So...about the disappearing corpses

[MrGlide]

@Xasar, wow man I never knew that, I always wondered why that would happen.
@tou I wonder what the average polycount for the darksouls 3 and bloodborne models are vs Doom'16s.

[tuo]

MrGlide said:

@Xasar, wow man I never knew that, I always wondered why that would happen.
@tou I wonder what the average polycount for the darksouls 3 and bloodborne models are vs Doom'16s.

Hard to say nowadays since most models are much lower in polycount than they look, as devs no longer try to push the boundaries regarding polycount (at least most).

Still I guess the polycount from Soulsborne is a fair bit lower than from Doom.

[TheGamePhilosophe]

id.dav said:

And yet human corpses stayed in Rage, a game developed for an outdated consoles. I think that well known ragdoll dance was the main reason they decided to completely remove any corpse. BTW that ragdoll dance inherited from Rage, however in Rage it was very rare glitch)

And once again, RAGE proves to be the high-water mark of id's technical achievements in the 21st century.

[TheZombieKiller]

If you're absolutely dead-set on disabling the corpse fade, try taking a look in gameresources.resources/generated/decls/entitydef/ai/default.decl

It has a section that looks like the following:

death = {
	ignoreDamageType = "DAMAGETYPE_EMP";
	removeTime = 4000;
	fadeOutTime = 3;
	canBecomeInjured = false;
}

And in various other decl files in the entitydef directory you'll see things like this:

fadeTime = 3;
fadeDelay = 5;

and this:

fadeAndRemoval = {
	fadeAfterMS = 4000;
	removeAfterMS = 1000;
	fxCondition = "FX_START_DEATH_2";
}

Grab a copy of DOOMExtract and play around. I give you no guarantee that it will work though, I haven't personally tried it and I don't currently have the time to.

[sheridan]

Corpses are removed to reduce draw calls, not polycounts. It used to be that render times increased somewhat linearly with the number of polys in the scene, but this is no longer the case. Modern gpus can render millions of polygons a second before they even begin breaking a sweat. Trouble is, when you've got literally thousands of distinct objects populating your scene, each with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of polys to render, sending a draw call for each of these polys from the cpu to the gpu literally causes the bus linking the two systems to become the bottleneck in your app. So, you have to get clever and learn to store the geometry for whole meshes on your video card so you can render entire objects with one draw call rather than force-feeding your gpu one poly at a time, but even that only helps somewhat, since modern games often have up to 2000 distinct objects that must be drawn in any given scene, causing the bus from cpu->gpu to remain a bottleneck even with these improvements.

It's worth mentioning that back in the days of the original doom, the weakness of the cpu, plus the fact that all the drawing happened there rather than with a split architecture, plus the relative simplicity of the scenes in doom, meant that orders of magnitude more time would be spent rendering objects than passing them off to get drawn on the screen. So this modern draw call bottleneck wouldn't become the real problem for another 10-15 years, when 3d cards were popular and scenes were starting to get really complex.

So, yeah. Like others have said, the bodies in doom unfortunately must disintegrate for technical reasons, and you likely wouldn't enjoy having them stay as much as you think you would. But that isn't necessarily because your gpu is too weak in and of itself. Literally the way cpu->gpu architecture works is the biggest source of the problem there, and until we can afford to unify the cpu->gpu arch for a majority of computers (or just invent a better division of work between the two units), this is probably the way it's gonna be for a while.

[MTF Sergeant]

Nope. By far no one has tried to.

Ask Bethesda. They might know the answer!

[TheZombieKiller]

AbhinandAnilDoomguy said:

Nope. By far no one has tried to.

Ask Bethesda. They might know the answer!

Bethesda didn't develop Doom 4.

[Wario64]

If Quake in 1996 could do it, why can't DOOM in 2016?

[snapshot]

Because Multiple High poly corpses/models at the same small area would ruin your Framerate.

