very good example of this is the yard where you have to lift the big containers with the magnetic arm. When you play around with it you can easily see how bad the shadows are. This doesn't hurt the game itself because most of the time you wont't notice it unless you look for it. It has already been mentioned that HL2 is very good at lipsynching, even though I dont really see why this would make much difference for anybody. This is helpfull in cutscenes but doesn't really change the game itself.

My conclusion is. If I want to play a game I would go for HL2. It is much more fun to play than D3 which is simply boring. Since this is purely a personal thing not everybody will agree with me here but everybody is entitled to his own opinion. For modding I can not really say much because I wont mod for HL2 because of Steam. Also there are other, more technical reasons as well to go with D3 and not all of these reasons may apply to others. Still it is not a good idea to select an engine just because of some hunch. D3 offers some advantages and HL2 does and whatever suits your mod more should be the deciding point for which engine to use.

Personally I think that one has to clearly seperate the game D3 from the engine. In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more. For some it is even an entertaining game, which certainly is a bonus.

Some reasons why I stick with D3.

1) I don't intend to learn two different engines to mod for because it takes enough time to learn one. As long as the engine can do what I want there is no real reason to switch.
2) D3 also runs on Linux and Mac(?)
3) Id is known to give away the sourcode to the public after some time, so we can expect the same happening for D3 as well.
4) Lighting is MUCH better in D3.
5) D3 runs on OpenGL and is therfore not reliant on DirectX.
6) Id has a much better reputation with me then Valve. Valve represents more the money greedy company to me, that I would like to avoid. Especially Carmack is known to have a strong personal attachment with the open source community.



pbmax@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 3:34 pm :
sparhawk wrote:
In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more.


i hate it when people say this. d3 is a fully featured game. just because the gameplay was straight forward doesn't make it a tech demo.



Rayne@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 3:37 pm :
So, even Painkiller is a techdemo.



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:31 pm :
Rayne wrote:
So, even Painkiller is a techdemo.


Comparing D3 and Painkiller I would definitely say that Painkiller is a game on it's own. I'm really a fan of Doom but D3 was just to boring for me, while Painkiller defnitely provided hours of fun just playing it, listening to the really cool ambience or examining the levels, which really provided a good atmosphere. That's what I miss in D3.



sparhawk@Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:34 pm :
pbmax wrote:
sparhawk wrote:
In my opinion the game D3 is just a tech demo for the D3 engine and nothing more. It shows the features it is capable off and nothing more.


i hate it when people say this. d3 is a fully featured game. just because the gameplay was straight forward doesn't make it a tech demo.


As can be seen in the quote this is just my opinion. :) D3 has the feeling of a techdemo to me, because it is simply to repitative. When I play it I have the impression that it was done without love for the game itself. It doesn't really matter if this is true or false, because this is just what I personally experience when I play it and there is no arguing about it. I'm not talking about objective facts here, just about the gameplay value it provides for me, which is purely subjective, and it was simply not there.

Nevertheless I don't rue the money I spent for it, because I also get a lot of satisfaction out of the modding for it. So it was still worth the money to me, but not on the gameplay side.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:45 am :
My opinion on the demo thing:

First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.

Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.

The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)

Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine. Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3. I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.

On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter. So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 9:27 am :
goodoldalex wrote:
First, it's funny that almost every game that looks wat better than the usual average is considered to be a tech demo, despite the actual quality of the game. Not only ALL of the 3D (Hovertanks and newer) id games were considered to be just tech demos by quite a few people, but also games like Max Payne, Unreal 2, Halo for Xbox or Far Cry.


The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).

Quote:
Second. If the game looks good AND is being disliked by the reviewer (no problem with that, everyone has different tastes), it's quickly judged as a demo. I mean, Quake is bland, Quake 3 is simplistic, Max and U2 are short, Halo is made of boxes and Doom 3 is repetitive.


I also didn't like Quake while Q2 was fun to play. Q3 is also fun to play, because it's focus is quite different.

Quote:
The moral: you're free to not like the game but it doesn't mean it's a tech demo :)


I didn't say it IS a tech demo I said it just feels like a tech demo to me. At least that is what I wanted to say. :) Of course I know that it is not a demo, but the fact is that it feels like one to me.

