Arl's improvements.

[Arl]

Hi, I though that I may post this here as well, for who ever may find interest.

Moddb Page with downloads: http://www.moddb.com/mods/arls-improvements

I'm trying to improve some graphical aspects of Doom 3 that for todays standards are a bit annoying, but not implementing any changes that way come from a personal taste decision (or at least I'm trying not to).


The more laborious and most important feature so far, improved hands of npcs, zombies, etc:

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Zombies look better now without that 3 fingered/crabclaw looking hand:

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As you may have noticed, I used the first person hand model as a base for all the replacements.


Some graphic improvements:

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Edited May 15, 2017 by Arl

[Arl]

HD 16:9 splash screens (WIP):

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HD icons, one like the original and a variant:

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Other changes:

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These are some thing I'm planing to do:

-Replace weapon's item models with more detailed version using the first person models.
-Improve the meshes of any head that looks too blocky.

There's still work to be done, but this is already going somewhere I guess. Sorry for not being quite clear about what this is all about, hopefully you can assume that this is just another graphic improvement mod on the way. I'm most than open to suggestion of what else could I try to improve.


Hope you like what you see so far, Saludos.

[Tetzlaff]

Looks great so far! Did you also find a solution for the distortion of the Mars planet model in the main menu in widescreen mode?

[snapshot]

Good work, this would be better than sikkmod, Sikkmod basically eliminated the need to flashlight =P .

[Avoozl]

  On 4/6/2016 at 9:30 PM, Arl said:

http://i.imgur.com/dovO7Yu.jpg

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But now the dark side of Mars no longer has the fire effect.

[Face23785]

Try not to fuck with the lighting too much. I love making the character models and things look better, but other graphics mods tend to go overboard trying to "improve" the lighting effects.

[Arl]

Thanks all for your words.

  On 4/7/2016 at 4:32 AM, Tetzlaff said:

Looks great so far! Did you also find a solution for the distortion of the Mars planet model in the main menu in widescreen mode?

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Sadly no, I just streched the image in those pictures.

  On 4/7/2016 at 7:13 AM, Avoozl said:

But now the dark side of Mars no longer has the fire effect.

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The image is not finished yet, there's a lot of work still to be done in that splash.

  On 4/7/2016 at 6:40 AM, DMGUYDZ64 said:

Good work, this would be better than sikkmod, Sikkmod basically eliminated the need to flashlight =P .

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  On 4/7/2016 at 7:15 AM, Face23785 said:

Try not to fuck with the lighting too much. I love making the character models and things look better, but other graphics mods tend to go overboard trying to "improve" the lighting effects.

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I'm not touching the render engine or how the game handles lighting at all, this project only cover graphics such as models, textures, etc...

[Shaviro]

I like these nice subtle changes. You seem to "get" the engine and what it means to improve the resolution/fidelity and still have the art be consistent with itself. Great work!

[RUSH]

Excellent work! I like all these changes. Subtle but clearer and overall improved.

[Pencil of Doom]

These look so much better, also a suggestion, make the arms and hands a bit more muscular in fps mode while holding weapons in particular the fists and the shotgun if possible, they look skinny to me.

[spamclark15]

Nice job on the much higher resolution versons of the UAC posters. Did you have to redraw them?

[Marnetmar]

Do you plan on using the alpha shotgun for this?

[Xerge]

Good work, really looking forward to it. I suppose this will only be a graphics mod leaving other aspects of the game intact? I hope so, because I like Doom 3 the way it is, The darkness and the lack of ducktape for the flashlight never bothered me, in fact I think this contributed to build a better atmosphere since the game is supposed to be a survival horror fps.

[Arl]

  On 4/7/2016 at 9:43 AM, Shaviro said:

I like these nice subtle changes. You seem to "get" the engine and what it means to improve the resolution/fidelity and still have the art be consistent with itself. Great work!

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  On 4/7/2016 at 1:45 PM, RUSH said:

Excellent work! I like all these changes. Subtle but clearer and overall improved.

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Thank you, I'm glad you liked it so far.


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  On 4/7/2016 at 8:22 PM, J.B.R said:

These look so much better, also a suggestion, make the arms and hands a bit more muscular in fps mode while holding weapons in particular the fists and the shotgun if possible, they look skinny to me.

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I think that would be too much of a personal taste change. Besides, it would take lots of meshes to edit, every weapon has its own arms model.


