[HN Gopher] D3wasm 0.4 - Doom 3 in WASM
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D3wasm 0.4 - Doom 3 in WASM
Author : nkjoep
Score : 278 points
Date : 2022-09-28 10:47 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wasm.continuation-labs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wasm.continuation-labs.com)
| nonethewiser wrote:
| So is WASM basically just going to be about video games? And
| graphics rendering?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Well, that would be great, yeah. But the other web APIs
| (everything except WASM, WebGL and WebGPU) still have a long
| way to go to provide the same functionality as native APIs that
| are relevant for gaming. Currently the web equivalents are a
| massive PITA to work with. The web platform needs something
| like the DirectX or Proton initiatives to make it viable for
| games, WASM and WebGPU alone are not enough.
| vinkelhake wrote:
| I have no idea why this is getting downvoted. Floh is, among
| other things, the author of Sokol, which is a set of cross
| platform libs suitable for game dev. Sokol has "native"
| support for the web, which means you can write your app
| against Sokol and don't have to deal directly with these
| painful web APIs.
|
| I've personally used Sokol for a number of projects and it
| has been great. You get something much leaner and meaner
| compared to the Emscripten port of SDL, which otherwise seems
| to be the "default" when people do these things.
|
| https://github.com/floooh/sokol
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Speaking as someone working on a webassembly port of a non-
| video game software for a living: yeah maybe.
|
| It's certainly the use-case that received the most love.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| WASD + WASM = <3
| Javantea_ wrote:
| I used emscripten to make physics and math software written in
| Fortran available to my JavaScript program. I would've used
| wasm, but it was in poor shape back when I wrote the software.
| There are a lot of things besides games and graphics written in
| C/C++ that can be used in JavaScript as a result of emscripten
| and wasm.
| RunSet wrote:
| If only.
|
| https://github.com/jtgrassie/xmr-wasm
| boppo1 wrote:
| I wondered as I clicked, "why would someone want a limited
| application set for WASM? Wouldn't it be better if more--Oh
| yes, I see."
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Yeah WebAssembly enables casual gamers, gamers on Macs
| (especially on newer M1/M2 devices with limited game
| compatibility natively) and students on Chromebooks to jump
| into a game in a low friction manner. And this isn't even
| mentioning being able to reach mobile devices, which
| represents the largest portion of revenue in the games
| industry today.
|
| Couple this with the fact that developers won't have to pay
| a 30% fee for distribution on the web, and you have the
| recipe for the next big games platform that's hardware
| agnostic by default. Very disruptive stuff.
| anthk wrote:
| Mac users already have Rosetta, they don't need any
| limited gaming platform. And Chromebooks have native
| Android and Linux compatibility (plus Wine and Steam), so
| the WASM gaming would be useless for them compared to
| native GL/Vulkan rendering thru MESA under ChromeOS.
| omeysalvi wrote:
| Doom 3's design suffered due to its programming innovations.
| Since the game developers wanted to show off the real time
| lighting, they opted for a horror like design that showed off the
| tech. It kinda drove it away from the thing that made the
| original Doom games fun - fast paced fps action
| beebeepka wrote:
| Dear god, I was just thinking that it's about time we have Doom 3
| running in a browser. Good job. In fact, 8 am going to try it
| right now
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Ooof, performance on an Mac Studio was not great, ~30-60fps
| antihero wrote:
| Weird, was mostly 60FPS on a 2019 MBP.
|
| Just couldn't press INSERT/HOME to actually get anywhere when
| necessary :(
| lmohseni wrote:
| If you hold the function key ('fn') and press the left arrow
| it works. Macs map fn+arrows to home, end, pgup, and pgdown.
| zeristor wrote:
| Is that an unladen MacStudio?