[MrGlide]

Not to mention we don't know the stats on how the in game lighting effects play out on these models. While Doom'16s lighting is great, the models require dynamic lighting. The more things lying around that require dynamic lighting, the more you're computer is going to have troubles keeping up. I'm sure if it was a viable option, there would be an option for it to stay on.

[Wario64]

The same was true for Quake in 1996.

[Jaxxoon R]

I'd say the previous posts making up this thread explain pretty well why there aren't any disappearing corpses in this game.

[Wario64]

1 hour ago, Jaxxoon R said:

I'd say the previous posts making up this thread explain pretty well why there aren't any disappearing corpses in this game.

All they say is that computers wouldn't handle it even though there is bazillion games which do not have dissapearing corpses and computers can handle them with ease.

[Arctangent]

And all you're saying that a game that has low-poly models walking around fairly basic 3D environments using vertex animations ( including static death animations - no ragdolling for at least a couple years ) that was initially designed to be rendered with a pallete and rendered torch fire using models being able to keep a lot of enemy corpses on the ground ( which it ... really couldn't, there's a reason why you don't get huge groups of enemies in one place in the vanilla game ) somehow proves that a game with far more complex levels, models and animations that are at least a hundred times more data-consuming that what was used in 1996, and that has dynamic dismemberment. With quite a lot of pieces to it. Not to mention stuff like post-processing, colored lighting, lighting that's not part of a lightmap in the first place ...

 

Oh, yeah, and one was a PC exclusive for a while whereas the other was designed to make sure it could run on consoles.

[Jaxxoon R]

 

Quote

All they say is that computers wouldn't handle it even though there is bazillion games which do not have dissapearing corpses and computers can handle them with ease.

 

If that's all you've gleamed from this then I don't know what to tell you. More than likely you won't be satisfied with the same answers you'll just be given again. So it's probably not worth the effort to discuss it, else we all become shrieking woodwinds.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Jaxxoon R
ffs formatting is hard

[Wario64]

18 hours ago, Arctangent said:

And all you're saying that a game that has low-poly models walking around fairly basic 3D environments using vertex animations ( including static death animations - no ragdolling for at least a couple years ) that was initially designed to be rendered with a pallete and rendered torch fire using models being able to keep a lot of enemy corpses on the ground ( which it ... really couldn't, there's a reason why you don't get huge groups of enemies in one place in the vanilla game ) somehow proves that a game with far more complex levels, models and animations that are at least a hundred times more data-consuming that what was used in 1996, and that has dynamic dismemberment. With quite a lot of pieces to it. Not to mention stuff like post-processing, colored lighting, lighting that's not part of a lightmap in the first place ...

 

Oh, yeah, and one was a PC exclusive for a while whereas the other was designed to make sure it could run on consoles.

I don't understand how Quake having worse graphics has anything to do with anything. You seem to forget Quake also had to run at worse COMPUTERS.

 

There is a huge list of games with non-dissapearing corpses. Even have a game from the same publisher that came out just two years before DOOM - Wolfenstein: The New Order. And it didn't have dissapearing corpses, unless you piled up a fuckton of bodies. And that game looks way prettier than DOOM.

 

Hell, RAGE was even developed by the same studio. AND it was open world. And it still didn't have dissapearing corpses.

 

These games didn't struggle with non-dissapearing corpses, then why should DOOM? DOOM doesn't do anything differently.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Wario64

[Trycon]

Real reason why bodies disappear.....

 

Their respawning. You're actually killing the same guy over and over again.

 

Crazy amiright

Edited March 16, 2017 by Trycon

[Bauul]

Honestly I suspect it's because id struggle with ragdolls.  They always have.  They can get human enemies just about ok, but the weird and wonderful shapes in Doom 2016 likely just don't work reliably.  

 

Plus, some are huge, and they'd have to pick between ones you can just walk through (immersion breaking), ones that are solid but have no weight so you can kick them out of the way (immersion breaking), or ones that are solid and have proper weight (not immersion breaking, but potentially gameplay breaking).  All are crap ideas.

