myk
patron mod of ugly ducklings and black sheep
Posts: 10458
Registered: 04-02 |
fraggle said:
No, it won't, because 320x200 is supposed to be displayed at a 4:3 aspect ratio. The pixels in 320x200 mode aren't square. If you run Doom in a square pixel mode, it looks squashed.
The whole thing is kind of confusing. I suggest you read the Doom wiki article on Aspect Ratio.
What may be confusing (or was to me before reading more into it) is "aspect ratio" itself in reference to pixels and rendered appearance. As aspect ratio refers to the assumed proportions of the screen (4:3 could be a 12" x 9" screen). Since 320x240, 800x600, or 1024x768 have a ratio of 4:3 in regard to the number of pixels, the pixels are square in a 4:3 screen, but since Doom uses less pixels for height but also fills the screen, the difference means those pixels need to be taller (200 vs. 240 means they are 1.2 times taller).
I think I understand now why 1280x1024 was missing as an option on my system till I ran ZDoom at that resolution. It wasn't listed by the drivers because they initially listed only those for the 4:3 aspect ratio, and 1280x1024 makes square pixels at 5:4.
Rather oddly, it is possible to use a non-standard 320x240 8-bit mode with VGA cards, in a hack called Mode X. The odd part is that Mode X was popularised by Michael Abrash, who also helped out in some of Doom's graphics programming. It's odd that they didn't use Abrash's technique to get a square pixel mode for Doom, as I'm sure it would have simplified development.
I'm skeptical about him being involved in graphics programming for the DOOM games... or does he say otherwise somewhere? Of what I've read from him, he's talked only about Quake. He seems to have joined up for the period after DOOM II, when Carmack had quit coding for the DOOM games and was into Quake. I wonder if Abrash was really involved in The Ultimate DOOM in any way, or listed in the credits just because he was part of id's development team at the moment (the in-game credits seem to have a lot to do with proprietary rights rather than necessarily with direct contribution, or else people like Tom Hall would have been listed), because they take an all-or-nothing stance in regard to membership. I guess it would be worth asking Carmack or Romero about this, to have accurate info on the wiki and whatnot.
Also, perhaps they had graphics editing tools that worked using a 320x200 (or 640x400) full screen mode, to allow artists to see the graphics as intended while modifying them.
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05-10-08 06:44 
