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Programming Entertainment Games IT Technology

Doom 3 vs. Source: Comparing Engines 144

Posted by Zonk from the apples-and-apples dept.
Tom V. writes "DevMaster.net has an article that outlines some of the technical differences between Half-life 2's Source and Doom 3 engines from various game development aspects such as graphics, A.I., physics, networking, etc. According to the author, the winner is the Source engine based on its 'completeness' as a game development package. However, in terms of graphics, the clear winner is Doom 3."
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Doom 3 vs. Source: Comparing Engines More

Doom 3 vs. Source: Comparing Engines

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  • Really a review of the games (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28, 2005 @01:17PM (#11504850)
    The reviewer's methodology seems to be:

    1) Play both games.
    2) Compare graphics/sound/AI etc between the 2 games.
    3) Assume that those comparisons are solely founded on what the underlying engine provides, rather than some of what the games add on top.

    It's disappointing that a site with 'dev' in it's name didn't actually review the functionality, performance, and extensibility of the engines outside of games that might use it. Doom 3 is not just map and sound data fed into Id's engine, and Half-Life 2 is not just map and sound data fed into Source.

    The title should be "Doom 3 vs. Half-Life 2: Comparing games". This has the potential to be a fascinating topic, but this article is sophomoric.
    • Honestly, it sounds as if the whole article was written by a 14 year old Valve fanboy defending source against some evil company trying to take its rightfully deserved title for creating such things as "Counter Strike."

      I quote: "The Source Engine once again takes the title and rightfully so as the most popular FPS multiplayer game Counter Strike was developed by Valve."

      A little less bias would also do this article some good, not to mention fixing the authors grammatical mistakes. Does anyone else find rea
    • The methodology is worse than you suggest. Taken from his sound analysis:

      ...I haven't had the chance to experience the sound of Half-Life 2.

      He later reiterates this. I assume either 1) played HL2 with his sound turned off, or 2) hasn't played HL2. Furthermore, in the networking analysis:

      I've heard numbers of 64 players at one-time being played with little to no lag.

      So, from what I can tell, this entire essay is based primarily one published specs, screenshots, and secondhand anecdotes. I don't

      • But in that case, why no inclusion of data from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, also based on the Source engine?

        Well, since there aren't any Doom 3 engine games in the marketplace aside from Doom 3 itself, it wouldn't be an especially well thought out comparison. Once Quake 4 gets released and we have more data points on both sides, I agree, that should be done.
      • Bloodlines uses an early version of the source engine

        wouldnt exactly be fair to use it in a comparison
    • The author seems to remember to consider that Quake4 will show that DOOM3's engine can (or be made to) do outdoor environments reasonably, and then forgets about Quake4 when it comes to likely networking improvements. He also fails to mention the post-DOOM3 deal with Creative, which means sound will improve on other games using the engine.

      I doubt id will be selling the "DOOM3" engine to other devs in the future, rather they will be selling the base DOOM3 engine plus the additions they made to it with other

    • He actually says that since Source is using DirectX, it can easily be ported to XBox. I think the guy never actually ave a shot at such a port. The author is probably more of a gamer wanting to develop games than a developper.

      I have to agree with you: the article is not serious.

  • It would of been nice if the game wasn't so dark.
    I mean, wasn't there duct tape [glenmurphy.com] in the future?

    • Re:Doom 3 Engine (Score:1, Informative)

      by jmole ( 696805 )
      I really hate when people complain about the darkness in Doom 3. You do not deserve to play this game if you do not know there are two settings called gamma and brightness that can be adjusted on your monitor or in the Nvidia/ATI control panel.
      • You have to change your system settings to play a game then there is something wrong with the game.

        Doom was a clear case of them getting a hard on for a feature (in this case lighting) and ruining the game to ensure people get to see their lighting (or lack of it). Tomb raider did the same thing, in one game they had some kind of flares that lara could use, surprise surprise the same game had many annoying pitch dark rooms.

