stupid vulcan logic 

I think the problem may be twofold:

As alluded to on another recent thread here, the more realistic something is in a gameworld, the less the imagination has to add, thus diluting the effect somewhat. Although the Lost Souls looked good to me, they do not necessarily match the detailed (and scary!) image I had in my mind after playing the original version. The same goes for all the monsters, I guess. It's almost as if (heretic!) the worse the graphics, the more scary, as playing in 320x200 (or whatever it was) didn't allow for the graphical splendour to override the visceral fear of survival. I think this also accounts for the longevity of Quake, you only have to hear the wake-up of the Ogre, or hear the 'tink' of a grenade to get scared. I feel that Doom 3 will be more like a 'spot the cool graphics/detailed model/special effect' of a slick but empty movie, rather than the fright-fest promised.

I did have a second point, but it seems to have slipped away under that longer-than-planned paragraph.

Oh, it's come back. Familiarity also has an effect here. We already know what to expect, as id have said it we be a retelling of the original story, so what's to get excited/scared about? 

Oh, it's come back. Familiarity also has an effect here. We already know what to expect, as id have said it we be a retelling of the original story, so what's to get excited/scared about?

I don't know, but keep those screenshots coming!!!!!!!!!1 

crap. it's a floating head with fire spurting out it's skull.

the original looked much much better, since the actual head was on fire, as well as having flames bursting from it's mouth as it charged you.

it actually looks like a bug in the game where the body model isn't displayed... 

Furthermore, anyone who tries to argue with my illogic shall be berated by more illogic.

You just summed up every message board on the internet in 1 sentence.

Excellent work!

I knew i loved you but this just confirms it. :o 

I thought czg's description sounded more lenient than mine :) 

perhaps it's because the D3 lost souls are heads, with jet propulsion whereas the original Doom souls were skulls. I think the eyes on the new ones are too small and blank to really be as striking: the original ones looked like they were screaming through their eyesockets.
And those spideresque creatures are totally taken from The Thing - the heads are even upside down exactly as in the movie.
Mind you, if you're talking about the fear factor screenshots aren't a fair assesment; no animation, no moving shadows, no sound. i think those things are what will or won't make it scary. 

http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/dl.asp?id=5504
has a download for the full version of that video, non-shakycam, large or small size.
(For me only mirror #1 worked.)

This one shows a lot of the same as the shakycam one, plus a crapload of new action scenes, a nice cutscene with the chainsaw zombie, an intro which I refuse to believe is realtime, (Probably isn't either...) and something that maybe looks like the first glimps of Hell...

Enjoy! 

I'm sold. It looks on the slow side, but I still think that visuals aside, the gameplay looks good (maybe not replayability wise but I'm sure first time through will be great). 

it looks great for monster in-fighting too. 

heavily scripted monster in-fighting... doesn't seem to me that they'd want their 1-2 monsters on a screen at once to fight themsealves all that often... unless of course, id has really, truly lost it's touch. 

it looks more like a sort of intro to a new monster, you know to emphasise how much of a mean monster the big hellknight is, they have him whack a chainsaw zombie into the wall etc etc.

I think it worked great personally (well in the trailer anyway). 

it looks more like a sort of intro to a new monster, you know to emphasise how much of a mean monster the big hellknight is, they have him whack a chainsaw zombie into the wall etc etc.

I think it worked great personally (well in the trailer anyway). 

it's either that i've grown up too much (so i dont imagine as many things as when i was a kid) or maybe high res images need to be VERY good to look scary. i'm not really scared by all these monsters. they almost look too human to me. but then again i think it's the novelty part of it. hopefully HL2's monsters WILL scare me (if i'll have time to play it that is /me moans about uni. 

doom 3 video looks a little poor, i was expecting it would have improved a lot more since the leaked alpha than it has. The half-life 2 video was pretty sexy though 

The Doom 3 graphics I've seen (the monster and character models at least) look yucky to me, as if they are decent computer models simulating plastic or rubber models of the real thing. Not much of it really has a suggestion of "realism" to it, depsite the undusputed advancement and capabilities of the engine (lighting especially).

The reason, I think, was alluded to in another thread where people were talking about the use of textures vs 3d surface manipulation. It looks to me like most of the monsters shown for D3 so far have virtually no texture maps. They all look kind of like lit, moderately high poly count 3D models with smooth shading and a bit of bump or displacement mapping, but little or no image or texture mapping (ie, color variation). Like the kind of images you see in graphics textbooks illustrating phong shading or bump mapping. They show the effect but are otherwise totally uninteresting.

This may be just a reflection of the point they are at in development, that finalized skins have not yet been applied to the images shown, but I sure hope they fix that or it will be pretty disappointing.

I actually think that less-advanced graphics can look more "realistic" if everything is in balance, and your mind adjusts to that world-look (so it's low-res, so what?), allowing you to suspend disbelief--almost like looking at a low-res video of something more real. Doom 3 doesn't seem to be doing that in what I have seen so far. (As others have noted, to a large extent Half Life 2 looks like it IS succeeding at this.)

I'm also less interested in the kind of gameplay they are discussing. It sounds like another tedious dungeon crawl, moving between scripted events with (in the great id tradition) a completely nonsensical and idiotic "story" failing to tie the whole together. About the only thing it seems to have going for it is a sort of scary shock value, which turns some people on, but is definitely not what I look for in a "game" (or even in a movie). (I prefer my games to be more like sports, not like scary greusome versions of Myst or haunted house simulator rides at amusement parks.) The weapons don't look too bad, and the movement looks ok too, but these are hardly unique. I'm probably more interested in Halo PC (never got an Xbox so it will be mostly new to me, and it just looks like fun). 

I don't think they'll miss your non-purchase that much tho. 

mind you, neither would valve 

cause I'm renovating my site and so yeah...

-runs- 

you seem to be making two different criticisms:

- doom3 models don't look interesting/good.
- doom3 models don't look realistic.

i agree with #2, but ask you why it's necessary for every game to havea realistic art style. As for #1, i'll withhold judgement until i play the game; but from the screenshots and movies they at least look appropriate for the game and setting. 

I don't really care if they look realistic, that's what I was saying. In fact, the Doom 3 stuff DOES look fairly realistic, but what it looks like is a realistic rendering of a plastic model! If it looked like a realistic rendering of a real monster, that would be great, but that's not what they look like to me. It's almost like "Army Men Doom." I should note that this effect is perhaps less pronounced in the E3 video than in past videos or screenshots, but I can't tell if that's a sign of improvement or just that the E3 video mostly shows fast cuts of fast-moving, darkly-lit monsters and so doesn't linger long enough to betray the problem. 

too tired to read or think straight I guess 

Maybe the 'plastic' texture of the models is due to the huge amount of specular highlighting on all the D3 stuff. Someone mentioned that way back when the first images were leaked. id seem to have given every surface some degree of reflective sheen, including the monsters' skin. 

Someone mentioned that way back when the first images were leaked. id seem to have given every surface some degree of reflective sheen, including the monsters' skin.

Yeah, but thats how gloss maps work, hardly anything is going to be full black on the gloss, apart from something like carpet. Even fabric and skin will have *some* sheen.

Admittedly though, it looks like they gave most things an excessive value of sheen, adding to the 'Army men effect'. I also get the feeling that the bump/normal maps need some noise added (not sure how that would be done on a normal map though, but i expect a utility could be written fairly easily.).