SneaksieDave on 22/9/2004 at 16:49
Having just played the Doom3 demo, I am (even more) extremely interested in seeing what you guys can do with The Dark Mod. Two things I was worried about were sound and AI. Well, the AI seems capable, and interesting (perhaps quite malleable with the SDK), and the sound code, for what I've seen of it, seems quite damn solid. Unlike old id games, sound is now occluded by solid walls, and seems to pathfind/go around corners as it should.
It should be sweet. Hope you guys have good programmers, as that could make or break the effort!
Fingernail on 22/9/2004 at 16:52
Sound is occluded? That's news to me.....during my tests, it was lessened somewhat, but that could be attributed merely to the falloff of the sound shader with distance.
But, all is not lost, as we can simply build in the trace() function to decide how loud, if at all, the sound should be heard based upon the player's position.
And yes, this might slow up framerates slightly, but we'll be using many fewer special effects and AI at once, and Thief is slower paced anyway. So we'll be pushing the detail up slightly.
SneaksieDave on 22/9/2004 at 18:11
Hmm. Well I'm no authority on it (just played through once so far, last night) but there were spots that I made an effort to listen in and things seemed right. As my example, the spot where two workers in orange jumpsuits are talking about rumors about people seeing something ... or something... anyway, when the sealed door near them closes, you can't hear them at all, from the other side of the door, or from the wall right next to and opposite them. And, several times I stood in front of a sound source, then walked around a corner and turned back toward the corner, to hear it coming from in front of me (so it rounded the corner) instead of to my right or left.
I'll make a more conscious effort tonight if I can.
jay pettitt on 22/9/2004 at 22:50
I had a pokey around the mars city underground level. There are a couple of opportunities for testing sound occlusion here - notably the conversation between the technicians working in the access tunnel. Sound doesn't occlude. At least not on my PC. There is a bit of a difference between the way that sound is rendered by EAX (which can be dependant upon how groovy your sound card is) and the kind of usefull data that can be parsed to AI.
I don't know how a simple trace is going to help? You'll be wanting to implement some kind of zoning or pathfinding system if simulating sound occlusion as affected by open and closed doors is what you're after. Oh, and while I am feeling critical I'd be cautious about claiming that there will be less AI and more detail. There are rarely more than a couple of AI at a time in Doom 3. It's carefully controlled and scripted that way through out the game. Thief is far less scripted - its not unthinkable (read: its quite likely) that numbers of AI could gather in a high poly area while chasing down our protagonist - or that fan mission authors might want to have a bunch of AI in one place. I'd be assuming that all the modifications - player movement, ai, sound occlusion, guaging how hidden in the shadows the player is etc will cause quite a performance hit and I'd be aiming at compensating by having less detail - not more.
Domarius on 23/9/2004 at 02:12
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
I had a pokey around the mars city underground level. There are a couple of opportunities for testing sound occlusion here - notably the conversation between the technicians working in the access tunnel. Sound doesn't occlude. At least not on my PC. There is a bit of a difference between the way that sound is rendered by EAX (which can be dependant upon how groovy your sound card is) and the kind of usefull data that can be parsed to AI.
I don't know how a simple trace is going to help? You'll be wanting to implement some kind of zoning or pathfinding system if simulating sound occlusion as affected by open and closed doors is what you're after. Oh, and while I am feeling critical I'd be cautious about claiming that there will be less AI and more detail. There are rarely more than a couple of AI at a time in Doom 3. It's carefully controlled and scripted that way through out the game. Thief is far less scripted - its not unthinkable (read: its quite likely) that numbers of AI could gather in a high poly area while chasing down our protagonist - or that fan mission authors might want to have a bunch of AI in one place. I'd be assuming that all the modifications - player movement, ai, sound occlusion, guaging how hidden in the shadows the player is etc will cause quite a performance hit and I'd be aiming at compensating by having less detail - not more.
Very good points. I agree with you on the sound propagation thing.
Komag on 23/9/2004 at 04:29
I don't see any problem with the detail and polys and AI gathering and stuff, because if this mod really is developed well it won't be done for a few months at least, and then good FMs will take many more months, so we won't really see great fruit from it for another year, and if it's a good system we'll make FMs for a few years to come, so over the next year or two more and more and more people will continue to upgrade their systems and graphics cards, so we'll be able to push the envelope further and further.