Quote:
Anyway my opinion: Doom is definitelly not a demo. It has a great engine and uses it very well, and most probably couldn't be made with a different engine.


No denying that.

Quote:
Anyways, just by the looks and complexity it's quite obvious that an insane amount of work and creativity (maybe not that sort of creativity sought by some players but it's there) has been put into creating of D3.


Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Quote:
I love it and don't find it repetitive at all, but than again I could never play it for more than two hours straight and it took me a few weeks to finish.


It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters. Even though Duke Nukem 3D was a cool game I always hated this when they did this as well.

Quote:
On the other hand, when I played the HL2 SP Demo (the Ravenholm level) I was quite screwed since I wanted to forget all about the manipulator after a few minutes playing with it and just use the shotgun. Well guess what - first, it was impossible since there was basically no ammo and second, with cheats i realized that the amount of ammo you can carry is very limited (perhaps that's just in the demo) and the game sucks as a plain shooter.


I totally forgot to mention this. :) I thought about it first, but when I wrote my review I forgot about this (and some other thigns I also wanted to mention. So I just add it here. :)

Yes, you are right. The amount of ammo you can carry is VERY limited and feels a bit to me like an artifical way of making the game harder without effort on the developer side. It is quite restricting. Especially when you have to fight against two helicopters but you can only carry 3 rockets at the same time. Maybe this is more realistic because of the weight, but gameplaywise I think it is a bad decision. Also for the other ammo like MP and this stuff.

Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead. The guy who gives you the shotgun later was standing on this balcony and shot some monsters from there. So I thought it might be possible to climb up there. I used the gravity gun to collect some stuff and managed to put it in such a way that I created a bridge to the balcony. I took me about 45 minutes to achieve this only to realise that some visible barrieres were planted there so I couldn't reach the balcony at all. Such things are VERY annoying for a modern game because it gives you the feeling that you are severly restricted from the developers. Maybe there is some other way up there, but I didn't bother anymore, because I don't like invisible barriers when they are not needed.

Quote:
So for me, HL2 is just little more than a physics game demo :)


It certainly made heavy use of Havoc. This is the only big plus for HL2 because everything else is just a normal linear shooter. But then again. Painkiller also uses Havoc and it is real fun to use it, but they didn't bother to make gameplay use of the phyiscs most of the time. Otherwise HL2 wouldn't be much better than Painkiller only more hype.



goodoldalex@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:56 pm :
sparhawk wrote:
The erason why I consider it as a techdemo is simply because it has the feeling of being rushed into production without regards for a decent game. Techincally it is quite good. Even though it crashes on my machine every second load which means every end of the map (plying in god mode).
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.

BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much. In reality, the difficulty to create the content is actually basically the same. So no, it's not rushed, that's a fact - however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)

Quote:
Sorry but I don't see much creativity there. It is basically the same game as D1 and D2 was with much better graphics. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it isn't very creative either. :)

Well, it depends what you're looking for. For me, a good game is good technically, with well-done design (incl. map design), not screwed or buggy and/or fun (and a few other things). I'm definitelly not into games that just need to be different, creative, independent and stuff like that. I love the first Splinter Cell because it's my game, it's very well executed and not because it is or is not creative, and I love SCCT as well, although it's almost the same. I like Daikatana since it has great game and level design, it's fun like hell (IMHO) and I couldn't experience almost any bugs. I found Halo (demo) to be great since it's Bungie-style fun, and not because it has vehicles. I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind. I like Doom 3 for the design, polish, and because it's very entertaining for me. It may not be creative by design (like the first Half-Life), it's more in the detail put into it.

And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity. D3 is simillar to first-person horror games, like Clive Barker's Undying, which is not a very populated genre anyway.

Quote:
It definitely had a pattern. It doesn't matter where you go, you always could be sure that there would be opening something in your back to release some monsters.

Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)

It's like the gravity gun in HL2. Some people just can't let it go, while I can't have enough of monsters spawning behind me ... if it's a good game that is :)

Quote:
Another thing that also annoyed me is that HL2 was extremely linear and didn't allow you to explore. Possibillities to explore are extremly rare or don't even exist. One of the most frustrating situations was at this place where the cars were burning on this placa with the balcony overhead...

Funny, I don't give a shit about that. Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.

And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.



sparhawk@Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 11:16 pm :
goodoldalex wrote:
Of course that's your opinion, anyway if you explore the maps a bit (not rushing through in god mode since you can't notice much that way), you'll see that it was definitelly not rushed, but quite the contrary, it was tweaked to extreme - mostly techno-wise, but also gameplay-wise. However the style of the game is so hardcore that you either love it or hate it.


The rushed feeling was not because of maps lacking detail or such. Quite on the contrary the maps were very well done and a lot of detail and work was put in them. The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter. Painkiller is still a straightforward shooter, but the maps were VERY good designed and the additional gameplay elements (tarot cards, secrets, optional objectives, some riddles like the one with the zombie where you had to figure out how to kill it, etc.) spiced up the game quite a lot. This made the impression that they really cared for the game itself even though it is "just" a shooter. Incidently I had the feeling that, because of timepressure, these details got lost over time, because there are more such extras in the beginning then in the end.

Quote:
BTW very often I hear from HL2 or Far Cry fans, that it's much more difficult to create environment like in those two games than Doom, therefore Doom is rushed and not being taken car of very much.


Nah! That's not the case with me. :) I know what D3 can do and I'm really impressed with it. Otherwise we wouldn't have sticked with D3 for our mod.

Quote:
... however it may seem that way if you don't enjoy the game as a whole :)


You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Quote:
I don't like Far Cry all that much since the weapons suck, you can't hide in the grass (you're wearing a read shirt), enemy placement is incredibly stupid, you can't move properly etc, and I don't care it's the first of its kind.


That's funny because I also didn't like Far Cry. Don't know whats wrong with it. Technically it is really good. It is beautifull to look at and gameplay mechanics also didn't seem to be so bad, but somehow it didn't manage to get me going. It lacked that "I want to see what happens next." for me.

Quote:
And as for D3 being the same as D1 or D2.... Don't say that :) I began to play Ultimate Doom (Doomsday engine) a while ago and I can hardly see any similarity.


I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :) I see this as a good sign, because it means that the artists managed to keep the artistic style to be the same as for D1 and D3.

Quote:
Yes. It got me scared and I was greatly stressed by that fact. Loved it all the time :)


LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

Quote:
Funny, I don't give a shit about that.


I guess this is because I'm a fan of Thief and when I see such a balcony I at immediately think how to get up there. :)

Quote:
Actually I enjoy games that are strictly linear, since in situations where there are several routes to go (SCCT, Far Cry, Deus Ex) I mostly explore all of them the first time I play to see whether I didn't miss anything. I even get quite annoyed by alternative routes, mostly if they seem forced. I prefer having one way to go, but polished to the best, and I'll take care of having the fun with my shotgun.


Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Quote:
And I don't care about physics either, I'm there to play a game, not to play with toys :) That's also the reason I trashed GTA.


IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.



goodoldalex@Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:41 am :
sparhawk wrote:
The rushed feeling is more on the side of the gameplay mechanics. To me it feels as if it was made as a shooter because this is about the simples game that you can get away with. No need for much innovations, just put some monsters in the maps, do a skelleton of a story and put some wepaons. That's it. Comparing it to Painkiller, it gives me the feeling as if the devs tried to think of ways how to create a shooter that is a little bit more then just a simple shooter...

I get your point, anyway this again proves that you're not satisfied with D3 as a whole. Painkiller can hardly be compared to Doom and I don't think that any of that special PK stuff could be implemented in it, however what people are missing in Doom the most is stuff present in the 'modern' games - like physics puzzles, large exteriors, intelligent AI and so. However those things would make it just another 'Far Cry/HL2/Chrome' game - and, er, vegetation in Doom? Hardly. Some people even complain about the hellish environment and the enemies.