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| An African or European MacStudio?
| rcarmo wrote:
| I see what you did there...
| [deleted]
| bhedgeoser wrote:
| I don't get it
| Narishma wrote:
| It's from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
| madrox wrote:
| I'm getting ~15 FPS on this demo, which is roughly the same FPS I
| got on my potato PC when Doom 3 launched. Really brings me back.
|
| I'm used to seeing Doom running on all kinds of platforms, but
| it's inspiring and humbling to see Doom 3 - a game I have vivid
| memories of being in awe of - running in a browser. It really
| highlights how far tech has come when I wasn't looking. In many
| ways, my old eyes don't see much different from Doom 3 high end
| graphics and the graphics of modern games.
| sails wrote:
| Runs great on M2 MBA! How do I skip the dialogue and go full
| screen?
| m00dy wrote:
| looks great
| daurnimator wrote:
| Fails to load in firefox 105.0.1 (64-bit ArchLinux) for me.
| WebGL warning: <Create>: WebglAllowWindowsNativeGl:false
| restricts context creation on this system. d3wasm.js:1:156185
| Failed to create WebGL context: WebGL creation failed: *
| WebglAllowWindowsNativeGl:false restricts context creation on
| this system. () * Exhausted GL driver options.
| (FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBGL_EXHAUSTED_DRIVERS) Uncaught
| TypeError: GLctx is undefined
| tyingq wrote:
| Supposedly a firefox bug. Try about:config => webgl.force-
| enabled = true
| ddoolin wrote:
| FWIW, working on Firefox Dev Edition on 64-bit Arch for me.
| olivierestsage wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how this game's legacy will
| ultimately be viewed. For the first decade or so after its
| release, it got a lot of flak for certain design choices, like
| the limited access it gives the player to the flashlight, that
| don't seem like such a big deal anymore.
| nailer wrote:
| It's more the genre change from action to horror. Serious Sam
| felt more like a Doom sequel than Doom 3 did.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, if you paid attention, Doom 1 and 2 were "horror" too
| (the amount of "creatures from hell", mutilated bodies
| hanging around as decoration, enemies exploding into giblets
| of bloody meat etc. are pretty sure giveaways), but the
| technical limitations of the time prevented them from being
| as scary as Doom 3.
| IMTDb wrote:
| "Horror" is more than just the setting, it's mainly about
| the gameplay. Doom 1, 2 and eternal are more action than
| horror. You have lots of relatively "weak" ennemies to
| kill. The blood and gore just intensify that "happy
| trigger" feeling. Rooms are bigs, allowing you to move
| freely to avoid projectiles.
|
| Doom 3 on the other hand is different; you very rarely have
| more than one enemy to beat at a time. That single enemy
| can absolutely shred you if you are not very careful, you
| have to consider each engagement carefully. The darkness
| and blood are tuned to intensify that "fear" feeling. Rooms
| are very small, limiting your ability to dodge, almost to
| the point of inducing claustrophobia.
|
| Painkiller was released almost as the same time as Doom and
| was way more action oriented, even tho it contains its fair
| share of gore.
| darkwater wrote:
| > "Horror" is more than just the setting, it's mainly
| about the gameplay. Doom 1, 2 and eternal are more action
| than horror. You have lots of relatively "weak" ennemies
| to kill. The blood and gore just intensify that "happy
| trigger" feeling. Rooms are bigs, allowing you to move
| freely to avoid projectiles.
|
| It might be just me being overly frightening but I
| clearly remember 14y old me playing Doom at night with my
| headphones on and begin scared as fuckin hell when
| something appeared out of nowhere making guttural noises.
| jerf wrote:
| If memory serves, Doom is sorta bimodal.
|
| If you know how to strafe, and get to the point that you
| are habitually doing it almost every second of play, Doom
| is an action game where you are grossly overpowered
| compared to your opponents, more or less. To even slow
| Doom guy down you need tight corridors to cut his
| maneuverability down and enough enemies to clog him up
| even so. In open space the only real threat is being
| plinked away by the undodgeable hit scan weapons; high
| level play with speedruns involves a lot of managing that
| and hoping for decent luck. The non-hitscan weapons for
| them are, to quote a popular Youtuber, super easy, barely
| an inconvenience, which ironically makes the "weakest"
| enemies actually the most dangerous in the game in most
| places.
