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Marine Finds Duct Tape on Mars
mhore writes "It seems that one of the biggest complaints about Doom 3 has been resolved. Thanks to Glen Murphy, you may now use your flashlight and weapon at the same time, thanks to the ingenious 'Duct Tape' mod! While some may think this ruins the game play, I disagree and think it is worth noting." There's plenty of other Doom 3-related coverage over at PlanetDoom, including a pointer to a new IGN review, which PlanetDoom considers "a lot more fair and balanced than some of the reviews we've seen so far", with an overall 8.9/10 score.
"In anticipation of a slashdotting due in 10 minutes (god bless being a /. subscriber), the images have been removed from the front page. You may still view them here, if you're interested: screenshot 1, screenshot 2 (image quality has also been reduced)."
There is another mod that gives just your pistol a flashlight.
6 8. html
http://dlx.gamespot.com/pc/doom3/moreinfo_61041
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
I was able to get a few more frames by toying around with some settings. Open your DoomConfig.cfg file and look for:
seta image_cacheMegs "32"
If you have a newer video card you can move the number up. I have a 9800XT and got it up to 96. Anything more than that and I start loosing preformance. The beta Radeon driver also helped a little bit.
It works OK with winex. Here is a page on how to get it to work but most of what he has written is pretty kludgy to put it nicely. A little tinkering will have it working in no time.
t ml
http://www.linux-militia.net/howtos/doom3/doom3.h
I know more than you drink.
Actually, according to the page, it now puts the light on both the machine gun and the shotgun.
Yes. The name is clever. Many have asked "don't they have duct tape in 2045?"
:)
Of course the anwer is yes, but you don't have any when this particular shit hits this particular fan. Sorry. Life is hard. And it's much scarier this way!
But, if you're as scared as this guy or this guy's friends then I have I a deal* for you (*not a monorail.)
It's easier to install than this new duct tape mod, requires no file download, and works 100% of the time. You're not restricted to a smaller-beam, or to duct-taping your flashlight to small arms only. And there's no modified doom3 files to cause problems in multiplayer when cheat detectors check your files.
Ready for it?
You think I'm effing with you, don't you?
I'm not.
Pull down the console (ctrl+alt+~ -- now that's security through obscurity! I be you were expecting just ~ eh?) and enter:
r_gamma 2
If it's still too dim for your panties to hold your dump, up it to something closer to 3 (over 3 is meaningless.)
Still crying mama every time you hear "come one hurry!"? Ok, open up Mr. Console again and do a:
r_brightness 1.6
You can push that up a bit higher if your teeth are chipping each other, but it gets ugly fast.
If you don't want to do that every game, find C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base\DoomConfig.cfg (or your equivalent in the case of non-standard install or other OS) and search/replace any existing settings of the above mentioned variables. Add them if they're not already there. Anything in DoomConfig.cfg gets executed on startup.
Be sure to use a nightlight and make sure mommy tucks you in, BTW.
And yes. There are monsters both under your bed and in your closet.
Bwahaha!
everything in moderation
they're making an SG-1 game now.. (projected 2005 release)
have fun for now playing the RPG, injecting yourself with Naquadah like it's heroine (so you can use a hand-device), and using the unstable vortex of the stargate as a battering ram- I bet that wont make it into the real game.
As for the zat gun being fun to watch, it seems a bit too fun. I mean, you shoot the guy once and he falls to thew ground in agony, twitching and shivering and such, then you shoot him again and he's dead, shoot him again and he disintegrates.. boring! I want to stun him repeatedly so he can twitch over and over again...
Hey wait a second, that was off-topic!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
You can mount flashlights on pretty much any firearm these days. Modern Glocks and Sigs have rails for small lights/lasers; shotguns can have a light either clamped to the barrel or integrated into the foregrip; and modern rifles can either have rails (P90, G36, M4) or can have the flashlight mounted to the barrel by way of a clamp.
Having had to compare shooting a handgun while holding a flashlight vs. having a handgun with an integrated flashlight, they're really incomparable.
Pull up the console (Ctrl + Alt + ~)
type "r_gamma 2" (max is 3, default 1)
Adjust brightness downward a notch or two; especially if you cranked it up while looking for the fucking gamma control like I did.
And here's a bonus hacking tip, the developer's own config files (keybindings, video settings, etc) are stored in one of the *.pk? files (in D3's case pak000.pk4). Usually you can pull out some interesting command usage, especially when one developer has binds to useful commands and functions as in-game editing menus. From the johnc.cfg file, a few lines out of many such as rebinding console to a normal "~" and Flashlight Batteries (MP option?), plus the fact that he doesn't mind his game dark. Jonah Hex (aka [TFO]DogMeat to my MOHAA old mod friends
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Ummmm... You can... and it does.
:-)
If people would stop and think for a minute, they'd realise that taping the torch to the barrel of your gun means that you can only use that weapon with lighting. What if you want to quickly change weapons in a dark room? I admit, being able to use the torch with the pistol would have been good. Nethertheless, as it stands, playing Doom is a lot like playing the marine in Alien Vs Predator - which is one of the scariest damn games ever when you're alone at night.
