Talk:id Tech 4

Future Games

RTCW2 hasn't been announced to be in production.

Tim Willits mentioned a sequel to RTCW on an interview a long time ago. On the following day he corrected himself saying he shouldn't have said that, as they were still looking for a developer.

This game might as well be Enemy Territory:Quake Wars, since RTCW:ET was in itself a sequel to RTCW.

Unfortunatelly I can't find those two interviews by Tim. But for now, I agree on the anon that deleted RTCW, as the game hasn't really been announced all we have now are rumors (that gray matter would be working on that, etc). zeh 17:23, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I was going by this article which says that Todd Hollenshead from id was talking openly about RTCW2, so I figured that was good enough for confirmation. But you are correct that RTCW2 may actually be one of the other games you mentioned, it's hard to keep all these id sequals straight.

Secondly, does id's next title belong on this page? Not because it's not announced (thats another worthy argument against it's inclusion). But that their next game will not be using the Doom 3 engine but whatever engine Carmack comes up with next? Or have they stated they will be basing their next game on the Doom 3 engine? Qutezuce 08:13, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed on the RTCW2 stuff. Unfortunately I can’t find a reference right now but I’m sure they announced their next game would be D3 engine in order to cut down development time. I'll look again later. —FlooK 18:39, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Not sure if anything more concrete was said after this but here’s an article from last year with Hollenshead saying the next game wont be as revolutionary as Doom 3 and that he would expect it to use the Doom 3 engine: "What’s next for id software?" —FlooK 14:24, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually RCTW2 has just been announced--84.190.70.176 13:56, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The name is not "RTCW2" however. All they call it is "Wolfenstein", and the logo just has "Wolfenstein" on it. --zeh 16:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

yeah, but RTCW2 makes more sense until we know the official name. 203.97.170.193 03:36, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

This is an encyclopedia, not a shrine to John Carmack's godly programming skills. Keep it descriptive, please. Biased phrases like "programmer-extraordinaire John Carmack, the mastermind behind such revolutionary and genre-shaping engines..." are not acceptable for Wikipedia.

I've also removed references to the "MegaTexture(tm) Rendering Engine". My reasons for removing this are simple:

• There is no mention of this technology on id software's site that I can find. It is therefore probably not notable.
• The information appears to be inaccurate: MegaTexture is not a trademark, according to the USPTO, and they should know.

If you wish to information on the MegaTexture engine in the article, please cite your sources and write verifiable information in a neutral point of view. Do not keep reverting the article to an unacceptable state. Haeleth 18:14, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Partial retraction: the Enemy Territory press release on Splash Damage's site does refer to MegaTexture and does refer to it as a trademark; I guess I forgot the USPTO only handles registered trademarks. So I'll stop removing all mentions of the technology from the article now. However, the "tm" is still going to go - Wikipedia does not, as a rule, mark trademarks where not absolutely required. Haeleth 12:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Where can I find a reference for the information in the "Further Planned Extensions" section ? 80.77.132.69 00:45, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, some sources would be nice in that section (now called "id extended technology"). In fact, I seem to recall an article where they specifically said Quake Wars used regular light blooms, not HDR. --Skrapion 23:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Update: I've gone and deleted that section. Feel free to put it back if you can cite sources for it. --Skrapion 07:16, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Just one thing...

"Rewritten rendering code (Direct3D support and fixed self-shadowing problem) and add the ClipMapping and Unique texturing by large terrain." is not a sentence, as far as I can tell. Can someone either translate this into English or get rid of it? --203.206.183.160 16:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

"fixed self-shadowing problem" : bullshit, it was simply disabled to accelerate rendering. In the D3 alpha they where all on. On the retail D3, it was disabled on monsters --194.98.147.125 16:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

"Direct3D support" needs sources ... never heard of that ... --194.98.147.125 16:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• Removed the sentence since it's later tagged on by someone that _thinks_ megatexture is a derived technology of clipmapping (we don't know yet, since no whitepaper is released yet) and then someone else adding a ad-link to it all. Zarkow 203.144.143.5 00:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Further extension technology

Can someone provide sources for the information in this section. I am unable to verify any of it. It was removed before, but seems to have been added back in. --Jimmybee 18:20, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

MegaTexture Explanation is nonsense

Simply put, the explanation of megatexture doesn't explain anything. The main problem d3 has with outdoor scenes is the shadowing system in large areas lit by something like the sun, not textures, and this is solved by blending lighting solutions, not, again, "megatexture." Furthermore, no explanation is given as to how megatexture works. I honestly don't understand it myself, but I would hope that someone would understand it well enough to give an explanation.

"The MegaTexture can also store physical information" ... a bit oversold : just said it contains additional attributes such as ...?

