Doomsday Questions

whats your opinion about doomsday in general? im just curious.


the default way to open the ingame console is Options/Show Taskbar. is there a shorter way to the console?

i did map for boom format. why cant doomsday support it? i mean the boom format isnt totally new.

besides i had some weird bugs with the launcher snowberry. i really want to like doomsday.

Badboy said:

the default way to open the ingame console is Options/Show Taskbar. is there a shorter way to the console?

The default shortcut key for the taskbar is '`', the same key used to open the console in Quake, other Doom ports etc.

Badboy said:

i did map for boom format. why cant doomsday support it? i mean the boom format isnt totally new.

Doomsday is slowly supporting Boom, but naturally, Deng Team, as all port authors do, are working on their own ambitions for the port as well. Doomsday's own modding features can mimic Boom's functionality, though a couple of elements of XG haven't yet been fully restred following the rewrite and building toward Doomsday 2.0.

Badboy said:

besides i had some weird bugs with the launcher snowberry. i really want to like doomsday.

What sort of bugs with Snowberry? Snowberry is due to be retired once all it's functionality is moved in engine meaning it will probably receive no new features and such, but any fatal bugs may be looked into.

>The default shortcut key for the taskbar is '`'

other language layout here, but i never had this problem before

for example with eternity engine the corner key works via default

with doomsday the corner key doesnt work via default, its "?" on german layout, anyway

i miss a a bindable key in the ingame menu for the console


general
if i start doomsday exe or doomsday through snowberry i see a ! warning icon in the right corner, what does that mean? can i click on it with the mouse? but the mouse dont work in the menu.

after doomsday start 2 files were created under path "bin" called dd-buffered-song1.mid/dd-buffered-song1.mid. why


snowberry
sometimes i cant tick mark the map which i am working on (mark to load the map). if i add the map path again under "addons" the tick mark works.

jumping between "shared settings" and "doom2" is getting on my nerves. if i do things under the doom2 field suddenly it jumps to "shared settings" for unknown reasons.

why i use snowberry = because drag and drop a custom wad on doomsday exe doesnt work.

thanks for help!

Badboy said:

>The default shortcut key for the taskbar is '`'

other language layout here, but i never had this problem before

for example with eternity engine the corner key works via default

with doomsday the corner key doesnt work via default, its "?" on german layout, anyway

i miss a a bindable key in the ingame menu for the console.

Independent of the shortcut key, Shift + Esc also opens the taskbar and attaches the mouse directly to the console.

The left most menu (the two arrows) on the taskbar, has an option for setting ones taskbar shortcut.

Badboy said:

general
if i start doomsday exe or doomsday through snowberry i see a ! warning icon in the right corner, what does that mean? can i click on it with the mouse? but the mouse dont work in the menu.

That is Doomsday's alert system; it informs the user of a variety of errors including engine, audio, networking, mapping and others. When the '!' comes up in the corner, it means there is an alert.

To click on it, you have to first open the taskbar, to release the mouse from the game world.

One can control what elements Doomsday alerts you about by opening the taskbar, clicking on the left most menu and then 'Log Filters and Alerts'. Click on the 'filter by subsystem' option to get a ton of options for fine control.

Badboy said:

>after doomsday start 2 files were created under path "bin" called dd-buffered-song1.mid/dd-buffered-song1.mid. why.

So Doomsday can quickly access the music track it needs. It's not really any different to a program creating a config file at the end of the day.

IIRC, there was a technical issue in the past, that meant Dday couldn't always access the music track quickly enough.

Badboy said:

snowberry
sometimes i cant tick mark the map which i am working on (mark to load the map). if i add the map path again under "addons" the tick mark works. .

All I can assume is that Doomsday can’t copy a file that is still be written to, to the add-ons folder

Badboy said:

jumping between "shared settings" and "doom2" is getting on my nerves. if i do things under the doom2 field suddenly it jumps to "shared settings" for unknown reasons.

I have personally not encountered this before. Naturally, anything in shared settings should be automatically applied to every game, while anything entered in one of the game’s profiles should only apply to the profile that game is for.

Badboy said:

why i use snowberry = because drag and drop a custom wad on doomsday exe doesnt work.

Doomsday doesn't support drag and drop and the chances of it supporting such appear to be extremely low. But you can dynamically load and unload files and switch games (i.e. switch between Doom and Heretic) in engine with the 'load' and 'unload' console commands. So one can launch Doomsday with their map, edit it in an editor and then reload it with the above console commands, without having to close Doomsday at all.

