Next Generation Doom3 mods

By on February 7, 2011

So, you’ve been wondering how Doom3 would look like if it was developed today? Let’s find out. The modding community of iD’s title is 100% active… and more. The Dark Mod and Hexen: Edge Of Chaos are two of the best Total Conversions and who can forget the Classic Doom3 and Doom II for Doom 3 Mods. What you don’t probably know however, is that there are some talented modders that enhanced the graphics of Doom3 by adding some funky effects like POM, SSAO, soft shadows and HDR. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the Next Generation Doom3.

It’s funny, because with these mods, iD could easily re-release Doom3 for consoles or for the PC in digital form. Like the HD remakes of Splinter Cell or Beyond Good & Evil. Although I seriously doubt that both the PS3 and the X360 can handle Doom3 modded.  Still, it will be a great idea from which both the modders and iD Software can benefit. I only hope that if iD decides to do such a thing, they’d at least up the polygon count of the characters.

There are two major graphical mods that enhance Doom3’s image. The first one is ‘NewDoom3’ and the other is Sikkmod. Both of them are exceptional, so I’d advice to test both of them. ‘NewDoom3’ from xXxTMODxXx adds better metallic look, better Special FX, better models and texture resolutions, better overall shininess and graphics using latest techniques, Fullshadows so you can have more than one shadow and everything can cast a shadow, more gore and ungibbable bodies, HDR bloom effect and motion blur.  Performance hit is minimal and you will enjoy the game to the fullest, without any framedrop. For our preview purposes, we mixed ‘NewDoom3’ with Dafama2K7’s Self Shadows 2.0, Monoxead’s High Resolution Textures, EvilEngine’s Enhanced Doom3 Models 1.1. You can also mix this mod with Dafama2K7’s shaders, like the Relief Extreme Shaders or the Next Generation Shaders. Be warned though that you might encounter some incompatibilities.

Sikkpin’s mod on the other hand, adds more modern effects than NewDoom3. Among other things, it adds soft shadows, HDR, SSAO, motion blur, Depth Of Field, color grading and lens flares. This mod however is demanding as hell and has major incompatibilities. With my GTX295 and the latest ForceWare drivers, I was experiencing flickering HDR. ATI owners should also disable the Catalyst AI. You can try it but you’ll need a really high-end PC in order to enable all of Sikkmod’s graphical features. I hope that Sikkpin will address some of the mod’s issues, though I doubt it.

Last but not least, we have some HD textures packs. We highly recommend Monoxead’s textures that are currently available. Dafama2K7 has released some textures that aren’t redesigned. The original textures are simply upscaled to 1024×1024. The name Rygel might ring a bell to you, especially if you are a Quake fan. Rygel made an amazing texture pack for Quake Darkplaces and prepares one for Doom3, although we haven’t heard from him since last June. I still hope that he’ll someday release his latest Doom3 texture pack. There are also some HD ParallaxOcclusionMapping Textures from wulfen, but we don’t know if and when he releases them.

The only downside is that nobody addressed the characters polygon count. EvilEngine upped the polygon count of some monsters but still, most of the human characters aren’t affected by this mod. Due to the low polygons, you will immediately notice square-ish blocks in most of the characters if you are using Dafama2K7’s Self-Shadows. A DX11 tessellation implementation might be ideal for this issue but is it possible? We certainly hope so.

Enjoy the following high resolution screens of Next Generation Doom3!

About David Scarpitta

I am a critical guy, and love to review and give my professional opinion on just about anything. Though have a love for tech/gaming and music alongside the cinema. You can catch me consulting and developing the net any day of the week.
  • DReW187

    what mods were used exactly in he above screen shots please