 

Dark Souls was mentioned above, and it's worth remembering that it phases out all bodies over the basic humanoid shape for exactly the same reason.

 

Far easier to just warp them out entirely and save some CPU power in the process.

[Arctangent]

2 hours ago, Wario64 said:

I don't understand how Quake having worse graphics has anything to do with anything. You seem to forget Quake also had to run at worse COMPUTERS.

Yes, on worse computers that struggled to run it. Having corpses disappear would've eased the burden for those computers - I doubt it would've done too much, but rendering fewer polygons when those require operations that were particularly expensive for computers of the day to compute would improve performance without a doubt, not to mention it'd free up memory that was being used to store the enemy object.

 

You seem to be unable to comprehend that lower systems requirements are a good thing. Corpses play no actual gameplay role in Doom 2016, so you lose absolutely nothing to have them fade away. What you gain, however, is allowing weaker systems to play it, which, y'know, is generally a really good thing, especially if you're reviving an old franchise and a significant amount of people think you'll mess it up.

2 hours ago, Wario64 said:

And it didn't have dissapearing corpses, unless you piled up a fuckton of bodies.

So, basically, what you're saying is that it used the same system, but made it incredibly game-y and immersion breaking, because instead of having interdimensional creatures that burn away when brutally killed, you have these humans that leave behind bodies like any normal human does, except once there's an arbitrary amount of dead dudes on the ground they start getting magically whisked to the fae dimension for who-knows-what-reason? Hmmmmmmmmm.

[Wario64]

11 hours ago, Bauul said:

Honestly I suspect it's because id struggle with ragdolls.  They always have.  They can get human enemies just about ok, but the weird and wonderful shapes in Doom 2016 likely just don't work reliably.  

 

Plus, some are huge, and they'd have to pick between ones you can just walk through (immersion breaking), ones that are solid but have no weight so you can kick them out of the way (immersion breaking), or ones that are solid and have proper weight (not immersion breaking, but potentially gameplay breaking).  All are crap ideas.

 

Dark Souls was mentioned above, and it's worth remembering that it phases out all bodies over the basic humanoid shape for exactly the same reason.

 

Far easier to just warp them out entirely and save some CPU power in the process.

Thank you. Finally a sensible answer

[Houndoom]

On 9/8/2016 at 10:22 PM, Sig said:

Why would you want that anyway?

I'd want it to feel victorious as this guy.

[Man of Doom]

On 3/16/2017 at 6:13 PM, Wario64 said:

There is a huge list of games with non-dissapearing corpses. Even have a game from the same publisher that came out just two years before DOOM - Wolfenstein: The New Order. And it didn't have dissapearing corpses, unless you piled up a fuckton of bodies. 

 

Well, for Wolf:TNO, it seemed to depend on the size of the corpses. The bodies of rank-and-file enemies like soldiers and dogs were likely to stay indefinitely, whereas giant bodies like Supersoldaten and guard robots were more likely to fade away.
That being said though, I have the Xbox One of Wolf:TNO, and I recall that during the moon mission, I killed a bunch of soldiers in a narrow set of corridors, as well as a couple of Supersoldaten, and all of their corpses remained, meaning I could stack up bodies like cordwood if I so desired in that section.

 

On 3/16/2017 at 6:13 PM, Wario64 said:

Hell, RAGE was even developed by the same studio. AND it was open world. And it still didn't have dissapearing corpses.

 

Actually, RAGE did have disappearing corpses, it just wasn't really the case for human enemies. For most kinds of mutant enemies you would encounter, their bodies would melt and fade into a black goo a short while after you killed them.

 

On 3/16/2017 at 6:54 PM, Bauul said:

Honestly I suspect it's because id struggle with ragdolls.  They always have.  They can get human enemies just about ok, but the weird and wonderful shapes in Doom 2016 likely just don't work reliably.  