        • i know its the "in thing" now to joke about this, but I thought the lighting was terrific. i also liked the use of the flashlight as well. the fumbling panic you get when being attacked. the game gave me the creeps. My theory of why the game has been stigmatized is that it really did buck the whole premise of fps. That being control. Doom fucked with that by having the player constantly off kilter ... the lighting be key. And also, it threw in some survival horror elements. It'd be interesting to se
      • I think he's complaining more that the color scheme used requires mucho black and brown. And when you add a color, like red, its the darkest red imaginable.

    • Carmack: This was a technical problem (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nomihn0 ( 739701 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @03:34PM (#11506723)
      John Carmack admitted that the Doom 3 was so dark because the game couldn't handle light on the engine level. There is, apparently, some pixel bleed-through and seaming of textures when light-entities are placed more generously. He said, on his blog I think, that he essentially made a game to suit the engine, but that the engine would develop with each new game release

      Unfortunately, I do not have a link on-hand.
    • For HL2, it would be nice if the powersupply for the grav gun also powered the flashlight.

      I mean, come on, the battery shouldn't burn out in a minute.

  • Couple of questions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @01:24PM (#11504948) Homepage Journal
    This guy says "I haven't been able to listen to the sounds in HalfLife II" - OK, but then did he really play the games, or is he just going on other people's statements about the engines?

    Or did he in fact play HL2, but for some reason was not able to hear the sounds?

    This alone makes me wonder about the validity of the review.

    And I am sorry, but while the issue of portability may not matter to many, it is important to me - and in that regard Doom wins.

    And one last thing - will this reviewer receive the flamage about saying HalfLife was based upon the Quake II engine that I did in when I said that in a previous /. post?
    • Yes.

      Q2 or Q1? [valve-erc.com]

      It's pretty apparent from a gameplay standpoint. In Quake2 to bunnyhop you had to run forward and strafe sideways. In Quake you could gain speed by just curving in the air-- Exactly the same way HalfLife does it (Except HL unregisters the +jump command if you're in the air, so you have to spam it within a frame or two of hitting the ground, rather than holding it in air like quake)

      And as the valve-erc page I linked noted, the mapping tools are identical, and theres the whole timeline thin
      • I remember reading this quite some time ago, actually during the development of HL1 if I recall. It could just be the fact that I just woke up, but I'm fairly certain about reading that they switched engines in the development of HL from Q1 to Q2. I'd imagine that some of the already developed code was portable enough that what you ended up with was a sort of 1.5 hybrid engine. :shrugs:

        Just going off what I remember maybe reading 7ish+ years ago, but yeah.
        • Maybe some of the rendering code, but gameplay is still very quake1 like. Every player still has quake1 ammo attributes (cells/rockets/nails/shells) as you can see by doing a delta_stats in console on cs1.6 and probably other mods.
      • The Halflife engine was the Q1 engine with a few things added: most notably, colored lighting - a Q2 engine feature, but developed independently from iD.
    • He doesn't really mention what he's basing his comparison on. But since it's supposed to be from a developer's point of view, he may have tinkered with the Source SDK and gone over some documentation, without having actually played HL2.

  • on sound.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jlapier ( 739283 )
    This category is tricky, because I haven't had the chance to experience the sound of Half-Life 2.

    Maybe it's just me, but good sound is almost as important as good graphics to overall gameplay IMO. I'm not really sure I understand this article - either this guy is comparing Doom3 and HL2 by what's on paper only, or he played Doom3 with sound and inexplicably played HL2 without sound. How do you play a FPS without sound? Sound is atmosphere - good sound gets your blood running - I just don't get it - I wou
  • "Even more ironic is that Half-Life used the Quake 2 licensed engine from id." That's wrong. The original Half-Life used a modified version of the Quake engine, not the Quake 2 engine.

    Should I bother to finish the article?

  • Source (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @01:26PM (#11504971) Homepage
    Ropes/cables, machines, constraint systems, ragdoll physics, vehicles, kinmetic-animated bones, and a materials system make the Source Engine the undisputed champion of physics gameplay.
    Ever wanted to see Havok physics used to an extreme? Got a copy of Half-Life 2? Well, there's the incredible Garry's Mod [garry.tv] for you! It's utterly ridiculous, and the eponymous Garry has a sick sense of humour.

