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synthsequence

Ways to make ZDoom closer to vanilla?

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I love and use Chocolate Doom for the main 4 IWADs but I hate its lack of compatibility with PWADs. I completely understand why though, to retain as much authenticity as possible, so I use ZDoom primarily for PWADs. I use GZDoom for mods that need specific features like Brutal Doom, stuff like that.

I've managed to make it pretty close to vanilla Doom by removing all mouse controls, jumping and all that bullcrap, set compatibility to Doom (Strict), removed all transparency (why the hell are Lost Souls transparent?), got rid of all the automap extras and changed the colors back, et cetera. I have 3 things I'd like to do to make it closer to the original games.

1. Is there a way to increase the damage light intensity? I can barely tell I'm being hurt in ZDoom. Even a head on blast from a rocket barely flashes red, whereas it basically blinds you in Chocolate Doom. I'd like to increase that if possible.

2. I really hate when it comes up with "A SECRET IS REVEALED!". It's incredibly obnoxious and makes me feel like a child. Anyway to turn this off?

3. Is there a way to limit messages at the top to just one at a time, and remove fading? This is just a nitpicky thing and it isn't as important.

Thanks for your help guys! I did a search around but couldn't find much information or previous threads about these things.

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synthsequence said:

I love and use Chocolate Doom for the main 4 IWADs but I hate its lack of compatibility with PWADs. I completely understand why though, to retain as much authenticity as possible, so I use ZDoom primarily for PWADs. I use GZDoom for mods that need specific features like Brutal Doom, stuff like that.

I've managed to make it pretty close to vanilla Doom by removing all mouse controls, jumping and all that bullcrap, set compatibility to Doom (Strict), removed all transparency (why the hell are Lost Souls transparent?), got rid of all the automap extras and changed the colors back, et cetera. I have 3 things I'd like to do to make it closer to the original games.

So you are using ZDoom for mod compatibility, but removing all the features they likely use?

Umm... Well then.

synthsequence said:

1. Is there a way to increase the damage light intensity? I can barely tell I'm being hurt in ZDoom. Even a head on blast from a rocket barely flashes red, whereas it basically blinds you in Chocolate Doom. I'd like to increase that if possible.

Traditionally, a selection of pallets from PLAYPAL are used to apply these effects. ZDoom precalculates its own versions instead, or not at all in DirectX (just a screen dim calculation). The latter ends up having vastly more subtle results at lower values due to having a larger range of colours. However the same thresholds exists, so 100 to 1 HP will blind the screen as expected.

synthsequence said:

2. I really hate when it comes up with "A SECRET IS REVEALED!". It's incredibly obnoxious and makes me feel like a child. Anyway to turn this off?

Outside of modding it out (SECRETMESSAGE in LANGUAGE and the dssecret sound), no.

synthsequence said:

3. Is there a way to limit messages at the top to just one at a time, and remove fading?

No.

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Such a shame nothing exists on the compat spectrum between these two extremes huh. What an oversight on the part of our community.

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synthsequence said:

I love and use Chocolate Doom for the main 4 IWADs but I hate its lack of compatibility with PWADs.

Which PWADs are those? Chocolate Doom should work fine with any Vanilla-compatible PWADs, if it doesn't then it's a bug.

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Quasar said:

Such a shame nothing exists on the compat spectrum between these two extremes huh. What an oversight on the part of our community.

Such subtlety, man :) Seriously, though, what is Eternity's mission statement? I personally know a lot of what it is. I think a thread (or better a Wiki page) would be appropriate - a page that answers the OP questions by describing all the ports, in "mission statement" form. One to three sentences for each port, filled in by the developers, that states what each port is really trying to accomplish. Just an idea.

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Quasar said:

Such a shame nothing exists on the compat spectrum between these two extremes huh. What an oversight on the part of our community.


Actually I really liked the look of Eternity, but I couldn't find a recent version of it. I went on the website and the latest it was updated was 2009. But then I found the thread with the latest version, so I'm getting that now.

It must be pretty obvious that I'm new to this stuff so I apologise if I ask really redundant shit, but I did look. Thanks anyway, I'll give Eternity a try!

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Maybe Eternity should get a new website through github.io or something. It'd be an idea for GZDoom too, another port which also suffers from the "lost the key to the website, host didn't bother trying to help, no idea what to do about it" problem.

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I know this seems like a little bit of a complex workaround, but if you're looking for more vanilla-style play with greater compatibility, I'd recommend downloading Team TNT's Boom executable, and dropping it into DOSbox. You're not going to get the compatibility of ZDoom, but I've been able to open a great deal of PWADs in it, regardless.

There are some options you'll feel the need to change from the get-go, but with the setup being in-engine instead of a separate setup executable, you'll find it incredibly easy.

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I'd really recommend using latest version of PrBoom+ instead of good old boom.exe.

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Gez said:

I'd really recommend using latest version of PrBoom+ instead of good old boom.exe.

PrBoom+ is definitely an option, but I run into all sorts of problems running it that I don't run into with DOSBoom.

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You must have a truly strange computer then...

Dos Boom is inevitably limited by being emulated, i.e. a significant loss of processing power.

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Graf Zahl said:

You must have a truly strange computer then...

Dos Boom is inevitably limited by being emulated, i.e. a significant loss of processing power.

I don't know about OP, but my rig is sufficiently powerful that the loss of CPU power is not a problem.

I can't explain my problems with PrBoom+, though. For whatever reason, the framerate is stuck around what looks like fifteen frames per second when the frame limiter is on. No problems with any other source ports running 35FPS; Chocolate Doom, ZDaemon, ZDoom/GZDoom with the frame limiter on, all run fine.

I am disappointed in the lack of ports that render at 320x200, though. Call me archaic, but I enjoy the look of the original chunky pixels.

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M_W said:

I am disappointed in the lack of ports that render at 320x200, though. Call me archaic, but I enjoy the look of the original chunky pixels.

For the record, I don't believe any port has dropped 320x200. What did happen is video drivers are dropping sub 640x480 modes. ZDoom has the command line options -2 and -4 to work around that for people like you.

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Blzut3 said:

For the record, I don't believe any port has dropped 320x200. What did happen is video drivers are dropping sub 640x480 modes. ZDoom has the command line options -2 and -4 to work around that for people like you.

This is correct. If you're using Chocolate Doom and the setup tool doesn't have 320x200 listed, it's not my fault.

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fraggle said:

This is correct. If you're using Chocolate Doom and the setup tool doesn't have 320x200 listed, it's not my fault.

Never an issue with Chocolate Doom, since it renders at 320x200 regardless.

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