ZDaemon 1.09.01 Released

The first point release of ZDaemon 1.09 has been released after just two months. This update affects the ZDaemon Client only. Take a quick look at what's new:

• Super-Sampled Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) - be sure to check the original news post regarding this feature
• Widescreen support
• Mouse code improvement that removes undesired mouse acceleration in Windows Vista/7 and plays nicely with high polling rates like 1000hz
• ZLauncher will now automatically look for missing wads needed to playback a zdd demo
• Demo compression has been improved further and the ZDaemon Demo Tool will auto-convert any demos saved through it
• A new Quick Chat Block feature that works similar to the Quick Voice Mute feature has been implemented

widescreen rocks!

Badboy said:

widescreen rocks!

You mean shortscreen? ZDoom implements widescreen support, this is merely cropping and stretching support.

Edit: And their excuse for that is kind of lame considering high resolutions allow you to pick out details in the distance better. They should always render at 320x200 and just stretch/crop to the desired resolution. :P

blzut3: i find increased FOV okay almost generally, with the notable exception of oldschool-style 1on1 competition. sadly, every other port with (true) widescreen gives (just some) people this whole new advantage with no ability to control/limit it to force oldschool behaviour.

you may scoff, but you don't actually play. :P

dew said:

you may scoff, but you don't actually play. :P

Well I stopped playing around the time new school players starting only playing co-op and "competitive" players started worrying about stupid stuff like an fov advantaged offered by 16:9. Back in my day we were competitive for the fun of it! :P

Blzut3 said:

Well I stopped playing around the time new school players starting only playing co-op and "competitive" players started worrying about stupid stuff like an fov advantaged offered by 16:9.

Although I agree with you to a point about widescreen being a side-effect of better monitor technology, there are a sizable number of oldschool 1on1 players that do care about this sort of thing. They simply don't play Zandronum, for that reason among many others.

Still, I am not sure why ZDaemon doesn't have a serverside option for widened FOV. In anything except 1on1 OS duel, it seems like a legitimate point of debate, and none of the alternatives to providing true widescreen are very attractive.

So to avoid giving a horizontal FOV advantage, you give a vertical FOV disadvantage. (Or you stretch things and make them ugly.) I guess vertical FOV isn't as useful in most cases, though it might hinder platforming stuff a bit as your sight is cut farther away from your feet.


How is the BFG edition IWAD support? Just using INTERPIC instead of TITLEPIC, or did you opt for DMENUPIC like Eternity? Are there other special features?

Gez said:

I guess vertical FOV isn't as useful in most cases, though it might hamper platforming stuff a bit as your sight is cut farther away from your feet.

this might be a serious disadvantage in judas23_, one of the principal 1on1 maps. i don't think i'm going to use the vertical cutoff option. i'll have to see how pillarboxes feel for me.

blzut: the top tier was always anal about details, so i don't buy that.

Blzut3 said:

... this is merely cropping and stretching support.

AlexMax said:

... why ZDaemon doesn't have a serverside option for widened FOV.

This update was just the first step on the client side. A dmflag for 'full' widescreen will be available in the next server update. 4:3 users will then be letterboxed and will have the same options to customize the boxing.
It would have not been fair to give widescreen users an advantage over 4:3 players without a server restriction at this point.

Gez said:

So to avoid giving a horizontal FOV advantage, you give a vertical FOV disadvantage. (Or you stretch things and make them ugly.)

Stretching used to be the default when using widescreen before. yes it's ugly imho. now we have pillarboxes that can be made smaller and you either loose some vertical info while preserving the aspect ratio or you gradually stretch the picture.
when using full pillarboxes you have no disadvantage on a widescreen and things at least look 'right' now.

Gez said:

How is the BFG edition IWAD support? Just using INTERPIC instead of TITLEPIC, or did you opt for DMENUPIC like Eternity?

BFG edition support means that you can play the IWAD with the zdaemon client (DMENUPIC will be used). If you want to play online though it will
be auto-patched (no it won't modify your actual iwad) so you join the server with a 1.9 IWAD.

phenex2 said:

This update was just the first step on the client side. A dmflag for 'full' widescreen will be available in the next server update. 4:3 users will then be letterboxed and will have the same options to customize the boxing.

That's a very interesting approach. Does this mean that widescreen is "gated" at 16:9 though, and that wider resolutions are pillarboxed?

Interesting mechanism. Thanks for the info.

Heh, this reminds me of the times I was able to get ~16:5 ratios working in Counterstrike Source with my Nvidia's custom resolution config (I think Source engine has updated for more strict aspects now).

EDIT: Disregard, I misunderstood too:

I don't think this is the right way to do it, or at least give a server setting for widescreen, since many prefer it to shortscreen. And I'm saying all this being stuck with a 4:3 monitor for the time being.

Edit: and that Supersampling is another spiffy option, I've been using 2x multisampling in GZDoom, but I've always wondered how software rendering would do Supersampled, gonna check it out now.

Edit: Yep, supersampling slows my old computer at 1024x768, but it does look good for 640x480. I think I prefer the mipmapping in hardware accellerated engines, I think Quake is the only software engine I've seen with mipmapped textures, though I think Randy tried it in ZDoom once but couldn't get it displaying correctly.

AlexMax said:

Does this mean that widescreen is "gated" at 16:9 though, and that wider resolutions are pillarboxed?

16:9 is utilized in the majority of widescreens atm so we'll probably go for that. wider screens will be pillarboxed in that case (though it should be a very small pillarbox).

phi108 said:

Yep, supersampling slows my old computer at 1024x768, but it does look good for 640x480.

You should have read the news post first ;)
1024x768 with 2xSSAA will internally render a 2048x1536 screen. That is extremely heavy for software rendering.

Evolution said:

ZLauncher will now automatically look for missing wads needed to playback a zdd demo

Someone checked what happens if you remove $CommercialWADFile? o.o

This was an oversight that will be fixed. Consider it done.

phi108 said:
I think Quake is the only software engine I've seen with mipmapped textures

I've seen mipmapping on UT99/GL, not sure if they also do it in software. (The SW renderer is only available in Windows, which I have not used for 5+ years...)