    Last night, I built the incredible mattress-car - basically, just a mattress with a (powered) car wheel at each corner. It writhed and wriggled in a gloriously disgusting manner, and somewhat disturbingly started following me around. I tried shooting it but that didn't help, so I tied a fridge to it, set it on fire and chucked it into a lake...

    Doom 3 might have a basic physics engine, but I'm really looking forward to what modders can do with Source's network-friendly version of Havok.
    The cool thing worth mentioning for Doom 3 is it uses the CPU instead of soundcard to create the sounds. This produces great sounds for people with cheap soundcards, but your new, $200 soundcard won't be able to improve on it much.
    Doom 3's sound engine is awful compared with the original Half-Life, let alone Source. I've got a below-minimum-specs PC with a cheap sound card from 1998, and in Half-Life 2 I get real-time, room-specific reverberation and sound occlusion. I once walked off while a character was talking, and his voice became muffled when I went round a corner. It sounded real. Plus, the gun and bullet sounds are physically modelled - notice how they vary with distance and surroundings? The only things I haven't noticed it simulate are the speed of sound and proper Doppler effects (which Halo does!), but still, Doom 3's sound playback just seems bland and flat in comparison.

    Doom 3's graphics might be the first of a new generation of engines, but Source, while primitive in some areas, is an old-school engine taken to the logical extreme. Which is why I like it so much... ;-)

    • Gotta love depth-of-field. [garry.tv] Boy that mod looks awesome.

      On a side note: this [garry.tv] just gave me a new sig.

    • Re:Source (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mike Hawk ( 687615 )
      Doom 3's sound engine is awful compared with the original Half-Life, let alone Source.

      Really? How can you claim this when its well documented across many end-user systems that after every loading screen the sound skips degrading performance for an extended period of time. None of Valve's attempted fixes so far have worked for me. I don't care how their positional audio sounds when it doesn't just work.
    • I love Garry's Mod. I learned about it from my friend, who is, coincidentally, the author of the official FAQ. It's amazing to see a corspe held aloft by balloons. I try to get it floating, but not rising, and then I shoot cinder blocks at it. Endless fun!

  • Doom 3's minimum requirements are Microsoft Windows 2000/XP; Pentium IV 1.5 GHz or AMD Athlon 1.7 GHz XP processor or higher; 384MB RAM and a DirectX 9.0 64MB Hardware Accelerated video card just to get the thing to even run.

    With my PC (a 1.1GHz Pentium III, 384MB RAM, 128MB video RAM) I can run Half-Life 2 on High (with its now-legendary stutters [slashdot.org] of course, but not too much difficulty).

    That you need 384MBs RAM just to run Doom III horrifies me, more than any of its monsters I've seen.

  • System Spec BS (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JF ( 18696 )
    "Doom 3's minimum requirements are [...] and a DirectX 9.0 64MB Hardware Accelerated video card just to get the thing to even run."

    People should learn to better research their stuff. Just because the iD website says it requires a DX 9.0b compatible card doesn't mean it requires a card with DX9 capabilities. The Doom 3 engine runs "fine" on GF3 Ti hardware.
  • The article definitely seems buzzword compliant, but to get a really good grasp, I think you'd have to try to develop a mod or something on each one to have a proper opinion.

    The other question is how expandable are they. In other words, how much can you do with them, with the least work. I think that improving half life graphics will be much harder than improving D3 networking.

    I'm not sure about Doom3 physics. How related is it to the game versus the engine. I seems that they just limited its use in the g

  • Source Engine? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dmayle ( 200765 ) *

    Source Engine? Am I the only one here who thinks that Valve is trying to capitlize on the mindshare of Open Source Software by calling their engine "Source"?

    First thing I thought when I heard the name was that it might just be something like that (with source available), but, alas, no...

