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Blind Alley 8, "Retribution"

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Congratulations on the time improvement, but I'm afraid the 5:10 desyncs for me (soon after you teleport back to the starting area from the cyberdemon room). I'm at a loss to explain that - I have never recorded a -complevel 1 demo that didn't play back with prboom (well, except one case where there were some weird issues with the wad itself).

I hesitate to ask all the normal silly questions, but you haven't rebuilt the nodes for the map, or something like that, have you? (This seems unlikely, of course, given that you are able to watch other people's demos without them desynching.)

cycloid said:

1. autopickupweaponchange to standard shotgun while shooting at revenants

So you fully understand the frustration that led to me whingeing about this is my /newstuff Chroncles review? :) It's a just a minor thing, but it can make a big difference. I'd recommend picking up the first standard shotgun you can, and changing back to SSG while waiting for the walls to lower.

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well i bloody well did the exact same thing, that was my 5:06 demo that desynced (i think the revenant that killed me had been killed/vanished before i got back in reality).. i found the 5:10 one, but cant be bothered to reupdate it right now, i can see though that i was on par for a similar time to yours and where all the seconds went!

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well i've given up on this map now. i did a 4:39 and earlier a 4:43 with 99% kills (missed the final ****ing imp!). both desyn in teh same way as my 5:06 : upon reteleporting to the first area from the crusher area, it seems like it's usually revenants that are wrong. this time however none of them were "lost" on the 4:39 demo they were to the right when i played in and on desynched playback they were straight ahead. hmmm. i've attatched it though it's a bit pointless unless there's some magic util to fix them!

:-(
:-(
:-(

edit: well i've hunted around the net to no avail. though i feel that whatever is wrong with the recording was infact wrong with the game. both desync in the exact same way with doom2.exe ... and it's possible that my uber fast times were because of whatever caused the desync. bah bah bah

bnd8-439.zip

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That attachment doesn't contain a lmp - just a textfile. Please check your files before attaching them.

I don't really understand these desyncs you're getting. They really shouldn't happen. Perhaps you could try 2.2.3 - I don't recall anyone having similar problems with that (although I haven't experienced any problems with 2.2.4 either myself). Beyond that, well, I'll ask the silly questions.
1) What is the precise command line that you are using?
2) What is the exact file size of your iwad?
3) What is the exact file size of your pwad?

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That attachment doesn't contain a lmp - just a textfile. Please check your files before attaching them.

I don't understand these desyncs you're getting. They really shouldn't happen. Perhaps you could try 2.2.3 - I don't recall anyone having similar problems with that (although I haven't experienced any problems with 2.2.4 either myself). Beyond that, well, I'll ask the silly questions.
1) What is the precise command line that you are using?
2) What is the exact file size of your iwad?
3) What is the exact file size of your pwad?

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ok i've resubmitted a proper zip,dohh, gawd it's like i've never zipped anything before lately, heh

0. prboom.exe : 284160 bytes

1. prboom -complevel 1 -file wads\bndaly8.wad -record demoname

2. doom2.wad : 14604584 bytes

3. bndaly8.wad : 124343 bytes

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Those filesizes all look OK. The only difference is that I always use glboom.exe rather than prboom.exe. I can't imagine why that should make any difference, but maybe some glitch got into one executable but not the other. That's just idle speculation though.

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yer, it always happens at the same part of the run. and i think it LOOKS like a desync too, what with me suddenly firing all over the place, hmz. the only other thing is that i'm hammering it: every time i die i exit, wait for the "demo recorded" dialogue, hit enter, up, change the number and straight back into the breach. could it be that something can't keep up!? i doubt it, wierrrd. also, during my first demo run on stylin2 i didnt have this trouble. mind you i did upload my first, and only exit, which was my 63rd attempt. it took me about 300 over three days to get that <5 min time on bndaly8!

could it be multitasking..? i might have had other things running in the background, like mozilla... hmz, bah, etc.

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I quite often record with other programs running (Word, for instance) and it never causes any problem. I find the "demo recorded" dialogue rather annoying (2.2.3 didn't have it) - it's one more thing to distract you between attempts. Generally I delete a failed attempt and clear the dialogue simultaneously (the dialogue normally pops up about the same time as the "Are you sure ..." question about the deletion). But that never seems to louse anything up.

I think the fact that it can record a demo that won't play back properly with the same program suggests a problem with the program itself, rather than interference from something external. My best guess (well, my only guess...) remains that there is something odd with prboom.exe, and that (assuming you want to keep trying), you should give glboom.exe a go.

BTW, I have just checked the prboom forums to see if there is any discussion of issues like this, but I didn't see any.

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i suppose i could have a go with glboom, the only reason i havent been using that is that the gamma, even on the highest setting, is too dark!

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Well, this hardly will be the case, just an idea - in original doom2.exe, if you enter the game menu or adjust sound volume with F4 while recording, the demo will desync. PrBoom may have fixed that. I doubt you're adjusting the sound in every recording session but, like I said, just an idea.

Generally, sounds like like more like a PrBoom issue but as I don't use it I can't tell anything.