|
| If you don't know how to strafe, which was very common at
| the time since we were all new to 3D spaces and even the
| ones we had used before may not have had a "strafe"
| option, Doom becomes much more a horror game. As others
| are saying about how Doom 3 gives you the choice of
| "seeing" or "shooting", but not both, Doom without
| strafing gives you the choice of _either_ dodging _or_
| shooting, but not both. Shooting becomes a contest of
| nerves because you 're committed for a second or two...
| to dodge an incoming missile involves turning, _then_
| moving. And that move is either "forward", vectoring
| into the oncoming missile, or backwards, vectoring away
| but heading away from your field of vision.
|
| I remember both modes now, both playing it back when Doom
| I was the only release and I played the shareware, and I
| saw the "strafe" option and had no idea what it was or
| why I would use it, and playing in later years when
| strafing was simply part of my 3D "vocabulary" and I did
| it instinctively. It's almost two different games.
|
| I suspect even at the time, the developers of Doom
| weren't used to strafing either, and in a weird way it
| has contributed to its classic status. If they were it
| would have been balanced much differently.
|
| The same things that make it a gaming classic that people
| are still playing to this day are also gross violations
| of the current state of the art of game design and
| balance... the reader is invited to conclude from that
| statement whatever they like.
| laumars wrote:
| > _I suspect even at the time, the developers of Doom
| weren 't used to strafing either,_
|
| I don't know if that's fair. Doom had a timer in it and
| was built to have speed running in mind (even if that
| term hasn't yet been coined).
| bombcar wrote:
| IIRC certain secrets are basically only available via
| strafing so the general concept was known.
|
| There are other moves that developed much later.
| laumars wrote:
| Strafing was in Wolf3D too. In fact I think it was
| intended as the core mechanic for defeating the Episode 1
| boss.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, especially the first time when one of those near-
| invisible bitey things sneaked up and started gnawing on
| you, you were in for a pretty good scare...
| laumars wrote:
| That was intentional but it's still a point about
| atmosphere and not game play.
|
| Doom 3 plays very different to Doom 1&2.
| nailer wrote:
| That's true, it's more the gameplay shift (jump scares,
| less enemies on screen at once, no power fantasy) than the
| aesthetic shift.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Yes, but it's not that simple. Doom 3 is pretty "horror"
| compared to any other Doom game. I would put in the same
| basket as Dead Space games.
|
| Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal gameplay is much closer to
| Doom 1 and 2. Both are very "push-forward" shooters.
| wussboy wrote:
| I remember playing around with the Serious Sam level editor.
| A buddy of mine made a map that was just a small hut in the
| middle and monster generators scattered over the next hill.
| Endless mindless hordes of monsters came over that hill and
| you and your buddies just needed to hold out as long as you
| could. Pretty amazing for, what, 1999?
| spatulon wrote:
| Note that they remastered the game in 2012 as "Doom 3: BFG
| Edition", and that included the ability to use the flashlight
| while holding weapons.
|
| I think Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal are far more successful as
| Doom games than Doom 3. Like the original 90s games, they're
| fast-paced, with wide-open combat areas and hordes of enemies
| on screen at the same time. The technical choices they made
| with id Tech 4 meant that a game like that wasn't really
| possible with the hardware available in 2004.
|
| Maybe they just shouldn't have called it Doom? But its design
| as a slow-paced horror game, what with all the tedious monster
| closets, doesn't compare well to Resident Evil 4, which came
| out only a few months later.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Downloading the duct tape mod was practically a requirement.
| pdntspa wrote:
| The flashlight mechanic really gave it a nice horror vibe the
| originals were missing. Like do you want light? Or do you
| want to kill things? Choose!