  • sloppy article, sloppy engine (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bobtree ( 105901 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @01:50PM (#11505277)
    I RTFA, and this guy is clueless.

    Quote: "The Source Engine's main lighting system is real-time radiosity lighting."

    There are no games using "real-time radiosity," period. Radiosity (or more generally, global illumination), almost by definiton, is too slow for real-time.

    This should probably read "pre-computed radiance transfer." It's pre-baked radiosity, cooked as a variant on spherical harmonic lightmap encoding. In other words: no real-time lighting, just PRT, faked dynamic lights (which EVERY other game does) and projective shadows. There is also no real HDR (high dynamic range) rendering in Source, just the same clever faking everyone else has.

    This stuff is old hat. Relatively speaking, Source is not technically advanced at all. The only place it consistently (purportedly) wins is the content tools.

    The big point that is NOT mentioned in the article is performance. Anyone who has played a lot of HL2 and CS:S can tell you that Source is just sloppy, on any hardware configuration. It is prone to periodic chugging, studders, fps drops from particle effects and physics lag online, etc.

    D3, comparatively is just tight. The unified surface shading model (lighting and stencil shadows) rocks, and iD knows exactly what they're doing. Valve apparently can not compete in the brainpower department.

    Game-wise, I personally preferred Doom 3 to Half-Life 2, old school playability vs. hype-tour-04, but that has nothing to do with the technical content.

    Valve can only hope to win by being the preferred mod platform. Their SDK uses tested and proven, centuries old, Elaborate Puppet Theater(TM) technology, so naturally everyone adores them for maintaining the traditional status-quo. Hooray for Valve.
    • >>This should probably read "pre-computed radiance transfer." It's pre-baked radiosity, cooked as a variant on spherical harmonic lightmap encoding.

      Whereas Doom3 has no radiosity at all. No line of site to the light source, no light. Pitch black. Levels were very carefully designed to make this flaw less obvious.

      >>In other words: no real-time lighting, just PRT, faked dynamic lights (which EVERY other game does) and projective shadows.

      Whoa there trigger. There is real-time lighting. It ju
      • >>This should probably read "pre-computed radiance transfer." It's pre-baked radiosity, cooked as a variant on spherical harmonic lightmap encoding.

        >Whereas Doom3 has no radiosity at all. No line of site to the light source, no light. Pitch black. Levels were very carefully designed to make this flaw less obvious.

        This so-called "flaw" highlights a very prominent design decision: you can not play with the gamma to make the dark areas visible. Adding an ambient lighting term is absolutely trivial
        • >>>In other words: no real-time lighting, just PRT, faked dynamic lights (which EVERY other game does) and projective shadows.

          >>Whoa there trigger. There is real-time lighting. It just isn't universal and unified like Doom3.

          >My point was that the "radiosity lighting" that Valve claims Source does is NOT the dynamic lighting in the game.

          I should clarify this (to the best of my knowledge, mostly via the gdalgorithms mailing list). The precomputed radiosity is a static lighting environmen
        • The credibilty comment was in response to
          iD knows exactly what they're doing. Valve apparently can not compete in the brainpower department.

          Just because Valve choses to focus on different aspects of the game hardly limits their brainpower. HL2 is one of the most enjoyable games I've played, and I've played a lot.

          Doom3 had it's moments, but it honestly wasn't as entertaining.

          This so-called "flaw" highlights a very prominent design decision: you can not play with the gamma to make the dark areas visibl
          • > The credibilty comment was in response to
            >>iD knows exactly what they're doing. Valve apparently can not compete in the brainpower department.

            When a game is technically deficient, I chalk it up to stupid developers.

            >Just because Valve choses to focus on different aspects of the game hardly limits their brainpower.

            I was not commenting on the gameplay or design aspects.

            >HL2 is one of the most enjoyable games I've played, and I've played a lot.

            And I've probably played more than you. I ca
            • I am a fan id especially of Carmacks undoubted technical mastery of the first person consumer level graphics engines. That however doesn't change the fact that I was bored senseless by the poor gameplay of Doom 3.

