I haven't had a chance to try this yet (damn work interferes with playtime), but feedback from gamers is positive. When time allows, I'll need to do this to get Doom3 to run properly on my own underpowered 'puter.

Here's the routine, feedback appreciated:

This is a guarenteed way to get a MASSIVE performance increase to your game, at the expense of taking up a little more hard drive space (2 gigs approx). There is a catch! By doing this, you temporarily can't connect to pure multiplayer servers. You have been warned (I'll tell you how to revert it at the end)

After installation, the Doom III Folder consists only of the doom3.exe and some .PK4 files. Those PK4 files includes the entire game (sounds, videos, textures etc.) compressed. They are normally uncompressed in mid game, which is very hard on your CPU. We can unpack them and thus take the strain of your CPU

1. Make a copy of ALL the files in C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base. This is some big filage, but if you want to revert to MP without reinstalling you need to do it.

2. Unrar the following .pk4 files (just pretend they are .rar's and open them with winrar) into the C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base folder (each one should unrar a single folder such as textures or models):

pak000.pk4
pak001.pk4
pak002.pk4
pak003.pk4
pak004.pk4 (This one has many files, put them all in \Base and over right any that apply.

3. Now delete the files above (pak000-004) or move them to another folder for storage so you can revert to multiplayer.

When you want to revert to multiplayer, restore everything you had before and get rid of the new stuff. I'm not sure if the folder "maps" is the same or not, so make sure you back that up.

When in the original Doom3 /base folder (that is, before the unpacking), you would have thse folders and files "maps" "savegames" "config.spec" "doomConfig.cfg" "doomkey" "game00.pk4" and "gamex86.dll", nothing else.

ALSO DO THIS! If you open DoomConfig.cfg (C:\programfiles\doom3\base) in notepad and change (make sure to save a backup copy)

seta image_cacheMegs "32"

to a higher number, such as 128 or 265 (depends on RAM, use 256 for a gig, 128 for 512mb) you will see a big increase too. You also have to change the seta image_useCache to "1" and seta image_cacheMinK to approx "20480" (or higher)

There you have it, since the CPU wont have to unpack the textures, sounds, etc...there is a MASSIVE performance increase at the expense of no MP and requiring more HD space.

YMMV, please post back with results.

~SC

Itw works but its still to lagy for me. PS, "pak004.pk4 (This one has many files, put them all in \Base and over right any that apply."--in mine it was pack000.pk4. Also the "DoomConfig.cfg " istn in the base folder untill you at least start 1 game. Ahh well, Ill just have to wait till I update my mobo,cpu, & video card.

Thanks for the feedback, optomos ... I'm almost caught up with my design work so I can try this myself. Since I know my puny 'puter doesn't meet the minimum requirements, I'm anxious to give it a boost if I can ....

~SC

SC, dont' bother if you have less that 512 in RAM. I learned that all by myself.

yeah also if you go to tweakguides.com, there is a whole guide FULL of tweaks for doom3 and the Doomcfg.cfg file or whatever, all kinds of awesome tweaks to make anyones system run it reasonably, well almost.

Also on that memory cache, I thought I read somewhere to set it to half your ram?? Sorry I was wrong. It is like 128mb if you have 512mb, etc.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Doom3_1.html

Interesting. I'll have to try it one of these days when I'm bored.

Works a charm!!

I'm unpacking the .pk4 files right now

DOOM III allready runs pretty ok on my computer, I have everything at
the recomended except for CPU, I'm running an AMD Athlon XP 1700+(1.3gigs) but its still runs decent...cant wait to try after this


-I HOPE to god they find some awsome tweaks for HL2, Don't think I will be able to run that....hehe

Can't wait to get home tonight and try this out, and set up my new gfx card that should be coming today. It's gona be doom heaven i should i say hell .....

I assume that this would work pretty good for the pep running doom3 in WINE will get my flat m8 to try it on his and report back if theres any one out there interested in running doom3 on linux.

I found the best way to get a performance boost is to use the "Scan my hardware" thingo in the in game video settings. I have a radeon 9200 and it ran pretty crappy before I did that. Then I did the scan thingo and beefed the res up a bit and it still runs nicer than it did when I tweeked it myself.

Great tips here. Thanks, boxcrash, there's tons of goodies at that link. I'll try the scan TheAvatar, if I can't tweak it to my satisfaction (I like getting in a fiddling with stuff).

You've given me hope, spidermanx, as I'm running a 1700+ myself, but I see an upgrade in my future.

Best to all,

!SC

I'm assuming that the scan probably sets alot of options that you would have to edit the config file, or use cvars to change. The problem with that is i dunno wtf most of the crap in the cfg file is.

Bah. It's been my experience thus far that changing settings in the .cfg's and whatnot it pretty much a waste of time. Even if you make a crapload of changes (which I tried recently), I could not find any discernable performance boost at all.

All well, it runs well enough as-is for me.