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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.")

4 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wouldn't this add to the processor usage? by AuMatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Note the 500 MB of memory for textures. They need memory badly. Bumping the CPU speed slightly probably makes for better minimum specs tan going over 500MB of ram.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  2. Re:Here's a Related Question by 88NoSoup4U88 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I think it would cause too much confusion : When people are blurring over reviews on sites : they don't tend to read all of the article, but skim over the screenies.

    Other than that, i think, as a developer, you would want the presentation of your product to be shown at its best. I do get your point, but I think demo's do quite a good , ifnot better job at determining if your rig is going to pull the game.

  3. Re:SLI? by idiot900 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Would SLI of (2)256MB GPUs be sufficient to meet the 512MB requirement?

    I'm no graphics programmer, but I'd suspect that no, it wouldn't, because both GPUs would be rendering the same scene, and thus both would need the same textures (and whatever other kinds of maps).

    Well, if one GPU renders the top half of the frame and the other the bottom, you might be able to buy a little bit of savings (think floor vs ceiling textures). But I don't expect that to have too much effect.

  4. More Related Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I ran the UT2004 demo at what must have been hovering near the recommended mark (practically all the special spiffies were turned off), and the graphics still blew me away.

    This is completley true for me as well. I almost felt like I was getting something for free.

    Questions...

    Is it just me or are the developers of UT2004 not getting enough critical and community thanks for making a game that runs so well on crappy systems? I could be totally wrong, but it doesn't seem like they are. Methinks it's just easier for some folks to complain when it *doesn't* work ;)

    Next-gen games that run well (or in the case of UT2k4, excellent) on low to mid-range systems would be a welcome paradigm shift and would go a long way to extend the lifespan and relevance of PC gaming. Was that a specific goal of UT2K4's desiginers? If so, how hard is it to implement?

    It *seems* like programming for next gen games would be harder for the bleeding edge systems because alot of assumptions about the hardware and drivers have to be made at the very beginning....wheras the crappy hardware in my computer is available for your perusal RIGHT NOW!

    Someone enlighten me?