Just bought Doom 3.

[|darc|]

But as a Doom game, I miss the pentagrams, the demonic landscapes, and the overall sense of being in hell. This feels like I'm in a industrial facility that's going through hell.

I haven't beaten it yet, but from what I heard, you won't feel like that throughout the entire game (something will happen ).

[ace]

How do I go about "RAR"ing, I guess you could say, these files? When I double click the pk4 files, it gives me a .dll and a .conf file. What should I do?

[Nyarlathotep]

As for the game itself, it plays more like Quake 2 than a Doom game. Between mission objectives, the mechanical corridors and devices, and even the enemies themselves, I found myself constantly thinking I was playing Quake 2.

What I played of it seemed like a rip-off of Half Life 1, with its your first day at your new job 'plotline', following scientists into the toilets, having the same looped conversations with NPCs, scripted conversations between NPCs you can eavesdrop on, making your way to the center of the experiment room (or in this case the obsolete comms tower) where suddenly everything goes... a little caca (to quote sam beckett) and you have to retrace your steps through the corridors and rooms you just went through, except this time there are dead bodies everywhere and headcrabbed scientists, sorry, zombied scientists amongst the various debris and automatic doors that are just broken now, forcing you to go through vents instead.

Hell, they even reused the wallmounted, limited use only, health dispensers.

I didn't play it for long, but I was distinctly unimpressed - and if there aren't just huge rooms full of enemies later on, its clearly just not the same Doom gameplay - at most I saw 3 enemies at a time...

[az_bont]

I was reading a few people on Slashdot saying that the engine is so complex that you won't ever see more than 3 enemies on the screen.

[|darc|]

I was reading a few people on Slashdot saying that the engine is so complex that you won't ever see more than 3 enemies on the screen.

http://www.thekickback.com/files/lotsaimps/

Note: Settings are on absolute lowest possible.

[AmadeusZull]

doom 3 performance boost

I tried this and Im now runnig at 1280x1024 compared to 800x600 at the same settings.

"As all of you who allready have this game recognized the game is very slow even on new Computers.

I found out the reason for this and the solution to fix this problem.

As you already know after installation the game consits only of the doom3.exe and some .PK4 files. Those PK4 files includes the entire game (sounds, videos, textures etc.) in high compressed form.

Normally those files were decompresse during the game.

But this exactly is the problem. Even new CPUs are not able to decompress those files while running the game with good peformance and therfore the game runs very **** also on new computers. I don't know if the develpers of ID-Soft was just too stupid to think about this or if they have an agreement with some hardware manufacturing firms.

How to get around this problem:

It is very simple. Go to your Doom 3 installation directoy and get inside the folder "Base". There are some .PK4 files you have to open each of them with WinRAR 3.3 and extract their entire contents to the Base dir in you Doom 3 installation folder (replace all files if they are any duplicates). Now you have to delete all .PK4 files in the Base folder to prevent the game to use those compressed files agian.

Now the game starts and runs mutch faster!!!

Have fun playing Doom 3!!! "

untested by me but there is a 13 page thread about this. (penalty mp games wont work)

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmes ... c=15503352

[|darc|]

I saw that. I don't understand how that would even work. I tried it anyway, and it didn't work.

id wouldn't be that stupid.

[melancholy]

As for the game itself, it plays more like Quake 2 than a Doom game. Between mission objectives, the mechanical corridors and devices, and even the enemies themselves, I found myself constantly thinking I was playing Quake 2.

What I played of it seemed like a rip-off of Half Life 1

Yeah, I know, but I was trying to pick an ID game.

[Lartrak]

Wow. That test showing how it performs with higher numbers of enemies is extremely disappointing. Huge numbers of enemies is a big part of the Doom feel...

[melancholy]

doom 3 performance boost

I tried this and Im now runnig at 1280x1024 compared to 800x600 at the same settings.

"As all of you who allready have this game recognized the game is very slow even on new Computers.

I found out the reason for this and the solution to fix this problem.