The other key things to remember about Doom is that it's a dark game because it's dark where it's set - a sealed environment on Mars with no windows. When the power gets cut of course it's going to be dark. If you can't see even with the torch on, then make sure that your monitor is calibrated and there is little or preferably no ambient light - it's like taking a photo of something inside with a window visible - if the camera is set for outside (bright light around you) then the inside part of the scene will be underexposed (the monitor).
The flashlight intensity and pattern of this mod is controlled by a .tga file that acts as an alpha channel. I opened it in photoshop and used the circle gradient to make the spot larger with a softer edge (the one in the mod is way too small and hard edged). Add it back to the pk4 and make sure it retains the /lights path.
On a sidenote, this mod seems to screw up screenshots. I took 4 to show people and they were solid blue.
You can also have some fun with the .tga and have like 2 flashlights or give it a wide/narrow shape, etc.
One of the things any real soldier knows is that once you give your position away you MOVE. So a sniper never stays in one place after a shot (make note snipers who are suprised that after they shoot me I kill them in computer games). With night fighting the flash of your weapon means that after you fire a round you move since the enemy now knows exactly were you are.
Same deal really with search lights. Sure they make it easier to see but the poor guy operating it will probably be the first to die as he is the easiest to target.
Putting lights on your body or weapon is a big NO-NO. Why not just paint your self a big fluorescent target on your chest and be done with it?
The only ones who use lights on their guns are special forces like swat teams. They operate at such speed and with such overwhelming force that the enemy doesn't have time to respond. A swat team could go in with sirens on their head since they are not supposed to stay still and engage a heavily armed enemy.
Watch the movie ET and the opening scene where all the cops are walking with their flashlights shining. Now imagine they are soldiers and you are the enemy waiting in ambush. Who do you think is going to win?
There is also an other reason why not to use a flashlight at night. Your eyes can adjust to the dark and make use of what little light there is available. Start shining a flashlight around however and your eyes won't adjust. You will see very good in the small cone of the flashlight and be blind outside. Not good.
So lights on weapons or worse the body are a clear sign you are watching a movie. They can only really be used when you are reasonably certain that you are operating at such speed against a less prepared enemy that the giving away your position and presenting a brightly lit target makes up for you being able to see.
How does this relate to doom3? Well what happened is pretty realistic. The marine realises he is not in a normal combat scenario so he uses duct tape to adjust to the situation. So the question is not why the marins do not have lights on their weapons or body pre-fitted. The question is why ID did not give their soldier some duct-tape after he learned of the changed situation. Then again how many FPS have you seen where the hero tapes clips together for faster reload, tapes two guns together for extra fire power? We seen it in the movies, gotta be sound tactics or they wouldn't use it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It is in the future when they would think power should be readily available and everything is supposed to be brightly lit.
And humans still need a roughly 86-87 ks light-dark cycle to prime their bioclocks.
I thought body heat was enough. But then maybe the bad guys are room temperature...
What you and many other fanboys seem to misunderstand (or ignore) is that I'm not scared - I'm bored.
The 213th time a monster jumps out of a shadow it's not scary, it's tedious.
The game is pretty good, but it's kind of a one-trick pony in this regard.
Oh, look, more than three items on the floor. Must trigger a monster event... yep.
Oh, look, a dark room. Must trigger a monster event... yep.
Oh, look, the screen turned red... again...
To some extent this does improve later in the game, but I almost didn't make it that far. Not because I was "scared," but because I was bored.
The first time I heard that the Marine could use either the flashlight, or a weapon, but not both at the same time, I immediately thought of the Harries flashlight techinque.
Here's a page showing off the Harries technique, and a number of other methods of employing a light and a one-handed weapon at the same time.
www.themartialist.com/1203/fightwithlight.htm
Basically, you hold the flashlight in your 'weak' hand (the left, for most people), and the pistol in your strong hand. Cross your wrists and press the backs of your hands together, while holding the pistol up in a normal orientation.
Pressing the backs of your hands together makes the gun more stable. It's not quite as good as holding the gun in both hands (which you should do whenever possible); but better than just waving it around one-handed. As my instructor at Gunsite said "If you aren't pressing the backs of your hands together enough to hurt, you aren't doing it hard enough".
This works best with flashlights that have a pressure-switch on the tailcap, which you press with your thumb when you want light, and release when you want dark. (fastest on-off mechanism).
Light the target; shoot it, then *move*. Immediately be somewhere other than where your light came from. The FBI used to teach a method of holding your light way out at arm's length to the side, in the theory that the bad guy will shoot at the light and miss you. In practice, running around corners and through doors tends to bring the light near you anyway, so that theory didn't work out well in practice. Use both hands together for best effect, use your feet for what they were intended for (running away, if at all possible!)
Game companies should send FPS game designers off to Gunsite (www.gunsite.net) for a week of instruction with real firearms and real room-clearing techniques, before they come up with too many movie-esque notions of how guns work in the Real World.
--Redchrome
My father was in the military and he had rolls of tape called GUN tape. I didn't know what DUCT tape was until I realized it was the same stuff just silver and not green.
IMHO it should be called the Red Green Mod or RGM.