Before Snowberry is retired, a GUI for loading/unloading files will be added in Doomsday itself.

cool thanks

FWIW, support for dragging and dropping addons onto the executable file will likely be implemented eventually. However that is largely redundant once addons can be managed through an ingame UI. Dropping addons onto the Doomsday client window would be far more useful than forcing the user to go locate the executable every time they want to play anything...

Badboy said:
whats your opinion about doomsday in general?

By default it changes doom. I find that weird. For example the bullet hitting a wall effect seems out of place. The muzzle flash is horrendously out of place imo.

I didn't even know it isn't boom compatible.
So if it isn't meant for stock doom or the standard wads, then it's only for doomsday specific projects?

I've got six doom engines set up, doomsday isn't one of them yet.

DaniJ said:

FWIW, support for dragging and dropping addons onto the executable file will likely be implemented eventually. However that is largely redundant once addons can be managed through an ingame UI. Dropping addons onto the Doomsday client window would be far more useful than forcing the user to go locate the executable every time they want to play anything...

Some cunning users put a link to the EXE on their desktop.

But why adapt to user behavior when you can force them to do it your way, muhahahaha.

VGA said:

By default it changes doom. I find that weird. For example the bullet hitting a wall effect seems out of place. The muzzle flash is horrendously out of place imo.

One of the primary goals of Doomsday is to enhance the audio visual experience. If you don't like it then simply open the taskbar and switch to the Vanilla renderer profile instead. There is no reason to use a configuration you don't like when it is so easy to change it.

andrewj said:

Some cunning users put a link to the EXE on their desktop.

But why adapt to user behavior when you can force them to do it your way, muhahahaha.

Why force users into a usage model from the dark ages when we can provide the kind of modern UI experience that is expected pretty much everywhere else?

Eh hem *cough* http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1279367#post1279367 *cough*

Not trying to rain on dday's parade, but Risen 3d is a fork of dday with boom compatibility emphazised.

Risen3D forked from Doomsday over a decade ago. They've long gone past the point that they can be compared like that.

You might as well compare ZDaemon and Zandronum.

Gonna post a bit of negativity here. Hope this doesn't come off as an angry rant because it's more of a disappointed rant if anything. Because I used to like Doomsday back when it wasn't such a mess.

I still use an old Doomsday version for playing Hexen and Deathkings as I find that somehow working best for me on a personal level. But I've been trying the new versions and the rewrite isn't really doing Doomsday any favors for it's players. It's slow and buggy as all hell and the controls are terrible. The UI for setting up controls is probably the most unintuitive I've ever come across and it seems to be using some of the weirdest mouse input ever. Just getting the damn thing to set up the mouselook with raw input (which should always be the default setting) is confusing to say the least.

Snowberry (and Kicks too for that matter) is still awful and I hate using it. And I loathe using an installation program for my Doom Source port. It's just clumsy and frustrating. I eventually just decided to drop Doomsday support for my Hexen project because it won't run well with my maps and the software is buggy and a pain to work with even if it wasn't.

kristus said:

Gonna post a bit of negativity here. Hope this doesn't come off as an angry rant because it's more of a disappointed rant if anything. Because I used to like Doomsday back when it wasn't such a mess.

The simple answer is that Doomsday is in considerable flux at the moment and may well continue to be so until the big 2.0. Things are constantly being worked on under the hood in preparation; some of these may in-avertedly break things temporarily.

Sometimes trying something different is needed to advance things though (i.e many common features in Doom ports today only came about because one port tried something different back in the day).

HeXen tends to suffer the worst due to it's relative complexity to the other games; for instance, the new save game system introduced in 1.14 is basically working perfectly in Doom and Heretic, but unfortunately not in HeXen, as evidenced by the number of 1.14 patch releases.

Vermil said:

Sometimes trying something different is needed to advance things though (i.e many common features in Doom ports today only came about because one port tried something different back in the day).

HeXen tends to suffer the worst due to it's relative complexity to the other games; for instance, the new save game system introduced in 1.14 is basically working perfectly in Doom and Heretic, but unfortunately not in HeXen, as evidenced by the number of 1.14 patch releases.

Well, sorry, but this sounds like a perfect case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it!'

How can a savegame system be so complex anyway to be such a cause of problems? Too much abstraction...???

So...
The past tells us one thing clearly: Every port that got too ambitious and changed too many things so that it got stalled because it took too long to get it all sorted out, eventually died an agonizing death. Let's see if it's different this time...