"It is expected that this will result in a considerably more detailed scene than the majority of existing technologies, using tiled textures, allow. " removed <- A little fanboyish / this is not an english sentence

---

More than that, the part saying that megatextures made ID tech 4 the best engine for outdoor is total rubbish! Quake wars was the first big attempt to implement this technology on a real scale (way before Rage), and the technical critics were really heavy on the results. Most people find advantages for artists (as you can draw directly on the megatextures), but it was not known to be the best outdoor, not at all, far from it actually. The first releases were buggy, suffer performance problems and the "megatextures" was not that sharp compared to other techniques. Rage is a far better implementation of it, but still, megatextures are overrated, spcially in the id tech 4 era. — Preceding unsigned comment added by UnLionel (talk • contribs) 14:29, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

For some reason those two lines were reinstated. I've taken them out. The second line is particularly poor English. They have no sources, but the fundamental problem is that - as you point out - the section doesn't actually explain how or why megatexturing works. I was under the impression the key aspect was the ability to decompress sections of the megatexture in real time, but the section says nothing about that. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 18:14, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Open standards

Maybe we should start a section about the doom 3 engines use of open standards/open source programs. Like the engines use of ogg and opengl and openal. Allowing for easy porting to Operating system and consoles Skeith , 9 October 2006

Probably not a bad idea, would be a good place to mention that the engine supports linux/mac as well, as this is pretty rare among game engines.

Seconded. I find all the 'DirectX' stuff a bit hard to stomach, considering it was an OpenGL engine (not sure how they ported Doom III to XBox, web has little information on this). Also referring to graphics chips by 'DirectX' marketing terms is quite annoying. Could somebody either remove this and put/leave the true chipset names in, or at least add the OpenGL compatibility levels as well (preferably *before* the DirectX ones, on the same line, since OpenGL is a universal standard and DirectX is one company's proprietary system). 124.170.12.25 (talk) 00:35, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Source of Prey 2 info ?

What is the source of the claim that Prey 2 will make use of the "further extension technology" ?

Shadows

What is the source of the claim that future games built on the Doom 3 engine will feature true soft shadows? It looks like a misunderstanding of this quote, in which Carmack explains that the shadow buffers in his next engine (not the Doom 3 engine) won't display penumbras correctly: "It is worth noting that with shadow buffers the edge blurring that you get isn't a real shadow umbra and penumbra. The soft part of a real world shadow is related to the size of the light emitter, the location of the occluder, and then the location of the surface that it's on."

id Tech 5

Why is this section here at all? Shouldn't this be in the 'id Tech 5' article? It also seems to contain a lot of assumptions by the author ('the engine will most likely feature'). It also states that the engine is unnamed, despite the section heading, 'id Tech 5', which is of course, the name of the engine. Zenix.

It's now called id Tech 4 not 5. 5 was the new engine that was reveiled at WWDC '07. This is a rundown of the new naming conventions. Lane5slacker 17:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Cheers, but I'm aware of that. As you say, this is 'id Tech 4', but there's a section in the article titled 'id Tech 5', which I'm saying shouldn't be here. Zenix, 30 June 2007

Original Doom 3 Engine

What's with the name of this section? It should've just been, 'Doom 3 Engine', and should now be 'id Tech 4'. Just wondering where the 'original' part came from, considering that there's no other version.

Condemned: Criminal origins

Doesn't it also use this engine?

No, it uses the latest Lithtech engine 203.97.170.193 19:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

heh, i was fooled ;) they do look alike though, but i can't put my finger on it... 212.25.59.2 10:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Licensing

I think that the following line: "Like the preceding and widely-used Quake III Engine, the Doom 3 engine has met with a licencing success", should be removed, because unlike the Quake III engine it hasn't been widely used. The only actual game that has licensed the engine is PREY, because the other games mentioned are a property of Id. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vash47 (talk • contribs) 00:34, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

I agree : Id Tech 4 is less popular than its ancestor. The DCC-oriented Id Tech 5 might correct the Id Tech 4 flaws.

GPL?

So when D3 engine was released under GPL? Where is the source? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.100.130.7 (talk) 09:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

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Criticism?

And where is all the info about failure with this engine? Why there is only positive criticism? It was epic fail engine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.80.50.93 (talk) 13:48, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

If someone should happen to find a reliable source describing the engine as a disappointment or a failure, please put it in the article. It certainly didn't seem to do as well in the market as previous engines. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 08:01, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

"Ultra" Mode

Doom 3 was infamous at the time of release because the "Ultra" mode to run properly used more VRAM than was available on graphics cards in 2004. The Wiki article claims "Ultra" mode is unusable on <512MB video hardware. This is not true, and 256MB cards do run Ultra Mode at playable levels, albeit the Doom 3 menu does warn about running it on <512MB hardware. --Schvass (talk) 22:13, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

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