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fraggle said:
Erm, no. The seed is randomly generated by the server each time you start a new demo - that's the point.

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Gez said:

And you can use a modified client to retrieve that seed and reuse it as often as you want.

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fraggle said:
Pray tell, why is it that using PrBoom+ or Chocolate Doom is unacceptable, but using DOSbox somehow is? Once you reach this level of pedantism and attention to detail, the hardware and operating system have just as much effect as the choice of whether to use a source port or not. Vanilla Doom's mouse behavior depends on the mouse driver you use, for example. If you really want to be that pedantic then you should play on hardware from the '90s, operating systems and drivers from the '90s, and with a '90s keyboard and mouse. It's pretty clear nobody wants to do that, though.

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Archy said:
Anyways, about software not working, earlier today I was trying to get a multiplayer Vanilla Doom deathmatch up and going with Toxic Barrel, who lives in Finland. I used the same method that has worked on so many people's computers, and it was a complete fail. Hours of frustration (he was up till 3:40 AM his time) and nothing came of it. Still don't know what was wrong.

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j4rio said:
Offtopic - there are still things that bother me, like when I start doom with recording parameter on, the game is in semi-frozen state and I have to press 'strafe on' or turn to sides to unfreeze it. If I do it too soon, while doom loads, and press strafe on/turn too soon while screen wiping happens, it can twist you to random angle. I wonder if it can be fixed as it's fairly annoying.

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Archy said:

You say -complevel 2 Source Ports should be accepted, but they shouldn't. Why? Because they are NOT equal and kimo_xvirus explained that. Every small difference affects the game, it may be that absence of the one tic start is a differance, but that one tic of difference is still a difference, an inequality.

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kimo_xvirus said:

Also, even if you set the DOSBox resolution to 320x200, it still has that bug, it has to do with internal resolution or something.

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Archy said:
Again, DOSBox does not change the principle software, and COMPET-N players have regularly been running Doom in an emulated DOS environment since the release of Windows 95. If we ban DOSBox, we should also ban Windows 95 & 98. I don't think we should ban either of them, as both where legal in the first place.

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While people's hardware and drivers and such certainly affect the game way more than the difference of Vanilla and Chocolate Doom, it is still fair because each player still has the exact same potential, while with Chocolate Doom, there are a few changes, and even if not humanly noticeable, they are changes non the less.

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Also, finding if someone's a cheater or not is easy. Invite them to a co-op game and constantly move around. This would continuously randomize how the Random Number Generator affects the game, and thus anything pre-set would be useless. Obvously, in co-op they can't use slow-motion either because it would be noticeable to the other player. This is a simple and reliable solution.

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Archy said:


Wouldn't the solution be to run a 320x200 program that then launches doom? Someone should make a command line interpreter that's exactly the same as DOSBox's command.com but is 320x200. Would this fix the problem? I don't think that would be too hard to create.

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Archy said:
I'm currently working on a "Vanilla Doom over the internet" tutorial. I thought I had figured it all out but then this happened:

<Inner Quote>

I'll make a thread later about this, and see if any of you guys know any solutions.

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kimo_xvirus said:
I think the problem is the resolution change from Doom's text to the game, so your suggestion wouldn't solve it as still the command line interpreter would run Doom's text then the splash screen. The only solution it seems is to fix the SDL code, or hack vanilla doom.

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GhostlyDeath said:
If you are using DOSBox, then you can just say wrap serial or modem (probably easier than IPX) over the network.

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I'd argue on the same lines: using PrBoom+ or Chocolate Doom does not change "the principle software": you're still playing the same game. It behaves in precisely the same way. If the behavior was different the demo would desync.

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playing in PrBoom+ is like 30 times easier, not because you have slow motion, but because you have uncapped frames, SR50 all time, much much better mouse (smoother), and almost EVERYTHING is visually different and it's EASIER to achieve then in Vanilla.

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You should refrain from talking about prboom if you are clueless about it. The points I mentioned are barely notable. The only significant difference for me is just the timer/monster counter not present.

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TimeOfDeath said:
For the timer, you can use the map's music. Pick "checkpoints" in the map and pick spots in the music (like the beginning of a verse or the chorus, etc.) to compare the checkpoints to. If the music checkpoint starts before the map checkpoint, you are too slow. :)

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TimeOfDeath said:
Archy - how do players play vanilla in Win95/98? Isn't the emulated DOS environment actually part of the operating system? You didn't need DOSbox for that, right?

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TimeOfDeath said:
All Chocolate Doom does is make the original game not require DOS at all.

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TimeOfDeath said:
It's the same exact game. I've seen prboom players play vanilla and succeed, to help prove that point. Playing prboom isn't going to magically make your demos faster.

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Archy said:

It isn't about the fact that PrBoom/Chocolate-Doom/WhateverPort isn't easier/harder, it's about the fact that they're different. Because of inability to do the fast start with Chocolate-Doom, a Choco player actually has a disadvantage against a Vanilla Player.

