Anyone else play with RBDoom3?

[Average]

A new version has just recently released.  I've had a blast playing through the BFG edition with UltimateHD.  There are a couple of bugs that I've encountered but nothing really game breaking.  Though, I did have an issue with the teleporter door remaining locked.  I just noclipped through the door and the NPC kicked in and all was well.

 

All in all, I'd highly recommend it if you haven't played D3 in a while. :)

 

 

EDIT:  Thought I should maybe share a link - https://www.moddb.com/mods/rbdoom-3-bfg

Edited November 6, 2021 by Average

[Average]

I'm gonna guess not many! :P

 

Anyway, if this gets anyone's attention, why does my Doomguy have a super shiney head in RoE? 

[Lippeth]

I've played the previous version, though it's not really for me, I could never get the lighting to look right with it; either everything's hued to a turquoise color with those light flares or it's too bright or too dark, and I end up using CstDoom3-BFG for the extremely rare case of deciding to play the BFG Edition over Doom 3. I've always gotten screen tearing and motion sickness with BFG in general as well, and RBDoom3 didn't help with that.

 

Downloading the massive 6GB newest version now to try it out. I always like checking out new mods though, even updates to older ones, thanks for the heads up!

[Arl]

22 hours ago, Average said:

I'm gonna guess not many! :P

 

Anyway, if this gets anyone's attention, why does my Doomguy have a super shiney head in RoE? 

 

Shiney? maybe a pic can give us some visual insight about what could be happening.

 

 

11 hours ago, Lippeth said:

I've played the previous version, though it's not really for me, I could never get the lighting to look right with it; either everything's hued to a turquoise color with those light flares or it's too bright or too dark, and I end up using CstDoom3-BFG for the extremely rare case of deciding to play the BFG Edition over Doom 3. I've always gotten screen tearing and motion sickness with BFG in general as well, and RBDoom3 didn't help with that.

 

Downloading the massive 6GB newest version now to try it out. I always like checking out new mods though, even updates to older ones, thanks for the heads up!

 

 

RBDoom3 has very neat console commands to control the look of the game. I'm also drawn out by the flares and the filmic post processing, but both can be disabled: The grainy filmic effect from the menu and the blue horizontal flares with 'r_skipbloom 1'.

 

The lighting can also be tweaked with 'r_lightscale #' and other settings like gamma and brightness, and since the console remembers the commands you use and writes them in a log, you can set those stuff for good.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Arl

[Lippeth]

I messed with the update for a while, and while I still don't like the general look of everything even after disabling post processing and all that, after reading about it on their ModDB page, it's quite an impressive endeavor. This might be one of those cases where I like to read and talk about it more than actually experiencing it, and I see a lot of modding potential. the updated Quake 3 light grids and the indirect lighting are absolutely awesome, though they seem to be a detriment to Doom 3's level design, and would benefit more with maps that were designed with irradiance volumes in mind. Still an impressive project!

[zmodder]

I have been playing it because 1) it supports mods and 2) it supports linux.

[Average]

Yeah, I'm a mapping and modding ignoramous so the Trenchbroom support and the like won't help me much.  I really do hope it inspires some people, though.  There really does seem to be a lot of potential for the future.

 

I hadn't tried Cst for a really long time.  I dl'd it earlier and I've been mucking about with it.  I think I'll keep it installed along with RB as both offer different vibes regarding lighting.

 

@Arl Sorry.  I could've been a little clearer in my description.  Here're a couple of screenies for you:

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Average
Forgot details - again.

[Average]

The shiney thing is only on the player model.  Everything else seems fine.  There are a couple of player-interactive panels on some doors and bridges that seem awfully bright to the point it's hard to read the text.  That happens in D3, Roe and LM so I'm not sure it'll mean much to you.  I'll grab a couple of screenies of that effect the next time I come across one in-game, if you like.

[Lippeth]

So I'm converting a Doom 3 patch I have to work with RBDoom3 and it mostly works out of the box, but vanilla sounds seem to be taking priority most of the time if the modded sounds share the same file name, and it seems to outright refuse to play ogg sounds, replacing it with the default beep until I disable it.

 

Does anyone know if there's a way to ensure the mod takes all priority or will I need to simply rename sound files and sound shader defs, and convert ogg to wave? I'm fairly novice with BFGisms, and I wonder if I've just set the batch file poorly.

[Arl]

@Average oh, what the heck...   Does this also happen in the intro cinematic? are you using any mods?

 

@LippethAs far as I know, ogg is not supported in BFG Edition nor in any other source port.

[Average]

@Arl It does, indeed, happen in the intro.  I'm using Doom 3 BFG Hi Def.  I've updated it to 3.3 (latest patch).  Dunno if it means anything but I have a nVidia GPU (1080ti) with the latest drivers.

 

It's really weird that the only thing affected like that is his head.  I'm sure it'll turn out to be user error - it usually is!

[Arl]

If you are using the latest RBDoom3 release, note that there are heavy changes to rendering now, so the stuff present in that mod may be causing this. Maybe textures or probably something regarding the material definition of that head. 

 

 

[Average]

My smooth brain finally decided that I should try running it without the Hi Def pack.  And, yeah, the head's fine.  I don't have a clue about how all the material stuff works (I'm old!) but is it something I could tweak somewhere or should I report it as a bug somewhere?   Sorry to be a burden.