              I am a fan of Valves ability to provide the best original first person shooter, that however doesn't change the fact that I was blown away by a great deal of Half Life 2 - the gameplay simply left Doom 3 in the dust.

              So you see, you can prefer one companies engine and another companies game...blin

    • I RTFA, and this guy is clueless.

      Indeed. I get a very strong impression that he hasn't actually touched the development tools -- he admits to not even having heard the sound in HL2 at all! -- he's just guessing at what the engines can do based on the games. For example, he downplays Doom's physics engine quite a bit, saying that although it has many of the same features, it's "on a smaller scale". Newsflash, the features are all that matters! The fact that the D3 level designers didn't use their physics e

    • `There are no games using "real-time radiosity," period. Radiosity (or more generally, global illumination), almost by definiton, is too slow for real-time.`

      Not really...

      There are discussions of real time GI in an engine by Yann L here:
      http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/to p ic.asp? topic_id=172296

      Unfortunatly, no one has seen that engine in action (other than a few scattered screen shots).

      More recently, http://www.artificialstudios.com has gone live with their increadable (and really inexpensive) e
      • >>There are no games using "real-time radiosity," period. Radiosity (or more generally, global illumination), almost by definiton, is too slow for real-time.`

        >Not really...

        Yes, really.

        Pre-computed means NOT realtime. PRT is all about making objects LOOK like they're in a radiosity environment, when it's mostly statically pre-mapped, leaving just a couple paramaters to evaluate in hardware (namely, the view vector and object positions).

        If you looked at these, you would see that the objects are
  • Where's the source (for Source)?

    Insert "use the Source to escape Doom", "use the Source or else face Doom", &c joke here.

    Actually, I believe, ironically, Nvidia don't make the source for their Source engine but ID Software do for Doom (at least for older versions).

  • Seriously. Doom appears to be "opengl" cross platform for easier porting to Mac/Linux. That might not matter to others but its a huge advantage when porting your game from windows.

    Cross platform can cause a slight performance hit.

    I feel old, but since when is AI part of the engine? shouldn't that be somewhat specific game to game?

  • Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @02:09PM (#11505559) Homepage
    That it declares Source the more complete engine, yet it doesn't include physics (Havoc) or probably AI either.

    So if your developing Source you have the most complete engine, but have to go buy Havoc + pos AI stuff too.

    Hmm very "complete".

  • Doom 3 Can Do It (Score:4, Informative)

    by ziggles ( 246540 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @02:21PM (#11505733) Homepage
    Those who want to see how well Doom 3 can pull off Half-Life 2 style environments should check out the Doom 3 Can Do It Too project. I don't think they have a site but their forum is on http://doom3world.org. Anyway, if you just want to see results here's their latest video: http://www.pcgamemods.com/9875/ (still a work in progress, obviously)

  • Doom3 for one reason (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GtKincaid ( 820642 )
    Opengl ... as a mac and a linux user i simply cant stand behind an engine which uses only directX.
    now I know this may be a tad biased and a bit political but with doom3 (opengl) i have a choise as to which OS i run my game under Im well aware that i can run half life 2 with cedega and i have done however its unlikely a mac port will ever appear.
    I will admit that half life 2 had better physics, and i enjoyed the game slightly more( all be it i enjoyed half life and doom /2 alot more than these modern ver

  • D3 Can Do it Too! (Score:2, Informative)

    by jtids ( 786024 ) *
    There is a very nice project that I have been following recently that shows off the Doom 3 engine. A large group of people have been creating an outdoor scene, alot like Trafalgar square. Currently it has a Day-night cycle script, door interaction and some nice catapult physics. It runs suprisingly well for something that curently has almost no optimisations.

    For those that are interested, you can find the project here:
    The D3CDIT Project [doom3world.org]

    The latest Test-Build Video can be found here:
    Latest Video [pcgamemods.com]

    And

  • Is it engines that he's talking about? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Slime-dogg ( 120473 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @03:09PM (#11506414) Journal

    Seriously, if he's talking about engines, why is he making mention of the character models?

