Quote: "i've not personally played doom3 but from what i've heard and what i've played in hl2 hl2 seems to have better physics."
The physics in Half-Life 2 are literally out-of-the-box Havok2 physics. Infact almost everything done in HL2 are part of the demos you get with the eval version.
This said..
Quote: "i've nevered heard of being able to pick up a barrel with your hands and throw it realistically down the stairs in doom3 which you can in hl2"
You can't actually do that in HL2, you can only use the Gravity-Gun. Believe it or not it is possible to create one in Doom3 relatively easily, while you'll hear of people saying "you can't shoot barrels without them exploding." well that's true, because all of the barrels in Doom3 are labeled 'explosive subtance' as such they do what you'd expect.
However there are a number of things within the world, like packing boxes and laptops, etc.. that you can kick or shoot around a level, which is great fun. The best section that shows the physics possible in Doom3 is near the begining where you have to dispose of a number of toxic barrels. If I have time, I will get to the bit and take a FRAPS of that section to show you.. While sure HL2 can do the same, the fact that Doom3 can without scripting kinda disproves the whole 'HL2 Physics = Better' theory doesn't it?
Especially as the Doom3 SDK has a vehicles sections that allows mod developers to include any form of vehicle in-game.
Quote: "glass effects are very good in hl2 but i haven't seen any glass in doom3, is it there at all?"
That just proves you haven't played it or even seen the Trailer.
The starting sequence has glass in the control room, the bio-scan room (first room) has glass in it... and actually near enough ALL of the game has glass in it. Glass that shatters based on where you shoot it and from how far away.
The Physics in Doom3 are used less as a gimmic, and in every damn aspect of the game. Your guns projectiles are subject to physics the moment they leave the barrel and the dynamics engine dictates how much damage and the spread.
You can empty and entire clip into a zombies leg and it'll fall off, but he'll keep hopping towards you.. you blow off his head and he'll disappear in a buffy-esqué way heh
For saying what Valve *could've* done with the physics, i've not seen any monsters have any real disabilities or such.. For a game which is truely pushing it has next generation physics, why did they have to use an Irish-Based physics engine?
Doom3's physics and dynamics were all done in-house, while some events such-as monsters comming through doors are scripted in Doom3, then actually bending the doors to try and get to you, or smashing open areas are not scripted they're simply subject to 'damageable' surfaces.
Doom3's engine can do basically anything Half-Life2's can. The setting of Doom3 however ment they didn't need to have wide open areas, or have brightly lit daylight sections. Carmack knows the engine he designed isn't perfect by far, and for thier current project he is enhancing it (see his Quakecon talks from Fileplanet). On the issue of what can one engine do over the other though, we have to really get down to the technical aspects, because like it or not they are both very capable engines of producing very similar graphics and worlds.
Personally the way I see it.. Doom3 is designed as a Next Generation Engine, it stands as the marker between this generation of games and Unreal3.
Half-Life2 Source Engine stands as a testiment to how far the old ways can be pushed.. however it is the last bastian engine, and the next generation is going to next to do better.
During this week I'm going to work with someone else to put-together the runtimes for both games, so we can release these for everyone, not just those with the games (or steam).
Going to see about getting a programmer as both SDKs annoyingly need Visual Studio 2003 (which I don't have, only 6.0SP5 and 2005) .. but I can recreate the levels from Uplink using Doom3Editor and Hammer 3.4, models can just be enhanced and exported in the correct formats ^_^
As I have XSI and Maya it allows my pipeline to be easier with this.
As physics is a big part of this, an extra section will need to be designed to show off the vehicle physics in both games, as well as the ability to physically grab things. A physics based puzzle should help.
Graphically speaking I'll be looking to push both engines as far as they'll go, so GeForce 6-Series and Radeon X-Series users; I want to make your cards struggle on High settings
On-top of this, I'll help code up a DBP version, which uses Newton Physics.. just to see how far we can push DBP to match these monster engines. If a specialised engine is developed for the task at hand it'll be alot quicker than something which can be modified to every situation.