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  On 4/9/2016 at 5:42 AM, spamclark15 said:

Nice job on the much higher resolution versons of the UAC posters. Did you have to redraw them?

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I would say "recompose", but you can say there is a bit of drawing there, I used several different images, and tracking original sources helps.


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  On 4/9/2016 at 4:07 PM, Marnetmar said:

Do you plan on using the alpha shotgun for this?

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Not really, that would force people to use the alpha shotgun too, which is a 'personal change', and maybe they just want the other stuff. You can use both separately, however.


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  On 4/9/2016 at 6:54 PM, Xerge said:

Good work, really looking forward to it. I suppose this will only be a graphics mod leaving other aspects of the game intact? I hope so, because I like Doom 3 the way it is, The darkness and the lack of ducktape for the flashlight never bothered me, in fact I think this contributed to build a better atmosphere since the game is supposed to be a survival horror fps.

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Thank you, and don't worry, I'm not changing gameplay elements or anything like that. Other mods can be used for that, and there's plenty of them already, my stuff consists of minor enhancements with no impact on how the game behaves or looks overall.

[snapshot]

Currently it looks like it's going to be just another Perfected Doom 3 mod .

[Tetzlaff]

  On 4/10/2016 at 12:29 PM, DMGUYDZ64 said:

Currently it looks like it's going to be just another Perfected Doom 3 mod .

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Why that? Perfected Doom 3 adds a bunch of stuff that considerably changes the look and gameplay mechanics of Doom 3. It's like everything the author thought would look cool thrown together coupled with random unbalanced weapon and monster modifications.

What Arl does is adding subtle graphical improvements while staying true to the original style of the game. I like that.

[gameragodzilla]

The only thing I really care about at this point, and it's not even that important, is improved models. The lighting still holds up, I installed the Wulfen and Monoxead texture pack to improve the textures, I installed the Trent Reznor sound pack and Phrozo particle effects mod to improve the effects, and I already made all the gameplay changes I wanted. The only thing preventing Doom 3 from still looking like a modern title is the relatively low polycount for the models, and smoothing those out are the only things I feel are necessary.

[Arl]

I'm messing around a bit with textures to see if it's feasible to start improving the textures of some characters. I'm realising that a lot of work results in no more than a very subtle improvement, and no matter what it seems that I'm unable to take it further:





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  On 4/10/2016 at 5:24 PM, Tetzlaff said:

Why that? Perfected Doom 3 adds a bunch of stuff that considerably changes the look and gameplay mechanics of Doom 3. It's like everything the author thought would look cool thrown together coupled with random unbalanced weapon and monster modifications.

What Arl does is adding subtle graphical improvements while staying true to the original style of the game. I like that.

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Indeed, you got it right.

  On 4/10/2016 at 7:19 PM, gameragodzilla said:

The only thing I really care about at this point, and it's not even that important, is improved models. The lighting still holds up, I installed the Wulfen and Monoxead texture pack to improve the textures, I installed the Trent Reznor sound pack and Phrozo particle effects mod to improve the effects, and I already made all the gameplay changes I wanted. The only thing preventing Doom 3 from still looking like a modern title is the relatively low polycount for the models, and smoothing those out are the only things I feel are necessary.

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Agreed, Id was very strict with the models' poly count back in the day. Sadly, improving that aspect is one of the hardest task.

[gameragodzilla]

Yeah I can imagine. I did see one mode that smoothed out the heads of people like Betruger, Swann, Sarge, and the Imps, but it screwed up Swann's head in one scripted event in Administration where his head literally did not spawn at all.

I can't find the link of the mod at the moment, but it might be worth checking out if you can find it.

[spamclark15]

  On 4/12/2016 at 5:07 AM, gameragodzilla said:

Yeah I can imagine. I did see one mode that smoothed out the heads of people like Betruger, Swann, Sarge, and the Imps, but it screwed up Swann's head in one scripted event in Administration where his head literally did not spawn at all.

I can't find the link of the mod at the moment, but it might be worth checking out if you can find it.

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That sounds hilarious. I need a video of headless Swann.

[gameragodzilla]

  On 4/12/2016 at 3:24 PM, spamclark15 said:

That sounds hilarious. I need a video of headless Swann.

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I remember what the mod was called. Enhanced Doom 3 models. Dunno where to find it standalone, though. I got my copy originally through Doom 3 Filefront, but I think that's down.

[Avoozl]

  On 4/13/2016 at 12:06 PM, gameragodzilla said:

I got my copy originally through Doom 3 Filefront, but I think that's down.