    The monsters however seem much more lifelike with their detailed skin combined with many details. The Source Engine has better models, especially human, but combined with the lighting and shadowing, the Doom 3 Engine creates amazing textures.

    Though it is important to note how the engine renders the models, but the models themselves are not part of the engine! It's possible to export the human models from HL Source and stick them into Doom3. It's as if he's comparing the artists, and not the engineer of the engine.

    He also says something to the effect of Source not having cut-scenes. Last I remember from playing Doom 3, the cut-scenes looked like they were being rendered by the engine, and not pre-recorded.

    It looks like he's confused engines for games. If I were going to compare the engines, I'd create my own levels and models, render them with both engines, and base my results off of that.

    • One assumes that the models used in the games are basically suited to the engine, such that they are probably using the best style and quality of models and textures that the game engine can support, in order to show it off and drum up interest in the game and/or licensing.
  • And completely neglects engine extensibility. Almost everything in Doom 3 is controlled through, esentially, text files. Nothing game-specific is hard-coded. The only things that aren't text are the textures, engine, and engine-script interface (gamex86.dll). I haven't checked out HL2 yet, but it certainly isn't that flexible.

  • Price wars (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spyrochaete ( 707033 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @04:31PM (#11507452) Homepage Journal
    The article should have mentioned the price of licensing as well. I believe the Quake 3 engine is still $250,000USD (which includes limited support from id programmers). D3 and Source must be a pretty penny.

  • Reflections from the Author (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brad Jashinsky ( 854275 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @06:17PM (#11508875) Homepage
    Thank you for reading my article and taking the time to comment on it, even if those comments were sometimes a bit harsh.

    As the author of this article I was happy to see my first article Slashdotted. Some of you came off as pretty harsh, but I can see where some of your criticism is valid. I'm not a crazy fanboy of either company, I'm not getting paid by Valve to write this, and picking at my spelling mistake of using "then" instead of "than" are ridiculous. I simply submitted the text article and the nice editors at Devmaster added the pictures, title, and summary. One of us should've probably caught the mistake, but it's easy to overlook. Whether I picked the Doom 3 Engine or the Source Engine I would've been flamed. The debate is similar to the Republicans and Democratic parties where you just can't win. I don't think anyone can rightfully say with an unbiased view that the Doom 3 Engine is a more complete engine then the Source Engine. Once you get past the graphics the rest of the engine just can't compete with what's out there today.

    The article was originally one of my .plan entries, which I submitted to DevMaster.net. I'll admit looking back on it I made a few errors like saying the original Half-Life used Quake 2 when it mainly used Quake 1 code with some Quake 2 code. Someone mentioned this is a common myth, which I somehow adopted at the time. I was aware that the original Quake Engine was used at the beginning of development, but thought Valve switched to Quake 2 after deciding to redo most of the game. I wasn't able to listen to the Half-Life 2 sound, because I didn't play it at a computer with speakers. Since writing the article (I wrote it in mid-November) I've listened to the sound and still agree that are equally good in the sound category. I tried not comparing the actual sound clips, but instead the way the sound is able to resonant.

    I tried my best to compare the engines as best as possible without comparing the actual game's content. I used the SDKs to try and do this, but it still came down to in-game content for stuff like character models. Someone said that Doom 3 can achieve Half-Life 2 quality models, but that is completely untrue. The engines use different methods for creating character models, which gives each engine its own distinguishable type of model look.

    I only compared the Source Engine and Doom 3 Engine, because those were the two people had been taking about. The discussion has been up for debate on forums all over the net, which is clearly seen by reading these comments. The Unreal 2004 Engine is a great, flexible engine, but it wouldn't have been far to compare it with the others. I did write a FarCry article, which should be published at DevMaster.net soon. If you want to read it now it's up on my site.

