Doom 2016 revitalised the fortunes of both id software and the classic Doom franchise, delivering a phenomenal, exhilarating focus on high-speed combat, extreme gore and sprawling stage design. It was a modern, refreshed take on a retro classic, underpinned by some of the most impressive tech in the business. And the good news is that Doom Eternal one-ups it in every way. it’s harder, faster and sleeker. It’s larger in scale both in terms of level design and the amount of enemies you’ll battle – and it’s more optimal too: we’ve managed to get the PC version running at around 300 to 500 frames per second.
Powered by the new id Tech 7, Doom Eternal represents the latest and greatest from id Software, delivering an engine upgrade that delivers in every way. Textures are more detailed all around while the world is more tightly packed with visual flourishes. Even if you can’t put your finger on it right away, there’s something special about the environments that just feels . How is it that a game on the same consoles can look and run so much better than a previous installment?
The answer is not so simple but the basic idea is – it comes down to key changes made to the internal technologies. Having discussed id Tech 7 with lead engine programmer Billy Khan, he reiterated that their main objective was to deliver a combination of visuals and frame-rate at a quality so high that most people will wonder how it was possible.
One of the first major shifts is the move to the low level Vulkan graphics API – not just for in-game rendering on the PC side, but for everything including the backend tools used to build the game. Vulkan enables faster performance within the id studio, enabling the creators to work faster and more efficiently. Assets can be created and implemented at a much higher rate than the previous game. This is evident in the variety on display – Doom Eternal takes players to many different places. From ruined cities to space colonies and other dimensions and beyond, the world is constantly changing. This new releases features upwards of ten times the number of unique assets when compared to the previous game – all with a big bump to detail.
A large part of this increased level of detail stems from the shift away from id’s legacy megatexture technology. Originally created for Rage, megatextures were designed to allow increased variety by storing texture data in a large texture atlas that could be referenced based on what was needed on-screen at any moment. Streaming texture data in and out made sense on a platform like PlayStation 3 with limited memory but it didn’t scale well and has a lot of limitations. Disk space requirements were huge, iterating on textures required a lot of time and quality was compromised by multiple steps of compression. Even on fast PCs, texture pop-in remained an issue in Doom 2016.