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| The originals had a lot of horror vibe. It might not seem
| like it nowadays because players are used to it and there's
| many mods like Brutal Doom trivializing the content, but
| original Doom was scary. There was no other game like it at
| the time, and the growls of the monsters, the flickering
| lights, rooms getting dark when you grab a key and monster
| closets opening, body horror elements on walls and
| decorations. Doom 3 felt actually milder, it just was more
| annoying with the darkness everywhere.
| ovao wrote:
| Doom 3's flashlight also took away one element from the
| original: a dark room was a place you _really_ didn't
| want to enter, but had to in order to progress.
|
| I think it was E1M3 or something that had a large room
| whose lighting slowly pulsed at about half a hertz. With
| about 15 demons, that room was fucking _unpleasant_. In
| Doom 3, you'd just whip out your flashlight -- no biggie.
| pdntspa wrote:
| I played the originals back in their day as a wee lad,
| and while it was scary -- and aaah the old lights-go-out-
| when-you-grab-the-macguffin trick -- I don't appreciate
| it in the same way that I did with Doom 3. The latter
| seemed to take a lot of inspiration from Resident
| Evil/Alone in the Dark. The original Doom was just lots
| of cheap traps.
|
| In any case, while I like Doom 3 I am glad the series
| didn't go in that direction afterwards. When lukewarm
| Quake 4 came out I was beginning to worry that id had
| lost its touch... luckily Doom 2016 saw a return to form.
| Tepix wrote:
| Works well on MBP16 M1 Pro.
|
| What's the best version of Doom 3 these days to use on Apple
| Silicon?
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Dhwem3 has a native macOS M1 (arm64) version that runs well:
| https://github.com/MacSourcePorts/dhewm3/releases
| refracture wrote:
| From the awesome terminals and PDA that didn't grant you a break
| from the demons.. Doom 3 still remains a wonderful immersive
| experience. Replaying it last year was really surprising to me;
| it's still great.
| sabujp wrote:
| fullscreen? f11 seems to be disabled
| mtrycz2 wrote:
| Oh yeah, I remember that intro.
|
| When I think of Amazon/Tesla, I always associate it with early
| 2000s era science-fiction videogames.
| wrycoder wrote:
| There's an X-plane app for iOS. It's fully flyable, 35,000 real-
| world airports, full instruments and nav aids, etc. $5 per month.
| tommica wrote:
| This is really cool - was too afraid to play this game as a
| teenager, but it's great to see it in this context!
| ugjka wrote:
| Yeah, D3 wash such an adrenaline rush
| djmips wrote:
| One background article on Doom3 renderer. I'm sure there's more
| from Carmack himself.
| https://fabiensanglard.net/doom3_bfg/renderer.php
| cloogshicer wrote:
| Something Doom 3 handled amazingly is how computers are
| controlled in first person.
|
| As your crosshair approaches the screen, it turns into a mouse
| cursor, and you can control the computer as you would a regular
| desktop PC. It just feels so natural.
|
| I'm surprised that this wasn't copied more by other games.
| Probably because it doesn't work as well on consoles with a
| controller.
| atomlib wrote:
| Kind of like real life as well. I always lower my weapon or
| item whenever I approach a terminal or a touchscreen in an
| elevator.
| bombcar wrote:
| Strange, I always shoot the computer first - only if it is
| invulnerable to bullets do I know it's actually important.
| oblak wrote:
| Me? I am old school and just clip right through some
| surfaces.
| [deleted]
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| If I understand your description right, I think Prey (the
| Arkane one) does the same thing. It does feel pretty awesome
| and natural; really helps you feel like you're in a corporate
| world with touchscreens everywhere.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| The new(-ish) Prey comes close, but if I remember correctly,
| it still sometimes locks on to the screen you're controlling,
| taking you out of the action.
|
| In Doom 3, you're still in control of your first person
| character, which is awesome.
|
| Try it in the demo linked above, if you skip the cutscenes
| you can find a screen within the first minute of gameplay or
| so.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| The Duke Nukem Forever 2001 leak handles in-game display
| interactions in a functionally identical way. Not discounting
| parallel discovery (or even that it was first) but id software
| and Apogee/3D Realms had a relationship.
| amelius wrote:
| How long until Linux runs in WASM, with Doom running in it on
| Wayland?
| williamstein wrote:
| There's several regularly updated Linux emulators running in
| WASM here: https://copy.sh/v86/ I don't know if doom runs in
| any of them, but it would be slow.
| amelius wrote:
| But that's emulating x86 code, as opposed to running Linux-
| ported-to-WASM directly.