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If you record a demo WITHOUT the -complevel, does it desync?
please email me or Grazza the 4:39 demo.

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i'm unsure, i had plenty of goes before i realised that i should be recording in complevel 1, up to then default_comp... was set to -1 in the config file. it was only after i changed it that my desyncs started to occur. the 439 zip (above) now contains the offending demo


er. should i leave default_comp... at -1 and use complevel 1 at the command line.. it's not something stupid like that is it!?

also to quit out of demos i escape->quit->yes. should i be using a shortcut exit key?

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cycloid said:

er. should i leave default_comp... at -1 and use complevel 1 at the command line.. it's not something stupid like that is it!?

I would be surprised if that were a problem. I have used all three permutations (just in cfg; just in command line; in both) to get complevel 1, and have had no problems in any of those three cases.

also to quit out of demos i escape->quit->yes. should i be using a shortcut exit key?

I always use "escape->quit->yes".

OK, I'm going to try recording with prboom.exe to see if I can duplicate the problem.

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yer well like i said, all the desyncs happened around the same physical location in the map but that wont answer wether or not its a map issue or a prboom issue.

i've thought about this too, on my 439 the revenants were to the right when i exited the teleport room and straight ahead in the desync. the layout of the map and iddt suggests the demo is, infact, getting it right and that perhaps the game in real time got it wrong. like the revenants were suddenly 512 units west in the game for some reason. and like i said before i "lost" a revenant from that room during a 99% run, unless it had wandered up the lift!

prboom used to desync during telefrags, well i change weapon during teleport both there and back too. i think this is grasping at straws. i've got glboom running to my satisfaction (uses less cpu too!) so i'll be using that from now on.

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Grazza said:

OK, I'm going to try recording with prboom.exe to see if I can duplicate the problem.

First time "lucky". The first demo I recorded with prboom.exe (Bnd8-449.lmp - I won't attach it unless anyone really wants to see it) desynched pretty hopelessly just before teleporting back to the start area. I had been making an effort to change weapons during each teleport.

Conclusion: If you use PrBoom 2.2.4 to record "-complevel 1" demos, it needs to be glboom.exe rather than prboom.exe.

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hurrah! i think. heh. so anyone round here going to be reporting it on sourceforge?

anyway... glboom ... time to open a can of whoopass on your time :-)

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cycloid said:

hurrah! i think. heh. so anyone round here going to be reporting it on sourceforge?

OK, I'll do that. Edit: once we've established what the bug is.

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guess what. it did it on glboom, though this time it desynced around the time i got to the crusher switch before even heading back to the teleporter. and i most definatley was changing weapon from chaingun->ssg mid teleport. i'll now attempt to recreate it on another map

oh, and glboom doesnt show the endmap screen properly, the numbers are all flickery!

edit: nope, had a dozen goes on map30 and changing guns during teleport wont make it desync... ergo prboom doesnt like bndaly8!?

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cycloid said:

oh, and glboom doesnt show the endmap screen properly, the numbers are all flickery!

That's something that depends on your hardware, I suppose.

I'll see if I can trigger the same teleport/weapon change problem in glboom.

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Cycloid, what does your prboom textdump say?
(there should be a crash dump, IIRC, in your prboom dir. for troubleshooting)

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Grazza said:

I'll see if I can trigger the same teleport/weapon change problem in glboom.

No "luck" so far. I've just recorded a demo on Bndaly8 where I changed weapons during every single teleport, and it played back OK.

BTW, remember that prboom.exe and glboom.exe have separate .cfg files, so if you're using the .cfg file to set the complevel, check that it is correct. I have had problems on the very rare occasions when I have tried "-complevel 2", for instance.

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nothing interesting in stdout.txt apart from:

G_DoPlayDemo: playing demo with demo compatibility
Using normal BSP nodes!


i have a very bad on board gfx thing, though it's upto about tnt2 standards in the rendering department. cant see how doom would be overly effected by it.


re: glboom config file: yup i was using the correct complevel

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just watched it. that's really odd.
You guys seem to be nailing it down pretty good.
I wonder if a zdoom1.22 demo or a prboom2.02 demo would fail on your system...
thanks for replying to my question about the stdout.txt.

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i've got a new theory now: that it's something to do with that map, more specifically the crusher and the cyberdemon trying to occupy the same space at the same time. time to do some test runs...

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Have you tried to record with the original doom2.exe? I'm 80% sure the demos will then playback OK (with the same doom2.exe).

Can be a map-specific issue as well. Here's a snip pasted from the Requiem.wad demoset textfile:

...
MAP21: Den of the Skull
-----------------------

This is one weird level, but that's OK because I love weird levels :). But
what I like less is that this is the buggiest level I've ever seen, too, at
least for an otherwise high-quality megawad like Requiem. Let's start by the
beginning:

1) Any demo recorded with the original Map21 will desynch. To solve that, I
had to extract Map21 and recompile it with BSP 2.3x. The new MAP21 is included
in this package under the name R21.WAD. You must add this wad to the -file
parameter when watching the MAP21 demo.
...

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yeah i'm learning about using doom2.exe, i need to work out the keybind codes and other things, heh

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