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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.")

5 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Cool by I_Love_Pocky! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does anyone know of any other high profile games using Ogg?

    1. Re:Cool by Kyouryuu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What's also remarkable is when you check out the size of some of Unreal Tournament 2003/2004's OGG files. Some are scarcely larger than a meg, but hold over 3 minutes of CD-quality music.

  2. Wouldn't this add to the processor usage? by bergeron76 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

    --
    Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
    1. Re:Wouldn't this add to the processor usage? by S.+Traaken · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Interestingly, it still works both ways :) For example, BSP trees aren't a particularly space efficient way to store level maps, but they make drawing them (or at least culling parts of them) much faster.

  3. Here's a Related Question by Ieshan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here's the question: Why don't game developers take care to run the game on a certain number of de-optimized systems and then release demos with those configurations as well?

    I mean, I think it would be nice to see exactly what the game looks like on the Min specs, and if recent games have proven anything, it ought to look incredible.

    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.

    If anything, this might convince me to buy the game or to upgrade hardware to "release" level, and it would also give people a *real* taste of what the game will look like.