 

Plus, some are huge, and they'd have to pick between ones you can just walk through (immersion breaking), ones that are solid but have no weight so you can kick them out of the way (immersion breaking), or ones that are solid and have proper weight (not immersion breaking, but potentially gameplay breaking).  All are crap ideas.

 

Dark Souls was mentioned above, and it's worth remembering that it phases out all bodies over the basic humanoid shape for exactly the same reason.

 

Far easier to just warp them out entirely and save some CPU power in the process.

This is pretty much what I have been telling people for a while now. For whatever reason, the physics engine in Doom 2016 is extremely wonky, as corpses getting stuck in walls or floors after performing a glory kill would be commonplace. As for the argument of larger corpses breaking immersion, I've come to discover that pretty much all corpses are not solid (at least, the ones that enemies leave behind).

I do have a counterargument for the immersion-breaking factor:
While being able to walk through large corpses would potentially be immersion breaking, the fact that they always burn away (sometimes before their death animation is complete) is just as immersion breaking, chiefly due to the fact that there are SEVERAL instances of demons have left behind corpses in the campaign, which include, but are likely not limited to:

Foundry: Several Possessed Scientists/Soldiers have been killed in the area that's been locked by a blue keycard, and their bodies all lay in said area.
Kadingir Sanctum: Just before the first arena fight, there is a carcass of a long-dead Mancubus nearby.
Destroyed Argent Facility: To get the yellow keycard, you basically have to pry it from the jaws of a Pinky who inexplicably died choking on the corpse that it was chewing on (that's just one theory). It's not asleep, either, as it's not breathing, and you can just shoot it without any consequences.
Lazarus Labs: To access a hatch below a stuck elevator, you have to directly interact with an Imp's corpse, namely by pulling it down and throwing it away (it doesn't burn away). Later, you have the Mancubus corpse being operated on by a surgery bot.
Necropolis: As a tribute to OG Doom, you have several instances of dead Barons that have been mutilated and strung up.

As an added bonus, in the multiplayer map Helix (AKA that one map with a Cyberdemon in a tank), there's the corpse of a pre-release Imp lying there in the room to the right of the main control room.

 

With all of that out of the way, with modding tools for Doom 2016 quickly becoming more advanced, it's becoming more possible to create a mod that disables the despawning of corpses altogether. I feel that's a crude way to handle it, but I feel it would be the first step towards a system that can be more adaptive of how it handles corpses, as it could be a test to see just how much RAM would be chewed up before the computer melts.

 

[Bauul]

3 hours ago, Man of Doom said:

I do have a counterargument for the immersion-breaking factor:

While being able to walk through large corpses would potentially be immersion breaking, the fact that they always burn away (sometimes before their death animation is complete) is just as immersion breaking

I remember playing Serious Sam and wishing the corpses didn't disappear. "Wouldn't it be cool if they all stayed!" I thought.

 

Then someone created a mod that did. To avoid sinking the frame rate with unending physics calculations, they made them intangible (you just walked through them).

 

You know how it looked after three minutes? Absolutely crap. Corpses clipping into each other left, right and center. Corpses stuck in walls. Corpses filling your vision as you clipped through them. Giant corpses sprawling preposterously across rooms in totally unnatural ways. It looked absolutely awful, in every single way.

 

I promptly turned disappearing corpses back on and never doubted it again.

 

Persistent corpses are one of those things that sound good in theory, but for anything bigger than a human just look absolutely awful in practice.

 

The only game that I've ever played that did them right I'm playing right now actually: Horizon Zero Dawn. Fully persistent and fully solid corpses. However, it only gets away with it because a) the enemies are robots, so can be fully static corpses and it doesn't look weird, and b) it's open-world, so they never get stuck blocking your path or anything. 

 

There's just no nice solution for Doom 2016. Genuinely disappearing corpses is the best solution.

[Koko Ricky]

I suspect that by the time we get another Doom, that problem will be solved, at least as far as rendering power goes. And probably some of the clipping/ragdoll/other physical issues will be improved as well. However, a corpse might potentially block your way, or be annoying to have to stumble over. They'll all need to be gibb-able to prevent players from getting stuck.

