Doom 3 Running On A Really Crappy Computer

[Evi]

Some crackhead wanted to see if he could play Doom 3 on a crappy computer system that he set up. This is Doom 3 running on a Voodoo 2 card with no...and I mean absolutely NO effects turned on. This makes me want to cry.

The crazy Czech chap has hacked together 2 Voodoo 2 12MB cards into an SLI configuration on Windows 98. By limiting himself to 800x600 resolution, and low detail, screenshots show decently playable framerates.

Of course, that\'s not all that has to be done to get Doom\'s cutting edge hardware working on paleolithic hardware. Texture sizes are cut in half from the lowest setting, meaning that they render at 32x32. All lighting and mapping effects are also turned off, meaning that there is no eye candy left whatsoever.

The screenshots therefore make for incredibly interesting viewing, purely because it shows just how little raw geometry underpins a Doom 3 level. The engine looks no more complicated than Quake 2 from a purely polygon perspective - it really emphasises how much of the Doom 3 look is created from lighting and high-end effects like normal mapping.

Although a fairly old posting, the page was brought to our attention by the release of Halo 2 on the Xbox. Bungie, Halo\'s developers, have mentioned in interviews that the polygon count of Halo 2 is lower than the original, but the graphics look a great deal better - this is down to similar mapping and lighting techniques.

The Article
The Pictures


I did the same thing with Quake III, and it was so bland and lifeless, I just busted up laughing It\'s a shame, really...

I saw this a few weeks ago.  pretty cool they got it to run on hardware that old

[Evi]

This is pretty bad...

it\'s pretty wierd to see doom 3 with no lighting effects at all... makes it look very 1992 ish

xbox

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

it looks strangely like Fade to Black..

[Evi]

Originally posted by THX
xbox

Yeah...

/me waits for someone to say it looks better this way

[nO-One]

I actually think the game would be a little more enjoyable this way, you can actually see around you instead of just a small dot.

That man has goatsed Doom 3. Or the equivalent of. The lengths people will go to.

[Living-In-Clip]

At least he can see the enemies, without having to turn the brightness up. The sad fact is, Doom 3 was all about atmosphere and that runs out real quick, say after the 300th you are going thru a dark corridor, that looks like the previous dark corridor and yet another monster pops up with it\'s crap AI.
I love ID. I love ID engines, but ID really dropped the ball on Doom 3, so here is hoping for Raven\'s Quake 4.