As you already know after installation the game consits only of the doom3.exe and some .PK4 files. Those PK4 files includes the entire game (sounds, videos, textures etc.) in high compressed form.

Normally those files were decompresse during the game.

But this exactly is the problem. Even new CPUs are not able to decompress those files while running the game with good peformance and therfore the game runs very **** also on new computers. I don't know if the develpers of ID-Soft was just too stupid to think about this or if they have an agreement with some hardware manufacturing firms.

How to get around this problem:

It is very simple. Go to your Doom 3 installation directoy and get inside the folder "Base". There are some .PK4 files you have to open each of them with WinRAR 3.3 and extract their entire contents to the Base dir in you Doom 3 installation folder (replace all files if they are any duplicates). Now you have to delete all .PK4 files in the Base folder to prevent the game to use those compressed files agian.

Now the game starts and runs mutch faster!!!

Have fun playing Doom 3!!! "

untested by me but there is a 13 page thread about this. (penalty mp games wont work)

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmes ... c=15503352

OMFG!!! I simply cannot believe how much of a performance increase I got from doing this! Last night I was playing the game on Medium Setting for the graphics because High Setting was way too choppy to play. After doing this trick, I can now run the High Setting almost flawlessly. I'm amazed how much this trick helped! The only downside is the fact that the initial load time nearly doubles, but for the immense speed increase, I don't mind the extra wait.

*EDIT: One thing to keep in mind is that only the pak00*.pk4 files are extracted and removed. The game00.pk4 must stay in the directory, or else the game won't load beyond the main menu. I found this out through some tinkering.

[AmadeusZull]

been reading up on loads of people switching right away the resolution to 1024x786 after doing this.

hopefully there will be a fix so we can keep this trick and play mp games.

[Jeeba Jabba]

If you're feeling disappointed with DOOM3 and still want that classic, yet revamped feel of the original's gameplay.. Serious Sam ^^

[saber07]

been reading up on loads of people switching right away the resolution to 1024x786 after doing this.

hopefully there will be a fix so we can keep this trick and play mp games.

if you have the hard drive space, could you have another install of the game for multiplayer?

[AmadeusZull]

i'm sure an easier fix is just to rename those pk files. and when u need to play mp just rename them back. though thats another gig of space u will be wasting.

o yeah i tested it and the game runs wonderful now.

on low quality i could get my geForce 4 mx440 to play at 1024x786 reso (don't laugh darc)

[melancholy]

been reading up on loads of people switching right away the resolution to 1024x786 after doing this.

hopefully there will be a fix so we can keep this trick and play mp games.

if you have the hard drive space, could you have another install of the game for multiplayer?

You can keep the original .pk4 files in seperate folder from the base directory. Then if you wanted to play multiplayer, simply move the .pk4 files back. So it's really a matter of inconvenience than an issue of totally broken multiplayer.

[az_bont]

Maybe you could create some sort of batch file? Create a folder called "PAK" and try the following:

Code: Select all

* Multiplayer *

if exist *.pak move *.pak PAK

Code: Select all

* Single Player*

if not exist *.pak move PAK\*.pak .

Create a couple of shortcuts and you're set .

[Egotistical EvilN]

Isn't there a dos command based program called RAR?

Code: Select all

RAR extract pak*.pak

You could take it a step further:

Code: Select all

* Multiplayer *

if exist *.pak move *.pak PAK

doom3

Code: Select all

* Single Player*

if not exist *.pak move PAK\*.pak .

doom3

[az_bont]

Yeah, but the decompression/compression times would be awful, and you'd probably have a hard time re-constructing the PAK archives correctly.

[Egotistical EvilN]

I mean make a zip that would contain:

setup.bat (initial unraring into pak folder,then deletes itself and rar.exe)
multiplayer.bat (your multiplayer batch, then running doom 3)
singelplayer.bat (your multiplayer batch, then running doom 3)
rar.exe (initial setup)

[az_bont]

If I had Doom 3, I might. Feel free, though .