[Man of Doom]

20 hours ago, Bauul said:

Persistent corpses are one of those things that sound good in theory, but for anything bigger than a human just look absolutely awful in practice.

 

The only game that I've ever played that did them right I'm playing right now actually: Horizon Zero Dawn. Fully persistent and fully solid corpses. However, it only gets away with it because a) the enemies are robots, so can be fully static corpses and it doesn't look weird, and b) it's open-world, so they never get stuck blocking your path or anything. 

 

The concept of lasting corpses may indeed be a better concept on paper rather than in practice, but until we see a mod that does away with disintegrating corpses, we'll have to see if it's the same story in Doom 2016. Plus, Doom 2016 has much more dynamic ragdoll physics than Serious Sam.

 

To be completely honest, your arguments for the despawning corpses are completely logical and I definitely understand why lasting corpses wouldn't look out of place in a game that was open-world, if said corpses were rendered static.

That being said, though, the corpses in Doom 2016 (except for the corpses you find in the environment), aren't static (most of the time), and are not solid, meaning even something like a Mancubus corpse wouldn't block your path (although it would block your sight, and it would look weird to the player when walking through larger corpses).

 

10 hours ago, GoatLord said:

However, a corpse might potentially block your way, or be annoying to have to stumble over. They'll all need to be gibb-able to prevent players from getting stuck.

 

Interestingly enough, even though you can only gib an enemy when it's alive, you can actually fuck up a corpse as much as you want (at least until it burns away), meaning you can blast off arms, legs, and blow additional holes in it to your heart's content. I picked this up as a casual observation during gameplay. 
That being said, though, this only applies when a common death state occurs (doesn't happen with a corpse resulting from a special kill or a glory kill, including examples such as a Hell Knight with a hole in its chest, or a Pinky with its throat slit open).

 

The issue is not the disappearing corpses themselves. The issue that how to deal with them could have been handled so much better. There are several different ways to take care of something like this, such as leaving the corpses of smaller enemies and despawning larger corpses, despawning corpses as soon as you leave a room, letting the player choose how much gibs can be left behind before disappearing, analyzing just how much carnage can be left based on how powerful the hardware is, etc.

 

Even in Half-Life 2, I've heard that it depends on whether your computer is powerful enough to handle the corpses of larger enemies such as Striders. If your computer was strong enough, their corpses would remain indefinitely, or disappearing in a cloud of sparks if your computer wasn't powerful enough.

EDIT: This actually got me thinking about my time with the Doom 3 Perfected mod, where zombies would only be gibbed by certain weapons, and the corpses of demons stuck around for much longer (like approximately 2-4 minutes). This got me thinking of another way that the demon corpses in Doom 2016 could have been handled. Possibly, the corpses of smaller enemies would stick around than the bodies of larger enemies (About 5-6 minutes for the former, 2-3 minutes for the latter).

Edited March 20, 2017 by Man of Doom

[Chezza]

Another solution, although probably not as suitable for Doom, could implement permanent Corpses until a player reaches a close proximity. When near the corpse, it dissipates and energy is given to the player. In Doom's case it would come in the form of health and ammo.

[Man of Doom]

 

So somebody actually did it. Somebody actually modded D2016 so that all corpses stay.

Apparently, it's still a work in progress, which is why there is no download link as of yet.

[Wario64]

1 hour ago, Man of Doom said:

 

So somebody actually did it. Somebody actually modded D2016 so that all corpses stay.

Apparently, it's still a work in progress, which is why there is no download link as of yet.

Can't wait for it to be finished. Even if it's too intensive for my PC now, in future this will be much appreciated.

[Koko Ricky]

There was such a battle to get Doom '16 at 60fps across three different platforms of varying hardware that I think the disappearing corpses was a necessary compromise.

[Tracer]

Whoops

Edited May 1, 2017 by Tracer
Whoops