| 0x457 wrote:
| That would require WASI to cover a lot more than it covers
| now.
| fsiefken wrote:
| might already be possible with webvm, cheerpx and greenfield
| https://leaningtech.com/webvm-server-less-x86-virtual-machin...
| https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield
| rglover wrote:
| This is a total mind blow. Consistently got 15-30+ FPS.
|
| It's early, but this is the future. No need for a console/native
| build, just pop open a browser and jump in.
| wmanley wrote:
| I don't think it is the future - but not because of the
| technology. Things in the browser have proven hard to monetize,
| unlike app stores/steam/consoles which have been built to
| enable selling.
| rglover wrote:
| The smart players will just run a custom headless browser in
| a glorified nix box with a console-like case and price it at
| a premium. Profit would be insane.
| oblak wrote:
| Dr. Malcolm Betruger: Amazing things will happen here soon, you
| just wait.
|
| Took a while but he was right.
| boppo1 wrote:
| How are graphics calls handled? WebGPU?
| alwaysal44 wrote:
| This port uses WebGL. There are no games out there yet that are
| using WebGPU in production, it's only available in Origin
| Trial. It goes live by default in Chrome February 2023.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| According to the project page [1], WebGL. WebGPU is still in
| development, it's the successor of WebGL and not yet supported
| by stable browsers.
|
| [1] http://www.continuation-labs.com/projects/d3wasm/
| seanalltogether wrote:
| Is there a full screen option that I'm missing?
| injidup wrote:
| This may be some kind of malware. I ran it till the game
| downloaded and started playing. Suddenly I noticed that my mouse
| cursor was no longer visible. After restarting the computer the
| mouse cursor is still missing. I've tried this twice now,
| including turning off the power. The mouse still works and I can
| click and scroll but the cursor is not visible.
| ris58h wrote:
| The naming is strange though. It could be Diablo 3 or D3.js.
| Keyframe wrote:
| I know it's 18 years old game by now, but in my mind it's the
| first wave of "next gen" games (normal maps, unified lighting,
| etc..) so it's still kind of amazing seeing this running at 60fps
| on a paltry laptop (razer blade stealth) and on linux in a
| browser at that!
|
| edit: scratch that, thing runs even on phone at 60fps
| spullara wrote:
| Depending on if you are talking about a recent iPhone, it may
| be faster than the laptop.
| tomxor wrote:
| > I know it's 18 years old game by now, but in my mind it's the
| first wave of "next gen" games
|
| Oh man that makes me feel old. I remember first playing this on
| my tiny 12" powerbook from 2004... and back then It felt like a
| heavy weight that shouldn't quite be running on that machine.
| erwinh wrote:
| seems not that long ago "can it run doom" was the benchmark,
| now we are already up to doom 3.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Still waiting for Crysis.
| [deleted]
| epakai wrote:
| Yeah doesn't take much these days. I played with dhewm on a
| surface go, and performance was amazing for a dinky 6W cpu even
| with the high dpi display.
| finikytou wrote:
| doom3 is a masterpiece of gaming. it represented a radical
| shift in how 3d was used in games, hardware shift, light shift
| in terms of how to light and reflect light in an environment.
| in terms of game design this is the pinnacle of the genre. it
| is to this day my favorite FPS by far.
|
| beautiful talk by carmack
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1q49GxsPWM&t=4s&ab_channel=...
| Groxx wrote:
| ehhh... Doom 3's limitations were painfully obvious when it
| launched. The shadows and pure blacks were a nice stylistic
| workaround for handling only a single light source, but later
| levels went crazy with filling the world with glowing fog to
| make larger rooms even _remotely_ usable. It felt more like
| an elaborate tech demo than a game at times.
|
| It was a significant leap, but it was the right time for it.
| In less than a year you saw other games doing the same thing
| or better - they had clearly been working on it as well. Doom
| 3 was just the first to come out, and Carmack did a lot to
| spread knowledge about it immediately (as he frequently does,
| which is wonderful).
| anthk wrote:
| A tech demo you say. Obvious. Doom, Doom2, Quake and
| Unreals and nothing more than FPS clones of the same
| concepts to sell engine features to third parties.