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It's still available there: http://www.gamefront.com/files/10071988/Enhanced_Doom_3_models__1_1_

[gameragodzilla]

  On 4/13/2016 at 1:02 PM, Avoozl said:

It's still available there: http://www.gamefront.com/files/10071988/Enhanced_Doom_3_models__1_1_

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Ah cool. There it is. As I mentioned before, when I used it, Swann's head neglected to spawn in one scripted event, so hopefully Arl can take this and implement it into his graphical improvements.

I don't even think smoothing out the monsters are all that necessary as they're supposed to look inhuman. Simply making people like Swann's, Betruger's, or Campbell's heads smoothed out is good enough IMO.

[Arl]

  On 4/13/2016 at 5:22 PM, gameragodzilla said:

Ah cool. There it is. As I mentioned before, when I used it, Swann's head neglected to spawn in one scripted event, so hopefully Arl can take this and implement it into his graphical improvements.

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I'll not be using other mod assets (if that's what you mean, I'm not sure), I already made improved head meshes for most characters myself. I even played all the Administration map and I can say that everything went perfect with Swann's head so far.

 

  On 4/13/2016 at 5:22 PM, gameragodzilla said:

I don't even think smoothing out the monsters are all that necessary as they're supposed to look inhuman. Simply making people like Swann's, Betruger's, or Campbell's heads smoothed out is good enough IMO.

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I agree, I will only take a look at some of the most noticeable low poly issues, like the imp's head, I guess we can all agree that that head is very 'triangular'.

Edited December 5, 2018 by Arl

[gameragodzilla]

  On 4/13/2016 at 8:44 PM, Arl said:

I'll not be using other mod assets (if that's what you mean, I'm not sure), I already made improved head meshes for most characters myself. I even played all the Administration map and I can say that everything went perfect with Swann's head so far.




I'm agree, I will only take a look at some of the most noticeable low poly issues, like the imp's head, I guess we can all agree that that head is very 'triangular'.

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Oh cool. Can't wait to try it then. I do hope it'll be compatible with other mods, though. Was a bitch to get the DB Shotgun mod working with Phrozo when I made it.

As for the imp, I didn't mind it as it's clearly not meant to be human. Monsters come in all weird shapes and sizes. Of course, it's appreciated that you took the effort nonetheless.

As for the Swann head thing: the area I'm referring to is the section in Administration where you see Swann and Campbell at the network thingy saying they can't stop a transmission there. Right before you get William Bank's PDA. Swann's head didn't spawn for some reason there so it was just some headless dude talking to Campbell. Was weird. If you don't have that issue with your mod, that's fantastic.

[Phrozo]

Hey Arl.

Great work with the improved models and textures. I really like the new menu/load screen textures.

[Tritnew]

Really gives It a fresh look, I like It.

[Dafama2k7]

Very good work, @Arl !!! This is a very hard work, well done !

[XenoRad]

Hello,

I've been lurking for a while but wanted to register to say thanks for looking into these small but I'd say very significant improvements.

If with a few subtle changes you can manage to improve the look of all the characters (including monster) and guns that would be a great achievement, although a very hard one.


Throughout the years I've been modding Doom 3 in such a way as to keep it as faithful as possible to its original design while improving it without breaking immersion. What you're doing fits right into that, so thank you.


The issue I found with Doom 3 modding is that despite the quality of the mods and the dedication of the people working on them they pretty much all lead to breaking immersion in one way or the other.

If they're texture mods, they don't cover all the textures and this leads to ugly situations of having high and low res textures right next to each other.

If they're graphics mods, they either don't make much of a difference or still have bugs.

If they're gameplay mods, they're either not well balanced or take the game in a different direction to what was intended.

Basically lots of good quality work, but either unfinished or bundled with lesser quality work.

I'm frustrated that after 12 years of Doom 3, the BFG Edition ended up being worse and we couldn't join forces to create one mod that would totally overhaul the game while keeping the original spirit.


I do hope we may achieve this one day and I hope it will be sooner than later. Doom 4 could only revive interest in Doom 3 for so long I fear ...

[Phrozo]

You can't please everyone, and it's really frustrating to put a lot of work into a mod only to see it get nitpicked to death. Mods are released for a variety of reasons but I have always released works with the intent and hope that people might mod it themselves or use the assets however they see fit. So if they have issues with it then they really should learn to mod or just move on.