Preferred screen size?

Patrol1985 said:

The classic:

Just the same : as big as possible, as long as there's a decent HUD with DoomGuy' face.
(I also enjoy some Memento Mori in Crispy Doom, like you !)

I've currently been using the BTSX HUD mod for Smooth Doom which has the Doomguy face on the bottom left corner of the screen, I prefer to see the full gun sprites and to play without the large default HUD taking up part of the screen.

Adventures of Square (at least the "general public" version) comes with a config that makes you start with a big dissected HUD (looks like this) instead of the Doom-like one (this), which IMO implies that the dissected one was assumed to be more attractive for a typical player. I personally strongly prefer the Doom-like one.

I find the look of red font on a purple background quite an eyesore.

40oz said:

My favorite style HUD is none, where all you can see is your weapon. I find the numbers to be compulsive distractions. I prefer to play as if I always have 1% health and infinite ammunition, but more often than not, health and ammo is sparse in most maps so that compulsivity saves my life. I focus on the game a lot better without it, though.

I'm surprised to see I'm not the only one who plays like this. I find the game much more pleasurable this way. When I'm playing a game, I want to be engaged with the game world itself, not with numbers and meters. And I generally find games much more interesting when the players have less-reliable information.

I suggest trying it out. You really don't need any hud whatsoever.

soner du said:

(I also enjoy some Memento Mori in Crispy Doom, like you !)

Thanks, but that's not Crispy Doom. ;)

Edit: I currently prefer this. That's the work-in-progress high-color branch of Crispy Doom with the translucent Crispy HUD:

5760x1080 is my favorite. If I had a more powerful pc I would play every game in 5760x1080 but I dont think the technology is evolved enough.

this layout (image copied from my post in the scythe2 thread)




i'm tinkering with the wide screen status bars though, i like the mugshot, as many others do.

1920x1080 resolution atm

(waiting with upgrading to 2560x1440 until better strobed monitors are out)

illuknisaa said:

5760x1080 is my favorite. If I had a more powerful pc I would play every game in 5760x1080 but I dont think the technology is evolved enough.

Well, let's see:

5760x1080 = 6,220,800 pixels
6,220,800 x 4 (32-bit color) = 24,883,200 bytes
24,883,200 x 2 (blit to video memory buffer) = 49,766,400 bytes
49,766,400 x 2 (the source data must be read to be able to render it) = 99,532,800 bytes

99,532,800 x 35 fps = 3,483,640,000 bytes/sec

So, very roughly, you need 3.5 gigabytes of memory transfer per second. That doesn't take into account any 8-to-32 conversions, 3d calculations, gameplay logic, sound, input, etc. Also, doesn't cover sprites, which, after heavy battles, can maybe add 1.5x to those numbers, due to overdraw. Speaking of overdraw, it also doesn't take into account Doom's cache-thrashing rendering methods.

That's a lot of throughput, for very little additional rendering fidelity. The only visual improvement 5760x1080 would provide, over, say 1920x1080, is that imps, a few thousand feet away, would be a bit crisper. Anything closer than, maybe 1,000 feet, would look exactly the same. Yet 5760 is WAY slower.

If your PC can handle it, go for it, but I'd be inclined to go for interpolated higher frame rates at a lower resolution, which would add a very noticeable smoothness.

In every port I play with the classic doomguy hud. Except in gzdoom I play with the screen size one higher than classic because the classic Hudson screen hurts my eyes in gzdoom. I don't know why

1920 × 1080 because my LCD screen is this size.

I wish there was some way to independantly scale the status bar in zDoom/gZDoom to your liking. You just have an option for stretched bar or not, and the stretched one takes up about as much space as if you were playing in 240p which is too much for me, and without it at 1080p it just becomes too small. So what I do is play at some upscaled resolution inbetween without stretching so I get it at just the right size.

I like the GZDoom HUD a lot. But the Zandronum HUD has a nice clean and minimal design and I especially like it when it's scaled so it fits towards the centre like this as if it were a 4:3 HUD

As above, except that I prefer to use all of my widescreen monitor.

prboom with the fancy advanced hud thingy that almost feels like cheating to use

I usually run Zdoom at 1920 X 1200 resolution with Jimmy's minimal HUD.

I play at 7 just to be a little aware of my surroundings and without Doomguy's face, I just feel sad.

Status bar w/ face. If there are mods that use full screen with overlay, I'll use that too.

1600x1200.

640 x 480. I'm an old school guy!

1024x768

JudgeDeadd said:

My preference is the "full screen with HUD overlay" mode (Zdoom/prboom), and I suppose that most other players share my opinion. What's yours?

Its kind of funny how the opening post writes about the HUD, while many people (only) post the amount of pixels in terms of resolution as a response.

1024x600, windowed, because I want to see the clock.

I play with the largest screen size that keeps the status bar on.

Any resolution that resembles 640x400 aspect ratio, I've never used 4:3 ratios because those make DOOM look like shit.

Macblain said:

I'm surprised to see I'm not the only one who plays like this. I find the game much more pleasurable this way. When I'm playing a game, I want to be engaged with the game world itself, not with numbers and meters. And I generally find games much more interesting when the players have less-reliable information.

I suggest trying it out. You really don't need any hud whatsoever.

I have tried playing like this many times. But in the end, I need to know my health and ammo levels, at the very least. So on most source ports, I compromise by hiding the status bar, and only showing the minimal HUD that most ports offer if you do the full screen size, minus one.