| Groxx wrote:
| I'm not claiming that's their goal, but yes, Carmack
| often seems more interested in his craft than the end
| product. Which I very much enjoy, and the computing world
| benefits from. I wish _more_ game companies were like
| that.
|
| As to views on the end product as a whole: opinions
| differ, ridicule seems unwarranted.
| [deleted]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| It was the last true generational leap in PC gaming. It took
| consoles at least 5 years to catch up. Something we'll never
| see again now that all AAA games are exclusively built for
| console limitations, with PC ports as an afterthought.
| Narishma wrote:
| Not really. It took less than a year for the Xbox version
| to release.
|
| That same year Quake 4 launched using the same engine on
| Xbox 360.
| csmpltn wrote:
| Death Stranding is, in my opinion, another such leap.
| sebazzz wrote:
| The Doom 3 demo scared the crap out of me the first time I
| played it, that scene in Mars City Underground. It still does
| in some way.
| Minor49er wrote:
| Have you ever played Prey (2006)? It used the same tech, had
| some extra capabilities like walking on walls and ceilings,
| and was probably even more intense in the body horror
| department
| oblak wrote:
| You forgot about the portals. It had portals before Portal.
| It also features some pretty cool weapons and other
| mechanics. Pretty cool game. Too bad Human Head never got
| to finish the second one
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > It had portals before Portal.
|
| Not entirely accurate. Narbacular Drop, the first
| prototype for Portal (that caught Valve's attention and
| they hired the devs to recreate the tech in Source
| engine) was released a year before Prey, in 2005.
| oblak wrote:
| I actually deleted the line I had written about
| Narbacular Drop. You're technically correct, which is the
| best kind of correct, of course, but Prey was stuck in a
| development hell for what, 10 years? It had portals in
| the 90s!
| crawsome wrote:
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I don't know... it's definitely a masterpiece of rendering
| technology, but IMHO not as a game. Compared to classic Doom
| or the Quake games, it took too long until the action
| started, and everything felt so slow and sticky! It was the
| first Id game I couldn't really get into, and the first I
| didn't play to the end.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| This was the first (only?) game that legit had me jumpy. I
| remember one part of the game where I was in this room and
| a monster walked across the window, saw me, then came
| around and started pounding on the door. Each time the door
| dented a bit more until it gave out.
|
| I don't think I saw a game before Doom3 that was quite like
| that.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The classic Alien vs Predator (I think?) had me literally
| falling out of the chair when a facehugger jumped at me
| :)
| cptnapalm wrote:
| Only game I ever played where I remained unmoving in one
| corner for half an hour and was not bored.
| wmanley wrote:
| Something I loved about that game was that stopping
| didn't make you safe - if you stopped for too long the
| aliens would come and find you. This lead to a intense
| experience where you had to keep going - even when
| terrified - because stopping was even scarier.
| msikora wrote:
| Same for me, it looked nice, but never got into Doom 3. On
| the other hand the new Doom games, especially Doom Eternal,
| go back to the roots and are one of the best FPS games out
| there, at least for single player that is...
| retinaros wrote:
| to this day it is for me the only fps that i felt was art.
| almost like a very good movie. better lit than most of what
| hollywood produce now. sound design was awesome, it had so
| much style and atmosphere, and it was really minimalist to
| an extent that each interaction was important each enemy
| was a strugle. defintly different from all the other doom
| games hence why it was never as popular as the others but
| there was so much depth in its shadows than it reminded me
| of how great composers use silence in music
|
| https://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/renderer.php at the
| technicql level there were some cool advances and the game
| in its production definitly felt like a leap forward that
| only a few game matched after (i could say mgs 4-5 and
| death stranding are close ones, final fantasy 15 while very
| weak story wise had others, but definitly no fps did what
| doom3 did)
| dvlsg wrote:
| I got super annoyed at enemies popping in behind me out of
| thin air, too. Felt like a cheap way to surprise the
| player, and it got old really fast.
|
| Doom 3 as a game sure looked cool, though. The flashlight
| blew my mind back in the day.
