myk
webbed digits
Posts: 14305
Registered: 04-02 |
Phml said:
The negative sky is something that doesn't affect gameplay and makes the game look better, much like higher resolution, GL rendering (imho, obv.)
I find everything turned negative ugly because it's more monotonous, but it does affect playability a little, as with the normal sky flying or overhead things (and grounded or low things, when the sky is on the floor) become easier to see while invulnerable. A "negative" cacodemon will stick out like a sore thumb against a red sky, for example. Taste here is probably a matter of habit, more than anything.
While I'm not too much of a fan personally because, like I say above, these things can have some marginal effect on play, I suppose PrBoom+ could have an additional, general "cosmetic bugs" option like Andrey suggests, but the defaults should stay close to what it's emulating, especially in a case like this; the effect appears glaringly in more than one DEMO sequence in the released DOOM versions (at least v1.2 and v1.666, the most widely distributed ones during the "supported game" era) which means the developers probably saw it and liked it enough to keep it till the end. I bet the Boom devs thought about that. Only later did Killough incorporate comp_skymap to MBF, which will be applied as selected regardless of the demo version being played (Doom, Boom or MBF-specific). PrBoom changed things from MBF in hard-coding the sky during different compatibility levels, inaccurately in the case of Boom, but MBF could optionally play even MBF demos (or just play the game) with the vanilla or Boom sky behavior, if the player wanted.
The only "problem" with the normal sky under invulnerability is that it may seem "illogical" but that's debatable even under such an irrelevant aspect, as the negative effect can be seen as an emanation that can be easily caught only on things that are nearer to the invulnerable observer. The sky is always much farther away than anything drawn in the level, so the character doesn't perceive from it the force or quality that becomes evident when he's invulnerable.
Generally speaking, some bugs (HOMs, tutti frutti, Medusa, double door sound, critical errors, crashes) are rather indisputable and can be fixed for all compatibilities, while others are more debatable (sky, ouch face, falling sound) and, I think, should be left as quirks of the engine being emulated, during emulation. This leaves out any even minor play changes as expected from a port suitable for competitive play, while providing a cleaner and more stable play experience as expected from a modern-styled port.
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08-16-10 12:35 