So the point, Doom may not be perfect, but I don't know how could its gameplay be enhanced so it would be more pleasant to everyone. Altering it in one way would bastardize it in another. I think the developers knew exactly what are they doing. Doom is a natural, it's not forced crippled in such way as HL2 (in which you cannot play with weapons since there's no ammo but you need to use that gravity thing).

That's why I'm worried about what's Raven doing with Quake 4. Is it still going to be the simplistic Quake?

Quote:
You could be right about that. I don't really care for that SciFi setting that much. That's also why Halo or Chrome doesn't really get me interested to play it. It could very well be that this clouded my opinion a bit further. :)

Ah yeah, right :) I also like scifi games. Didn't really give it much thought, but yeah, Doom is actually scifi :)

Quote:
I have seen a demo of D3 running on a very old Voodoo card. When you look at this, you immediately see where D3 comes from. I was really surprised because of that, because when you look at D3 of course its graphics is far superior and you would never notice the roots. But on this voodocard the graphics was severly reduced and when you looked at the screenshots it is immediately apparent. :)

That experiment visually reminds me of Quake 2. But than again, Quake 2 is based quite a lot on Doom 1+2, so I guess it makes sence. Anyway gameplay-wise, Doom 3 s different a lot, as I said I begun to play Ultimate Doom just a few weeks ago (not finished yet), as well as replay D3, so I know for sure :)

BTW I managed to obtain a Voodoo 4 card, I'll give it a shot as soon as I build an old AGP-based PC together.

Quote:
LOL. Well, when you love this, I can see why you like this game. :)

I still remember playing the Quake 2 demo for the first time, when I managed to look the wrong way just to realize I've got the Berserk behind me :) Scary. The Pinky in D3 can give quite the same feeling, so yeah I like this if it's well done.

Another thing why Doom got my respect is that it manages to scare the player without throwing some ugly shit on the display. Maybe it's just me, but from what I saw in games like Undying, The Thing, the Resident Evil series or Silent Hill series and other, those games always have to show off creatures that make me puke. Doom mostly relies on atmosphere and the element of surprise. Remember the first time to find the shotgun? :) Or the hallway with the machinegun at the end? My fauvorites, usually I replay every interesting scene in the games I play but I could never force myself to go through those two again.

Quote:
Normally I also don't like to have to many routes. This gives me always the feeling that I might miss something important or go the wrong way. IMO the best games are which are linear but don't let you see it. In HL2 it was VERY noticable.

Which reminds me. In the demo (Ravenholm level) there's a point where you can walk around a wall just to get to the same spot - which triggers a zombie spawn everytime. Walk around ten times and you get ten zombies coming from a completelly dead end alley - and BTW, when you walk to the end of that alley the zombie spawns directly behind you :) I actually managed to watch it pop out of nowhere a few times. An AAA '04 game, yep. I wonder if that's already patched through Steam :)

Quote:
IMO the physics really adds a lot of fun. Especially when it is not just there as a bonus, but also incorporated as a gameplay element. In Darkmod we also plan to emphasise this a bit more.
Well I managed to play with the gravity gun in HL2 for maybe 20 minutes. It was fun but then I switched to cheats and unlimited shotgun ammo, as I was getting f**kin tired of having to look for bricks, radiators and other material to throw (I had my 'pet radiator' which I used as a weapon for half of the level but then I lost it somewhere). I finally got D3:ROE so I'll see how much am I going to use the grabber in this one but I believe I'll just stick to the weapons, since that's me. Also, physics is nice to watch (Max Payne 2) but I don't want to get it in my way of doing things.

Good luck with the mod... and don't overphysice it too much, leave the alternative :)



kinkytheclown@Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:23 pm :
I've played both and I enjoyed Doom 3 WAY more. That's partially because I love scary games, but I really enjoyed HL1, so why not HL2? I think the thing I really liked about HL1 was its realistic architecture and atmosphere and almost the whole time you really feel like you're just trying to get the hell out of there and survive. It had a really cool atmosphere.