 

Anyway, that aside, for me RBD3 and Hi Def is a pretty definitive way to play - and not in a GTA kinda way!  The lighting in Cst seems to be a bit more faithful to the original and I do like the 'crouch toggle' but my eyes prefer the lighting in RBD as I don't have to strain quite as much. For the first time in years I've played through D3, RoE and LM back to back so it must be doing something right! :P

[Lippeth]

The lighting in RBDoom3 still catches me off guard, everything's just so well lit, and for Doom 3 I don't know how to feel about that, but overall it's cool to look at and I just powered through Lost Mission to fully test it out. The way certain lights reflect off the weapons is strange and looks almost like subsurface scattering at certain points, but 90% of the time it looks really good. The only thing that looked unintentional was the floor in the last level.

 

When you first mentioned RBDoom3 I think I had it confused with Doom BFA, but they seem very similar. Are they at all related? Doom 3 mod naming schemes are confusing sometimes.

[Arl]

On 11/19/2021 at 8:43 AM, Average said:

is it something I could tweak somewhere or should I report it as a bug somewhere?

 

I depends on the nature of the issue, but notifying the author of Hi Def of any problem his mod have with the newest RBDoom3 release is also appropriate.

 

On 11/19/2021 at 5:14 PM, Lippeth said:

everything's just so well lit, and for Doom 3 I don't know how to feel about that

 

Have you tried playing with 'r_forceAmbient' and 'r_lightscale'?

[Lippeth]

41 minutes ago, Arl said:

Have you tried playing with 'r_forceAmbient' and 'r_lightscale'?

Yeah no I mean I like it, it's just that it's a big difference from the infamous dark look of the original. I set r_lightscale to 2 so the skin textures on npcs don't look so washed out, but I really love the ambient lighting. It turns out all the issues I recalled having were from Doom3BFA, thinking it was RBDoom3.

 

I'm having a lot of fun messing around with this port and all the console commands, and am still fighting with the way sound shaders seem to work. I can't find a reference for them like the default def files they've included, and the only way to get new sounds to override old ones is to name them something unique and define the shader. I'm not sure if fs_resourceLoadPriority has something to do with it, but the guide I read about it says that setting it to zero will put fs_game first and will let the base folder fill in the rest. After changing it to 1, I can see that they're right, but it still plays the original sound if I name the new audio file the same as the original and I don't fully understand why.

[Arl]

Maybe you could ask Robert, the port's author himself, what's the deal with audio in BFG Ed, since he's interesting in supporting modding.

[Lippeth]

I'll contact him about that for sure. In the meantime I discovered the extract_resources.cfg that he (or one/some of the devs) was nice enough to include, which provides the exact references I was looking for.

[Lippeth]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but after playing through the main game and both expansions with RBDoom3, it was very hard to go back to the original Doom3.exe. Sorry for the double post but I think I just like talking about it.

 

Doom 3 BFG Edition was always impossible for me to get into, mainly because of screen tearing. I thought I had done everything possible to mitigate it, but no matter what I did, it continued to tear. This made any mod or content impossible to enjoy with BFG Edition, but it turns out that instead of setting r_mode to -1 like in Doom 3, I had to set r_vidMode to -1 (wow such different, though the new variable name is more descriptive). Anyway, since then I've been really enjoying RBDoom3 and the extra high framerate of BFG in general. I never actually played through all of Doom 3 or RoE with BFG before, and am surprised they removed certain monster placements like the two zsec guys at the top of the bridge in Alpha Labs 4 (I always considered that an iconic set piece), the imps that drop down in Recycling 2 or the forgotten souls in Erebus 3, but they kept the endless train of cherubs.

 

The high frame rate and decent sound handling of BFG edition combined with RBDoom 3's lighting system is quite an amazing experience. I went backwards and started with The Lost Mission, then RoE, and finally Doom 3. I had to unlearn a few habits formed with the original Doom 3, but now I'm finding it hard to go back, and I want to thank you again for the recommendation, Average!

 

I did try out that Hidef mod and experienced the same wet plastic faced RoE marine that you did. All in all I have a hard time enjoying retexture mods in general, but I still plan to give it another chance sometime.

 

Edit: Apparently the cause of my screen tearing issue was being in fullscreen. By using a program called Borderless Gaming to run in a borderless windowed mode, any trace of tearing is now gone. Hooray!

 

And something I've just noticed is that only the first five sounds defined in any sound shader will play. s_maxSamples also defaults to 5, but if set to 0 or a higher number, it will either play nothing when the sound is supposed to play, or play the default beep if it's enabled. It makes me think the BFG devs only converted the first five sounds for every shader in the game, and if I want them to play I'll need to convert the rest, but I'm desperately hoping there's a simpler solution.

 

It's quite frustrating to say the least.

Edited November 26, 2021 by Lippeth

[Average]

@Lippeth I'm glad you're enjoying your time with it.  On the other hand, I've now got two games going - one with RB and one Cst.  Thanks to you, I've rediscovered the dark spookiness of D3.  It's actually really cool to have lots of ways to enjoy the game these days.

 

That screwed up texture in the picture above never happened to me.  Did you find out what was causing it?

 

I agree with you regarding texture replacements and I tend to stay clear of them, too.  But, for whatever reason, I really like the hidef pack in this case.  Maybe it's just the freshness of a texture update to go along with the lighting update in RB.  

 

PS:  Thanks for making a compatible version of WoMD.  I hope you get your frustrations sorted regarding the sound shader thingy.

 

@Arl Do you know the best place to contact Robert?  I'd like to let him know the shader issue with the shiny head and the overly bright buttons.

[Arl]

10 hours ago, Average said:

@Arl Do you know the best place to contact Robert?  I'd like to let him know the shader issue with the shiny head and the overly bright buttons.

 

 

Yes, his #RBDoom3 channel on the Idtech 4 discord server: https://discord.gg/Q3E9rUFnnP

[Average]

Cool beans.  I'll join up after the chess is finished. :)

[CBM]

wow that screenshot, the head looks way off