Allow me to paraphrase, Graf - Quick get the pitchforks!! Change is bad m'kay! (Seriously?)

Doomsday changes things and is constantly moving forward. This should be no surprise to anyone at this point.

You haven't got a clue what you are talking about wrt abstraction Graf, that much is evidently clear. How else do you suggest we separate the components of the game and engine into clean libraries without a layered hierarchy of API abstractions? We all know your solution to that is "don't do it" but frankly, we aren't content with the way things are typically set up with Doom source ports.

The fact that the new savegame system had a couple bugs when first introduced is hardly relevant given that its typical of pretty much every project ever. New system has bugs? Hold the front page!!

@kristus
Thanks for the constructive/reasoned feedback. The control menu is indeed awkward at present. This is because its functionality is split with half on engine side and half on game side. Once this UI has been moved fully into the engine it should be easier to use.

Performance is another well known issue in large maps. We aren't really concerned about that at present because we're changing so much under the hood.

DaniJ said:

Allow me to paraphrase, Graf - Quick get the pitchforks!! Change is bad m'kay! (Seriously?)

No, change is neutral. Whether it's good or bad depends on what benefit it brings.

DaniJ said:

You haven't got a clue what you are talking about wrt abstraction Graf, that much is evidently clear. How else do you suggest we separate the components of the game and engine into clean libraries without a layered hierarchy of API abstractions? We all know your solution to that is "don't do it" but frankly, we aren't content with the way things are typically set up with Doom source ports.

Thanks for confirming. This means you are not moving forward (as in improving the game supposed to be played with your engine) but sideways (changing the underlying architecture to suit your personal preferences.)

And that's precisely what I was hinting at: In the past every port trying to do that died because to the end user who doesn't care about such things it looks like nothing substantial is happening (or that the changes he sees are not beneficial.)


Concerning architecture, of course there's a lot that can be improved. But before starting on such long-term endeavours I first do a quick check if it's worth it, and many times the answer I give myself is a clear 'no'.


Having said that, here's some quick feedback on 1.14 after playing around with it for half an hour.
To make it short: I didn't like it. Too many problems, both small and large, so here's a quick list:

- the weapon sprite doesn't display properly on my 16:9 screen. It looks squashed with the 4:3 image stretched to 16:9.
- unable to change any video settings from inside the game. (and no video config available in the launcher.) How can I change video settings?
- HUD font uses some ugly upscaling algorithm, and no option present to switch it off.
- sound is way too loud on startup
- setting IWADs in the launcher only works when using the launcher, not when starting the game directly.
- related to the previous: When starting Doomsday.exe directly, it complains about missing game WADs - what I couldn't find was an option to set them!
- crashed while checking out something with P:AR E1M6. I was unable to get any info about the reason for the crash.
- entering cheat codes treats all keys of the cheat as normal commands, making cheat code entering a chore.
- theres some weird shadows in the bottom left and right corners of the screen, giving some slight tunnel vision effect. (I guess it's intentional, but what is it supposed to mean and how can I switch it off?)
- playing larger maps is still extremely choppy, despite having a fast computer. I was unable to switch on the FPS display but using P:AR's crane for testing it was certainly way below 30 fps - GZDoom manages 250 fps in the same scene on the same system.

So, the sad conclusion: DD 1.8.6 was a port I never had much use for, but at least it was usable and I never had problems to set things up to my liking. Sadly, the new one's a mess.

[Useful feedback] Now thats more like it.

Graf Zahl said:

This means you are not moving forward (as in improving the game supposed to be played with your engine) but sideways (changing the underlying architecture to suit your personal preferences.)

No, that isn't what is happening here. The reason you see it that way is because of your perspective and the goals of the source ports you are interested in.

With Doomsday we are moving beyond supporting just id Tech 1 based games. In a source port like ZDoom, with limited scope compared to Doomsday and where everything is combined into the one executable, there is no compelling reason to develop a structured separation of engine and game. In fact, there is no separation at all and every system has direct access to every other part of the system.

And that's precisely what I was hinting at: In the past every port trying to do that died because to the end user who doesn't care about such things it looks like nothing substantial is happening (or that the changes he sees are not beneficial.)

You're not wrong that in the past such attempts have failed. But this is something we believe in and are dedicated to seeing these goals achieved. We fully understand that users will not appreciate the long term benefit of much of what we do but that is a sacrifice that we have been willing to make.