| giobox wrote:
| It's also a game that arguably was directly limited by its
| advanced rendering techniques; the number of enemies on
| screen at any one time rarely exceeds four IIRC, corpses
| vanish almost immediately to reclaim resources, most
| environments are quite small with few open or large spaces
| to explore. Id had to ship something that could actually
| run on customer computers of the era.
|
| This is in sharp contrast to Half Life 2 released at a
| similar time, which had far more enemies and NPCs on screen
| at one time as well as much much larger maps to explore. I
| think in some ways Half Life 2s visuals have honestly dated
| better despite the less ambitious technology - the larger
| and more varied maps its lesser performance requirements
| permitted help a lot.
| torginus wrote:
| I think it might even be argued its rendering techniques
| either weren't that revolutionary, or turned out to be dead
| ends.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's a technical masterpiece, but one
| of execution rather than innovation.
|
| It's main feature was dynamic lighting and shadows, which
| it accomplished with dynamic lights, normal maps and
| stencil shadows.
|
| Dynamic lights and normal maps were nothing new even back
| then, I remember multiple titles using them, but not this
| well and not to this extent.
|
| Stencil shadows were kind of unique, they worked by
| extruding the geometry from the light's perspective, and
| figuring out what was inside the light's shadow by counting
| front and back faces.
|
| Unfortunately, since they used geometry, they looked really
| blocky and sharp, with no smooth edges unlike shadow
| mapping.
|
| Imo they looked kind of bad, a step down from the beautiful
| pre-rendered lightmap shadows we enjoyed years before.
| bombcar wrote:
| Doom 3 wasn't the same kind of game as Doom and Quake were.
| Serious Sam was more on that line - Doom 3 was an entirely
| different game type even though it had the same lineage.
| son_of_gloin wrote:
| Half-Life 2 came out around the same time and I think had
| better graphics, story, and realistic physics.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Stencil shadows were not particularly influential, everything
| now is either lightmaps or RT. If anything I'd argue that The
| Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay did what Doom
| 3 did technology-wise (stencil shadows, normal mapped models
| and environments) and used it better since the lighting tech
| had real impact on gameplay systems other than "you can't
| see". Butcher Bay even released before Doom 3 did, on console
| hardware no less. Having played Butcher Bay before Doom 3,
| the latter was an deep disappointment.
|
| Also I wouldn't put light reflection in the list of idtech
| 4's achievements if we're talking more than one bounce, it
| literally does not do that. idtech 2 did, precalculated of
| course.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Well, on MBP M1 (Ventura) it drops from 63 to 15 sometimes
| (levels loading?).
| boppo1 wrote:
| Just hangs at loading the demo data (after clicking new game and
| choosing a difficulty) for me.
| vient wrote:
| Network tab showed that game data was loading for almost 10
| minutes, maybe that's the case.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Nah, it threw a js exception. Tbh it's probably a me problem,
| been a while since I updated chrome. Tried it on my phone and
| it loaded up fine in about 3-5 minutes.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Is there a console command to go straight into the action instead
| of having to wait through the long intro cutscene? I want to try
| shooting some things.
| Felk wrote:
| You can use the Home key to skip cutscenes. Click on "show
| help" for more alternate controls
| jawadch93 wrote:
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| Very impressive! Few minor artifacts with shadows and the fps
| counter shows 63, but otherwise, works great on Firefox on my
| 2021 M1 MBP.
|
| On a sidenote, I unironically love the dialogue in this game -
| it's so bad it's good:
|
| Guy 1> I'm tired of running damage control every time he makes a
| mess.
|
| Guy 2> Right, you're the control. And if that fails, I'm the
| damage.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| The same author also did a port of Arkane's Arx Fatalis to
| WebAssembly. Interestingly, both Doom 3 and Arx are now owned by
| Microsoft with the Zenimax acquisition, so it would be interested
| to see these two games on the frontpage in a gaming section when
| you open the Edge browser.
|
| https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/arxdemo/
| anthk wrote:
| That's because both engines are under a libre license. Check
| Arx Libertatis.
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