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Archy said:
Not exactly. If we're talking code for code, tic for tic, it is not a NT/Linux Vanilla Doom, but something different. An example of difference is that the fast start is impossible on Chocolate-Doom. That's just one difference, and it's a very small difference, but any difference equals and inequality.

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It isn't about the fact that PrBoom/Chocolate-Doom/WhateverPort isn't easier/harder, it's about the fact that they're different. Because of inability to do the fast start with Chocolate-Doom, a Choco player actually has a disadvantage against a Vanilla Player.

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In what ways? I'd like to hear your specific objections and the actual ways you think using a source port gives an advantage and affects the gameplay. Not just some vague notion of "vanillaness" that is "not humanly noticeable". If you can't cite specific examples, then I argue that there is no difference.

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fx02 said:
Ok, so you say that you can achieve permanent SR50 while playing Vanilla or Chocolate doom? Show me please.

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TimeOfDeath said:
fraggle - Prboom+ has uncapped framerate, higher resolutions, monster counter, timer, removed limits (sprites, visplanes, etc), slightly taller viewing area when using HUD instead of status bar, probably more.

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fraggle said:
You can make an argument that a difference that gives some kind of advantage would be unfair. If it doesn't give any advantage, why does it matter? Your argument that "any difference equals [an] inequality" is nonsense. Some differences might potentially equal an inequality, yes, but not all.

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fraggle said:
Plus you've contradicted yourself: playing in DOSbox is different to playing on a real DOS machine (mouse behavior is different). If "any difference equals [an] equality" then that is different too.

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fraggle said:
With this comment you've not only failed to answer this challenge, but clarified that it doesn't matter to you. You've basically admitted that your desire to exclude source ports does not serve any rational purpose.

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Archy said:
Anyways, I understand that my opinions and beliefs are in many ways unrealistic and and irrational, but they are my opinions and I will state them and defend them, as they [,perhaps irrationally,] mean very much to me. COMPET-N's been a big part of my life, and I'd like to keep C-N as it always has been. If COMPET-N's old rules are just ridicules by today's standards, then let's not change C-N, but create a new organization of competition; however, I think DSDA suits that just fine.

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Gez said:
Those are potentially-valid reasons to dismiss PrBoom(+), but they do not apply to Chocolate Doom.

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chungy said:
Just one note to Archy: DOSBox is far more "changing the principles of the software" than any source port is. Your attempts to compare with Windows 9x are a little bit futile since those OSes did not contain CPU emulators (they thinly wrapped around some direct hardware control, but otherwise ran it just on DOS itself), built-in keyboard remapping or mouse control. it is probably way easier to cheat on vanilla doom via DOSBox than having to deal with Doom's source code.

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Archy said:
psychological response

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Archy said:
Of coerce "any difference equals [an] inequality," no matter how small, irrelevant, or subliminal the difference is, these all affect our psychological response to input (video & sound in the case of doom) which then create a difference in our physical response (the way we move the controller, mouse ect). If someone was to use a foreign computer (a computer other than my own) and load Chocolate-Doom on it and launched the game, I would not be able to tell if it was Vanilla or Chocolate-Doom because they're so similar. Let's say I played through map 1 of Doom 2. Now, let's say the God of the universe made the world go back in time and then changed one thing, Vanilla Doom was loaded on the foreign computer instead. When I sat down and started playing though map 1, I can guarantee you that I would have played a few tics differentially. This is because of the small differences which caused my mind to react differentially, and thus causing a different physical response.

You'll probably say that that's an insane example and making a fuss about the small differences in action during each tic is ridiculously extreme and does not qualify as any rational reason to disallow source ports at COMPET-N. I see your view but when things are taken to their extreme, you found out their truths, and it is true that Chocolate-Doom will give off a slightly different psychological response than Vanilla Doom.

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fraggle said:
Sorry if I sound slightly pissed off in the comments I'm making here but the fact is that I've spent several years now crafting what, if you love Vanilla Doom so much, ought to be your favorite source port.

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Archy said:
I always set up Chocolate-Doom for people when I install Doom on their computer

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fraggle said:
To see it [Chocolate-Doom] casually dismissed as an option, based on some bullshit argument like this that doesn't even make any sense, or reasoning that essentially amounts to "just because", is more than slightly infuriating.

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Belial said:
Every time you say ["psychological response"] I want to scream bullshit.

At that rate I could argue your morning coffee or getting laid last night had more of an effect than DosBox.

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Gez said:
There are important differences between DOSBox and the real hardware and software of the era. For example, you cannot get the Doom alpha high-color mode to work on DOSBox, it'll just look glitchy. Maes implemented a working version in MochaDoom. Sure, that example is not relevant since the high-color mode was long removed when Doom.exe v1.9 was finalized, but it's just one thing that shows that the original software on an emulated platform might not be as accurate as a careful recreation which actually made sure that each and every feature works as they did originally even on modern platforms.

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Archy said:
Note that I'm only talking about bugs that happen internally within Doom, not bugs that can happen from the Operating Environment interacting with the exe.

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