In Half Life 2 you're basically just some freedom fighter runninfor reasons that aren't made clear. I can't understand how people praise the storyline unless their usual material is the backs of cereal boxes and Saturday morning cartoons. Just because something doesn't totally suck doesn't mean it's not mediocre. I think part of the problem too is that I played Painkiller before playing HL2. People would rave about shooting the crossbow, or how amazing the physics are, or the enormous bridge... Painkiller had all that. Also if you ever played the mod They Hunger, that wraps up more of what HL2 had. Ravenholm wasn't as creepy to me as that, and god knows how many games and mods there are for the end section where you're fighting in a ruined city. And the AI, well I ended up using the gravity gun on a turret gun and killing my entire team on purpose if that says anything. HL2 is not a bad game, but it certainly isn't a great game either. There really wasn't much in there that I haven't seen before.

Now Doom 3. Doom 3 isn't the end-all game either, but it dishes out in spades what I think HL2 lacked, which is atmosphere. I mean this game really does things right when it comes to creating a tense situation. You have a nice calm opening, then all hell breaks lose with flying skulls possessing people and had me worked up enough in the beginning to start putting confirmation shots in bodies that looked dead.

Then you have things happen like the mirror scene, or later on when I start hearing a woman's voice whispering shit to me faintly like "they took my baby". They did a damn good job in creating the right atmosphere. I didn't like Hell so much (I think it should have been more shocking like 1, with parapelegic corpses bound up in chairs and such) or the ruins (it just didn't feel as interesting), but I totally enjoyed the rest of it. It has its flaws, but it sucked me in enough to not really care about them.



romperstomper@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:24 pm :
what Kinktheclowns aid i agree upon,
and umm if doom3 is a demo, then its a heck of a bigass
demo ;)



pbmax@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:54 am :
more hl2 love from gamespy

"As was the case in Half-Life 2, the graphics in Episode One are drop-dead gorgeous; there may not be another graphics engine today capable of consistently producing such attractive scenes in so many different settings. From the dramatic sights outside the crumbling Citadel to the shimmering reactor core to the dramatic lighting effects when fighting zombies in the dark, it's almost impossible to take a bad screenshot in Episode One. The NPCs are once again rendered with amazing detail and animations, and Valve has included the advanced HDR lighting effects that it showcased last year in the Lost Coast tech demo.

"Probably the biggest change introduced in Episode One is how Alyx fights at Gordon's side for the majority of the game. Plenty of shooters have tried this and failed, with NPCs who get lost or get in the way or are just plain annoying. Valve strikes just the right notes with Alyx; she doesn't nag Gordon, she can competently follow you around, and even provides useful support a lot of the time.

:roll:



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:24 am :
lol ;)
hl2 is easily the most overrated game of all times,
im not saying its totally shite, just that its sooo
immensly overhyped and overrated its almost reaching
pathetic regions, hl1 is 1000 times better and id rather
play that than hl2 any day :roll:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:15 am :
hl1 = 2nd best FPS of all time, period. :) Second only to Doom 1.

HL2 is somewhere far, far lower in my ranking... I've played a lot more enjoyable games then that. I've heard Episode 1 plays just like Valve promised HL2 would 3 years ago. That's good, i guess... considering it took 3 years of aditional work to make their statements true.



goodoldalex@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:22 pm :
Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ...

So how's everyone doing? :)



romperstomper@Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 11:31 pm :
"Hi guys, just dropped in to warn ya about Ep1 as it's a piece of trash, a complete waste of time, money, and electricity. Trust me ... "
Well, if it is the dudes that made Blueshift expansion, im not at all surprised, Gearbox i think theyre called, funny tho cuss their OpFor was good, but since that everything theyve made sucked major backside



pbmax@Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:57 pm :
there will be no HL3. the episodes are now going to conclude the story.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:23 am :
but there WILL be a HL2E3. :)



Eddie@Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:05 am :
Half-Life 2 was a great game but I hated the civilians! I purposely killed them and actually felt more sorry when my robot sentry died in Doom 3!

I'm not buying any more Valve games though. I love CSS and play it all the time but I just bought DODS and that is a waste of money - it's a half-assed completed game. I'm not going to bother with the whole episodes either. I'll save my money up for something like Prey instead.

I just don't like Valve as a company and their attitude where they just release games unfinished and patch it up through steam later.