    I appreciate the constructive feedback, because it lets me know how to revise my writing style for my next article. Like I said before this was my first article, and I made a few mistakes. I'll make sure to not repeat those when writing my next article, which will compare Unreal Engine 3 with Oblivion's graphics engine.
  • If Doom 3 weren't so f***in' dark, I could probably compare the two engines myself.
  • This happens to be the most subjective reveiw ever. He basicly said that "HL2 obviously wins lol cause I can't look into code, or can't be arsed to go look at anything else in doom 3 besides normal mapping and lighting. LOL it had good sound too I guess LOL!!, and I also can't admit that Valve didn't make anything that makes there game "revolutionary" or "obviously better" LOL!" This was sad. What a waste of good internet.
    • Did you even read the article? Probably not, because looking at your other comments it seems you just make an uneducated smart-aleck comment. I would like constructive criticism and respect like many Slashdot users have shown. Maybe you're bitter, because all of your points are contradictory. I would have liked to see the code, but I was a couple million dollars short. Half-Life 2 is revolutionary for its story-telling and the way it brings all of the greats elements of games together into one package. I'd
      • The scripting system in Doom 3 is pretty powerful and flexible.
        • On its own it is pretty powerful, but can't compete with Half-Life 2's scripting system. That is a good point though and is a bright spot of the engine.
          • 'On its own it is pretty powerful, but can't compete with Half-Life 2's scripting system.'

            Justify that statement?
      • Let me list to you the things to look at in the DOom 3 engine. 1: GLSL 2: GUI 3: Physics (the game actually has great physics) 4: The latent Soft Shadow and HDRI GLSL code 5: Easy to use editor (did I mention it was built in?) 6: The awesome bone animation system (only limited by the bones) 7: The MOD community (though little as it is, they are great) a loud minority if you will. So mabey if you could get your head out of your ass and look beyond the fact that Valve licenced all of it's "inovation". I don'
        • Looking past your listings of the graphics, which you listed a few times and the GUI all the rest of your listings are irrelevant. The physics in Doom 3 are extremely limited with a material system and interactivity system that does the bare minimum. You can't compare that to the Havok physics engine by any means. Sure, the Havok physics engine is a third-party physics engine, while id brought in one programmer to do it, but what else was licensed for the Source Engine? The animation system is good when com
          • Anything Source can do, Doom3 can do better. http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=5 7 Deal with it. I like the fact that you know what half life is, but no, I do not fit into the pile of racists and Klan members of CS.
            • Your link isn't working. There are many things that the Source Engine can do, but the Doom 3 Engine can't. I'll name one quick thing, I know for sure that Doom 3 can't render realistic water like Half-Life 2. By the way, I wasn't calling you a racist or Klan member, but instead someone who stands up for their game no matter what.
            • Thanks for clearing up the link thing. A tag would've made it easier. Although the latest demo video in itself is very impressive, it's not anywhere close to Half-Life 2. The water was a joke with it being clear and not moving at all. The physics showed exactly what was in Doom 3. Nothing spectacular, when put up against Source's Engine. The whole city was bland, with few high-res textures and no moving vehicles or other characters. Even though it's not close to the Source Engine the demo is impressive. Goo
              • Since this is a community project, which isn't being produced by professionals under excellent art direction over a period of 5 years I'd say its looking pretty good. http://img162.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img162&image=b7223 8cw.jpg [img162.exs.cx] http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=7 792 [doom3world.org] Also, you don't seem to know what you're talking about. In regard to anything. ;D
                • I believe I already commented that it looks great, but when you are billing it as Half-Life 2 than no it really doesn't. You posted a baseless claim saying I don't know what I am talking about it. If you don't think I know what I am talking about then please give examples.
                  • Have you read your own article? ;D Well i suppose 'the Doom 3 Engine creates amazing textures.' is a start ;o Everytime I read your article its different; since you seem to just tag on statements other people have made in criticism. Which tbh, makes it even more terribly written than it already is. Despite claiming to be writing about the technical aspects you nearly always come back to content, as if you have some inability to distinguish the difference. Your article is bias and based on little fact. Yo
  • It would appear that people can write articles entirely on heresay now!

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