Concerning architecture, of course there's a lot that can be improved. But before starting on such long-term endeavours I first do a quick check if it's worth it, and many times the answer I give myself is a clear 'no'.

Absolutely. However we're playing the long game here. We firmly believe that what we are doing is worthwhile, regardless of the fact end users might not see or appreciate where we're headed with Doomsday.

Over the next few versions users will begin to see the fruits of what we've been doing and I guarantee this is going to be game changing stuff.

Having said that, here's some quick feedback on 1.14 after playing around with it for half an hour.

Before I address the points you made its obvious you didn't find the taskbar at all (Did you install over a really old version?). The taskbar is the focal point of the Doomsday UI, if you didn't find it then you're missing out. (See: http://dengine.net/dew/index.php?title=Introduction_to_the_console#Opening_and_closing ).

the weapon sprite doesn't display properly on my 16:9 screen. It looks squashed with the 4:3 image stretched to 16:9.

What resolution are you running at? Windowed? I've not seen this before on any system.

unable to change any video settings from inside the game. (and no video config available in the launcher.) How can I change video settings?

From the taskbar.

HUD font uses some ugly upscaling algorithm, and no option present to switch it off.

That would be HQ2X. Its always on because the vanilla fonts look a mess with filtering otherwise. It can't presently be disabled but that will be addressed soon...

sound is way too loud on startup

Obviously system variable, its fine here. Use the taskbar to change the audio settings.

setting IWADs in the launcher only works when using the launcher, not when starting the game directly.

Open the taskbar and go to the home screen (unload the game).

related to the previous: When starting Doomsday.exe directly, it complains about missing game WADs - what I couldn't find was an option to set them!

You misunderstand how this works. Doomsday allows you to change game dynamically at runtime and to do that it needs to know the location of all your IWADs. The warnings let you know that you've installed a game plugin for a game but haven't informed Doomsday where the IWADs are at. If you use say DOOMWADDIR or Stream, these will be found automatically. Otherwise, use -iwad.

crashed while checking out something with P:AR E1M6. I was unable to get any info about the reason for the crash.

Doomsday is not fully Boom compatible, although it clearly shouldn't crash here. Thanks for info, I'll check that out...

entering cheat codes treats all keys of the cheat as normal commands, making cheat code entering a chore.

I don't think this is much of an issue? What do you mean exactly, that pressing a cheat sequence key doesn't block that event from filtering through to the player control responder? Surely it has to work like that, no?

theres some weird shadows in the bottom left and right corners of the screen, giving some slight tunnel vision effect. (I guess it's intentional, but what is it supposed to mean and how can I switch it off?)

Thats a vignetting effect. It can be disabled via the taskbar if you don't like it.

I was unable to switch on the FPS display

Use the taskbar.

playing larger maps is still extremely choppy

Yeah. Not much I can say about that, its something we're not concerned with at present because we intend to completely rewrite the renderer in the (very) near future.

DaniJ said:

What resolution are you running at? Windowed? I've not seen this before on any system.

Doesn't matter. The 3D-view is fine, but the weapon is distorted. My monitor is 1920x1080.

That would be HQ2X. Its always on because the vanilla fonts look a mess with filtering otherwise. It can't presently be disabled but that will be addressed soon...

Well, 'mess' is relative. I find the filter a mess...

... from the taskbar...

Hm... I honestly can't see the greatness of this - for me it's just not intuitive to separate in-game options from engine options this way. It confused even me as an experienced computer user. I looked in the options menu and did not find what I was looking for.

BTW, you really should pause the game when the taskbar gets opened. It isn't fun to be shot dead while changing some video settings...

Graf Zahl said:

Doesn't matter. The 3D-view is fine, but the weapon is distorted. My monitor is 1920x1080.

OK. I'll add this to the todo list for 1.15

Well, 'mess' is relative. I find the filter a mess...

Indeed, it needs to be optional. We just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Hm... I honestly can't see the greatness of this - for me it's just not intuitive to separate in-game options from engine options this way. It confused even me as an experienced computer user. I looked in the options menu and did not find what I was looking for.

There won't be any separation in future. The in-game options menu will be retired once everything has been moved in the new UI. There is a lot more to the taskbar than just changing settings. Try clicking the 'DE' button for example.

BTW, you really should pause the game when the taskbar gets opened. It isn't fun to be shot dead while changing some video settings...

Naturally that can only be done in singleplayer but yes it would be helpful. I'll add that to the todo list.