Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Doom 3 Programmer on OGG, Ultra, 60FPS Play

Posted by simoniker on from the zoom-zoom dept.

Cryect writes "Appears that Doom 3 is making use of Ogg Vorbis to reduce memory usage for sounds. This comes from id programmer Robert Duffy's latest plan update where he says: 'When we started on memory optimization, most levels used between 80 and 100 megabytes of sound data. We made the choice to move to .OGG for quite a few sounds which effectively removed the problem for us.'" Duffy also comments on texture usage in 'Ultra' mode ("In Ultra quality, we load each texture; diffuse, specular, normal map at full resolution with no compression. In a typical DOOM 3 level, this can hover around a whopping 500MB of texture data") and framerate ("The game is capped at 60fps for normal game play. For render demos, like what was used for the HardOCP stuff, we run those at full tilt which is why you will see 60fps.")

5 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cool by Senjutsu · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Unreal Tournaments, I believe.

  2. Ogg is great for gaming by BillyBlaze · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Vorbis format really is a godsend for gamers, because in the game programming world, the roadblocks which otherwise hinder it are gone. For one, the no license fee argument becomes applicable - Vorbis doesn't help portable player makers much, because they have to support MP3 and WMA anyway. But since the consumer doesn't care what format game audio is in, programmers can go for a cheap (BSD licensed), easy (good APIs), and very good (high quality) solution without worrying about making the game less useful. Many games already use Ogg Vorbis, like UT2003/4 - here's a complete list. (Well, it would be there, if the Wiki was up.)

  3. Re:Cool by MC+Negro · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Unreal Tournaments, I believe.
    You would be correct.

    From Vorbis website --
    I'm a developer. Why should I be interested?

    Epic Games (the makers of Unreal Tournament, et. al.) have used Vorbis in their games ever since releasing Unreal Tournament 2003 to compress game music without having per-game license fees sap profits from every game sold. Vorbis saves developers money by avoiding patent-license fees.

    Epic isn't alone; other Vorbis users include:

    * Crystal Dynamics (Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2)
    * Croteam (Serious Sam: The Second Encounter)
    * Pyrogon (Candy Cruncher)
    * PopCap Games (Alchemy)
    * EA Games (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
    --
    "You and your third dimension."
  4. Re:Wouldn't this add to the processor usage? by oskillator · · Score: 3, Informative
    If I'm not mistaken, doesn't this just shift the burden to the processor by adding more decoding time to it in exchange for memory savings?

    You are correct. Shifting the burden from a resource that can't handle a load to a resource that can is a big part of optimization

  5. Capped at 60 fps by zz99 · · Score: 3, Informative

    "The game is capped at 60fps for normal game play. For render demos, like what was used for the HardOCP stuff, we run those at full tilt which is why you will see 60fps."

    This quote made no sense to me until I did RTFA, and realized that it was faulty. What really was written in the article was:
    "...which is why you will see > 60fps."