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.")

10 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 Senjutsu · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Unreal Tournaments, I believe.

    2. 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."
  2. 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?
  3. 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.)

  4. 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.

    1. 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.

  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. 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."