Another thing is that doom 3 has lots of fast action, which made it more important to limit AI and geometry, but Thief (if FM authors choose, of course) is slower paced and more sneaky, so performance is not such a priority. Thus, a lower framerate is more acceptable, and eye candy might be preferred.
SneaksieDave on 23/9/2004 at 14:45
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
Sound doesn't occlude.
Are you talking about it not pathfinding/going around corners, or even just being blocked by doorways? I'm not sure about the former (still need to verify or not) but there is no doubt it's blocked by closed doors. Or is that not being debated? I listened to the brown jumpsuit guys talking about the rumors of seeing something, and as the door opened, closed, opened closed, the conversation could be heard, not heard, heard, not heard...
I'm using a plain ol' SBLive! with whatever drivers are the last ones available for use with XP.
Edit: With regard to the poly issue - toward the end of the demo, (spoiler warning here, I suppose) there's a spot where it starts to get thick and there are between 3 to 4 AIs on the screen at once, and my measly 1.4 GHz processor ran it just fine on medium detail. Probably not a huge issue.
jay pettitt on 23/9/2004 at 17:31
3 to 4 AIs. Look out. Its not a lot is it. Doom is scripted to the extent that where multiple AIs appear at the same time it is in a low poly area. Spiders and other creepies that appear in groups get reinforcements only when enough spiders have been squished. Corpses dissolve when new AI enter the game. These are luxuries that the unscripted thief style of gamplay can't stretch to.
Err, yes there is doubt about sound being blocked by doorways. I've run through various scripted conversations in the game to test this out. I've found that while conversations stop and restart depending whether you are out of the room and a door closes and that sounds fade with distance, but sounds are not actually blocked by closed doors. Unless your SB card is doing something my nVidia soundstorm widget isn't. Obviously you can't rely on hardware details to affect AI as gameplay would change dramatically from one machine to another. But as you allude to in your post this is unlikely as SB and soundstorm are pretty much comparable regarding features support for sfx.
Which level are these jumpsuity guys you mention? - perhaps I should check them out just in case.
Yep thats a fair point Komag. I'd guess that even a year is pretty hopefull. Performance hits and thier implications can be tested once there is some code and content to try out. But it seems likely to me from the extent and care that has clearly gone into designing and scripting Doom3 to avoid performance issues that they must be sailing pretty close to what is possible with the current generation of hardware.
Renzatic on 23/9/2004 at 17:59
Komag pretty much took the words right out of my mouth.
One big advantage that a Thief-like game will have over Doom 3 is that the enemies aren't nearly as flashy. Imps come packaged with lightsourced fireballs they throw constantly accompanied with nice glowy pentagram texture overlays, Hell Knights and just about every other enemy in the game are in the same boat. Regular Thief guards won't have that problem, they'll just walk around, talk, or chase you down...nothing flashy. So from that standpoint the enemies in the darkmod will be less graphically intensive and more processor intensive, that might allow us some room for extra level geometry.
It's also rare to ever see more than 4 guards at once in any Thief game. As long as an FM designer is careful, he can avoid having alot of enemies crowd in any single area.
jay pettitt on 23/9/2004 at 18:42
I'm going to have to take back my claims that sound occlusion doesn't occour with doors. Trouble is that conversations pause when you leave a room and the door closes, and restart when you re-enter, which makes it hard to tell. But the video introduction to mars base that plays on the very first level, just past the bio scan provides a good example to check the effect out. You can nip back in to the bio scan chamber and still here the video play. Once the doors close the volume from the video drops significantly, but you can still just hear it play very quietly. cute. How this information can be passed to AI is another question, but the effect is certainly there, which is a good start.
Renz, Imps with fire balls vs guards with torches? My concern is mostly that the amount of modding required will cause a processor hit. Calculating how well hidden by shadow the player is will require a function to be called at least every few ticks. Thats a whole extra process that Doom 3 presumeably doesn't bother with. I'd guess that would be the worst culpret for a speed hit because you'll need to do that process continually. Extra work for dealing with noise and AI, for instance, need only happen when a noise is made, rather than every few ticks, but it will still add up to slower performance than Doom.
I'm not so worried that there may be 20 guards running about or something - but that you can't control very well if 4 or 5 guards chase the thief into a high poly area - or an area with a collection of unconscious bodies on the floor. Whatever, we'll get to see what happens when the Dark Mod team get some code and content together to play around with.
