Doom Eternal launches in less than two months, scheduled for March 20 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. The game will feature the first iteration of id's new Tech 7 engine, and the Digital Foundry staff were able to discuss the upgrades the technology will bring with it in an interview with id Software's producer Marty Stratton.
In a conversation with journalists, he pointed out the increase in the size of game locations, improved physics and destructibility, a complete departure from the "megatexture" system to achieve greater visual quality as the main points:
βThe size of the world, its scale and our levels have become twice as large as in . This is intended to create a sense of scale and epic Doom Eternal. You know, one of the things we created after the release of Doom 2016 was that we would really take players to places they had never seen before. Doom 2016 was pretty much just Mars and Hell. And in this game, as you know, we're making Hell on Earth, we're making the Sentinel homeworld that we mentioned in Doom 2016. We'll send you to the arctic cult base, we'll take you to our version of Heaven, and of course, Hell. Each of these worlds had to be truly large. This entailed most of the technical work that was done across the board. Of course, things like physics and better environment destructibility will enhance the player experience. And our system for dealing visual damage to demons required a lot of technical effort and animation system updates from the team.
We have completed the transition from megatexture technology, which allowed us to increase the geometry, increase the number of texture overlays and achieve higher texture fidelity. I would say that we really got rid of it for the first time. I think in the last few games you could criticize the quality of our textures, which have remained somewhat blurry. Doom Eternal is the first project where we're once again at the top of the game when it comes to texture accuracy."
Ray tracing won't be available at the time of Doom Eternal's release, despite Marty Stratton proudly boasting during E3 2019 that id Software can handle it better than anyone. But the team had to focus on other priority work and will deal with tracing-related technologies later (there was also a hint of using tracing to improve not only graphics, but also sound):
βWe honestly spent a lot of work time on this question: our team was mainly engaged in the initial implementation and research of ray tracing about a year ago, but at the same time we had too much of what we wanted to do in the game. I mean, our tech team are big fans of new technology, so it was pretty hard to pull them all away from it, because it was a bright new toy. But when we talk about making Doom Eternal and releasing it as close to the deadline as possible, with the highest possible final quality, we had to abandon those efforts. But our guys are ready to start diving into ray tracing again, in fact, there are already interesting ideas. I don't want to go too far with the answer because who knows exactly what we'll do; but you can use this technology not only for reflections, shadows and lighting in real time. It has some really cool uses that I think will not only improve the gaming experience, but actually promise to make life easier for developers in some ways."
Also, the executive producer of Doom Eternal added that the Nintendo Switch version of the project (released a little later than other systems) works very well thanks to Panic Button, which also ported the previous Doom game. All in all, he believes that DOOM Eternal will squeeze all the computing power out of all consoles and of course provide the perfect environment for high-end PCs.
Incidentally, during a recent interview, director Hugo Martin of id Software - Animal Crossing: New Horizons, set to launch on March 20, coinciding with Doom Eternal. His opinion turned out to be very positive, especially considering the polar opposite of projects in terms of genre, graphics and gameplay.
Mr. Martin said, βI think it's amazing and speaks to the amazing diversity we see in games today. I sincerely support other games and other studios. I'm so proud to be in the gaming industry and the fact that two completely different games that get tons of press coverage come out on the same day. This is an incredible time for developers and I enjoy playing Animal Crossing."
The boss didn't stop praising other people's games at this point, mentioning other projects that he liked and looked forward to: βOne of my favorite games is Inside, but this is just an example of an exciting game among a number of others. Or God of War. I mean, given the choice between these two games, which one do I like better? I love both, and they are completely different at the same time.
Source: 3dnews.ru